John’s destiny, so to speak, was cut and dried—let there be no doubt on that score—although his politics, his general outlook, his “isms” were crosses for his mother’s old age. Indeed, the attitude of Lady Elizabeth to her distinguished son was that of an entirely responsible barndoor hen who, by a whim of the gods, has hatched a peacock. The ideas in which he trafficked were so much colored moonshine, for which she had simply no use at all. She was greatly surprised that Eton and Oxford had failed to knock such pernicious nonsense out of him. Ne sutor ultra crepidam was the motto she believed in. Old as she was, and rather too infirm to wield a stick with the vigor of her prime—the irony of the matter was, that a Spartan parent had always bestowed great pains upon his youth!—she did not despair, even now, of seeing this renegade back in the fold.
At any rate, the renegade’s mother was fain to inform the edified Helen that the knock on the head he had received the previous day from the Hellington miners would do him all the good in the world. “A gentleman has no right to go among the rabble. They have no more use for him, than he should have for them. I hope they’ve hit him hard enough, that’s all.”
Even Helen, a woman of the world, hardly knew whether to be shocked or amused by this downrightness. She compromised by being both. And greatly daring, she ventured presently to take up cudgels for her stricken hero.
Was it possible Lady Elizabeth didn’t realize that one day John might become Prime Minister?
The Die-hard would be surprised at nothing, but in times like these it was little enough to any one’s credit to become Prime Minister.
Helen, a little staggered, yet secretly charmed, did her best to develop the subject, but the old lady would have none of it. Abhorring John’s ideas, she refused to take their owner seriously. The truth was she had never quite got over the shock of his flaunting a red necktie at Christ Church and being called in consequence “Comrade” Endor.
At the back of Lady Elizabeth’s mind, no doubt, lay the hard fact that this Miss Sholto was not the least fantastic of “Comrade” Endor’s “isms.” She had no right to be there, and Helen was quick to penetrate to that cold truth. On occasion, however, she could be mischievous, and by the end of a trying meal she had decided that the only fun that evening was likely to provide would consist in drawing the old lady out.
She fell back, therefore, on tracing relationships. In Helen’s opinion, it was a poor game at best, but it served at least to keep the ball of conversation rolling in the drawing room. Lady Elizabeth’s tree was immensely distinguished; she was the second daughter of no less a personage than the fourth Duke of Bridport.
“My father,” said Lady Elizabeth, “had the name of a very clever man. But his own class never forgave him for introducing what was called The People’s Charter in the House of Lords. He certainly thought too much of the workingman, gave him free education, cheap beer, and so on. My father’s weakness for the masses made him innumerable enemies. People called him Brother Bridport or the Mad Duke. When he left the Tories and went over to Gladstone, even his lifelong friends turned against him, the dear Queen among them.”
“So that was why he was called the Mad Duke!” said Helen. The deadly phrase used by Saul Hartz recurred to her vividly: madness in the mother’s family. Was it possible that the charge was based merely on the reputation of the fourth duke of Bridport? Helen felt a weight lifted suddenly from her mind. And yet, if this theory was sound, it was one rag the more torn from the reputation of a man whom she had implicitly trusted.