She bore up very well, in spite of the fact that she had already told herself privately that she would have to consider the question of marrying Mr. John Endor.
He was good to look at certainly, his low voice a delight, there was not a hint of stiffness or formality about him, and, crowning joy, he had a sense of humor.
“How exciting!” Only a very little curry was needed for Miss Clarice to effect a superb, if rather stoical, recovery. “Do tell me. Who is the lady?”
“Miss Helen Sholto of Virginia, my dear.” Mrs. Wilber had seen the announcement in the Morning Post, and had known how to cherish it in a manner becoming a prime minister’s lady. “But tell me, Mr. Endor, what does dear Lady Elizabeth say?” In she went again, horse, foot, and artillery. “Virginia is in the south, I believe, which is not the moneyed part of America. But all Americans, of course, have money.”
A look of blank despair settled upon Miss Clarice, who was inclined to see her mother, not in terms of Mrs. Gladstone, but in terms of Mrs. Dizzy.
John Endor enjoyed his dinner all the same and so did Miss Clarice. The talk was really quite amusing. Mr. Williams himself was a model host and no mean conversationalist. He went back a long way. Even in Victorian times he had been in the inner circle of society and politics. He had a fund of anecdote which no man living knew better how to employ. He was always geniality itself, and on occasions of modest festivity in the bosom of his family he was wholly delightful.
It was in the library, however, after dinner that John Endor really found himself at grips with Fate. Ushered into an armchair, strategically disposed so that the bust of Pitt should be on his right and a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica on his left, two adjuncts indispensable to the library of Number 10 Downing Street, and duly furnished with an excellent cigar, the neophyte settled himself to hear golden words.
In the delicate and judicious phrase of the prime minister, it seemed that one Bendish, an admirable man, was living now under the threat of Bright’s disease, and that in the opinion of Mrs. Bendish, an admirable woman, only one place could hope to arrest the ravages of such a grave malady. That place was the House of Lords. Whether the air of the Gilded Chamber was more salubrious, whether its system of drainage was more modern, the central heating more efficient, the ventilation less inadequate, was one of those problems which the prime minister, having no first-hand knowledge of Another Place, did not offer to solve. But there the matter was. Mrs. Bendish, an admirable woman, was convinced that, for Bright’s disease, the rarified atmosphere of the House of Lords was the only remedy. Alas, that Mr. Bendish should be smitten with so fell a malady!
The prime minister, however, was by no means averse from applying the antidote. Drastic, no doubt, but Mrs. Bendish, a Spartan wife, was adamant. Unhappily, Mr. Bendish would not be able to continue his signal work for the State. The Home Office and the House of Lords are not necessarily incompatible, but like Burgundy and port they are a combination not quite suited to all constitutions. Such at least, in this case, was the view of the prime minister. In the event of Mr. Bendish really going to the House of Lords—and Mrs. Bendish was so firm on the point that it hardly admitted of doubt—it would be expedient for his Britannic majesty to seek a new secretary of state for the Home Department. In a word, would Mr. Endor take that Office?
Mr. Endor was a little staggered. The bust of Pitt was on his right hand, a set of the Encyclopedia Britannica was on his left, none the less, the prime minister’s point-blank offer was in the nature of a bolt from a blue sky.