THE TENTH EARL.
Hetherington House stands in Beaufort Square, forming one side of that
confessedly aristocratic quarter. The house stands back in melancholy
"grounds" of dirty gravel, brown turf, and smutted trees, while the
dwarf wall which forms the side of the square, and is indeed a
sufficiently huge brick screen, fences off the commonalty, and
prevents them from ever catching so much as a glimpse of the paradise
within, save when the great gates are flung open for the entrance or
exit of vehicles, or when the porter, so gorgeous and yet so simple,
is sunning himself in the calm evening air at the small postern-door.
The Countess of Hetherington likes this brick screen, and looks upon
it as a necessary appanage of her rank. When visitors, having
exhausted every topic of conversation possible to their great minds--a
feat which is easily performed in the space of five minutes--and,
beginning to fear the immediate advent of brain-softening if not of
idiotcy, suddenly become possessed with a fresh idea after a
lengthened contemplation of the wall in front of them, and with an air
of desperation ask whether it does not make the house dull, Lady
Hetherington says that, on the contrary, it is the only thing that
renders the house habitable. She confesses that, during the time she
is compelled to be in London, the sight of hack cabs, and policemen on
their beat, and those kind of things, are not absolutely necessary to
her existence, and as Sir Charles Dumfunk insists on her rooms facing
the west, she is glad that the wall is there to act as a screen. Oh
yes, she is perfectly aware that Lord Letterkenney had the screen of
Purcell House pulled down and an open Italian façade erected in its
place, the picture of which was in the illustrated papers; but as Lady
Letterkenney until her marriage had lived in Ireland, and had probably
never seen anything human except priests and pigs, the sight of
civilised beings was doubtless an agreeable novelty to her. The same
circumstances did not exist in her, Lady Hetherington's, case, and she
decidedly liked the screen.
The Earl likes the screen also, but he never says anything about it,
chiefly because no one over asks his opinion on any subject. He likes
it because it is his, the Earl of Hetherington's, and he likes looking
at it as he likes looking at the coronet on his plate, on his
carriage-panels, and his horses' harness, at his family history as set
forth by Burke and Debrett, and at the marginal illustrations of his
coat-of-arms as given in those charming volumes, at his genealogical
tree--a mysterious work of art which hangs in the library, looking
something like an enlarged "sampler" worked by a school-girl, and from
the contemplation of which he derives intense delight. It does not
take a great deal to fill Lord Hetherington's soul with rapture. Down
in Norfolk villages, in the neighbourhood of his ancestral home, and
far away in scattered cottages on the side of green Welsh mountains,
where the cross-tree rears its inopportune head in the midst of the
lovely landscape, and where smoke and coal-dust permeate the soft
delicious air, his lordship, as landlord and mine-holder, is spoken of
with bated breath by tenants and workmen, and regarded as one of the
hardest-headed, tightest-fisted men of business by stewards and
agents. They do not see much, scarcely anything, of him, they say, and
they don't need to, if he's to be judged by the letters he writes and
the orders he sends. To screw up the rents and to lengthen the hours
of labour was the purport of these letters, while their style was
modelled on that used by the Saxon Franklin to his hog-hind, curt,
overbearing, and offensive. Agents and stewards, recipients of these
missives, say bitter words about Lord Hetherington in private, and
tenants and workmen curse him secretly as they bow to his decree. To
them he is a haughty, selfish, grinding aristocrat, without a thought
for any one but himself; whereas in reality he is a chuckle-headed
nobleman, with an inordinate idea of his position certainly, but
kindly hearted, a slave to his wife, and with one great desire in
life, a desire to distinguish himself somehow, no matter how.
He had tried politics. When a young man he had sat as Lord West for
his county, and the first Conservative ministry which came into office
after he had succeeded to his title, remembering the service which
Lord West had done them in roaring, hooting, and yar-yaring in the
House of Commons, repaid the obligation by appointing the newly
fledged Earl of Hetherington to be the head of one of the inferior
departments. Immensely delighted was his lordship at first; went down
to the office daily, to the intense astonishment of the departmental
private secretary, whose official labours had hitherto been confined
to writing about four letters a day, took upon himself to question
some of the suggestions which were made for his approval, carped at
the handwriting of the clerks, and for at least a week thought he had
at length found his proper place in the world, and had made an
impression. But it did not last. The permanent heads of the department
soon found him out, scratched through the external cuticle of pride
and pomposity, and discovered the true obstinate dullard underneath.
And then they humoured him, and led him by the nose as they had led
many a better man before him, and he subsided into a nonentity, and
then his party went out of office, and when they came in again they
declined to reappoint Lord Hetherington, though he clamoured ever so
loudly.
Social science was the field in which his lordship next disported
himself, and prolix, pragmatical, and eccentric as are its professors
generally, he managed to excel them all. Lord Hetherington had his
theories on the utilisation of sewage and the treatment of criminals,
on strikes and trades unions--the first of which he thought should
be suppressed by the military, the second put down by Act of
Parliament--and on the proper position of women; on which subject be
certainly spoke with more than his usual spirit and fluency. But he
was a bore upon all; and at length the social-science audiences, so
tolerant of boredom, felt that they could stand him no longer, and
coughed him down gently but firmly when he attempted to address them.
Lord Hetherington then gave up social science in disgust, and let his
noble mind lie fallow for a few months, during which time he employed
himself in cutting his noble fingers with a turning-lathe which he
caused to be erected in his mansion, and which amused him very much:
until it suddenly occurred to him that the art of bookbinding was one
in which his taste and talent might find a vent. So the room in which
the now deserted turning-lathe stood was soon littered with scraps of
leather and floating fragments of gilt-leaf; and there his lordship
spent hours every day looking on at two men very hard at work in their
shirt-sleeves, and occasionally handing them the tools they asked for:
and thus he practised the art of book-binding. Every one said it was
an odd thing for a man to take to, but every one knew that Lord
Hetherington was an odd man; consequently no one was astonished, after
the bound volumes had been duly exhibited to dining or calling
friends, and had elicited the various outbursts of "Jove!" "Ah!"
"Charming!" "Quite too nice!" and "Can't think how he does it, eh?"
which politeness demanded--no one was astonished to hear that his
lordship, panting for something fresh in which to distinguish himself,
had found it in taxidermy, which was now absorbing all the energies of
his noble mind. The receipt of a packet of humming-birds, presented by
a poor relation in the navy, first turned Lord Hetherington's thoughts
to this new pursuit; and he acted with such promptitude, that before
the end of a week Mr. Byrne--small, shrunken, and high-shouldered--had
taken the place at the bench erst occupied by the stalwart men in
shirt-sleeves; but the smell of paste and gum had been supplanted by
that of pungent chemicals, the floor was strewn with feathers and wool
instead of leather and gilt-leaf, and his lordship, still looking on
and handing tools to his companion, was stuffing birds very much in
the same way as he had bound books.
It was a fine sight to see old Jack Byrne, "Bitter Byrne," the
ultra-radical, the sourest-tongued orator of the Spartan Club, the
ex-Chartist prisoner, waited on by gorgeous footmen in plush and silk
stockings, fed on French dishes and dry sherry, and accepting it all
as if he had been born to the situation.
"Why should I quarrel with my bread and butter, or what's a devilish
deal better than bread and butter," he asked in the course of a long
evening's ramble with Walter Joyce, "because it comes from a
representative of the class I hate? I earn it, I work honestly and
hard for my wage, and suppose I am to act up to the sham self-denial
preached in some of the prints which batten on the great cause without
understanding or caring for it--suppose I were to refuse the meal
which my lord's politeness sends me, as some of your self-styled
Gracchi or Patriots would wish, how much further should we have
developed the plans, or by what the more should we have dealt a blow
at the institution we are labouring to destroy? Not one jot My maxim,
as I have told you before, is, use these people! Hate them if you
will, despise them as you must, but use them!"
The old man's vehemence had a certain weight with Joyce, who,
nevertheless, was not wholly convinced as to the propriety of his
friend's position, and said, "You justify your conduct by Lord
Hetherington's, then? You use each other?"
"Exactly! My Lord Hetherington in Parliament says, or would say if he
were allowed the chance, but they know him too well for that, so he
can only show by his votes and his proxies--proxies, by the Lord!
isn't that a happy state of things when a minister can swamp any
measure that he chooses by pulling from his pocket a few papers sent
to him by a few brother peers, who care so little about the question
in hand that they won't even leave their dinner-tables to come down
and hear it discussed?--says that he loathes what he is pleased to
call the lower classes, and considers them unworthy of being
represented in the legislature. But then he wants to stuff birds, or
rather to be known as a bird-stuffer of taste, and none of the House
of Peers can help him there. So he makes inquiries, and is referred to
me, and engages me, and we work together--neither abrogating our own
sentiments. He uses my skill, I take his money, each has his _quid pro
quo_; and if the time were ever to come,--as it may come, Walter,
mark my words--as it _must_ come, for everything is tending towards
it,--when the battle of the poor against the rich, the bees against
the drones, is fought in this country, fought out, I mean, practically
and not theoretically, we shall each of us, my Lord Hetherington and
I, be found on our respective sides, without the slightest obligation
from one to the other!"
Joyce had come to look forward to those evening walks with the old man
as the pleasantest portion of the day. From nine till six he laboured
conscientiously at the natural-history work which Mr. Byrne had
procured for him, dull uninteresting work enough, but sufficiently
fairly rewarded. Then he met his old friend at Bliffkins's, and after
their frugal meal they set out for a long ramble through the streets.
Byrne was full of information, which, in his worldly wise fashion, he
imparted, tinged with social philosophy or dashed with an undercurrent
of his own peculiar views. Of which an example. Walter Joyce had been
standing for five minutes, silent, rapt in delight at his first view
of the Parliament Houses as seen from Westminster Bridge. A bright
moonlight night, soft, dreamy, even here, with a big yellow harvest
moon coming up from the back, throwing the delicate tracery into
splendid relief, and sending out the shadows thick and black; the old
man looking on calmly, quietly chuckling at the irrepressible
enthusiasm mantling over his young friend's cheeks and gleaming in his
eyes.
"A fine place, lad?"
"Fine! splendid, superb!"
"Well, not to put _too_ fine a point upon it, we'll say fine. Ah, they
may blackguard Barry as much as they like--and when it comes to
calling names and flinging mud in print, mind you, I don't know
anybody to beat your architect or your architect's friend--but there's
not another man among 'em could have done anything like that! That's a
proper dignified house for the Parliament of the People to sit
in--when it comes!"
"But it does sit there, doesn't it!"
"It? What? The Parliament of the People? No, sir; that sits, if you
would believe certain organs of the press, up a court in Fleet Street,
where it discusses the affairs of the nation over screws of shag
tobacco and pots of fourpenny ale. What sits there before us is the
Croesus Club, a select assemblage of between six and seven hundred
members, who drop down here to levy taxes and job generally in the
interval between dinner and bed."
"Are they--are they there now?" asked Joyce eagerly, peering with
outstretched neck at the building before him.
"Now? No, of course not, man! They're away at their own devices,
nine-tenths of them breaking the laws which they helped to make, and
all enjoying themselves, and wondering what the devil people find to
grumble at!"
"One of the governors of the old school, down, down at
Helmingham"--a large knot swelled in Joyce's throat as he said the
word, and nearly choked him; never before had he felt the place so far
away or the days spent there so long removed from his then life--"was
a member of Parliament, I think. Lord Beachcroft. Did you ever hear of
him?"
The old man smiled sardonically.
"Hear of him, man? There's not one of them that has made his mark, or
that is likely to make his mark in any way, that I don't know by
sight, or that I haven't heard speak. I know Lord Beachcroft well
enough; he's a philanthropist, wants camphorated chalk tooth-powder
for the paupers, and horse-exercise for the convicts. Registered among
the noodles, ranks A1, weakly built, leaden-headed, and wants an
experienced keeper!"
"That doctrine would have been taken as heresy at Helmingham! I know
he came there once on our speech-day to deliver the prizes, and the
boys all cheered him to the echo!"
"The boys! of course they did! The child is father to the man! I
forgot, people don't read Wordsworth nowadays, but that's what he
says, and he and Tennyson are the only poet-philosophers that have
risen amongst us for many years; and boys shout, as men would, at the
mere sight, at the mere taste of a lord! How they like to roll your
'lordship' round their mouths, and fear lest they should lose the
slightest atom of its flavour! Not that the boys did wrong in cheering
Lord Beachcroft! He's harmless enough, and well-meaning, I'm sure, and
stands well up among the noodles. And it's better to stand anywhere
amongst them than to be affiliated to the other party!"
"The other party? Who are they, Mr. Byrne?"
"The rogues, lad, the rogues! Rogues and noodles make up the blessed
lot of senators sitting in your gimcrack palace, who vote away your
birthright and mine, tax the sweat of millions, bow to Gold Stick and
kiss Black Rod's coat-tails, send our fleets to defend Von Sourkraut's
honour, or our soldiers to sicken of jungle fever in pursuit of the
rebel Lollum Dha's adversaries! Parliament? Representatives of the
people? Very much! My gallant friend, all pipeclay and padded breast,
who won't hear of the army estimates being reduced; my learned friend,
who brings all his forensic skill and all his power of tongue-fence,
first learned in three-guinea briefs at the Old Bailey, and now
educated up into such silvery eloquence, into play for the chance of a
judgeship and a knighthood; the volatile Irish member, who subsides
finally into the consulate of Zanzibar; the honourable member, who,
having in his early youth swept out a shop at Loughboro', and arrived
in London with eightpence, has accumulated millions, and is, of
course, a strong Tory, with but two desires in life--to keep down 'the
people,' and to obtain a card for his wife for the Premier's Saturday
evenings--these are the representatives of the people for you! Rogues
and noodles, noodles and rogues. Don't you like the picture?"
"I should hate it, if I believed in it, Mr. Byrne!" said Joyce, moving
away, "but I don't! You won't think me rude or unkind, but--but I've
been brought up in so widely different a faith. I've been taught to
hold in such reverence all that I hear you deny, that----"
"Stick to it, lad! hold to it while you can!" said the old man kindly,
laying his hand on his companion's arm. "My doctrines are strong meat
for babes--too strong, I dare say--and you're but a toothless infant
yet in these things, anyhow! So much the better for you. I recollect a
story of some man who said he was never happy or well after he was
told he had a liver! Go on as long as you can in pleasant ignorance of
the fact that you have a political liver. Some day it will become
torpid and sluggish, and then--then come and talk to old Dr. Byrne.
Till then, he won't attempt to alarm you, depend upon it!"
Not very long to be deferred was the day in which the political
patient was to come to the political physician for advice and for
treatment.
Beaufort Square looked hideously dull as Lord Hetherington drove
through it on his way to his home from the railway station a few days
after the conversation above recorded, and the clanging of his own
great gates as they shut behind him echoed and re-echoed through the
vast deserted space. The gorgeous porter and all the regiment of
domestics were down at Westhope, the family place in Norfolk, so the
carriage-gates were opened by a middle-aged female with her head tied
up for toothache, and Mrs. Mason, the housekeeper, with a female
retinue, was waiting to receive his lordship on the steps. Always
affable to old servants of the family, whose age, long service, and
comfortable comely appearance do him credit, as he thinks, Lord
Hetherington exchanges a few gracious words with Mrs. Mason, desires
that Mr. Byrne shall be shown in to him so soon as he arrives, and
makes his way across the great hall to the library. The shutters of
his room have been opened, but there has been no time given for
further preparations, and the big writing-table, the globes, and the
bookcases are all swathed in ghostly holland drapery. The bust of the
ninth earl, Lord Hetherington's father, has slipped its head out of
its covering, and looks astonished and as if it had been suddenly
called up in its nightclothes. My lord looks dismayed, as well he may,
at the dreary room, but finds no more cheerful outlook from the window
into the little square garden, where a few melancholy leaves are
rotting in the dirty corners into which they have drifted, and where
Mrs. Mason's grandson, unconscious of observation, is throwing stones
at a cat. My lord rattles the loose silver in his trousers-pockets,
and walks up to the fireplace and inspects his tongue in the
looking-glass, whistles thoughtfully, sighs heavily, and is beginning
to think he shall go mad, when Mrs. Mason opens the door and announces
"Mr. Byrne."
"How do, Byrne?" says his lordship, much relieved. "Glad to see
you--come up on purpose--want your help!"
Mr. Byrne returns his lordship's salutations, and quietly asks in what
way he can be of use. His lordship is rather taken aback at being so
suddenly brought to book, but says with some hesitation--
"Well, not exactly in your own way, Byrne; I don't think I shall do
any more what-d'ye-call-ums, birds, any more--for the present, I mean,
for the present. Her ladyship thought those last screens so good that
it would be-useless to try to improve on them, and so she's given
me--I mean I've got--another idea."
Mr. Byrne, with the faintest dawn of a cynical grin on his face, bows
and waits.
"Fact is," pursues his lordship, "my place down at Westhope, full of
most monstrously interesting records of our family from the time
of--oh, the Crusaders and Guy Fawkes and the Pretender, and all that
kind of thing; records, don't you know; old papers, and what they call
documents, you know, and those kind of things. Well, I want to take
all these things and make 'em into a sort of history of the family,
you know, to write it and have it published, don't they call it? You
know what I mean."
Mr. Byrne intimates that they do call it published, and that he
apprehends his lordship's meaning completely.
"Well, then, Byrne," his lordship continues, "what I sent for you for
is this. 'Tisn't in your line, I know, but I've found you clever, and
all that kind of thing, and above your station. Oh, I mean it, I do
indeed, and I want you to find me some person, respectable and
educated and all that, who will just go through these papers, you
know, and select the right bits, you know, and write them down, you
know, and, in point of fact, just do--you know what I mean."
Mr. Byrne, with a radiant look which his face but seldom wore, averred
that he not merely understood what was meant, but that he could
recommend the very man whom his lordship required: a young man of
excellent address, good education, and great industry.
"And he'll understand----?" asked Lord Hetherington hesitatingly, and
with a curious look at Mr. Byrne.
"Everything," replied the old man. "Your lordship's book will be the
most successful thing you've done."
"Then bring him to the Clarendon at twelve the day after to-morrow. As
he's to live in the house, and that kind of thing, her ladyship must
see him before he's engaged."
"I suppose I may congratulate you, my boy," said Byrne to Joyce a day
or two afterwards, as they walked away from the Clarendon Hotel after
their interview, "though you don't look much pleased about it."
"I am an ungrateful brute," said Walter; "I ought to have thanked you
the instant the door closed; for it is entirely owing to you and your
kindness that I have obtained this splendid chance. But----"
"But what?" said the old man kindly.
"Did you notice that woman's reception of me, and the way she spoke?"
"That woman? Oh, my Lady! H'm--she's not too polite to those she
considers her inferiors."
"Polite? To me it was imperious, insolent, degrading! But I can put up
with it!" And he added softly to himself, "For Marian's sake!"