Lord L'Estrange parted company with Mr. Digby at the entrance of Oxford
Street. The father and child there took a cabriolet. Mr. Digby directed
the driver to go down the Edgware Road. He refused to tell L'Estrange
his address, and this with such evident pain, from the sores of pride,
that L'Estrange could not press the point. Reminding the soldier of his
promise to call, Harley thrust a pocket-book into his hand, and walked
off hastily towards Grosvenor Square.
He reached Audley Egerton's door just as that gentleman was getting out
of his carriage; and the two friends entered the house together.
"Does the nation take a nap to-night?" asked L'Estrange. "Poor old lady!
She hears so much of her affairs, that she may well boast of her
constitution: it must be of iron."
"The House is still sitting," answered Audley, seriously, and with small
heed of his friend's witticism. "But it is not a Government motion, and
the division will be late, so I came home; and if I had not found you
here, I should have gone into the Park to look for you."
"Yes; one always knows where to find me at this hour, nine o'clock P.M.,
cigar, Hyde Park. There is not a man in England so regular in his
habits."
Here the friends reached a drawing-room in which the member of parliament
seldom sat, for his private apartments were all on the ground-floor.
"But it is the strangest whim of yours, Harley," said he.
"What?"
To affect detestation of ground-floors."
"Affect! O sophisticated man, of the earth, earthy! Affect!--nothing
less natural to the human soul than a ground-floor. We are quite far
enough from Heaven, mount as many stairs as we will, without grovelling
by preference."
"According to that symbolical view of the case," said Audley, "you should
lodge in an attic."
"So I would, but that I abhor new slippers. As for hairbrushes, I am
indifferent."
"What have slippers and hair-brushes to do with attics?"
"Try! Make your bed in an attic, and the next morning you will have
neither slippers nor hair-brushes!"
"What shall I have done with them?"
"Shied them at the cats!"
"What odd things you say, Harley!"
"Odd! By Apollo and his nine spinsters! there is no human being who has
so little imagination as a distinguished member of parliament. Answer me
this, thou solemn Right Honourable,--Hast thou climbed to the heights of
august contemplation? Hast thou gazed on the stars with the rapt eye of
song? Hast thou dreamed of a love known to the angels, or sought to
seize in the Infinite the mystery of life?"
"Not I indeed, my poor Harley."
"Then no wonder, poor Audley, that you cannot conjecture why he who makes
his bed in an attic, disturbed by base catterwauls, shies his slippers at
cats. Bring a chair into the balcony. Nero spoiled my cigar to-night.
I am going to smoke now. You never smoke. You can look on the shrubs in
the square."
Audley slightly shrugged his shoulders, but he followed his friend's
counsel and example, and brought his chair into the balcony. Nero came
too, but at sight and smell of the cigar prudently retreated, and took
refuge under the table.
"Audley Egerton, I want something from Government."
"I am delighted to hear it."
"There was a cornet in my regiment, who would have done better not to
have come into it. We were, for the most part of us, puppies and fops."
"You all fought well, however."
"Puppies and fops do fight well. Vanity and valour generally go
together. CAesar, who scratched his head with due care of his scanty
curls, and even in dying thought of the folds in his toga; Walter
Raleigh, who could not walk twenty yards because of the gems in his
shoes; Alcibiades, who lounged into the Agora with doves in his bosom,
and an apple in his hand; Murat, bedizened in gold lace and furs; and
Demetrius, the City-Taker, who made himself up like a French marquise,
were all pretty good fellows at fighting. A slovenly hero like Cromwell
is a paradox in nature, and a marvel in history. But to return to my
cornet. We were rich; he was poor. When the pot of clay swims down the
stream with the brass-pots, it is sure of a smash. Men said Digby was
stingy; I saw he was extravagant. But every one, I fear, would be rather
thought stingy than poor. /Bref/--I left the army, and saw him no more
till to-night. There was never shabby poor gentleman on the stage more
awfully shabby, more pathetically gentleman. But, look ye, this man has
fought for England. It was no child's play at Waterloo, let me tell you,
Mr. Egerton; and, but for such men, you would be at best a /sous prefet/,
and your parliament a Provincial Assembly. You must do something for
Digby. What shall it be?"
"Why, really, my dear Harley, this man was no great friend of yours, eh?"
"If he were, he would not want the Government to help him,--he would not
be ashamed of taking money from me."
"That is all very fine, Harley; but there are so many poor officers, and
so little to give. It is the most difficult thing in the world that
which you ask me. Indeed, I know nothing can be done: he has his half-
pay?"
"I think not; or, if he has it, no doubt it all goes on his debts.
That's nothing to us: the man and his child are starving."
"But if it is his own fault,--if he has been imprudent?"
"Ah, well, well; where the devil is Nero?"
"I am so sorry I can't oblige you. If it were anything else--"
"There is something else. My valet--I can't turn him adrift-excellent
fellow, but gets drunk now and then. Will you find him a place in the
Stamp Office?"
"With pleasure."
"No, now I think of it, the man knows my ways: I must keep him. But my
old wine-merchant--civil man, never dunned--is a bankrupt. I am under
great obligations to him, and he has a very pretty daughter. Do you
think you could thrust him into some small place in the Colonies, or make
him a King's Messenger, or something of the sort?"
"If you very much wish it, no doubt I can."
"My dear Audley, I am but feeling my way: the fact is, I want something
for myself."
"Ah, that indeed gives me pleasure!" cried Egerton, with animation.
"The mission to Florence will soon be vacant,--I know it privately. The
place would quite suit me. Pleasant city; the best figs in Italy; very
little to do. You could sound Lord on the subject."
"I will answer beforehand. Lord--would be enchanted to secure to the
public service a man so accomplished as yourself, and the son of a peer
like Lord Lansmere."
Harley L'Estrange sprang to his feet, and flung his cigar in the face of
a stately policeman who was looking up at the balcony.
"Infamous and bloodless official!" cried Harley L'Estrange; "so you could
provide for a pimple-nosed lackey, for a wine-merchant who has been
poisoning the king's subjects with white lead,--or sloe-juice,--for an
idle sybarite, who would complain of a crumpled rose-leaf; and nothing,
in all the vast patronage of England, for a broken-down soldier, whose
dauntless breast was her rampart?"
"Harley," said the member of parliament, with his calm, sensible smile,
"this would be a very good claptrap at a small theatre; but there is
nothing in which parliament demands such rigid economy as the military
branch of the public service; and no man for whom it is so hard to effect
what we must plainly call a job as a subaltern officer who has done
nothing more than his duty,--and all military men do that. Still, as you
take it so earnestly, I will use what interest I can at the War Office,
and get him, perhaps, the mastership of a barrack."
"You had better; for, if you do not, I swear I will turn Radical, and
come down to your own city to oppose you, with Hunt and Cobbett to
canvass for me."
"I should be very glad to see you come into parliament, even as a
Radical, and at my expense," said Audley, with great kindness; "but the
air is growing cold, and you are not accustomed to our climate. Nay, if
you are too poetic for catarrhs and rheums, I'm not,--come in."