The morning after this visit of Frank Hazeldean's to Rood Hall, the
Right Honorable Audley Egerton, member of Parliament, privy councilor,
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 mean while 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 among 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 toward 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 humor;
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, kinswomen
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 quarreled, 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 honored 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 afterward, 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
among his many liberal actions, there was none which seemed more worthy
of panegyric, than the generous favor 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, afterward married to Mr.
Egerton.
Meanwhile the elder son of the fore-mentioned 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 death bed, 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
neighboring solicitor having caught scent of the legacy, hunted it down
into his own hands, on pretense 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 afterward 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 afterward 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 characterizes 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 toward 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
_protégé_, I may now permit him to receive and to read his letters.