The morning after this visit of Frank Hazeldean's to Rood Hall,
the Right Honourable Audley Egerton, member of parliament, privy
councillor, and minister of a high department in the state--just
below the rank of the cabinet--was seated in his library, awaiting
the delivery of the post, before he walked down to his office. In the
meanwhile, he sipped his tea, and glanced over the newspapers with that
quick and half-disdainful eye with which your practical man in public
life is wont to regard the abuse or the eulogium of the Fourth Estate.
There is very little likeness between Mr Egerton and his half-brother;
none indeed, except that they are both of tall stature, and strong,
sinewy, English build. But even in this last they do not resemble each
other; for the Squire's athletic shape is already beginning to expand
into that portly embonpoint which seems the natural development of
contented men as they approach middle life. Audley, on the contrary,
is inclined to be spare; and his figure, though the muscles are as
firm as iron, has enough of the slender to satisfy metropolitan ideas
of elegance. His dress--his look--his _tout ensemble_, are those of
the London man. In the first, there is more attention to fashion than
is usual amongst the busy members of the House of Commons; but then
Audley Egerton had always been something more than a mere busy member
of the House of Commons. He had always been a person of mark in the
best society, and one secret of his success in life has been his high
reputation as 'a gentleman.'
As he now bends over the journals, there is an air of distinction in
the turn of the well-shaped head, with the dark-brown hair--dark in
spite of a reddish tinge--cut close behind, and worn away a little
towards the crown, so as to give additional height to a commanding
forehead. His profile is very handsome, and of that kind of beauty
which imposes on men if it pleases women; and is therefore, unlike that
of your mere pretty fellows, a positive advantage in public life. It
is a profile with large features clearly cut, masculine, and somewhat
severe. The expression of his face is not open, like the Squire's; nor
has it the cold closeness which accompanies the intellectual character
of young Leslie's; but it is reserved and dignified, and significant
of self-control, as should be the physiognomy of a man accustomed to
think before he speaks. When you look at him, you are not surprised
to learn that he is not a florid orator nor a smart debater--he is
a "weighty speaker." He is fairly read, but without any great range
either of ornamental scholarship or constitutional lore. He has not
much humour; but he has that kind of wit which is essential to grave
and serious irony. He has not much imagination, nor remarkable subtlety
in reasoning; but if he does not dazzle, he does not _bore_: he is
too much the man of the world for that. He is considered to have
sound sense and accurate judgment. Withal, as he now lays aside the
journals, and his face relaxes its austerer lines, you will not be
astonished to hear that he is a man who is said to have been greatly
beloved by women, and still to exercise much influence in drawing-rooms
and boudoirs. At least no one was surprised when the great heiress
Clementina Leslie, kinswoman and ward to Lord Lansmere--a young lady
who had refused three earls and the heir-apparent to a dukedom--was
declared by her dearest friends to be dying of love for Audley Egerton.
It had been the natural wish of the Lansmeres that this lady should
marry their son, Lord L'Estrange. But that young gentleman, whose
opinions on matrimony partook of the eccentricity of his general
character, could never be induced to propose, and had, according to
the _on-dits_ of town, been the principal party to make up the match
between Clementina and his friend Audley; for the match required
making-up, despite the predilections of the young heiress. Mr Egerton
had had scruples of delicacy. He avowed, for the first time, that his
fortune was much less than had been generally supposed, and he did not
like the idea of owing all to a wife, however much he might esteem
and admire her. L'Estrange was with his regiment abroad during the
existence of these scruples; but by letters to his father, and to his
cousin Clementina, he contrived to open and conclude negotiations,
while he argued away Mr Egerton's objections; and, before the year in
which Audley was returned for Lansmere had expired, he received the
hand of the great heiress. The settlement of her fortune, which was
chiefly in the funds, had been unusually advantageous to the husband;
for though the capital was tied up so long as both survived--for the
benefit of any children they might have--yet, in the event of one of
the parties dying without issue by the marriage, the whole passed
without limitation to the survivor. In not only assenting to, but
proposing this clause, Miss Leslie, if she showed a generous trust in
Mr Egerton, inflicted no positive wrong on her relations; for she had
none sufficiently near to her to warrant their claim to the succession.
Her nearest kinsman, and therefore her natural heir, was Harley
L'Estrange; and if he was contented, no one had a right to complain.
The tie of blood between herself and the Leslies of Rood Hall was, as
we shall see presently, extremely distant.
It was not till after his marriage that Mr Egerton took an active
part in the business of the House of Commons. He was then at the most
advantageous starting-point for the career of ambition. His words
on the state of the country took importance from his stake in it.
His talents found accessories in the opulence of Grosvenor Square,
the dignity of a princely establishment, the respectability of one
firmly settled in life, the reputation of a fortune in reality very
large, and which was magnified by popular report into the revenues of
a Croesus. Audley Egerton succeeded in Parliament beyond the early
expectations formed of him. He took, at first, that station in the
House which it requires tact to establish, and great knowledge of
the world to free from the charge of impracticability and crotchet,
but which, once established, is peculiarly imposing from the rarity
of its independence; that is to say, the station of the moderate man
who belongs sufficiently to a party to obtain its support, but is yet
sufficiently disengaged from a party to make his vote and word, on
certain questions, matter of anxiety and speculation.
Professing Toryism, (the word Conservative, which would have suited
him better, was not then known,) he separated himself from the
country party, and always avowed great respect for the opinions of
the large towns. The epithet given to the views of Audley Egerton
was "enlightened." Never too much in advance of the passion of the
day, yet never behind its movement, he had that shrewd calculation of
odds which a consummate mastery of the world sometimes bestows upon
politicians--perceived the chances for and against a certain question
being carried within a certain time, and nicked the question between
wind and water. He was so good a barometer of that changeful weather
called Public Opinion that he might have had a hand in the _Times_
newspaper. He soon quarrelled, and purposely, with his Lansmere
constituents--nor had he ever revisited that borough, perhaps because
it was associated with unpleasant reminiscences in the shape of the
Squire's epistolary trimmer, and in that of his own effigies which
his agricultural constituents had burned in the corn-market. But the
speeches which produced such indignation at Lansmere, had delighted one
of the greatest of our commercial towns, which at the next general
election honoured him with its representation. In those days, before
the Reform Bill, great commercial towns chose men of high mark for
their members; and a proud station it was for him who was delegated to
speak the voice of the princely merchants of England.
Mrs Egerton survived her marriage but a few years; she left no
children; two had been born, but died in their first infancy. The
property of the wife, therefore, passed without control or limit to the
husband.
Whatever might have been the grief of the widower, he disdained to
betray it to the world. Indeed, Audley Egerton was a man who had early
taught himself to conceal emotion. He buried himself in the country,
none knew where, for some months: when he returned, there was a deep
wrinkle on his brow; but no change in his habits and avocations, except
that, shortly afterwards, he accepted office, and thus became more busy
than ever.
Mr Egerton had always been lavish and magnificent in money matters.
A rich man in public life has many claims on his fortune, and no one
yielded to those claims with an air so regal as Audley Egerton. But
amongst his many liberal actions, there was none which seemed more
worthy of panegyric, than the generous favour he extended to the son of
his wife's poor and distant kinsfolks, the Leslies of Rood Hall.
Some four generations back, there had lived a certain Squire Leslie, a
man of large acres and active mind. He had cause to be displeased with
his elder son, and though he did not disinherit him, he left half his
property to a younger.
The younger had capacity and spirit, which justified the paternal
provision. He increased his fortune; lifted himself into notice and
consideration, by public services and a noble alliance. His descendants
followed his example, and took rank among the first commoners in
England, till the last male, dying, left his sole heiress and
representative in one daughter, Clementina, afterwards married to Mr
Egerton.
Meanwhile the elder son of the forementioned squire had muddled and
sotted away much of his share in the Leslie property; and, by low
habits and mean society, lowered in repute his representation of the
name.
His successors imitated him, till nothing was left to Randal's father,
Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie, but the decayed house which was what the
Germans call the _stamm schloss_, or "stem hall" of the race, and the
wretched lands immediately around it.
Still, though all intercourse between the two branches of the family
had ceased, the younger had always felt a respect for the elder, as
the head of the house. And it was supposed that, on her deathbed, Mrs
Egerton had recommended her impoverished namesakes and kindred to the
care of her husband. For, when he returned to town after Mrs Egerton's
death, Audley had sent to Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie the sum of £5000,
which he said his wife, leaving no written will, had orally bequeathed
as a legacy to that gentleman; and he requested permission to charge
himself with the education of the eldest son.
Mr Maunder Slugge Leslie might have done great things for his little
property with those £5000, or even, (kept in the three-per-cents) the
interest would have afforded a material addition to his comforts. But
a neighbouring solicitor having caught scent of the legacy, hunted
it down into his own hands, on pretence of having found a capital
investment in a canal. And when the solicitor had got possession of the
£5000, he went off with them to America.
Meanwhile Randal, placed by Mr Egerton at an excellent preparatory
school, at first gave no signs of industry or talent; but just
before he left it, there came to the school, as classical tutor, an
ambitious young Oxford man; and his zeal, for he was a capital teacher,
produced a great effect generally on the pupils, and especially on
Randal Leslie. He talked to them much in private on the advantages
of learning, and shortly afterwards he exhibited those advantages
in his own person; for, having edited a Greek play with much subtle
scholarship, his college, which some slight irregularities of his had
displeased, recalled him to its venerable bosom by the presentation
of a fellowship. After this he took orders, became a college tutor,
distinguished himself yet more by a treatise on the Greek accent, got
a capital living, and was considered on the high road to a bishopric.
This young man, then, communicated to Randal the thirst for knowledge;
and when the boy went afterwards to Eton, he applied with such
earnestness and resolve that his fame soon reached the ears of Audley;
and that person, who had the sympathy for talent, and yet more for
purpose, which often characterises ambitious men, went to Eton to see
him. From that time, Audley evinced great and almost fatherly interest
in the brilliant Etonian; and Randal always spent with him some days in
each vacation.
I have said that Egerton's conduct, with respect to this boy, was
more praiseworthy than most of those generous actions for which he
was renowned, since to this the world gave no applause. What a man
does within the range of his family connections, does not carry with
it that _éclat_ which invests a munificence exhibited on public
occasions. Either people care nothing about it, or tacitly suppose
it to be but his duty. It was true, too, as the Squire had observed,
that Randal Leslie was even less distantly related to the Hazeldeans
than to Mrs Egerton, since Randal's grandfather had actually married
a Miss Hazeldean, (the highest worldly connection that branch of the
family had formed since the great split I have commemorated.) But
Audley Egerton never appeared aware of that fact. As he was not himself
descended from the Hazeldeans, he never troubled himself about their
genealogy; and he took care to impress it upon the Leslies that his
generosity on their behalf was solely to be ascribed to his respect
for his wife's memory and kindred. Still the Squire had felt as if his
"distant brother" implied a rebuke on his own neglect of these poor
Leslies, by the liberality Audley evinced towards them; and this had
made him doubly sore when the name of Randal Leslie was mentioned. But
the fact really was, that the Leslies of Rood had so shrunk out of all
notice that the Squire had actually forgotten their existence, until
Randal became thus indebted to his brother; and then he felt a pang of
remorse that any one save himself, the head of the Hazeldeans, should
lend a helping hand to the grandson of a Hazeldean.
But having thus, somewhat too tediously, explained the position of
Audley Egerton, whether in the world or in relation to his young
_protegé_, I may now permit him to receive and to read his letters.