“Or that he killed himself with drinking brandy after the manner of your own illustrious parent. By the way, you have yet to give me a description of your mother. Can you recall her?”
“She died, worn out, I believe, by slavery when I was about four years old. She reminded me of a cow; her eyes were so placid and her movements were so slow. But she had been affiliated to the Trades’ Union from her earliest days. I believe she was a life member with her policy or whatever they call it—I have no first-hand knowledge—fully paid up. She was buried in consecrated ground in Kensal Green cemetery with wreaths on her coffin in consequence. Non-members of the Union are mostly buried in a prison or in the Thames. And now about your mother, the clergyman’s widow? She, I presume, would be a vice-president of the Union, or on its committee, or one of its trustees, or she might even aspire to be one of its honorary secretaries? Her social rank would render it necessary.”
“Yes, dear old woman,” said Northcote softly. “She is on the committee right enough. As you say, her social rank has rendered it necessary.”
XXXVI
THE HONORABLE SECRETARY
On the following morning Northcote was late for breakfast. When the old charwoman shook his curtains at a quarter to eight, a sleepy voice murmured: “I may be a bit late. I will cook the bacon myself and make the tea. Lay a knife and fork for two and don’t stay.”
It was between ten and eleven o’clock by the time he had completed his toilet. And it befell that at that hour the kettle was singing on the fire, and he himself was kneeling before it, toasting pieces of bacon upon a fork, when there came a knock on the door of his room.
“Come in,” he called cheerfully.
He expected to see an attorney’s clerk with further business for his attention.
Instead, two persons entered whose appearance caused him to drop the fork and the bacon among the ashes.
A moment ensued in which he had to fight with all his resolution to regain his self-possession. The first to enter the room was his mother, and immediately behind her was the young girl whom he was under a pledge to marry.