Part 61

It was useless. No remonstrances shook the iron resolution of the man who had hewed his way through the rank and file of political humanity to his own high place apart from the rest. Helpless, ghastly, snatched out of the very jaws of death, there he lay, steadily distilling the clear common-sense which had won him all his worldly rewards into the mind of his son. Not a hint was missed, not a caution was forgotten, that could guide Julius safely through the miry political ways which he had trodden so safely and so dextrously himself. An hour more had passed before the impenetrable old man closed his weary eyes, and consented to take his nourishment and compose himself to rest. His last words, rendered barely articulate by exhaustion, still sang the praises of party manoeuvres and political strife. “It’s a grand career! I miss the House of Commons, Julius, as I miss nothing else!”

Left free to pursue his own thoughts, and to guide his own movements, Julius went straight from Lord Holchester’s bedside to Lady Holchester’s boudoir.

“Has your father said any thing about Geoffrey?” was his mother’s first question as soon as he entered the room.

“My father gives Geoffrey a last chance, if Geoffrey will only take it.”

Lady Holchester’s face clouded. “I know,” she said, with a look of disappointment. “His last chance is to read for his degree. Hopeless, my dear. Quite hopeless! If it had only been something easier than that; something that rested with me--”

“It does rest with you,” interposed Julius. “My dear mother!--can you believe it?--Geoffrey’s last chance is (in one word) Marriage!”

“Oh, Julius! it’s too good to be true!”

Julius repeated his father’s own words. Lady Holchester looked twenty years younger as she listened. When he had done she rang the bell.

“No matter who calls,” she said to the servant, “I am not at home.” She turned to Julius, kissed him, and made a place for him on the sofa by her side. “Geoffrey shall take that chance,” she said, gayly--“I will answer for it! I have three women in my mind, any one of whom would suit him. Sit down, my dear, and let us consider carefully which of the three will be most likely to attract Geoffrey, and to come up to your father’s standard of what his daughter-in-law ought to be. When we have decided, don’t trust to writing. Go yourself and see Geoffrey at his hotel.”

Mother and son entered on their consultation--and innocently sowed the seeds of a terrible harvest to come.

CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.

GEOFFREY AS A PUBLIC CHARACTER.

TIME had advanced to after noon before the selection of Geoffrey’s future wife was accomplished, and before the instructions of Geoffrey’s brother were complete enough to justify the opening of the matrimonial negotiation at Nagle’s Hotel.

“Don’t leave him till you have got his promise,” were Lady Holchester’s last words when her son started on his mission.

“If Geoffrey doesn’t jump at what I am going to offer him,” was the son’s reply, “I shall agree with my father that the case is hopeless; and I shall end, like my father, in giving Geoffrey up.”

This was strong language for Julius to use. It was not easy to rouse the disciplined and equable temperament of Lord Holchester’s eldest son. No two men were ever more thoroughly unlike each other than these two brothers. It is melancholy to acknowledge it of the blood relation of a “stroke oar,” but it must be owned, in the interests of truth, that Julius cultivated his intelligence. This degenerate Briton could digest books--and couldn’t digest beer. Could learn languages--and couldn’t learn to row. Practiced the foreign vice of perfecting himself in the art of playing on a musical instrument and couldn’t learn the English virtue of knowing a good horse when he saw him. Got through life. (Heaven only knows how!) without either a biceps or a betting-book. Had openly acknowledged, in English society, that he didn’t think the barking of a pack of hounds the finest music in the world. Could go to foreign parts, and see a mountain which nobody had ever got to the top of yet--and didn’t instantly feel his honor as an Englishman involved in getting to the top of it himself. Such people may, and do, exist among the inferior races of the Continent. Let us thank Heaven, Sir, that England never has been, and never will be, the right place for them!

Arrived at Nagle’s Hotel, and finding nobody to inquire of in the hall, Julius applied to the young lady who sat behind the window of “the bar.” The young lady was reading something so deeply interesting in the evening newspaper that she never even heard him. Julius went into the coffee-room.

The waiter, in his corner, was absorbed over a second newspaper. Three gentlemen, at three different tables, were absorbed in a third, fourth, and fifth newspaper. They all alike went on with their reading without noticing the entrance of the stranger. Julius ventured on disturbing the waiter by asking for Mr. Geoffrey Delamayn. At the sound of that illustrious name the waiter looked up with a start. “Are you Mr. Delamayn’s brother, Sir?”

“Yes.”

The three gentlemen at the tables looked up with a start. The light of Geoffrey’s celebrity fell, reflected, on Geoffrey’s brother, and made a public character of him.

“You’ll find Mr. Geoffrey, Sir,” said the waiter, in a flurried, excited manner, “at the Cock and Bottle, Putney.”

“I expected to find him here. I had an appointment with him at this hotel.”

The wait er opened his eyes on Julius with an expression of blank astonishment. “Haven’t you heard the news, Sir?”

“No!”

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the waiter--and offered the newspaper.

“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the three gentlemen--and offered the three newspapers.

“What is it?” asked Julius.

“What is it?” repeated the waiter, in a hollow voice. “The most dreadful thing that’s happened in my time. It’s all up, Sir, with the great Foot-Race at Fulham. Tinkler has gone stale.”