“It will rather spoil your little excursion, if you’ve only just come,” Peter suggested; “to say nothing of the great Biddy’s, if she’s enjoying Paris.”
“We may stay perhaps — with Julia to protect us,” said Lady Agnes.
“Ah she won’t stay; she’ll go over for her man.”
“Her man ——?”
“The fellow who stands, whoever he is — especially if he’s Nick.” These last words caused the eyes of Peter Sherringham’s companions to meet again, and he went on: “She’ll go straight down to Harsh.”
“Wonderful Julia!” Lady Agnes panted. “Of course Nick must go straight there too.”
“Well, I suppose he must see first if they’ll have him.”
“If they’ll have him? Why how can he tell till he tries?”
“I mean the people at headquarters, the fellows who arrange it.”
Lady Agnes coloured a little. “My dear Peter, do you suppose there will be the least doubt of their ‘having’ the son of his father?”
“Of course it’s a great name, Cousin Agnes — a very great name.”
“One of the greatest, simply,” Lady Agnes smiled.
“It’s the best name in the world!” said Grace more emphatically.
“All the same it didn’t prevent his losing his seat.”
“By half-a-dozen votes: it was too odious!” her ladyship cried.
“I remember — I remember. And in such a case as that why didn’t they immediately put him in somewhere else?”
“How one sees you live abroad, dear Peter! There happens to have been the most extraordinary lack of openings — I never saw anything like it — for a year. They’ve had their hand on him, keeping him all ready. I daresay they’ve telegraphed him.”
“And he hasn’t told you?”
Lady Agnes faltered. “He’s so very odd when he’s abroad!”
“At home too he lets things go,” Grace interposed. “He does so little — takes no trouble.” Her mother suffered this statement to pass unchallenged, and she pursued philosophically: “I suppose it’s because he knows he’s so clever.”
“So he is, dear old man. But what does he do, what has he been doing, in a positive way?”
“He has been painting.”
“Ah not seriously!” Lady Agnes protested.
“That’s the worst way,” said Peter Sherringham. “Good things?”
Neither of the ladies made a direct response to this, but Lady Agnes said: “He has spoken repeatedly. They’re always calling on him.”
“He speaks magnificently,” Grace attested.
“That’s another of the things I lose, living in far countries. And he’s doing the Salon now with the great Biddy?”
“Just the things in this part. I can’t think what keeps them so long,” Lady Agnes groaned. “Did you ever see such a dreadful place?”
Sherringham stared. “Aren’t the things good? I had an idea ——!”
“Good?” cried Lady Agnes. “They’re too odious, too wicked.”
“Ah,” laughed Peter, “that’s what people fall into if they live abroad. The French oughtn’t to live abroad!”
“Here they come,” Grace announced at this point; “but they’ve got a strange man with them.”
“That’s a bore when we want to talk!” Lady Agnes sighed.
Peter got up in the spirit of welcome and stood a moment watching the others approach. “There will be no difficulty in talking, to judge by the gentleman,” he dropped; and while he remains so conspicuous our eyes may briefly rest on him. He was middling high and was visibly a representative of the nervous rather than of the phlegmatic branch of his race. He had an oval face, fine firm features, and a complexion that tended to the brown. Brown were his eyes, and women thought them soft; dark brown his hair, in which the same critics sometimes regretted the absence of a little undulation. It was perhaps to conceal this plainness that he wore it very short. His teeth were white, his moustache was pointed, and so was the small beard that adorned the extremity of his chin. His face expressed intelligence and was very much alive; it had the further distinction that it often struck superficial observers with a certain foreignness of cast. The deeper sort, however, usually felt it latently English enough. There was an idea that, having taken up the diplomatic career and gone to live in strange lands, he cultivated the mask of an alien, an Italian or a Spaniard; of an alien in time even — one of the wonderful ubiquitous diplomatic agents of the sixteenth century. In fact, none the less, it would have been impossible to be more modern than Peter Sherringham — more of one’s class and one’s country. But this didn’t prevent several stray persons — Bridget Dormer for instance — from admiring the hue of his cheek for its olive richness and his moustache and beard for their resemblance to those of Charles I. At the same time — she rather jumbled her comparisons — she thought he recalled a Titian.
IV
Peter’s meeting with Nick was of the friendliest on both sides, involving a great many “dear fellows” and “old boys,” and his salutation to the younger of the Miss Dormers consisted of the frankest “Delighted to see you, my dear Bid!” There was no kissing, but there was cousinship in the air, of a conscious, living kind, as Gabriel Nash doubtless quickly noted, hovering for a moment outside the group. Biddy said nothing to Peter Sherringham, but there was no flatness in a silence which heaved, as it were, with the fairest physiognomic portents. Nick introduced Gabriel Nash to his mother and to the other two as “a delightful old friend” whom he had just come across, and Sherringham acknowledged the act by saying to Mr. Nash, but as if rather less for his sake than for that of the presenter: “I’ve seen you very often before.”
“Ah repetition — recurrence: we haven’t yet, in the study of how to live, abolished that clumsiness, have we?” Mr. Nash genially inquired. “It’s a poverty in the supernumeraries of our stage that we don’t pass once for all, but come round and cross again like a procession or an army at the theatre. It’s a sordid economy that ought to have been managed better. The right thing would be just one appearance, and the procession, regardless of expense, for ever and for ever different.” The company was occupied in placing itself at table, so that the only disengaged attention for the moment was Grace’s, to whom, as her eyes rested on him, the young man addressed these last words with a smile. “Alas, it’s a very shabby idea, isn’t it? The world isn’t got up regardless of expense!”
Grace looked quickly away from him and said to her brother: “Nick, Mr. Pinks is dead.”
“Mr. Pinks?” asked Gabriel Nash, appearing to wonder where he should sit.
“The member for Harsh; and Julia wants you to stand,” the girl went on.
“Mr. Pinks, the member for Harsh? What names to be sure!” Gabriel mused cheerfully, still unseated.
“Julia wants me? I’m much obliged to her!” Nick absently said. “Nash, please sit by my mother, with Peter on her other side.”
“My dear, it isn’t Julia”— Lady Agnes spoke earnestly. “Every one wants you. Haven’t you heard from your people? Didn’t you know the seat was vacant?”
Nick was looking round the table to see what was on it. “Upon