THE NEW LIFE

"You haven't mentioned it to the young man himself?" asked Lady Evenswood.

"Certainly not. I've only seen him once, and then he didn't talk of his own affairs. He takes the thing very well. He's lost his position and he's the hero of the newspapers, and he bears both afflictions quite coolly. A lad of good balance, I think."

"Is he agreeable?"

"Hum, I'm not sure of that. No excess of modesty, I fancy."

"I suppose you mean he's not shy? All young men are conceited. I think I should like you to bring him to see me."

For forty years such an intimation from Lady Evenswood had enjoyed the rank of a command; Lord Southend received it with proper obedience.

"The solution I spoke of has occurred to some of us," he went on. "He's poor now, but with that he could make a marriage. The case is very exceptional----"

"So is what you propose, George."

"Oh, there are precedents. It was done in the Bearsdale case."

"There was a doubt there." Lady Evenswood knew all about the Bearsdale case; though it was ancient history to Southend, she had danced with both the parties to it.

"The House was against the marriage unanimously." But he did not deny the doubt.

"Well, what are you going to do?" she asked.

"It would be necessary to approach Disney." Southend spoke with some appearance of timidity. Mr Disney was Prime Minister. "And the truth is, none of us seemed to like the job. So John Fullcombe suggested you."

"What brave men you are!" Her face wrinkled humorously.

"Well, he might bite us, and he couldn't bite you--not so hard anyhow."

"And you want me to ask for a higher rank! That wasn't done in the Bearsdale case, nor in any other that I ever heard of."

"We shouldn't press that. A barony would do. But if Disney thought that under the very exceptional circ.u.mstances a viscounty----"

"I don't see why you want it," she persisted. The slight embarra.s.sment in Southend's manner stirred the old lady's curiosity. "It's rather odd to reward a man for his mother's----. There, I don't say a word about Addie. I took her to her first ball, poor girl."

"Disney used to know her as a girl."

"If you're relying on Robert Disney's romantic memories----" But she stopped, adding after a pause, "Well, one never knows. But again, why a viscounty?"

Driven into a corner, but evidently rather ashamed of himself, Southend explained.

"The viscounty would be more convenient if a match came about between him and the girl."

"What, the new Lady Tristram? Well, George, romance has taken possession of you to-day!"

"Not at all," he protested indignantly. "It's the obviously sensible way out."

"Then they can do it without a viscounty."

"Oh, no, not without something. There's the past, you see."

"And a sponge is wanted? And the bigger the sponge the better? And I'm to get my nose bitten off by asking Robert Disney for it? And if by a miracle he said yes, for all I know somebody else might say no!"

This dark reference to the Highest Quarters caused Southend to nod thoughtfully: they discussed the probable att.i.tude--a theme too exalted to be more than mentioned here. "Anyhow the first thing is to sound Disney," continued Southend.

"I'll think about it after I've seen the young man," Lady Evenswood promised. "Have you any reason to suppose he likes his cousin?"

"None at all--except, of course, the way he's cleared out for her."

"Yielding gracefully to necessity, I suppose?"

"Really, I doubt the necessity; and, anyhow, the gracefulness needs some explanation in a case like this. Still I always fancied he was going to marry another girl, a daughter of a friend of mine--Iver--you know who I mean?"

"Oh, yes. Bring Harry Tristram to see me," said she. "Good-by, George.

You're looking very well."

"And you're looking very young."

"Oh, I finished getting old before you were forty."

A thought struck Southend. "You might suggest the viscounty as contingent on the marriage."

"I shan't suggest anything till I've seen the boy--and I won't promise to then."

Later in the afternoon Southend dropped in at the Imperium, where to his surprise and pleasure he found Iver in the smoking-room. Asked how he came to be in town, Iver explained:

"I really ran away from the cackling down at Blentmouth. All our old ladies are talking fifteen to the dozen about Harry Tristram, and Lady Tristram, and me, and my family, and--well, I dare say you're in it by now, Southend! There's an old cat named Swinkerton, who is positively beyond human endurance; she waylays me in the street. And Mrs Trumbler, the vicar's wife, comes and talks about Providence to my poor wife every day. So I fled."

"Leaving your wife behind, I suppose?"

"Oh, she doesn't mind Mrs Trumbler. But I do."

"Well, there's a good deal of cackling up here too. But tell me about the new girl." Lord Southend did not appear to consider his own question "cackling" or as tending to produce the same.

"I've only seen her once. She's in absolute seclusion and lets n.o.body in except Mina Zabriska--a funny little foreign woman--You don't know her."

"I know about her, I saw it in the paper. She had something to do with it?"

"Yes." Iver pa.s.sed away from that side of the subject immediately. "And she's struck up a friendship with Cecily Gainsborough--Lady Tristram, I ought to say. I had a few words with the father. The poor old chap doesn't know whether he's on his head or his heels; but as they're of about equal value, I should imagine, for thinking purposes, it doesn't much matter. Ah, here's Neeld. He came up with me."

The advent of Neeld produced more discussion. Yet Southend said nothing of the matter which he had brought to Lady Evenswood's attention.

Discretion was necessary there. Besides he wished to know how the land lay as to Janie Iver. On that subject his friend preserved silence.

"And the whole thing was actually in old Joe's diary!" exclaimed Southend.

Neeld, always annoyed at the "Joe," admitted that the main facts had been recorded in Mr Cholderton's Journal, and that he himself had known them when n.o.body else in England did--save, of course, the conspirators themselves.