Chapter X: Premier and Peeress

The new Grand Imperial Hotel at Brighton was very full; for it had become the fashion once again to spend the week-end away from town, and the Grand Imperial was the hotel temporarily favoured, not so much by the so-called “smart set” as by those who were popularly supposed to possess brains. Jaded barristers, glad to forget for the moment that there existed such a place as the Inner Temple, a trio of actor-managers who were “resting”; two or three of the most beautiful women in society, and a sprinkling of clerics were included among the guests. To-night—Saturday—the Right Hon. Athelstan Moore was expected, and the hotel complement would be complete.

It was the hour between tea and dinner—the children’s hour. Those who were not imbibing the salubrious air along the promenade were gathered in the lounge, whilst the children—there were not many—played hide-and-seek around the Corinthian pillars and behind the numerous Chesterfield couches. One of them, a tiny boy of scarcely five summers, was playing horses with a little girl three years his senior, and racing up and down as fast as his little legs would carry him, seemed bubbling over with health and merriment.

“You go too slow, Phyllis,” he piped, almost out of breath with his mimic galloping and plunging. “Why don’t you run?”

Phyllis Moore loosened the reins.

“If I run I shall make myself tired,” she replied demurely. “My governess told me to play quietly. I am going to wait up for father to-night.”

The air of maiden superiority jarred upon the little boy.

“I will wait up for father, too,” he announced sturdily. “Let’s both wait up.”

Phyllis looked more superior than ever.

“You are very silly, Leslie,” she returned. “How can you wait up for your father when he is dead?”

“What’s dead?” demanded Leslie, with wide-open eyes.

“Dead? Oh, it’s being put down in a hole in the ground and being covered with a lot of nasty earth, and then having a great flat stone plumped down on top of you. That’s what your father is.”

“He isn’t,” denied Leslie, with indignation.

“He is, or else you would not be the Earl of Chesterwood.”

“He isn’t!” Leslie stamped his foot.

“He is!”

“He isn’t. You are a horrid little girl, and I don’t like you a bit.”

“Children, what are you quarrelling about?” said a lady’s voice from behind one of the pillars. “It is very naughty to quarrel. Come and tell me what is the matter.”

Leslie dissolved into tears, and hid his face in the folds of his mother’s skirt, whilst Phyllis stood by abashed. Lady Chesterwood, not wishing to have her gown marred by her son’s emotion, produced a small cambric handkerchief, and placed it between the child’s face and her skirt.

“Now,” she said, addressing herself to Phyllis, “why did you make Leslie cry?”

“I didn’t make him cry,” the Premier’s daughter answered sulkily. “I only told him his father was dead. It is quite true. His father _is_ dead.”

“He isn’t,” came from Leslie, in a stifled voice. “She says my father is in a hole in the ground, with a lot of nasty earth and a stone on top of him; and he isn’t! My father doesn’t live in a hole.”

The Countess maintained a calm demeanour.

“Your father is above the bright blue sky with the angels, sonnie,” she said soothingly. “Don’t you remember that I told you he had gone away to heaven?”

“Yes.” Leslie raised his head triumphantly, and glowered at Phyllis. “My father is in heaven with the angels. I knew he wasn’t down a nasty hole in the ground!”

Phyllis, still unconvinced, stalked away to rejoin her governess, and the Countess was spared the necessity of entering further into the problem. She wondered what Leslie would have to say if she were to provide him with a new father, and how he and Phyllis would agree. The letter which she had dashed off in Patricia’s boudoir had never been sent, for she had thought better of it before she reached home. She had not yet given a definite answer to her illustrious wooer, although a month had passed, but she knew that he was coming to Brighton expressly to hear what she had to say.

When the nurse came for her boy, she went to rejoin the sister with whom she was staying—the Princess Charles von Felsen-Schvoenig. She felt unusually nervous, and could not settle down anywhere. The bravado she had shown in her conversation with Patricia had gradually evaporated until there was little left. The nearer it came to meeting the Premier the less courageous did she feel. She was not at all sure now that she considered it worth while to become the defender of the Jews.

The Princess was very much like her sister in appearance, but possessed stronger features and a firmer will. She considered Mamie foolish to wish to encumber herself with another husband, and to give up her widowed freedom. Her own husband—with whom she was not in love—was suffering with a disease of the spine; and as he allowed himself to be relegated to the castle in Felsen-Schvoenig whenever his presence was undesired by his wife, the Princess enjoyed life in her own way as a woman of independence. She was fond of travelling, and journeyed from one place to another as she felt inclined. Perhaps there was scarcely a wife in the whole of Europe so little troubled by domestic affairs.

“So the hour approaches!” she exclaimed, as her sister appeared in her boudoir. “Whence the pale cheeks and troubled brow?”

“Am I pale?” The Countess glanced at herself in the mirror. “I shall have plenty of colour when the lights are lit. I feel real stupid to-day; I don’t know why. When Moore begins rolling off his words to me in that curious manner of his, I know I shall have nothing to say for myself in return. I might be a girl in her first season instead of a widow and a woman of the world. And I just wanted to be especially brilliant to-night. It’s very annoying, isn’t it?”

The Princess regarded her contemplatively. “I believe you are afraid of Moore,” she said.

“Afraid? What nonsense. As if I could be frightened of a little man scarcely a head taller than myself!”

“A little man certainly, but he has a great personality. It is said that the man or woman does not exist who can oppose Moore’s iron will. It is true enough that when he determines on a thing, that thing always comes to pass. Therefore, my dear Mamie, you will know what to expect.”

“_Qui vivra verra_,” returned her sister, as the dressing-bell resounded through the hotel; and then, with a careless nod, she left the room.

She looked much better when, an hour later, she descended to the salon. Her gown of filmy chiffon and lace suited her to perfection, and anticipation had lent a touch of colour to her cheeks. The Princess, who was in black relieved and studded by gems which glittered with every ray of light, glanced at her with satisfaction.

“Moore is here,” she announced quietly. “He arrived about ten minutes ago, and has gone up to see Phyllis and dress.”

Nevertheless the Premier was absent from the dinner-table, and the Countess was kept on tenter-hooks until the gentlemen rejoined the ladies, when she noticed his short, thick-set figure at the entrance to the lounge. The band in the north gallery had begun the overture to Faust, and his coming was—by a coincidence—heralded by the martial tones of the Soldiers’ Chorus. She put down the untasted cup of coffee on the little table at her side, and trifled nervously with the diamond collar on her neck. The next moment she had shaken hands and was exchanging commonplaces with the first man in England. Her nervousness suddenly vanished, leaving her natural and free.

The Press had often remarked on the apparent likeness between the Premier and Napoleon the Great. Certainly Athelstan Moore possessed eagle-eyes, a Roman nose, and somewhat round and stooping shoulders, and the brusqueness of his manner considerably strengthened the effect. He jerked out his words in the tone of one accustomed to command, and was absolutely devoid of the saving sense of humour. That was why some people found his society somewhat trying. He never could—or would—receive a joke.

“You are late,” the Countess said, as she made room for him beside her. “I expected you long ago.”

“Yes; I was detained in town. I could have been down to dinner, however, had not Phyllis insisted on my staying with her until she went to sleep.”

It was a curious fact that while the Premier never suffered himself to be dictated to by those whose powers of thought equalled his own, he was as wax in the hands of his child. The Countess smiled.

“Phyllis has been quarrelling with my little Leslie,” she informed him, with pretended gravity. “It is strange that they two can never agree.”

“I suppose it is because the girl is older than the boy,” he returned thoughtfully. “A boy does not like to be commanded by a girl, even if she be older than himself. I must have a serious talk with Phyllis. I do not wish her to quarrel with anyone, least of all your little boy.”

He laid stress on the pronoun. The Countess knew what he meant, but she said nothing, and turned over the pages of her book with apparent carelessness. The lounge was filling, and the music ceased. Espying the figure of a well-known political bore opposite, Moore leant farther back in shadow. He knew that if he were noticed he would be called upon to talk politics for the remainder of the evening; and although it was true that his life was bound up in his beloved Government, he was not anxious to enter into a controversy just now.

“I wish to speak to you, Mamie,” he said, lowering his voice. “Will you come out on the terrace? It is a glorious night; and if you put on a wrap you will not feel cold.”

The Countess rose obediently, and sent for her fur-lined cloak. It was just like a man to think that a bare neck and arms could be sufficiently protected by a flimsy “wrap.” The night was certainly calm, but as it was winter it could scarcely be otherwise than chilly. The terrace was deserted, save for a young man who was enjoying a smoke at the far end. Moore drew the young widow to a rustic seat at the most sheltered corner. There was no sound save the swish of the sea.

Athelstan Moore was not the man to indulge in sentimentality. He paid no heed to the moon and the stars and the stillness, but came to the point at once. Lady Chesterwood had been given a month to consider his offer of marriage, and as the time had expired, he awaited her answer now.

Lady Chesterwood was still undecided.

“You say you wish to marry me because you are particularly drawn towards me,” she said evenly. “But in your position as head of the State, is it wise to saddle yourself with a wife?”

“‘_Amare simul et sapere ipsi jovi non datur_,’” he quoted lightly. “Besides, I think it expedient for a Prime Minister to be married, since his wife can perform her duty to the State socially as hostess. Mrs. Moore, as you know, died a year after our marriage—when Phyllis was born. Don’t you think I owe a duty also to my motherless child?”

If there was a tender spot in the Premier’s heart, it was for his little girl. Mamie knew it, and thought she recognised what had prompted the man’s desire.

“You want a mother for Phyllis?” she asked softly. “Am I not right?”

“Yes; but I also want you for myself. It is not good for man to be alone, especially a man so harassed and worried by the affairs of the nation as I am. When a fellow’s brain is so severely taxed that sometimes the whole universe seems out of joint, he longs for the sympathy of an intelligent woman to steady his nerves. I am not a young man, and I do not offer you the passionate devotion which a hotheaded youth lavishes on a young girl in her teens; but I will do my best to make you a good husband, Mamie; and as you are a sensible woman, I think you will understand.”

Mamie did understand, and experienced a feeling of gratification. It seemed strange to hear Moore—the ostensibly stony-hearted, hard-headed Prime Minister—talk in this strain. It showed that, strong as he was, he was not too strong to be able to dispense with sympathy. It showed that, in spite of all the logic of dry-as-dust professors, there was a force to be reckoned with in love.

The music had begun again, and the seductive strains of a valse floated out towards them. The waves, as they broke at regular intervals upon the beach, seemed to beat time to the melody, and the seething foam rushing backwards on the pebbles added a refrain. A sense of unreality affected the little Countess as she listened; it seemed almost as if she were living the past over again. She had had acquaintance with the man beside her for at least three years, but she had never liked him so well as at this moment. Perhaps it was because she saw him in a new light, and felt the undoubted fascination of his virile personality. She forgot the many stories she had heard of his despotic dealings, forgot altogether his hatred of the Jews. She remembered only that he was a great man, and that he had come to _her_ for sympathy. Was it a wonder that her small features glowed with pride!

“I will marry you because you want me,” she said, in a gentle voice at last, “and I will try and do my duty to your motherless girl, as I hope you will to my fatherless boy. But you will be good to me, won’t you, Athelstan?” she added, almost wistfully. “You will be our protector—Leslie’s and mine?”

He raised her hand to his lips.

“It will be my first care to protect you,” he replied, well pleased, although he had known all along that she would consent. And he decided that the marriage should take place in six weeks’ time; there was no occasion for a further delay.

It was getting cold, and Mamie suggested an adjournment within. They repassed the young man on their way, still unconcernedly smoking his cigar. The Princess watched their return, but failed to deduce from their manner what had happened. Before retiring to rest, however, she presented herself in her sister’s apartment. She was curious to know the result.

Mamie was sitting in front of her dressing-table shedding tears—though whether of joy or sadness she did not herself know. She felt as though she had just come through an ordeal, which, paradoxically, had not been an ordeal after all. She dried her eyes hastily, declaring that she was a goose; to which statement her sister unhesitatingly agreed.

Mamie pushed back her chair, and regarded her with an unnecessary expression of defiance.

“Well, it’s all settled,” she said carelessly. “I am just going to write to Poppa. We shall be married on the 10th of February if the fates propend.”

The Princess gave her a sisterly kiss.

“I suppose you know your own business best, so I will congratulate you,” she remarked. “Did you keep your promise to Patricia and impose some condition about the Jews?”

Mamie shook her head.

“It would not have been wise to ruffle Athelstan’s feelings just then by talking about the Jews,” was her reply. “To tell you the truth, I entirely forgot their existence. However, there is time yet. I will introduce the subject to-morrow.”

She was not over-anxious to show the red rag to the bull.