“Oh, Spears!” he cried at last, suddenly waking to intelligence; he had not heard him called Mr. Spears before. A laugh woke about the corners of his mouth. He was apt to laugh at most things, and it amused him to hear the softening politeness with which the great lady spoke of the demagogue. But the next moment the wistful anxiety in Lady Markham’s eyes made him ashamed of his smile.
“I will show you the place if you will let me go with you,” he said.
It seemed some strange negligence on the part of the race generally that such a woman should be unattended wherever she might choose to go. He was a democrat too, mildly, with less devotion to Spears than Paul, yet with some interest in his teaching; but Paul’s mother roused within him a natural loyalty and respect which was not in accordance with these principles—loyalty in which a subtle unexpressed regard for her rank mingled with reverence for herself. It was not as a mere woman and his friend’s mother, but also as a lady—the kind that queens are made of—that she affected his mind. The idea of her required an attendant, a servant, a retainer. He put himself into the vacant place hastily, to repair the neglect of the world.
Lady Markham took an unfair advantage of this devotion. She plied him with questions—subtle and skilful—not always about Paul, but coming back to Paul with many a wily twist and turn. She threw herself with the warmest pretence of interest into his own career—what he was doing, how his studies were being directed, what his future was to be? Was it a pretence? No, it was not altogether a pretence. She could not but be polite, and true politeness cannot but be interested. She was pleased that he should tell her about himself, and a kind of shadow of an anxiety that he too should do well came into her mind—a shadow faint and vague of her great anxiety and longing that Paul should do well, better than any one had ever done before. And like a lark descending in circles of cautious approach to her home, she came back to Paul when her young companion was off his guard, when she had beguiled him to babble of himself.
“Ah!” she said, “I fear you are both idle, both Paul and you,” when Fairfax had been making confession of sundry shortcomings.
“No, Markham is not like me,” he said. “Markham puts more of himself into everything; he does not take things lightly as I do. He is a more serious fellow altogether. That makes me rather fear Spears’s influence over him, if you will let me say so.”
“Indeed I will let you say so,” Paul’s mother replied. “That is just what makes me unhappy. He is a great deal with Mr. Spears?”
“One time and another—yes, they have seen a great deal of each other,” Fairfax said. “Perhaps you don’t know, Spears is the most entertaining fellow. He has his own opinion about everything. I think myself he is wrong just as often as he is right; but he has his own way of looking at things. I don’t go with him in half he says, but I like to hear him talk——”
“And his house is a pleasant place to go to?” said the anxious mother. “Excuse me if I don’t quite know. He is not in any kind of society, but he has a family? It is a pleasant house?”
Fairfax stared and then he laughed.