AT eight o’clock the next evening, John Endor found himself in the prime minister’s drawing room, shaking hands with the prime minister’s lady.
The celebrated “Mrs. Wilber” was a tall, rather austere dame, with the remains of considerable good looks; moreover, they conferred upon her an air of intellectual distinction to which she was hardly entitled. Mrs. Wilber, it is true, had an almost sublime power of putting her foot in it; but this faculty in a prime minister’s lady may spring from one of two causes: she may have too many brains, or she may have too few. Slippery Sam’s greatest enemies had never accused his wife of having too many.
By no means brilliant herself, Mrs. Wilber profoundly distrusted scintillation in others. Her husband she regarded as good rather than brilliant; indeed, in her attitude to her lord, she was almost a latter-day equivalent of Mrs. Gladstone. She seemed to regard the prime minister as too bright and good for human nature’s daily food; in fact, a kind of composite of the librarian to the House of Lords and a certain highly distinguished personage in Heaven. To those best acquainted with the singularly complex character of the first minister of the Crown, this obsession of Mrs. Wilber’s was a source of pure joy.
John Endor was too elemental to give overmuch thought to the Mrs. Wilbers of life. All the same, he had humor enough to appreciate his hostess’ sovereign faculty of “putting her foot in it.” Dinner had hardly begun when she was openly rebuked by a clever, charming, unconventional young daughter seated opposite Mr. Endor, for announcing “that it gave her so much pleasure to find that gentlemen were still to be found in politics.”
“Really, mother!” Miss Clarice reproved her with the very latest Oxford inflection.
Mrs. Wilber shifted her ground a little, although maintaining the general position by asking after “dear Lady Elizabeth.” She herself claimed to be of solid Middleshire county stock; indeed, one of her father’s properties marched with Wyndham, and she was able to remember John’s own father being acclaimed as one of the best men to hounds of his generation.
“And I hear you are going to be married, Mr. Endor.”
Rather a blow this, to Miss Clarice, who brought her charming nose to the menu card before attacking a curry.
She bore up very well, in spite of the fact that she had already told herself privately that she would have to consider the question of marrying Mr. John Endor.
He was good to look at certainly, his low voice a delight, there was not a hint of stiffness or formality about him, and, crowning joy, he had a sense of humor.
“How exciting!” Only a very little curry was needed for Miss Clarice to effect a superb, if rather stoical, recovery. “Do tell me. Who is the lady?”
“Miss Helen Sholto of Virginia, my dear.” Mrs. Wilber had seen the announcement in the Morning Post, and had known how to cherish it in a manner becoming a prime minister’s lady. “But tell me, Mr. Endor, what does dear Lady Elizabeth say?” In she went again, horse, foot, and artillery. “Virginia is in the south, I believe, which is not the moneyed part of America. But all Americans, of course, have money.”
A look of blank despair settled upon Miss Clarice, who was inclined to see her mother, not in terms of Mrs. Gladstone, but in terms of Mrs. Dizzy.
John Endor enjoyed his dinner all the same and so did Miss Clarice. The talk was really quite amusing. Mr. Williams himself was a model host and no mean conversationalist. He went back a long way. Even in Victorian times he had been in the inner circle of society and politics. He had a fund of anecdote which no man living knew better how to employ. He was always geniality itself, and on occasions of modest festivity in the bosom of his family he was wholly delightful.
It was in the library, however, after dinner that John Endor really found himself at grips with Fate. Ushered into an armchair, strategically disposed so that the bust of Pitt should be on his right and a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica on his left, two adjuncts indispensable to the library of Number 10 Downing Street, and duly furnished with an excellent cigar, the neophyte settled himself to hear golden words.
In the delicate and judicious phrase of the prime minister, it seemed that one Bendish, an admirable man, was living now under the threat of Bright’s disease, and that in the opinion of Mrs. Bendish, an admirable woman, only one place could hope to arrest the ravages of such a grave malady. That place was the House of Lords. Whether the air of the Gilded Chamber was more salubrious, whether its system of drainage was more modern, the central heating more efficient, the ventilation less inadequate, was one of those problems which the prime minister, having no first-hand knowledge of Another Place, did not offer to solve. But there the matter was. Mrs. Bendish, an admirable woman, was convinced that, for Bright’s disease, the rarified atmosphere of the House of Lords was the only remedy. Alas, that Mr. Bendish should be smitten with so fell a malady!
The prime minister, however, was by no means averse from applying the antidote. Drastic, no doubt, but Mrs. Bendish, a Spartan wife, was adamant. Unhappily, Mr. Bendish would not be able to continue his signal work for the State. The Home Office and the House of Lords are not necessarily incompatible, but like Burgundy and port they are a combination not quite suited to all constitutions. Such at least, in this case, was the view of the prime minister. In the event of Mr. Bendish really going to the House of Lords—and Mrs. Bendish was so firm on the point that it hardly admitted of doubt—it would be expedient for his Britannic majesty to seek a new secretary of state for the Home Department. In a word, would Mr. Endor take that Office?
Mr. Endor was a little staggered. The bust of Pitt was on his right hand, a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica was on his left, none the less, the prime minister’s point-blank offer was in the nature of a bolt from a blue sky.
“It will mean, I’m afraid, a by-election.” The honeyed voice of Mr. Wilberforce Williams had the mellifluity that endeared him to every journalist in the land. “And—don’t let us deceive ourselves—my dear sir—a stiff one. To be frank—to be perfectly frank—the member for Blackhampton will not be exactly persona gratissima in Universe Building.”
To the young Lothair, that was the amazing part of the whole matter. He had no claim to subtlety of mind, but he was not a fool. What was in the wind? Well he knew that for the member for Blackhampton to be given the Home Office was tantamount to Slippery Sam throwing down the gage of battle to the U. P.
“Take a little time for your answer, my dear sir.” Such linked sweetness must have seemed a little excessive in any one not the prime minister. “Take twenty-four—forty-eight—yes, forty-eight hours—shall we say? In the meantime, may I rely—of course I may—such a superfluous question—on your absolute discretion?”
John Endor gave that unnecessary assurance.
“You see, my dear sir, do you not?”—the smile of Slippery Sam was deliciously vulpine. “As soon as they get wind of this in Universe Building, the Great General Staff will be in the field with a hundred fully mobilized army corps—before even our dear Mr. Bendish can apply for the Chiltern Hundreds.”