The scheme did take several years. At various intervals Sir Rupert wrote to his constituents long letters spangled with stirring allusions to the Empire, to England's meteor flag, to the inevitable triumph of the New Toryism, to the necessity a sincere British statesman was under of becoming a complete master of all the possible problems of a daily-increasing authority. He made some sharp thrusts at the weakness of the Government, but accused the Opposition of a lack of patriotism in trading upon that weakness; he almost chaffed the leader in the Lower House and the leader in the Lords; he made no allusion to Sidney Blenheim, then rapidly advancing along the road of success. He concluded each letter by offering to resign his seat if his constituents wished it.
His constituents did not wish it—at least, not at first. The Conservative committee returned him a florid address assuring him of their confidence in his statesmanship, but expressing the hope that he might be able speedily to return to represent them at Westminster, and the further hope that he might be able to see his way to reconcile his difficulties with the existing Government. To this address Sir Rupert sent a reply duly acknowledging its expression of confidence, but taking no notice of its suggestions. Time went on, and Sir Rupert did not return. He was heard of now and again; now in the court of some rajah in the North-West Provinces; now in the khanate of some Central Asian despot; now in South America, from which continent he sent a long letter to the 'Times,' giving an interesting account of the latest revolution in the Gloria Republic, of which he had happened to be an eye-witness; now in Java; now in Pekin; now at the Cape. He did not seem to pursue his idea of going round the world on any settled consecutive plan.
Of his large means there could be no doubt. He was probably one of the richest, as he was certainly one of the oldest, baronets in England, and he could afford to travel as if he were an accredited representative of the Queen—almost as if he were an American Midas of the fourth or fifth class. But as to his large leisure people began to say things. It began to be hinted in leading articles that it was scarcely fair that Sir Rupert's constituents should be disfranchised because it pleased a disappointed politician to drift idly about the world. These hints had their effect upon the disfranchised constituents, who began to grumble. The Conservative Committee was goaded almost to the point of addressing a remonstrance to Sir Rupert, then in the interior of Japan, urging him to return or resign, when the need for any such action was taken out of their hands by a somewhat unexpected General Election. Sir Rupert telegraphed back to announce his intention of remaining abroad for the present, and of not, therefore, proposing to seek just then the suffrages of the electors. Sidney Blenheim succeeded in getting a close personal friend of his own, who was also his private secretary, accepted by the Conservative Committee, and he was returned at the head of the poll by a slightly decreased majority.
Sir Rupert remained away from England for several years longer. After he had gone round the world in the most thorough sense, he revisited many places where he had been before, and stayed there for longer periods. It began to seem as if he did not really intend to return to England at all. His communications with his friends grew fewer and shorter, but wandering Parliamentarians in the recess occasionally came across him in the course of an extended holiday, and always found him affable, interested to animation in home politics, and always suggesting by his manner, though never in his speech, that he would some day return to his old place and his old fame. Of Sidney Blenheim he spoke with an equable, impartial composure.
At last one day he did come home. He had been in the United States during the closing years of the American Civil War, and in Washington, when peace was concluded, he had met at the English Ministry a young girl of great beauty, of a family that was old for America, that was wealthy, though not wealthy for America. He fell in love with her, wooed her, and was accepted. They were married in Washington, and soon after the marriage they returned to England. They settled down for a while at the old home of the Langleys, the home whose site had been the home of the race ever since the Conquest. Part of an old Norman tower still held itself erect amidst the Tudor, Elizabethan, and Victorian additions to the ancient place. It was called Queen's Langley now, had been so called ever since the days when, in the beginning of the Civil War, Henrietta Maria had been besieged there, during her visit to the then baronet, by a small party of Roundheads, and had successfully kept them off. Queen's Langley had been held during the Commonwealth by a member of the family, who had declared for the Parliament, but had gone back to the head of the house when he returned with his king at the Restoration.
At Queen's Langley Sir Rupert and his wife abode for a while, and at Queen's Langley a child was born to them, a girl child, who was christened after her mother, Helena. Then the taste for wandering, which had become almost a passion with Sir Rupert, took possession of Sir Rupert again. If he had expected to re-enter London in any kind of triumph he was disappointed. He had allowed himself to fall out of the race, and he found himself almost forgotten. Society, of course, received him almost rapturously, and his beautiful wife was the queen of a resplendent season. But politics seemed to have passed him by. The New Toryism of those youthful years was not very new Toryism now. Sidney Blenheim was a settled reactionary and a recognised celebrity. There was a New Toryism, with its new cave of strenuous, impetuous young men, and they, if they thought of Sir Rupert Langley at all, thought of him as old-fashioned, the hero or victim of a piece of ancient history.
Nevertheless, Sir Rupert had his thoughts of entering political life again, but in the meantime he was very happy. He had a steam yacht of his own, and when his little girl was three years old he and his wife went for a long cruise in the Mediterranean. And then his happiness was taken away from him. His wife suddenly sickened, died, unconscious, in his arms, and was buried at sea. Sir Rupert seemed like a broken man. From Alexandria he wrote to his sister, who was married to the Duke of Magdiel's third son, Lord Edmond Herrington, asking her to look after his child for him—the child was then with her aunt at Herrington Hall, in Argyllshire—in his absence. He sold his yacht, paid off his crew, and disappeared for two years.
During those two years he was believed to have wandered all over Egypt, and to have passed much of his time the hermit-like tenant of a tomb on the lovely, lonely island of Phylæ, at the first cataract of the Nile. At the end of the two years he wrote to his sister that he was returning to Europe, to England, to his own home, and his own people. His little girl was then five years old.
He reappeared in England changed and aged, but a strong man still, with a more settled air of strength of purpose than he had worn in his wild youth. He found his little girl a pretty child, brilliantly healthy, brilliantly strong. The wind of the mountain, of the heather, of the woods, had quickened her with an enduring vitality very different from that of the delicate fair mother for whom his heart still grieved. Of course the little Helena did not remember her father, and was at first rather alarmed when Lady Edmond Herrington told her that a new papa was coming home for her from across the seas. But the feeling of fear passed away after the first meeting between father and child. The fascination which in his younger days Rupert Langley had exercised upon so many men and women, which had made him so much of a leader in his youth, affected the child powerfully. In a week she was as devoted to him as if she had never been parted from him.
Helena's education was what some people would call a strange education. She was never sent to school; she was taught, and taught much, at home, first by a succession of clever governesses, then by carefully chosen masters of many languages and many arts. In almost all things her father was her chief instructor. He was a man of varied accomplishments; he was a good linguist, and his years of wandering had made his attainments in language really colloquial; he had a rich and various store of information, gathered even more from personal experience than from books. His great purpose in life appeared to be to make his daughter as accomplished as himself. People had said at first when he returned that he would marry again, but the assumption proved to be wrong. Sir Rupert had made up his mind that he would never marry again, and he kept to his determination. There was an intense sentimentality in his strong nature; the sentimentality which led him to take his early defeat and the defection of Sidney Blenheim so much to heart had made him vow, on the day when the body of his fair young wife was lowered into the sea, changeless fidelity to her memory. Undoubtedly it was somewhat of a grief to him that there was no son to carry on his name; but he bore that grief in silence. He resolved, however, that his daughter should be in every way worthy of the old line which culminated in her; she should be a woman worthy to surrender the ancient name to some exceptional mortal; she should be worthy to be the wife of some great statesman.