When he was there he busied himself for some moments with trifles and delayed to undress. He wanted very much to lie awake for hours so that he could taste again all the most exquisite moments of the day that was just gone. He also desired with equal intensity to fall asleep at once, so that he might begin the new day as soon as possible. He had got so far as taking off his coat when there was a discreet knocking at the door. He opened it and found a servant, who said deferentially:
“The Speaker would like to see you at once, sir, in his own room.”
“All right,” Jeremy answered, picking up his coat. And then, when the man had gone, he murmured to himself in sudden dread, “What can it be? Oh, what can it be?”
2
Jeremy hastened down the stairs to the Speaker’s room in a state of rapidly increasing agitation. He did not know, he could not imagine, what it was that he feared; but he had been raised to so high a pinnacle of joy that the least touch of the unexpected could set him trembling and looking for evil. When he reached his object he found the old man alone, seated sprawling in his great chair by the open window, his wrinkled, thick-veined hands spread calmly on the carven arms. Two or three candles stood on the table behind him, flickering and guttering slightly in the faint night breeze.
“I am glad you have come at once, my son,” he observed, turning his head a little, in a tone which showed no symptoms of trouble. “You had not gone to bed, then? I wished to speak to you alone, before the others have come that I have sent for. Sit down and listen to me.”
Jeremy drew up a smaller chair on the other side of the window and obeyed.
“We have yet another battle before us,” the Speaker pronounced abruptly.
Jeremy started. “What——” he began.
“Another battle,” the old man repeated. “Do not be distressed. I know this is ill news for a bridegroom, yet it is not so bad as it seems. When we returned this morning—it was after you had fainted at the door and while you were still unconscious—I learnt that the President of Wales had made up his mind, only a few days after the Northerners, to march on London. I knew that there was trouble of some kind in the west, but I had got no trustworthy news to show me how far it had gone. But information came to me this morning that the President and his army had passed round the Cotswolds and were marching towards Oxford. The worst part of the news was that the Gloucestershire wool-merchants had joined with him. Of course, they were very much interested in what might happen to the Chairman. That was what that gloomy dullard, Henry Watkins, was hinting at in his speech to-night—I know you saw me frowning at him. I tell you frankly I thought nothing of it. It was only the Yorkshiremen that disturbed the others; and I took it for granted that our victory would settle all quarrels at once.”