V
On leaving the Montresors, Sir Wilfrid, seeing that it was a fine night with mild breezes abroad, refused a hansom, and set out to walk home to his rooms in Duke Street, St. James's. He was so much in love with the mere streets, the mere clatter of the omnibuses and shimmer of the lamps, after his long absence, that every step was pleasure. At the top of Grosvenor Place he stood still awhile only to snuff up the soft, rainy air, or to delight his eye now with the shining pools which some showers of the afternoon had left behind them on the pavement, and now with the light veil of fog which closed in the distance of Piccadilly.
"And there are silly persons who grumble about the fogs!" he thought, contemptuously, while he was thus yielding himself heart and sense to his beloved London.
As for him, dried and wilted by long years of cloudless heat, he drank up the moisture and the mist with a kind of physical passion--the noises and the lights no less. And when he had resumed his walk along the crowded street, the question buzzed within him, whether he must indeed go back to his exile, either at Teheran, or nearer home, in some more exalted post? "I've got plenty of money; why the deuce don't I give it up, and come home and enjoy myself? Only a few more years, after all; why not spend them here, in one's own world, among one's own kind?"
It was the weariness of the governing Englishman, and it was answered immediately by that other instinct, partly physical, partly moral, which keeps the elderly man of affairs to his task. Idleness? No! That way lies the end. To slacken the rush of life, for men of his sort, is to call on death--death, the secret pursuer, who is not far from each one of us. No, no! Fight on! It was only the long drudgery behind, under alien suns, together with the iron certainty of fresh drudgery ahead, that gave value, after all, to this rainy, this enchanting Piccadilly--that kept the string of feeling taut and all its notes clear.
"Going to bed, Sir Wilfrid?" said a voice behind him, as he turned down St. James's Street.
"Delafield!" The old man faced round with alacrity. "Where have you sprung from?"
Delafield explained that he had been dining with the Crowboroughs, and was now going to his club to look for news of a friend's success or failure in a north-country election.
"Oh, that'll keep!" said Sir Wilfrid. "Turn in with me for half an hour. I'm at my old rooms, you know, in Duke Street."
"All right," said the young man, after what seemed to Sir Wilfrid a moment of hesitation.
"Are you often up in town this way?" asked Bury, as they walked on. "Land agency seems to be a profession with mitigations."
"There is some London business thrown in. We have some large milk depots in town that I look after."
There was just a trace of hurry in the young man's voice, and Bury surveyed him with a smile.
"No other attractions, eh?"
"Not that I know of. By-the-way, Sir Wilfrid, I never asked you how Dick Mason was getting on?"
"Dick Mason? Is he a friend of yours?"
"Well, we were at Eton and Oxford together."
"Were you? I never heard him mention your name."
The young man laughed.
"I don't mean to suggest he couldn't live without me. You've left him in charge, haven't you, at Teheran?"
"Yes, I have--worse luck. So you're deeply interested in Dick Mason?"
"Oh, come--I liked him pretty well."
"Hm--I don't much care about him. And I don't somehow believe you do."
And Bury, with a smile, slipped a friendly hand within the arm of his companion.
Delafield reddened.
"It's decent, I suppose, to inquire after an old school-fellow?"
"Exemplary. But--there are things more amusing to talk about."
Delafield was silent. Sir Wilfrid's fair mustaches approached his ear.
"I had my interview with Mademoiselle Julie."
"So I suppose. I hope you did some good."
"I doubt it. Jacob, between ourselves, the little Duchess hasn't been a miracle of wisdom."
"No--perhaps not," said the other, unwillingly.
"She realizes, I suppose, that they are connected?"
"Of course. It isn't very close. Lady Rose's brother married Evelyn's aunt, her mother's sister."
"Yes, that's it. She and Mademoiselle Julie ought to have called the same person uncle; but, for lack of certain ceremonies, they don't. By-the-way, what became of Lady Rose's younger sister?"
"Lady Blanche? Oh, she married Sir John Moffatt, and has been a widow for years. He left her a place in Westmoreland, and she lives there generally with her girl."
"Has Mademoiselle Julie ever come across them?"
"No."
"She speaks of them?"
"Yes. We can't tell her much about them, except that the girl was presented last year, and went to a few balls in town. But neither she nor her mother cares for London."
"Lady Blanche Moffatt--Lady Blanche Moffatt?" said Sir Wilfrid, pausing. "Wasn't she in India this winter?"
"Yes. I believe they went out in November and are to be home by April."
"Somebody told me they had met her and the girl at Peshawar and then at Simla," said Sir Wilfrid, ruminating. "Now I remember! She's a great heiress, isn't she, and pretty to boot? I know! Somebody told me that fellow Warkworth had been making up to her."
"Warkworth?" Jacob Delafield stood still a moment, and Sir Wilfrid caught a sudden contraction of the brow. "That, of course, was just a bit of Indian gossip."
"I don't think so," said Sir Wilfrid, dryly. "My informants were two frontier officers--I came from Egypt with them--who had recently been at Peshawar; good fellows both of them, not at all given to take young ladies' names in vain."
Jacob made no reply. They had let themselves into the Duke Street house and were groping their way up the dim staircase to Sir Wilfrid's rooms.
There all was light and comfort. Sir Wilfrid's valet, much the same age as himself, hovered round his master, brought him his smoking-coat, offered Delafield cigars, and provided Sir Wilfrid, strange to say, with a large cup of tea.
"I follow Mr. Gladstone," said Sir Wilfrid, with a sigh of luxury, as he sank into an easy-chair and extended a very neatly made pair of legs and feet to the blaze. "He seems to have slept the sleep of the just--on a cup of tea at midnight--through the rise and fall of cabinets. So I'm trying the receipt."
"Does that mean that you are hankering after politics?"
"Heavens! When you come to doddering, Jacob, it's better to dodder in the paths you know. I salute Mr. G.'s physique, that's all. Well, now, Jacob, do you know anything about this Warkworth?"
"Warkworth?" Delafield withdrew his cigar, and seemed to choose his words a little. "Well, I know what all the world knows."
"Hm--you seemed very sure just now that he wasn't going to marry Miss Moffatt."
"Sure? I'm not sure of anything," said the young man, slowly.
"Well, what I should like to know," said Sir Wilfrid, cradling his teacup in both hands, "is, what particular interest has Mademoiselle Julie in that young soldier?"
Delafield looked into the fire.
"Has she any?"
"She seems