As for Mrs. Ullershaw, when she was assured that this dreadful news was incontrovertible, and that her only son was indeed dead, she said merely in the ancient words: “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord,” and stumbled to the bed whence she never rose again. Here a second stroke fell upon her, but still for many weeks she lived on in a half-conscious state. It was during this time that Edith left the house, saying that her room was wanted by the nurses, and went into comfortable rooms of her own in Brook Street.
The fact was, of course, that she could no longer endure this atmosphere of sickness. It was repugnant to her nature; the sound of her poor mother-in-law’s stertorous breathing as she passed her door tore her nerves, the shadow of advancing death oppressed her spirits which already were low enough. So she went and set up a ménage of her own as a young widow had a right to do. As for Mrs. Ullershaw, by degrees she sank into complete insensibility and so died, making no sign. A week before Rupert reached England she was buried in Brompton Cemetery by the side of the husband who had treated her so ill in life.
It was a little before this that an event occurred which indirectly lessened Edith’s material disappointment, and consoled Lord Devene for the death of Rupert that for his own reasons had grieved and disappointed him much. To the astonishment of all the world, on one fine autumn morning Tabitha presented him with a singularly healthy son.
“This one should do!” exclaimed the doctor in triumph, while Lord Devene kissed it fondly.
But when they had left the room together, his wife bade the nurse show her the child, and after she too had kissed it, said sadly:
“Ach! poor little lamb, I fear you will have no more luck than the rest. How should you with such a father?” she added in German.
As for Dick Learmer, with the exception of the birth of this to him inopportune child, which now stood between him and the Devene wealth, his fortunes seemed to wax as those of his rival, Rupert, waned and vanished. He was a clever man, with an agreeable manner and a certain gift of shallow but rather amusing speech; the kind of speech that entertains and even impresses for the moment, but behind which there is neither thought nor power. These graces soon made him acceptable to that dreary and middle-class institution, the House of Commons, where entertainment of any sort is so rare and precious a thing. Thus it happened that before long he came to be considered as a rising man, one with a future.
Moreover, on one or two occasions when he addressed the House upon some fiscal matter, he was fortunate enough to impress the public with the idea that he possessed a business ability that in fact was no part of his mental equipment, which impression was strengthened by a rather clever article, mostly extracted from works of reference, however, that he published in one of the leading reviews. The result was that soon Dick found himself a director of several sound and one or two speculative, but for the while prosperous, companies, which, in the aggregate, to say nothing of the salary that he received from Lord Devene, who also paid for his qualifying shares, furnished him with a clear income of over £1,300 a year.
Thus was the scapegrace and debt-haunted Dick Learmer completely white-washed and rehabilitated in the eyes of all who knew of his existence, and thus did he come to be regarded as a political possibility, and therefore worthy of the attention of party wire-pullers and of the outside world at large.