“What a frightful outrage! And having been presented, and being now actually out, I conclude you have found London a very pleasant place, under mother’s wing?” said Jack.
“Oh, it is all very quiet so far, and will be till after Easter, no doubt; but we have been to a few friendly dinners and a good many luncheons, and we have a cloud of invitations and engagements for May, and some of our Hampshire friends are in town, so there is plenty to do.”
“And have you seen anything of your Yorkshire friend, Sir Hubert Hartley?” asked Jack.
“Yes. Sir Hubert is in town.”
“And did he see you in your débutante’s finery?”
“Yes, mother had a tea-party that afternoon, and there were a good many people—and, yes, Sir Hubert dropped in.”
“And didn’t that finish him?”
“Finish him! oh, Jack, what a horrid expression! I don’t understand you in the least!”
“Of course not. Well, I’ll say no more about my old friend Hubert. I can look him up at the Devonshire tomorrow.”
“The Devonshire,” sighed Maud. “How sad to think that he is one of the few respectable people who can find it in their hearts to be Liberals!”
“Yes, he is on the wrong side, no doubt, but that doesn’t matter to us,” said Jack.
Mrs. Vansittart sighed slightly as she touched her daughter’s fluffy hair, the girl sitting on her low chair between mother and brother.
“My Maud would like her friends to be of the same opinion as herself,” she said, “and she is such an ardent Conservative, and knows so much about politics.”
“At least, I know that I am not a Radical, and that I hate what people call Progress,” protested Maud. “Progress means pulling down every historical house and widening every picturesque street, cutting railways through Arcadian valleys, and turning romantic lakes into reservoirs.”
“And progress sometimes means feeding the hungry, and teaching the ignorant,” said her mother, “and building healthy dwellings for people who are herding in poisonous slums. I think we are all agreed as to the necessity for reform, Maud, whether we are Whigs or Tories.”
“Oh, of course I want people to be taken care of all over the world,” replied Maud, “and I am prouder of our sound, roomy cottages than anything on our estate.”
“Ah, that’s the mother’s work,” said Vansittart. “One can see that a woman’s eye watches over the parish.”
“Sir Hubert tells me they have very good cottages at Hartley,” pursued Maud, “but I cannot imagine either comfort or picturesqueness within twenty miles of Sheffield.”
“Yet there are some romantic spots and some fine, bold scenery in that part of the world, I believe,” said her brother.
Later in the evening mother and son were alone together in the room which had always been John Vansittart’s sanctum and tabagie, a snug little room on the ground floor; and here the conversation was more serious than it had been at teatime, for wherever Maud was frivolity reigned. She had not yet discovered that life is a troublesome business. For her life meant new frocks and new admirers.
“Dear Jack,” sighed the mother, looking fondly at the young man’s sunburnt face, as he sat silently enjoying his pipe, “I hope now we have you home again you are going really to settle down.”
“Really to settle down,” he repeated; “that sounds rather alarming. Settle down to what, mother? Not to matrimony, I hope!”
“To that in good time, dear; but at your own good time, not mine. That is a crisis I would be the last to hasten—not because I am afraid of being turned out of the big house at Merewood; this house will be more than enough for me—but because a hasty union is seldom a happy union.”
“Ah, that’s the old-fashioned way of looking at it. I believe in the love of a day, the happiness of a lifetime. I believe in elective affinities, and upon this teeming earth there is somewhere just the one woman who could make me happy. Don’t be frightened, mother, the chances are against my meeting her; but till I do, till my heart goes ticktack at the sight of her face, at the first sound of her voice, I shall not marry. I shall not marry because the wisdom of my elders says that it is good for a man to marry. I shall not marry just to place a handsome woman at the head of my table. I will be content with a round table, where there need be no headship.”
“I was not thinking of marriage, Jack. I only want to see you settle down to the real business of life. I should be sorry to see you always an idler—sauntering through a London season, yachting a little in the Cowes week, shooting a little in September and October, hunting a little in November, and running away from the winter to amuse yourself at Nice or Monte Carlo. Independent as you are, you ought to do something better with your talents.”
“My talents are an unknown quantity. I doubt if anyone in this world, except my fond mother, gives me credit for being even moderately clever.”
“I remember what you were as a boy, Jack, and how well you got on at Balliol.”
“Oh, that was in the atmosphere, I think. I was in love with Greek because I worshipped Jowett. That was a boyish dream. All scholarly ambition is a thing of the past. I shall never do anything in that line.”
“Perhaps not. You have too much energy and activity for a student’s life. I should like to see you a power in the House.”
“Dearest flatterer, you would like to see me Prime Minister. I have no doubt you think that it simply rests with myself to become First Lord of the Treasury at an earlier
