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 Edgeware 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, 9 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 hair-brushes, 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 do 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. Cæsar, 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-prefêt_, 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 clap-trap 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."