In the centre of the raised platform in the town-hall sat the mayor.
On either hand of that dignitary now appeared the candidates of the
respective parties,--to his right, Audley Egerton and Leslie; to his
left, Dick Avenel and Leonard.
The place was as full as it could hold. Rows of grimy faces peeped in,
even from the upper windows outside the building. The contest was one
that created intense interest, not only from public principles, but local
passions. Dick Avenel, the son of a small tradesman, standing against
the Right Honourable Audley Egerton, the choice of the powerful Lansmere
aristocratic party,--standing, too, with his nephew by his side; taking,
as he himself was wont to say, "the tarnation Blue Bull by both its
oligarchical horns!"--there was a pluck and gallantry in the very
impudence of the attempt to convert the important borough--for one member
of which a great earl had hitherto striven, "with labour dire and weary
woe" into two family seats for the House of Avenel and the triumph of the
Capelocracy.
This alone would have excited all the spare passions of a country
borough; but, besides this, there was the curiosity that attached to
the long-deferred public appearance of a candidate so renowned as the
ex-minister,--a man whose career had commenced with his success at
Lansmere, and who now, amidst the popular tempest that scattered his
colleagues, sought to refit his vessel in the same harbour from which it
had first put forth. New generations had grown up since the name of
Audley Egerton had first fluttered the dovecotes in that Corioli. The
questions that had then seemed so important were, for the most part,
settled and at rest. But those present who remembered Egerton in the
former day, were struck to see how the same characteristics of bearing
and aspect which had distinguished his early youth revived their interest
in the mature and celebrated man. As he stood up for a few moments,
before he took his seat beside the mayor, glancing over the assembly,
with its uproar of cheers and hisses, there was the same stately
erectness of form and steadfastness of look, the same indefinable and
mysterious dignity of externals, that imposed respect, confirmed esteem,
or stilled dislike. The hisses involuntarily ceased.
The preliminary proceedings over, the proposers and seconders commenced
their office.
Audley was proposed, of course, by the crack man of the party,--a
gentleman who lived on his means in a white house in the High Street, had
received a University education, and was a cadet of a "County Family."
This gentleman spoke much about the Constitution, something about Greece
and Rome; compared Egerton with William Pitt, also with Aristides; and
sat down, after an oration esteemed classical by the few, and pronounced
prosy by the many. Audley's seconder, a burly and important maltster,
struck a bolder key. He dwelt largely upon the necessity of being
represented by gentlemen of wealth and rank, and not by "upstarts and
adventurers." (Cheers and groans.) "Looking at the candidates on the
other side, it was an insult to the respectability of Lansmere to suppose
its constituents could elect a man who had no pretensions whatever to
their notice, except that he had once been a little boy in the town, in
which his father kept a shop,--and a very noisy, turbulent, dirty little
boy he was!" Dick smoothed his spotless shirt-front, and looked daggers,
while the Blues laughed heartily, and the Yellows cried "Shame!" "As for
the other candidate on the same side, he [the maltster] had nothing to
say against him.--He was, no doubt, seduced into presumption by his uncle
and his own inexperience. It was said that that candidate, Mr.
Fairfield, was an author and a poet; if so, he was unknown to fame, for
no bookseller in the town had ever even heard of Mr. Fairfield's works.
Then it was replied Mr. Fairfield had written under another name. What
would that prove? Either that he was ashamed of his name, or that the
works did him no credit. For his part, he [the maltster] was an
Englishman; he did not like anonymous scribblers; there was something not
right in whatever was concealed. A man should never be afraid to put his
name to what be wrote. But grant that Mr. Fairfield was a great author
and a great poet, what the borough of Lansinere wanted was, not a member
who would pass his time in writing sonnets to Peggy or Moggy, but a
practical man of business,--a statesman,--such a man as Mr. Audley
Egerton, a gentleman of ancient birth, high standing, and princely
fortune. The member for such a place as Lansmere should have a proper
degree of wealth." ("Hear, hear!" from the Hundred and Fifty Hesitators,
who all stood in a row at the bottom of the hall; and "Gammon!" "Stuff!"
from some revolutionary but incorruptible Yellows.) Still the allusion
to Egerton's private fortune had considerable effect with the bulk of the
audience, and the maltster was much cheered on concluding. Mr. Avenel's
proposer and seconder--the one a large grocer, the other the proprietor
of a new shop for ticketed prints, shawls, blankets, and counterpanes,--
a man, who, as he boasted, dealt with the People for ready money, and no
mistake, at least none that he ever rectified--next followed. Both said
much the same thing. Mr. Avenel had made his fortune by honest industry,
was a fellow-townsman, must know the interests of the town better than
strangers, upright public principles, never fawn on governments, would
see that the people had their rights, and cut down army, navy, and all
other jobs of a corrupt aristocracy, etc. Randal Leslie's proposer, a
captain on half-pay, undertook a long defence of army and navy, from the
unpatriotic aspersions of the preceding speakers, which defence diverted
him from the due praise of Randal, until cries of "Cut it short,"
recalled him to that subject; and then the topics he selected for
eulogium were "amiability of character, so conspicuous in the urbane
manners of his young friend;" "coincidence in the opinions of that
illustrious statesman with whom he was conjoined;" "early tuition in the
best principles; only fault, youth,--and that was a fault which would
diminish every day." Randal's seconder was a bluff yeoman, an outvoter
of weight with the agricultural electors. He was too straightforward by
half,--adverted to Audley Egerton's early desertion of questions espoused
by landed interest, hoped he had had enough of the large towns; and he
(the yeoman) was ready to forgive and forget, but trusted that there
would be no chance of burning their member again in effigy. As to the
young gentleman, whose nomination he had the pleasure to second, did
not know much about him; but the Leslies were an old family in the
neighbouring county, and Mr. Leslie said he was nearly related to Squire
Hazeldean,--as good a man as ever stood upon shoe leather. He (the
yeoman) liked a good breed in sheep and bullocks; and a good breed in men
he supposed was the same thing. He (the yeoman) was not for abuses,--he
was for King and Constitution. He should have no objection, for
instance, to have tithes lowered, and the malt-tax repealed,--not the
least objection. Mr. Leslie seemed to him a likely young chap, and
uncommon well-spoken; and, on the whole, for aught he (the yeoman) could
see, would do quite as well in parliament as nine-tenths of the gentlemen
sent there. The yeoman sat down, little cheered by the Blues, much by
the Yellows, and with a dim consciousness that somehow or other he had
rather damaged than not the cause of the party he had been chosen to
advocate. Leonard was not particularly fortunate in his proposer, a
youngish gentleman, who, having tried various callings, with signal
unsuccess, had come into a small independence, and set up for a literary
character. This gentleman undertook the defence of poets, as the half-
pay captain had undertaken that of the army and navy; and after a dozen
sentences spoken through the nose, about the "moonlight of existence,"
and "the oasis in the desert," suddenly broke down, to the satisfaction
of his impatient listeners. This failure was, however, redeemed by
Leonard's seconder, a master tailor, a practised speaker and an earnest,
thinking man, sincerely liking and warmly admiring Leonard Fairfield.
His opinions were delivered with brief simplicity, and accompanied by
expressions of trust in Leonard's talents and honesty, that were
effective, because expressed with feeling.
These preparatory orations over, a dead silence succeeded, and Audley
Egerton arose.
At the first few sentences, all felt they were in the presence of one
accustomed to command attention, and to give to opinions the weight of
recognized authority. The slowness of the measured accents, the
composure of the manly aspect, the decorum of the simple gestures,--all
bespoke and all became the minister of a great empire, who had less
agitated assemblies by impassioned eloquence, than compelled their silent
respect to the views of sagacity and experience. But what might have
been formal and didactic in another was relieved in Egerton by that air,
tone, bearing of gentleman, which have a charm for the most plebeian
audience. He had eminently these attributes in private life; but they
became far more conspicuous whenever he had to appear in public. The
"senatorius decor" seemed a phrase coined for him.
Audley commenced with notice of his adversaries in that language of high
courtesy which is so becoming to superior station, and which augurs
better for victory than the most pointed diatribes of hostile
declamation. Inclining his head towards Avenel, he expressed regret that
he should be opposed by a gentleman whose birth naturally endeared him to
the town, of which he was a distinguished native, and whose honourable
ambition was in itself a proof of the admirable nature of that
Constitution, which admitted the lowliest to rise to its distinctions,
while it compelled the loftiest to labour and compete for those honours
which were the most coveted, because they were derived from the trust of
their countrymen, and dignified by the duties which the sense of
responsibility entailed. He paid a passing but generous compliment to
the reputed abilities of Leonard Fairfield; and alluding with appropriate
grace to the interest he had ever taken in the success of youth striving
for place in the van of the new generation that marched on to replace the
old, he implied that he did not consider Leonard as opposed to himself,
but rather as an emulous competitor for a worthy prize with his "own
young and valued friend, Mr. Randal Leslie." "They are happy at their
years!" said the statesman, with a certain pathos. "In the future they
see nothing to fear, in the past they have nothing to defend. It is not
so with me." And then, passing on to the vague insinuations or bolder
charges against himself and his policy proffered by the preceding
speakers, Audley gathered himself up, and paused; for his eye here rested
on the Reporters seated round the table just below him; and he recognized
faces not unfamiliar to his recollection when metropolitan assemblies had
hung on the words which fell from lips then privileged to advise a king.
And involuntarily it occurred to the ex-minister to escape altogether
from this contracted audience,--this election, with all its associations
of pain,--and address himself wholly to that vast and invisible Public,
to which those Reporters would transmit his ideas. At this thought his
whole manner gradually changed. His eye became fixed on the farthest
verge of the crowd; his tones grew more solemn in their deep and sonorous
swell. He began to review and to vindicate his whole political life. He
spoke of the measures he had aided to pass, of his part in the laws which
now ruled the land. He touched lightly, but with pride, on the services
he had rendered to the opinions he had represented. He alluded to his
neglect of his own private fortunes; but in what detail, however minute,
in the public business committed to his charge, could even an enemy
accuse him of neglect? The allusion was no doubt intended to prepare the
public for the news that the wealth of Audley Egerton was gone. Finally,
he came to the questions that then agitated the day; and made a general
but masterly exposition of the policy which, under the changes he
foresaw, he should recommend his party to adopt.
Spoken to the motley assembly in that town-hall, Audley's speech extended
to a circle of interest too wide for their sympathy. But that assembly
he heeded not,--he forgot it. The reporters understood him, as their
flying pens followed words which they presumed neither to correct nor to
abridge. Audley's speech was addressed to the nation,--the speech of a
man in whom the nation yet recognized a chief, desiring to clear all
misrepresentation from his past career; calculating, if life were spared
to him, on destinies higher than he had yet fulfilled; issuing a
manifesto of principles to be carried later into power, and planting a
banner round which the divided sections of a broken host might yet rally
for battle and for conquest. Or perhaps, in the deeps of his heart (not
even comprehended by reporters, nor to be divined by the public), the
uncertainty of life was more felt than the hope of ambition; and the
statesman desired to leave behind him one full vindication of that public
integrity and honour, on which, at least, his conscience acknowledged not
a stain.
"For more than twenty years," said Audley, in conclusion, "I have known
no day in which I have not lived for my country. I may at times have
opposed the wish of the People,--I may oppose it now; but, so far as I
can form a judgment, only because I prefer their welfare to their wish.
And if--as I believe--there have been occasions on which, as one amongst
men more renowned, I have amended the laws of England, confirmed her
safety, extended her commerce, upheld her honour, I leave the rest to the
censure of my enemies, and [his voice trembled] to the charity of my
friends."
Before the cheers that greeted the close of this speech were over,
Richard Avenel arose. What is called "the more respectable part" of an
audience--namely, the better educated and better clad, even on the Yellow
side of the question--winced a little for the credit of their native
borough, when they contemplated the candidate pitted against the Great
Commoner, whose lofty presence still filled the eye, and whose majestic
tones yet sounded in the ear. But the vast majority on both sides, Blue
and Yellow, hailed the rise of Dick Avenel as a relief to what, while it
had awed their attention, had rather strained their faculties. The
Yellows cheered and the Blues groaned; there was a tumultuous din of
voices, and a reel to and fro of the whole excited mass of unwashed faces
and brawny shoulders. But Dick had as much pluck as Audley himself; and
by degrees, his pluck and his handsome features, and the curiosity to
hear what he had to say, obtained him a hearing; and that hearing Dick
having once got, he contrived to keep. His self-confidence was backed by
a grudge against Egerton, that attained to the elevation of malignity.
He had armed himself for this occasion with an arsenal of quotations from
Audley's speeches, taken out of Hansard's Debates; and, garbling these
texts in the unfairest and most ingenious manner, he contrived to split
consistency into such fragments of inconsistency--to cut so many harmless
sentences into such unpopular, arbitrary, tyrannical segments of
doctrine--that he made a very pretty case against the enlightened and
incorruptible Egerton, as shuffler and trimmer, defender of jobs, and
eulogist of Manchester massacres, etc. And all told the more because it
seemed courted and provoked by the ex-minister's elaborate vindication of
himself. Having thus, as he declared, "triumphantly convicted the Right
Honourable Gentleman out of his own mouth," Dick considered himself at
liberty to diverge into what he termed "the just indignation of a
freeborn Briton;" in other words, into every variety of abuse which bad
taste could supply to acrimonious feeling. But he did it so roundly and
dauntlessly, in such true hustings style, that for the moment, at least,
he carried the bulk of the crowd along with him sufficiently to bear down
all the resentful murmurs of the Blue Committee men, and the abashed
shakes of the head with which the more aristocratic and well-bred among
the Yellows signified to each other that they were heartily ashamed of
their candidate. Dick concluded with an emphatic declaration that the
Right Honourable Gentleman's day was gone by; that the people had been
pillaged and plundered enough by pompous red-tapists, who only thought of
their salaries, and never went to their offices except to waste the pen,
ink, and paper which they did not pay for; that the Right Honourable
Gentleman had boasted he had served his country for twenty years. Served
his country!--he should have said served her out! (Much laughter.)
Pretty mess his country was in now. In short, for twenty years the Right
Honourable Gentleman had put his hands into his country's pockets. "And
I ask you," bawled Dick, "whether any of you are a bit the better for all
that he has taken out of them!" The Hundred and Fifty Hesitators shook
their heads. "Noa, that we ben't!" cried the Hundred and Fifty,
dolorously. "You hear THE PEOPLE!" said Dick, turning majestically to
Egerton, who, with his arms folded on his breast, and his upper lip
slightly curved, sat like "Atlas unremoved,"--"you hear THE PEOPLE! They
condemn you and the whole set of you. I repeat here what I once vowed on
a less public occasion, 'As sure as my name is Richard Avenel, you shall
smart for'--Dick hesitated--'smart for your contempt of the just rights,
honest claims, and enlightened aspirations of your indignant countrymen.
The schoolmaster is abroad, and the British Lion is aroused!'"
Dick sat down. The curve of contempt had passed from Egerton's lip; at
the name of Avenel, thus harshly spoken, he had suddenly shaded his face
with his hand.
But Randal Leslie next arose, and Audley slowly raised his eyes, and
looked towards his /protege/ with an expression of kindly interest. What
better /debut/ could there be for a young man warmly attached to an
eminent patron who had been coarsely assailed,--for a political aspirant
vindicating the principles which that patron represented? The Blues,
palpitating with indignant excitement, all prepared to cheer every
sentence that could embody their sense of outrage, even the meanest
amongst the Yellows, now that Dick had concluded, dimly aware that their
orator had laid himself terribly open, and richly deserved (more
especially from the friend of Audley Egerton) whatever punishing retort
could vibrate from the heart of a man to the tongue of an orator. A
better opportunity for an honest young /debutant/ could not exist; a more
disagreeable, annoying, perplexing, unmanageable opportunity for Randal
Leslie, the malice of the Fates could not have contrived. How could he
attack Dick Avenel,--he who counted upon Dick Avenel to win his election?
How could he exasperate the Yellows, when Dick's solemn injunction had
been, "Say nothing to make the Yellows not vote for you"? How could he
identify himself with Egerton's policy, when it was his own policy to
make his opponents believe him an unprejudiced, sensible youth, who would
come all right and all Yellow one of these days? Demosthenes himself
would have had a sore throat worse than when he swallowed the golden cup
of Harpalus, had Demosthenes been placed in so cursed a fix. Therefore
Randal Leslie may well be excused if he stammered and boggled, if he was
appalled by a cheer when he said a word in vindication of Egerton, and
looked cringing and pitiful when he sneaked out a counter civility to
Dick. The Blues were sadly disappointed, damped; the Yellows smirked and
took heart. Audley Egerton's brows darkened. Harley, who was on the
platform, half seen behind the front row, a quiet listener, bent over and
whispered dryly to Audley, "You should have given a lesson beforehand to
your clever young friend. His affection for you overpowers him!"
Audley made no rejoinder, but tore a leaf out of his pocketbook, and
wrote, in pencil, these words, "Say that you may well feel embarrassed
how to reply to Mr. Avenel, because I had especially requested you not to
be provoked to one angry expression against a gentleman whose father and
brother-in-law gave the majority of two by which I gained my first seat
in parliament; then plunge at once into general politics." He placed
this paper in Randal's hand, just as that unhappy young man was on the
point of a thorough breakdown. Randal paused, took breath, read the
words attentively, and amidst a general titter; his presence of mind
returned to him; he saw a way out of the scrape, collected himself,
suddenly raised his head, and in tones unexpectedly firm and fluent,
enlarged on the text afforded to him,--enlarged so well that he took the
audience by surprise, pleased the Blues by an evidence of Audley's
generosity, and touched the Yellows by so affectionate a deference to the
family of their two candidates. Then the speaker was enabled to come at
once to the topics on which he had elaborately prepared himself, and
delivered a set harangue, very artfully put together,--temporizing it is
true, and trimming, but full of what would have been called admirable
tact and discretion in an old stager who did not want to commit himself
to anybody or to anything. On the whole, the display became creditable,
at least as an evidence of thoughtful reserve, rare in a man so young;
too refining and scholastic for oratory, but a very good essay,--upon
both sides of the question. Randal wiped his pale forehead and sat down,
cheered, especially by the lawyers present, and self-contented. It was
now Leonard's turn to speak. Keenly nervous, as men of the literary
temperament are, constitutionally shy, his voice trembled as he began.
But he trusted, unconsciously, less to his intellect than his warm heart
and noble temper; and the warm heart prompted his words, and the noble
temper gradually dignified his manner. He took advantage of the
sentences which Audley had put into Randal's mouth, in order to efface
the impression made by his uncle's rude assault. "Would that the Right
Honourable Gentleman had himself made that generous and affecting
allusion to the services which he had deigned to remember, for, in that
case, he [Leonard] was confident that Mr. Avenel would have lost all the
bitterness which political contest was apt to engender in proportion to
the earnestness with which political opinions were entertained. Happy it
was when some such milder sentiment as that which Mr. Egerton had
instructed Mr. Leslie to convey, preceded the sharp encounter, and
reminded antagonists, as Mr. Leslie had so emphatically done, that every
shield had two sides, and that it was possible to maintain the one side
to be golden, without denying the truth of the champion who asserted the
other side to be silver." Then, without appearing to throw over his
uncle, the young speaker contrived to insinuate an apology on his uncle's
behalf, with such exquisite grace and good feeling, that he was loudly
cheered by both parties; and even Dick did not venture to utter the
dissent which struggled to his lips.
But if Leonard dealt thus respectfully with Egerton, he had no such
inducement to spare Randal Leslie. With the intuitive penetration of
minds accustomed to analyze character and investigate human nature, he
detected the varnished insincerity of Randal's artful address. His
colour rose, his voice swelled, his fancy began to play, and his wit to
sparkle, when he came to take to pieces his younger antagonist's
rhetorical mosaic. He exposed the falsehood of its affected moderation;
he tore into shreds the veil of words, with their motley woof of yellow
and blue, and showed that not a single conviction could be discovered
behind it. "Mr. Leslie's speech," said he, "puts me in mind of a ferry-
boat; it seems made for no purpose but to go from one side to the other."
The simile hit the truth so exactly that it was received with a roar of
laughter: even Egerton smiled. "For myself," concluded Leonard, as he
summed up his unsparing analysis, "I am new to party warfare; yet if I
were not opposing Mr. Leslie as a candidate for your suffrages, if I were
but an elector,--belonging, as I do, to the people by my condition and my
labours,--I should feel that he is one of those politicians in whom the
welfare, the honour, the moral elevation of the people, find no fitting
representative."
Leonard sat down amidst great applause, and after a speech that raised
the Yellows in their own estimation, and materially damaged Randal Leslie
in the eyes of the Blues. Randal felt this, with a writhing of the
heart, though a sneer on the lips. He glanced furtively towards Dick
Avenel, on whom, after all, his election, in spite of the Blues, might
depend. Dick answered the furtive glance by an encouraging wink. Randal
turned to Egerton, and whispered to him, "How I wish I had had more
practice in speaking, so that I could have done you more justice!"
"Thank you, Leslie; Mr. Fairfield has supplied any omission of yours, so
far as I am concerned. And you should excuse him for his attack on
yourself, because it may serve to convince you where your fault as a
speaker lies."
"Where?" asked Leslie, with jealous sullenness.
"In not believing a single word that you say," answered Egerton, very
dryly; and then turning away, be said aloud to his proposer, and with a
slight sigh, "Mr. Avenel maybe proud of his nephew! I wish that young
man were on our side; I could train him into a great debater."
And now the proceedings were about to terminate with a show of hands,
when a tall, brawny elector in the middle of the hall suddenly arose, and
said he had some questions to put. A thrill ran through the assembly,
for this elector was the demagogue of the Yellows,--a fellow whom it was
impossible to put down, a capital speaker, with lungs of brass. "I shall
be very short," said the demagogue. And therewith, under the shape of
questions to the two Blue candidates, he commenced a most furious
onslaught on the Earl of Lansmere, and the earl's son, Lord L'Estrange,
accusing the last of the grossest intimidation and corruption, and citing
instances thereof as exhibited towards various electors in Fish Lane and
the Back Slums, who had been turned from Yellow promises by the base arts
of Blue aristocracy, represented in the person of the noble lord, whom he
now dared to reply. The orator paused, and Harley suddenly passed into
the front of the platform, in token that he accepted the ungracious
invitation. Great as had been the curiosity to hear Audley Egerton, yet
greater, if possible, was the curiosity to hear Lord L'Estrange. Absent
from the place for so many years, heir to such immense possessions, with
a vague reputation for talents that he had never proved,--strange,
indeed, if Blue and Yellow had not strained their ears and hushed their
breaths to listen.
It is said that the poet is born, and the orator made,--a saying only
partially true. Some men have been made poets, and some men have been
born orators. Most probably Harley L'Estrange had hitherto never spoken
in public; and he had not now spoken five minutes before all the passions
and humours of the assembly were as much under his command as the keys of
the instrument are under the hands of the musician. He had taken from
nature a voice capable of infinite variety of modulation, a countenance
of the most flexible play of expression; and he was keenly alive (as
profound humourists are) equally to the ludicrous and the graver side of
everything presented to his vigorous understanding. Leonard had the
eloquence of a poet, Audley Egerton that of a parliamentary debater; but
Harley had the rarer gift of eloquence in itself, apart from the matter
it conveys or adorns,--that gift which Demosthenes meant by his triple
requisite of an orator, which has been improperly translated "action,"
but means in reality "the acting," "the stage-play." Both Leonard and
Audley spoke well, from the good sense which their speeches contained;
but Harley could have talked nonsense, and made it more effective than
sense,--even as a Kemble or Macready could produce effects from the trash
talked by "The Stranger," which your merely accomplished performer would
fail to extract from the beauties of Hamlet. The art of oratory, indeed,
is allied more closely to that of the drama than to any other; and
throughout Harley's whole nature there ran, as the reader may have noted
(though quite unconsciously to Harley himself), a tendency towards that
concentration of thought, action, and circumstance on a single purpose,
which makes the world form itself into a stage, and gathers various and
scattered agencies into the symmetry and compactness of a drama. This
tendency, though it often produces effects that appear artificially
theatrical, is not uncommon with persons the most genuine and single-
minded. It is, indeed, the natural inclination of quick energies
springing from warm emotions. Hence the very history of nations in their
fresh, vigorous, half-civilized youth always shapes itself into dramatic
forms; while, as the exercise of sober reason expands with civilization,
to the injury of the livelier faculties and more intuitive impulses,
people look to the dramatic form of expression, whether in thought or in
action, as if it were the antidote to truth, instead of being its
abstract and essence.
But to return from this long and somewhat metaphysical digression:
whatever might be the cause why Harley L'Estrange spoke so wonderfully
well, there could be no doubt that wonderfully well he did speak. He
turned the demagogue and his attack into the most felicitous ridicule,
and yet with the most genial good-humour; described that virtuous
gentleman's adventures in search of corruption through the pure regions
of Fish Lane and the Back Slums; and then summed up the evidences on
which the demagogue had founded his charge, with a humour so caustic and
original that the audience were convulsed with laughter. From laughter
Harley hurried his audience almost to the pathos of tears,--for he spoke
of the insinuations against his father so that every son and every father
in the assembly felt moved as at the voice of Nature.
A turn in a sentence, and a new emotion seized the assembly. Harley was
identifying himself with the Lansmere electors. He spoke of his pride in
being a Lansmere man, and all the Lansmere electors suddenly felt proud
of him. He talked with familiar kindness of old friends remembered in
his schoolboy holidays, rejoicing to find so many alive and prospering.
He had a felicitous word to each.
"Dear old Lansmere!" said he, and the simple exclamation won him the
hearts of all. In fine, when he paused, as if to retire, it was amidst a
storm of acclamation. Audley grasped his hand, and whispered, "I am the
only one here not surprised, Harley. Now you have discovered your
powers, never again let them slumber. What a life may be yours if you no
longer waste it!" Harley extricated his hand, and his eye glittered. He
made a sign that he had more to say, and the applause was hushed. "My
Right Honourable friend chides me for the years that I have wasted.
True; my years have been wasted,--no matter how nor wherefore! But his!
how have they been spent? In such devotion to the public that those who
know him not as I do, have said that he had not one feeling left to spare
to the obscurer duties and more limited affections, by which men of
ordinary talents and humble minds rivet the links of that social order
which it is the august destiny of statesmen--like him who now sits beside
me--to cherish and defend. But, for my part, I think that there is no
being so dangerous as the solemn hypocrite, who, because he drills his
cold nature into serving mechanically some conventional abstraction,--
whether he calls it 'the Constitution' or 'the Public,'--holds himself
dispensed from whatever, in the warm blood of private life, wins
attachment to goodness, and confidence to truth. Let others, then,
praise my Right Honourable friend as the incorruptible politician.
Pardon me if I draw his likeness as the loyal sincere man, who might say
with the honest priest 'that he could not tell a lie to gain heaven by
it!'--and with so fine a sense of honour, that he would hold it a lie
merely to conceal the truth." Harley then drew a brilliant picture of
the type of chivalrous honesty,--of the ideal which the English attach to
the phrase of "a perfect gentleman," applying each sentence to his Right
Honourable friend with an emphasis that seemed to burst from his heart.
To all of the audience, save two, it was an eulogium which the fervent
sincerity of the eulogist alone saved from hyperbole. But Levy rubbed
his hands, and chuckled inly; and Egerton hung his head, and moved
restlessly on his seat. Every word that Harley uttered lodged an arrow
in Audley's breast. Amidst the cheers that followed this admirable
sketch of the "loyal man," Harley recognized Leonard's enthusiastic
voice. He turned sharply towards the young man: "Mr. Fairfield cheers
this description of integrity, and its application; let him imitate the
model set before him, and he may live to hear praise as genuine as mine
from some friend who has tested his worth as I have tested Mr. Egerton's.
Mr. Fairfield is a poet: his claim to that title was disputed by one of
the speakers who preceded me!--unjustly disputed! Mr. Fairfield is every
inch a poet. But, it has been asked, 'Are poets fit for the business of
senates? Will they not be writing sonnets to Peggy and Moggy, when you
want them to concentrate their divine imagination on the details of a
beer bill?' Do not let Mr. Fairfield's friends be alarmed. At the risk
of injury to the two candidates whose cause I espouse, truth compels me
to say, that poets, when they stoop to action, are not less prosaic than
the dullest amongst us; they are swayed by the same selfish interests,
they are moved by the same petty passions. It is a mistake to suppose
that any detail in common life, whether in public or private, can be too
mean to seduce the exquisite pliances of their fancy. Nay, in public
life, we may trust them better than other men; for vanity is a kind of
second conscience, and, as a poet has himself said,--
"'Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And free from conscience, is a slave to shame.'
In private life alone we do well to be on our guard against these
children of fancy, for they so devote to the Muse all their treasury of
sentiment, that we can no more expect them to waste a thought on the
plain duties of men, than we can expect the spendthrift, who dazzles the
town, 'to fritter away his money in paying his debts.' But all the world
are agreed to be indulgent to the infirmities of those who are their own
deceivers and their own chastisers. Poets have more enthusiasm, more
affection, more heart than others; but only for fictions of their own
creating. It is in vain for us to attach them to ourselves by vulgar
merit, by commonplace obligations, strive and sacrifice as we may. They
are ungrateful to us, only because gratitude is so very unpoetical a
subject. We lose them the moment we attempt to bind. Their love--
"'Light as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads its light wings, and in a moment flies.'
"They follow their own caprices, adore their own delusions, and, deeming
the forms of humanity too material for their fantastic affections,
conjure up a ghost, and are chilled to death by its embrace!"
Then, suddenly aware that he was passing beyond the comprehension of his
audience, and touching upon the bounds of his bitter secret (for here he
was thinking, not of Leonard, but of Nora), Harley gave a new and more
homely direction to his terrible irony,--turned into telling ridicule the
most elevated sentiments Leonard's speech had conveyed, hastened on to a
rapid view of political questions in general, defended Leslie with the
same apparent earnestness and latent satire with which he had eulogized
Audley, and concluded a speech which, for popular effect, had never been
equalled in that hall, amidst a diapason of cheers that threatened to
bring down the rafters.
In a few minutes more the proceedings were closed, a show of hands taken.
The show was declared by the Mayor, who was a thorough Blue, in favour of
the Right Hon. Audley Egerton and Randal Leslie, Esquire.
Cries of "No," "Shame," "Partial," etc., a poll demanded on behalf of
the other two candidates, and the crowd began to pour out of the hall.
Harley was the first who vanished, retreating by the private entrance.
Egerton followed; Randal lingering, Avenel came up and shook hands with
him openly, but whispered privately, "Meet me to-night in Lansmere Park,
in the oak copse, about three hundred yards from the turnstile, at the
town end of the park. We must see how to make all right. What a
confounded humbug this has been!"