Part 35 (2/2)

”You may sit up to any hour you like. I only ask that you don't read in bed.”

XVII

Nick's little visit was to terminate immediately after luncheon the following day: much as the old man enjoyed his being there he wouldn't have dreamed of asking for more of his time now that it had such great public uses. He liked infinitely better that his young friend should be occupied with parliamentary work than only occupied in talking it over with him. Talking it over, however, was the next best thing, as on the morrow, after breakfast, Mr. Carteret showed Nick he considered. They sat in the garden, the morning being warm, and the old man had a table beside him covered with the letters and newspapers the post had poured forth. He was proud of his correspondence, which was altogether on public affairs, and proud in a manner of the fact that he now dictated almost everything. That had more in it of the statesman in retirement, a character indeed not consciously a.s.sumed by Mr. Carteret, but always tacitly attributed to him by Nick, who took it rather from the pictorial point of view--remembering on each occasion only afterwards that though he was in retirement he had not exactly been a statesman. A young man, a very sharp, handy young man, came every morning at ten o'clock and wrote for him till luncheon. The young man had a holiday to-day in honour of Nick's visit--a fact the mention of which led Nick to make some not particularly sincere speech about _his_ being ready to write anything if Mr. Carteret were at all pressed.

”Ah but your own budget--what will become of that?” the old gentleman objected, glancing at Nick's pockets as if rather surprised not to see them stuffed out with doc.u.ments in split envelopes. His visitor had to confess that he had not directed his letters to meet him at Beauclere: he should find them in town that afternoon. This led to a little homily from Mr. Carteret which made him feel quite guilty; there was such an implication of neglected duty in the way the old man said, ”You won't do them justice--you won't do them justice.” He talked for ten minutes, in his rich, simple, urbane way, about the fatal consequences of getting behind. It was his favourite doctrine that one should always be a little before, and his own eminently regular respiration seemed to ill.u.s.trate the idea. A man was certainly before who had so much in his rear.

This led to the bestowal of a good deal of general advice on the mistakes to avoid at the beginning of a parliamentary career--as to which Mr. Carteret spoke with the experience of one who had sat for fifty years in the House of Commons. Nick was amused, but also mystified and even a little irritated, by his talk: it was founded on the idea of observation and yet our young man couldn't at all regard him as an observer. ”He doesn't observe _me_,” he said to himself; ”if he did he would see, he wouldn't think----!” The end of this private cogitation was a vague impatience of all the things his venerable host took for granted. He didn't see any of the things Nick saw. Some of these latter were the light touches the summer morning scattered through the sweet old garden. The time pa.s.sed there a good deal as if it were sitting still with a plaid under its feet while Mr. Carteret distilled a little more of the wisdom he had laid up in his fifty years. This immense term had something fabulous and monstrous for Nick, who wondered whether it were the sort of thing his companion supposed _he_ had gone in for. It was not strange Mr. Carteret should be different; he might originally have been more--well, to himself Nick was not obliged to phrase it: what our young man meant was more of what it was perceptible to him that his old friend was not. Should even he, Nick, be like that at the end of fifty years? What Mr. Carteret was so good as to expect for him was that he should be much more distinguished; and wouldn't this exactly mean much more like that? Of course Nick heard some things he had heard before; as for instance the circ.u.mstances that had originally led the old man to settle at Beauclere. He had been returned for that borough--it was his second seat--in years far remote, and had come to live there because he then had a conscientious conviction, modified indeed by later experience, that a member should be constantly resident.

He spoke of this now, smiling rosily, as he might have spoken of some wild aberration of his youth; yet he called Nick's attention to the fact that he still so far clung to his conviction as to hold--though of what might be urged on the other side he was perfectly aware--that a representative should at least be as resident as possible. This gave Nick an opening for something that had been on and off his lips all the morning.

”According to that I ought to take up my abode at Harsh.”

”In the measure of the convenient I shouldn't be sorry to see you do it.”

”It ought to be rather convenient,” Nick largely smiled. ”I've got a piece of news for you which I've kept, as one keeps that sort of thing--for it's very good--till the last.” He waited a little to see if Mr. Carteret would guess, and at first thought nothing would come of this. But after resting his young-looking eyes on him for a moment the old man said:

”I should indeed be very happy to hear that you've arranged to take a wife.”

”Mrs. Dallow has been so good as to say she'll marry me,” Nick returned.

”That's very suitable. I should think it would answer.”

”It's very jolly,” said Nick. It was well Mr. Carteret was not what his guest called observant, or he might have found a lower pitch in the sound of this sentence than in the sense.

”Your dear father would have liked it.”

”So my mother says.”

”And _she_ must be delighted.”

”Mrs. Dallow, do you mean?” Nick asked.

”I was thinking of your mother. But I don't exclude the charming lady. I remember her as a little girl. I must have seen her at Windrush. Now I understand the fine spirit with which she threw herself into your canva.s.s.”

”It was her they elected,” said Nick.

”I don't know,” his host went on, ”that I've ever been an enthusiast for political women, but there's no doubt that in approaching the ma.s.s of electors a graceful, affable manner, the manner of the real English lady, is a force not to be despised.”

”Julia's a real English lady and at the same time a very political woman,” Nick remarked.

”Isn't it rather in the family? I remember once going to see her mother in town and finding the leaders of both parties sitting with her.”

”My princ.i.p.al friend, of the others, is her brother Peter. I don't think he troubles himself much about that sort of thing,” said Nick.

”What does he trouble himself about?” Mr. Carteret asked with a certain gravity.

”He's in the diplomatic service; he's a secretary in Paris.”

”That may be serious,” said the old man.

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