was as irresponsible as a child.
'Do you find it difficult to live on the income grandfather left you?' he said incredulously. 'I understood that life in the south of France was so much cheaper.'
'Oh, my dear, life is never cheap anywhere,' said Fanny-Rosa, 'What with little dinners, and going about, and one thing and another, I am always short.'
She was being persistently vague on purpose, thought Henry; she was not going to commit herself.
'You have about twelve hundred a year from my grandfather,' said Henry firmly, 'and the rent of your villa, in English money, is about fifty pounds a year. Say your servants-there's a cook and a little girl, isn't there? — and your food cost you a hundred; clothes, the small amount of entertaining you can do, a further fifty; that's only two hundred pounds gone, mother, and a clear thousand in hand. What have you done with it all, that you have been obliged to borrow a thousand pounds from Owen Williams?'
'It goes, I tell you,' said Fanny-Rosa.
'Don't ask me how or why.
I have not the slightest idea. Henry, dear boy, do put off that school, master expression, it is so unbecoming, and when you greet your constituents directly you must be your usual smiling, charming self. You are sitting on my ear-rings, darling; throw them across to me, will you?'
She pleaded softly, looking at him out of the corner of her eyes, and shrugging his shoulders, he rose from the bed, the ear-rings in his hand, and fastened them gently in her ears.
'You have hands like your father,' she said: 'now I know why your Katherine loves you… May you always be happy together.'
He stared at her face in the looking-glass. Was that a very small tear in the corner of her eye, and she smiling all the while?
'Mother,' he said impulsively, 'why don't you give up this life in the south of Prance, and come and live with us at Clonmere? Katherine would love to have you, and you know you belong there, to your own country.'
Fanny-Rosa shook her head.
'Don't be absurd,' she said lightly. 'My present existence suits me to the ground. Everyone and everything so amusing. Anyway, it's a great mistake for a mother to live with her son. I tried it once, and I failed. Which of these bonnets shall I wear this evening?'
'Never mind about the bonnets. Mother, will you change your mind and come and live with us? You could have your own rooms, do exactly as you please, and no one would interfere with you.'
'No, darling.'
'Will you tell me then what you are doing with your money?'
'Oh, Henry, don't harp so… Look, it's half-past five; we ought to be at the Town Hall. Run down and tell the others to get ready.
I love your Tom Callaghan; so much more understanding than the usual run of parsons. You have always been lucky in your friends. Johnnie never made any…
'Kiss me, my funny dear serious son, and don't worry about me any more. I won't bother Mr. Owen Williams again, I promise you. This coming season will make up for last, I know it will.'
'Why, what do you mean?' smiled Henry. 'You talk like a shopkeeper, as though you expected to make some money.'
She flashed him a vivid smile, and patted the side of her hair.
'Let's go and find the others,' she said, 'and don't forget to put a flower in your buttonhole. Praise God I have such good-looking children.'
It was useless, thought Henry, as he followed her downstairs, to try to get anything out of her. She just put up barriers all the time. She smiled, and looked softly at you, and made some irrelevant remark, but what went on within that head of hers you would never know. And he wondered whether his father, who had loved her so well, had found her the same, and whether, even when they were closest, she had eluded him….
The family were waiting for them downstairs in the lounge, and cabs were ordered immediately to take them to the Town Hall.
The streets were congested, though, with everyone bent on the same errand as themselves, and the horses were obliged to proceed at walking pace, or they would have run down the people.
Henry directed the driver to take them round to the entrance at the back of the building, for to climb up the steps in front of the crowds assembled in the square was to court immediate recognition.
Even now they could hear the hum of excitement and the babble of voices, for all the world, said Fanny-Rosa, like a mob before an execution, and as the cabs turned into the little street behind the Town Hall they could see line upon line of excited faces, looking upwards to the balcony, laughing, shouting, with caps waving, and handkerchiefs flying.
'We must be even later than I thought,' said Henry swiftly, 'it looks to me as though the result is being given out.'
He handed his mother and his sister from the cab, and leaving them to follow in the care of his brothers, Tom Callaghan, and his brother-in-law, he ran up the narrow staircase at the back of the Hall that led to the large board room on the upper floor. His heart was beating, and for the first time in his life his hands were trembling. He entered the room, which was filled with people and the excited buzz of voices. Outside the crowds were cheering their heads off. And there, in front of him, standing on the balcony, hat in hand, bowing to right and left, was Mr. Sartor, the Liberal candidate.
Something snapped for an instant in Henry's mind, and a momentary wave of bitter disappointment filled his heart.
'Oh, damn…' he thought to himself, 'damn and blast…?
And then he smiled, he walked forward with his hand extended. and Mr. Sartor, the new member for Bronsea, turned and saw him, and beckoned him on to the balcony beside him. The Liberal had won by a majority of eight thousand votes.
'And so that's that,' said Henry, when the applause had died away and the crowds had dispersed to make merry in the public-houses. 'And I may as well confess now to my family that I never for one moment thought I would succeed. It's been an experience, and very great fun; now let us go back and have an excellent dinner, and forget all about it.'
'Spoken like a sportsman,' said Tom Callaghan, taking his arm. 'I don't mind saying I'm disappointed. I should have dearly loved to have gone to Westminster and seen you talking the heads off all the fellows there. But never mind, it was not to be, and we shall have you home in Doonhaven.'
'Better luck next time, old fellow,' said Edward.
'Ah, there'll be no next time,' said Henry; 'this was my first and last venture into politics. I don't mind making a fool of myself once, but twice is too often.'
He chatted lightly and gaily to cover his sense of defeat. His family must not think he minded, nor did he mind, he kept insisting to himself. The worst thing in the world was to be a bad loser. No, it was just a silly pin- prick to his pride, that was all.
Henry Brodrick hitherto had got away with everything.
'I simply can't understand how anyone voted for that Mr. Sartor,' said Fanny-Rosa; 'such a terribly unattractive man. Bad teeth, which I can't forgive. And absolutely no breeding whatsoever.'
'The people of Bronsea don't mind that, Mrs.
Brodrick,' said Tom Callaghan. 'They felt he knew more about them than Henry did, and that's how he won the seat.'
'Oh, it's easy to persuade a man who lives on bread and porridge that he is a suffering man,' replied Fanny- Rosa, 'but whether you can do him any good by telling him so is another matter.'
'Politics is a gamble, nothing more nor less,' said Henry, 'and if you lose you cut your losses and forget the business, which is what I propose to do.'
'Which shows your very good sense of balance,' said Tom. 'Your inveterate gambler never knows when he is beaten, and goes on until the thing becomes 3 disease and be can't stop. It's a form of mental escape, like drink, and runs in the blood-stream.
But I don't know why we are so serious all of a sudden. Henry, old friend, even if you have lost the election, you conducted the affair like a gentleman, and I, for one, am proud of you.'
