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 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 amongst the busy members of the House of Commons; but then Audley
Egerton has always been something more than a mere busy member of the
House of Commons. He has 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 an 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 of 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 highly be might esteem and admire
her. Now, Lord L'Estrange (not long after the election at Lansmere,
which had given to Audley his first seat in parliament) had suddenly
exchanged from the battalion of the Guards to which be belonged, and
which was detained at home, into a cavalry regiment on active service in
the Peninsula. Nevertheless, even abroad, and amidst the distractions of
war, his interest in all that could forward Egerton's career was
unabated; and by letters to his father and to his cousin Clementina, he
assisted in the negotiations for the marriage between Miss Leslie and his
friend; and before the year in which Audley was returned for Lansmere had
expired, the young senator 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. Miss
Leslie, in spite of all remonstrance from her own legal adviser, had
settled this clause with Egerton's confidential solicitor, one Mr. Levy,
of whom we shall see more hereafter; and Egerton was to be kept in
ignorance of it till after the marriage. If in this Miss Leslie showed a
generous trust in Mr. Egerton, she still 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, from the 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 that 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 member; 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 spatters.
A rich man in public life has many claims on his fortune, and no one
yielded to those claims with in 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 kinsfolk, 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 parental
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 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 L5000, 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 L5000, 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 L5000, 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 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
eclat 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 did
not trouble 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 protege, I may
now permit him to receive and to read his letters.