His mother's love for Oliver was tempered by fear; she was keenly desirous of keeping his good opinion, but of late, seeing how almost intolerable to him was the position he had accepted, she had been sorely tempted to speak—to point out to him that men in the position of James Berwick come to expect from those about them something like subserviency, and that then they often repay in lavish measure those who yield it them.
At last the dining-room door opened and the two men came in.
"Well," cried Berwick, "we've thrashed out the whole plan of campaign! There's never anything like a good talk with Oliver to confirm me in my own opinion! It's really absurd he should stick on here looking after the Chancton cabbages, dead and alive—but he's positively incorruptible! I'm thinking of starting a newspaper, Mrs. Boringdon, and to coax him into approval—also, I must say, to secure him a little freedom—I offered him the editorship, but he won't hear of it."
Berwick had thrown himself as he spoke into a low chair, which creaked ominously under his weight. How indignant would Mrs. Boringdon have felt had any other young man, looking as James Berwick now looked, his fair hair tossed and rumpled with the constant ruffling of his fingers, come and thrown himself down in this free and easy attitude on one of the few comfortable chairs in Chancton Cottage! But his hostess smiled at him very indulgently, and turned a look of gentle reproach at her son's stern dark face.
"An editorship," she said, vaguely, "that sounds very nice. I suppose it would mean going and living in London?" Her quick mind, darting this way and that, saw herself settled in a small house in Mayfair, entertaining important people, acting perhaps as hostess to Berwick's friends and supporters! She had once been able to render him a slight service—in fact, on two occasions he had been able to meet a friend, a lady, in her drawing-room. In doing what she had done Mrs. Boringdon had lowered herself in her own eyes, and she had had the uncomfortable sensation that she had lost in his some of the prestige naturally attaching to his friend's mother, and yet, for all she knew, these interviews might have been of a political nature. Women now played a great part in politics. Mrs. Boringdon preferred to think that the fair stranger, concerning whose coming to her house there had been so much mystery, had been one of these.
Her son's next words rudely interrupted her pleasant dream.
"The ownership of a newspaper," Oliver was saying abruptly, "has never yet been of any use to a politician or statesman, and has certainly prevented some from getting into the Cabinet," and he named two well-known members of Parliament who were believed to be financially interested in certain important journals. "It isn't as if you wanted what the Americans call a platform," he went on. "No man is more sure of a hearing than you are yourself. But just now, the less you say the more you will be listened to when the moment comes for saying it!"
The speaker was walking up and down the narrow room, looking restless and impatient, with Berwick smiling lazily up at him, though evidently rather nettled at the frank, unasked-for advice.
Mrs. Boringdon judged the moment had come to intervene. "I hear that Lord Bosworth and your sister are back at Fletchings, and that they are expecting a good many people down—" She added, in a tone of apology, "Chancton, as you know, has half-a-dozen Court newsmen of its own."
"To me"—Berwick had jumped up and was helping himself to sugar, to cake, with the eager insouciance of an intimate—"to me Chancton always has been, what it is now more than ever, the most delightful spot on earth! I know that Oliver doesn't agree with me, but even he, Mrs. Boringdon, ought to enjoy the humours of the place. What other village can offer such a range of odd-come-shorts, of eccentrics? Where else in these prosaic days can one see gathered together in one spot our McKirdys, our Vipens——"