Whenever Audley joined the other guests of an evening--while Harley was

perhaps closeted with Levy and committeemen, and Randal was going the

round of the public-houses--the one with whom he chiefly conversed was

Violante. He had been struck at first, despite his gloom, less perhaps

by her extraordinary beauty than by something in the expression of

her countenance which, despite differences in feature and complexion,

reminded him of Nora; and when, by his praises of Harley, he drew her

attention, and won into her liking, he discovered, perhaps, that the

likeness which had thus impressed him came from some similarities

in character between the living and the lost one,--the same charming

combination of lofty thought and childlike innocence, the same

enthusiasm, the same rich exuberance of imagination and feeling. Two

souls that resemble each other will give their likeness to the looks

from which they beam. On the other hand, the person with whom Harley

most familiarly associated, in his rare intervals of leisure, was Helen

Digby. One day, Audley Egerton, standing mournfully by the window of

the sitting-room appropriated to his private use, saw the two, whom he

believed still betrothed, take their way across the park, side by side.

“Pray Heaven, that she may atone to him for all!” murmured Audley. “But

ah, that it had been Violante! Then I might have felt assured that the

Future would efface the Past,--and found the courage to tell him all.

And when last night I spoke of what Harley ought to be to England, how

like were Violante’s eyes and smile to Nora’s, when Nora listened in

delighted sympathy to the hopes of my own young ambition.” With a

sigh he turned away, and resolutely sat down to read and reply to the

voluminous correspondence which covered the table of the busy public

man. For Audley’s return to parliament being considered by his political

party as secure, to him were transmitted all the hopes and fears of the

large and influential section of it whose members looked up to him as

their future chief, and who in that general election (unprecedented for

the number of eminent men it was fated to expel from parliament, and the

number of new politicians it was fated to send into it) drew their only

hopes of regaining their lost power from Audley’s sanguine confidence in

the reaction of that Public Opinion which he had hitherto so profoundly

comprehended; and it was too clearly seen, that the seasonable adoption

of his counsels would have saved the existence and popularity of the

late Administration, whose most distinguished members could now scarcely

show themselves on the hustings.

Meanwhile Lord L’Estrange led his young companion towards a green

hill in the centre of the park, on which stood a circular temple; that

commanded a view of the country round for miles. They had walked in

silence till they gained the summit of the sloped and gradual ascent;

and then, as they stood still, side by side, Harley thus spoke,

“Helen, you know that Leonard is in the town, though I cannot receive

him at the Park, since he is standing in opposition to my guests,

Egerton and Leslie.”

HELEN.--“But that seems to me so strange. How--how could Leonard do

anything that seems hostile to you?”

HARLEY.--“Would his hostility to me lower him in your opinion? If he

know that I am his rival, does not rivalry include hate?”

HELEN.--“Oh, Lord L’Estrange, how can you speak thus; how so wrong

yourself? Hate--hate to you! and from Leonard Fairfield!”

HARLEY.--“You evade my question. Would his hate or hostility to me

affect your sentiments towards him?”

HELEN (looking down).--“I could not force myself to believe in it.”

HARLEY.--“Why?”

HELEN.--“Because it would be so unworthy of him.”

HARLEY.--“Poor child! You have the delusion of your years. You deck a

cloud in the hues of the rainbow, and will not believe that its glory is

borrowed from the sun of your own fancy. But here, at least, you are not

deceived. Leonard obeys but my wishes, and, I believe, against his own

will. He has none of man’s noblest attribute, Ambition.”

HELEN.--“No ambition!”

HARLEY.--“It is vanity that stirs the poet to toil,--if toil the wayward

chase of his own chimeras can be called. Ambition is a more masculine

passion.”

Helen shook her head gently, but made no answer.

HARLEY.--“If I utter a word that profanes one of your delusions, you

shake your head and are incredulous. Pause: listen one moment to my

counsels,--perhaps the last I may ever obtrude upon you. Lift your eyes;

look around. Far as your eye can reach, nay, far beyond the line which

the horizon forms in the landscape, stretch the lands of my inheritance.

Yonder you see the home in which my forefathers for many generations

lived with honour, and died lamented. All these, in the course of

nature, might one day have been your own, had you not rejected my

proposals. I offered you, it is true, not what is commonly called Love;

I offered you sincere esteem, and affections the more durable for their

calm. You have not been reared by the world in the low idolatry of rank

and wealth; but even romance cannot despise the power of serving others,

which rank and wealth bestow. For myself, hitherto indolence, and lately

disdain, rob fortune of these nobler attributes. But she who will share

my fortune may dispense it so as to atone for my sins of omission.

On the other side, grant that there is no bar to your preference for

Leonard Fairfield, what does your choice present to you? Those of his

kindred with whom you will associate are unrefined and mean. His sole

income is derived from precarious labours; the most vulgar of all

anxieties--the fear of bread itself for the morrow--must mingle with

all your romance, and soon steal from love all its poetry. You think his

affection will console you for every sacrifice. Folly! the love of poets

is for a mist, a moonbeam, a denizen of air, a phantom that they call

an Ideal. They suppose for a moment that they have found that Ideal in

Chloe or Phyllis, Helen or a milkmaid. Bah! the first time you come to

the poet with the baker’s bill, where flies the Ideal? I knew one more

brilliant than Leonard, more exquisitely gifted by nature; that one

was a woman; she saw a man hard and cold as that stone at your feet,--a

false, hollow, sordid worldling; she made him her idol, beheld in him

all that history would not recognize in a Caesar, that mythology would

scarcely grant to an Apollo: to him she was the plaything of an hour;

she died, and before the year was out he had married for money! I knew

another instance,--I speak of myself. I loved before I was your age. Had

an angel warned me then, I would have been incredulous as you. How

that ended, no matter: but had it not been for that dream of

maudlin delirium, I had lived and acted as others of my kind and my

sphere,--married from reason and judgment, been now a useful and happy

man. Pause, then. Will you still reject me for Leonard Fairfield? For

the last time you have the option,--me and all the substance of waking

life, Leonard Fairfield and the shadows of a fleeting dream. Speak! You

hesitate. Nay, take time to decide.”

HELEN.--“Ah, Lord L’Estrange, you who have felt what it is to love,

how can you doubt my answer; how think that I could be so base, so

ungrateful as take from yourself what you call the substance of waking

life, while my heart was far away, faithful to what you call a dream?”

HARLEY.--“But can you not dispel the dream?”

HELEN (her whole face one flush).--“It was wrong to call it dream! It is

the reality of life to me. All things else are as dreams.”

HARLEY (taking her hand and kissing it with respect).--“Helen, you have

a noble heart, and I have tempted you in vain. I regret your choice,

though I will no more oppose it. I regret it, though I shall never

witness your disappointment. As the wife of that man, I shall see and

know you no more.”

HELEN.--“Oh, no! do not say that. Why? Wherefore?”

HARLEY (his brows meeting).--“He is the child of fraud and of shame.

His father is my foe, and my hate descends to the son. He, too, the son,

filches from me--But complaints are idle. When the next few days are

over, think of me but as one who abandons all right over your actions,

and is a stranger to your future fate. Pooh! dry your tears: so long as

you love Leonard or esteem me, rejoice that our paths do not cross.”

He walked on impatiently; but Helen, alarmed and wondering, followed

close, took his arm timidly, and sought to soothe him. She felt that he

wronged Leonard,--that he knew not how Leonard had yielded all hope when

he learned to whom she was affianced. For Leonard’s sake she conquered

her bashfulness, and sought to explain. But at her first hesitating,

faltered words, Harley, who with great effort suppressed the emotions

which swelled within him, abruptly left her side, and plunged into the

recesses of thick, farspreading groves, that soon wrapped him from her

eye.

While this conversation occurred between Lord L’Estrange and his ward,

the soi-disant Riccabocca and Violante were walking slowly through the

gardens. The philosopher, unchanged by his brightening prospects,--so

far as the outer man was concerned,--still characterized by the red

umbrella and the accustomed pipe,--took the way mechanically towards

the sunniest quarter of the grounds, now and then glancing tenderly at

Violante’s downcast, melancholy face, but not speaking; only, at each

glance, there came a brisker cloud from the pipe, as if obedient to a

fuller heave of the heart.

At length, in a spot which lay open towards the south, and seemed to

collect all the gentlest beams of the November sun, screened from the

piercing east by dense evergreens, and flanked from the bleak north by

lofty walls, Riccabocca paused and seated himself. Flowers still bloomed

on the sward in front, over which still fluttered the wings of those

later and more brilliant butterflies that, unseen in the genial days

of our English summer, come with autumnal skies, and sport round the

mournful steps of the coming winter,--types of those thoughts which

visit and delight the contemplation of age, while the current yet

glides free from the iron ice, and the leaves yet linger on the boughs;

thoughts that associate the memories of the departed summer with

messages from suns that shall succeed the winter, and expand colours the

most steeped in light and glory, just as the skies through which they

gleam are darkening, and the flowers on which they hover fade from the

surface of the earth, dropping still seeds, that sink deep out of sight

below.

“Daughter,” said Riccabocca, drawing Violante to his side with caressing

arm,--“Daughter! Mark how they who turn towards the south can still find

the sunny side of the land scape! In all the seasons of life, how much

of chill or of warmth depends on our choice of the aspect! Sit down: let

us reason.”

Violante sat down passively, clasping her father’s hand in both her

own. Reason! harsh word to the ears of Feeling! “You shrink,” resumed

Riccabocca, “from even the courtship, even the presence of the suitor in

whom my honour binds me to recognize your future bridegroom.”

Violante drew away her hands, and placed them before her eyes

shudderingly.

“But” continued Riccabocca, rather peevishly, “this is not listening to

reason. I may object to Mr. Leslie, because he has not an adequate rank

or fortune to pretend to a daughter of my house; that would be what

every one would allow to be reasonable in a father; except, indeed,”

added the poor sage, trying hard to be sprightly, and catching hold of

a proverb to help him--“except, indeed, those wise enough to recollect

that admonitory saying, ‘Casa il figlio quando vuoi, e la figlia quando

puoi,’--[Marry your son when you will, your daughter when you can].

Seriously, if I overlook those objections to Mr. Leslie, it is not

natural for a young girl to enforce them. What is reason in you is quite

another thing from reason in me. Mr. Leslie is young, not ill-looking,

has the air of a gentleman, is passionately enamoured of you, and

has proved his affection by risking his life against that villanous

Peschiera,--that is, he would have risked it had Peschiera not been

shipped out of the way. If, then, you will listen to reason, pray what

can reason say against Mr. Leslie?”

“Father, I detest him!”

“Cospetto!” persisted Riccabocca, testily, “you have no reason to detest

him. If you had any reason, child, I am sure that I should be the last

person to dispute it. How can you know your own mind in such a matter?

It is not as if you had seen anyone else you could prefer. Not another

man of your own years do you even know,--except, indeed, Leonard

Fairfield, whom, though I grant he is handsomer, and with more

imagination and genius than Mr. Leslie, you still must remember as the

boy who worked in my garden. Ah, to be sure, there is Frank Hazeldean;

fine lad, but his affections are pre-engaged. In short,” continued

the sage, dogmatically, “there is no one else you can, by any possible

caprice, prefer to Mr. Leslie; and for a girl who has no one else in

her head to talk of detesting a well-looking, well-dressed, clever young

man, is--a nonsense--‘Chi lascia il poco per haver l’assai ne l’uno, ne

l’altro avera mai’--which may be thus paraphrased,--The young lady who

refuses a mortal in the hope of obtaining an angel, loses the one, and

will never fall in with the other. So now, having thus shown that the

darker side of the question is contrary to reason, let us look to the

brighter. In the first place--”

“Oh, Father, Father!” cried Violante, passionately, “you to whom I once

came for comfort in every childish sorrow do not talk to me with this

cutting levity. See, I lay my head upon your breast, I put my arms

around you; and now, can you reason me into misery?”

“Child, child, do not be so wayward. Strive, at least, against a

prejudice that you cannot defend. My Violante, my darling, this is no

trifle. Here I must cease to be the fond, foolish father, whom you can

do what you will with. Here I am Alphonso, Duke di Serrano; for here my

honour as noble and my word as man are involved. I, then, but a helpless

exile, no hope of fairer prospects before me, trembling like a coward

at the wiles of my unscrupulous kinsman, grasping at all chances to save

you from his snares,--self offered your hand to Randal Leslie,--offered,

promised, pledged it; and now that my fortunes seem assured, my rank in

all likelihood restored, my foe crushed, my fears at rest, now, does it

become me to retract what I myself have urged? It is not the noble, it

is the parvenu, who has only to grow rich, in order to forget those

whom in poverty he hailed as his friends. Is it for me to make the poor

excuse, never heard on the lips of an Italian prince, ‘that I cannot

command the obedience of my child;’ subject myself to the galling

answer, ‘Duke of Serrano, you could once command that obedience, when,

in exile, penury, and terror you offered me a bride without a dower’?

Child, Violante, daughter of ancestors on whose honour never slander set

a stain, I call on you to redeem your father’s plighted word.”

“Father, must it be so? Is not even the convent open to me? Nay, look

not so coldly on me. If you could but read my heart! And oh! I feel so

assured of your own repentance hereafter,--so assured that this man

is not what you believe him. I so suspect that he has been playing

throughout some secret and perfidious part.”

“Ha!” interrupted Riccabocca, “Harley has perhaps infected you with that

notion.”

“No, no! But is not Harley, is not Lord L’Estrange one whose opinion you

have cause to esteem? And if he distrusts Mr. Leslie--”

“Let him make good his distrust by such proof as will absolve my word,

and I shall share your own joy. I have told him this. I have invited

him to make good his suspicions, he puts me off. He cannot do so,” added

Riccabocca, in a dejected tone; “Randal has already so well explained

all that Harley deemed equivocal. Violante, my name and my honour rest

in your hands. Cast them away if you will; I cannot constrain you, and

I cannot stoop to implore. Noblesse oblige! With your birth you took

its duties. Let them decide between your vain caprice and your father’s

solemn remonstrance.”

Assuming a sternness that he was far from feeling, and putting aside

his daughter’s arms, the exile walked away. Violante paused a moment,

shivered, looked round as if taking a last farewell of joy and peace

and hope on earth, and then approaching her father with a firm step, she

said, “I never rebelled, Father; I did but entreat. What you say is my

law now, as it has ever been; and come what may, never shall you hear

complaint or murmur from me. Poor Father, you will suffer more than I

shall. Kiss me!”

About an hour afterwards, as the short day closed in, Harley,

returning from his solitary wanderings, after he had parted from Helen,

encountered on the terrace, before the house, Lady Lansmere and Audley

Egerton arm in arm.

Harley had drawn his hat over his brows, and his eyes were fixed on the

ground, so that he did not see the group upon which he came unawares,

until Audley’s voice startled him from his revery.

“My dear Harley,” said the ex-minister, with a faint smile, “you must

not pass us by, now that you have a moment of leisure from the cares of

the election. And, Harley, though we are under the same roof, I see you

so little.” Lord L’Estrange darted a quick glance towards his mother,--a

glance that seemed to say, “You leaning on Audley’s arm! Have you kept

your promise?” And the eye that met his own reassured him.

“It is true,” said Harley; “but you, who know that, once engaged in

public affairs, one has no heart left for the ties of private life, will

excuse me. And this election is so important!”

“And you, Mr. Egerton,” said Lady Lansmere, “whom the election most

concerns, seem privileged to be the only one who appears indifferent to

success.”

“Ay; but you are not indifferent?” said Lord L’Estrange, abruptly.

“No. How can I be so, when my whole future career may depend on it?”

Harley drew Egerton aside. “There is one voter you ought at least to

call upon and thank. He cannot be made to comprehend that, for the sake

of any relation, even for the sake of his own son, he is to vote against

the Blues,--against you; I mean, of course, Nora’s father, John Avenel.

His vote and his son-in-law’s gained your majority at your first

election.”

EGERTON.--“Call on John Avenel! Have you called?”

HARLEY (calmly).--“Yes. Poor old man, his mind has been affected ever

since Nora’s death. But your name as the candidate for the borough at

that time,--the successful candidate for whose triumph the joy-bells

chimed with her funeral knell,--your name brings up her memory; and he

talks in a breath of her and of you. Come, let us walk together to his

house; it is close by the Park Lodge.”

The drops stood on Audley’s brow! He fixed his dark handsome eyes, in

mournful amaze, upon Harley’s tranquil face.

“Harley, at last, then, you have forgotten the Past.”

“No; but the Present is more imperious. All my efforts are needed to

requite your friendship. You stand against her brother,--yet her father

votes for you. And her mother says to her son, ‘Let the old man alone.

Conscience is all that is well alive in him; and he thinks if he were to

vote against the Blues, he would sin against honour.’ ‘An electioneering

prejudice,’ some sceptics would say. But you must be touched by this

trait of human nature,--in her father, too,--you, Audley Egerton, who

are the soul of honour. What ails you?”

EGERTON.--“Nothing; a spasm at the heart; my old complaint. Well, I will

call on the poor man later, but not now,--not with you. Nay, nay, I will

not,--I cannot. Harley, just as you joined us, I was talking to your

mother.”

HARLEY.--“Ay, and what of?”

EGERTON.--“Yourself. I saw you from my windows walking with your

betrothed. Afterwards I observed her coming home alone; and by the

glimpse I caught of her gentle countenance, it seemed sad. Harley, do

you deceive us?”

HARLEY.--“Deceive! I! How?”

EGERTON.--“DO you really feel that your intended marriage will bestow on

you the happiness, which is my prayer, as it must be your mother’s?”

HARLEY.--“Happiness, I hoped so. But perhaps--”

EGERTON.--“Perhaps what?”

HARLEY.--“Perhaps the marriage may not take place. Perhaps I have a

rival; not an open one,--a secret, stealthy wooer, in one, too, whom

I have loved, served, trusted. Question me not now. Such instances of

treachery make one learn more how to prize a friendship honest, devoted,

faithful as your own, Audley Egerton. But here comes your protege,

released awhile from his canvass, and your confidential adviser, Baron

Levy. He accompanied Randal through the town to-day. So anxious is he to

see that that young man does not play false, and regard his own interest

before yours! Would that surprise you?”

EGERTON.--“You are too severe upon Randal Leslie. He is ambitious,

worldly, has no surplus of affection at the command of his heart--”

HARLEY.--“Is it Randal Leslie you describe?”

EGERTON (with a languid smile).--“Yes, you see I do not flatter. But he

is born and reared a gentleman; as such he would scarcely do anything

mean. And, after all, it is with me that he must rise or fall. His

very intellect must tell him that. But again I ask, do not strive to

prepossess me against him. I am a man who could have loved a son. I have

none. Randal, such as he is, is a sort of son. He carries on my projects

and my interest in the world of men beyond the goal of the tomb.”

Audley turned kindly to Randal.

“Well, Leslie, what report of the canvass?”

“Levy has the book, sir. I think we have gained ten fresh votes for you,

and perhaps seven for me.”

“Let me rid you of your book, Baron Levy,” said Harley. Just at this

time Riccabocca and Violante approached the house, both silent. The

Italian caught sight of Randal, and made him a sign to join them. The

young lover glanced fearfully towards Harley, and then with alacrity

bounded forward, and was soon at Violante’s side. But scarce had Harley,

surprised by Leslie’s sudden disappearance, remarked the cause, than

with equal abruptness he abandoned the whispered conference he had

commenced with Levy, and hastening to Randal, laid hand on the young

man’s shoulder, exclaiming, “Ten thousand pardons to all three! But I

cannot allow this waste of time, Mr. Leslie. You have yet an hour before

it grows dark. There are three out-voters six miles off, influential

farmers, whom you must canvass in person with my father’s steward.

Hasten to the stables; choose your own horse. To saddle, to saddle!

Baron Levy, go and order my Lord’s steward, Mr. Smart, to join Mr.

Leslie at the stables; then come back to me,--quick. What! loitering

still, Mr. Leslie! You will make me throw up your whole cause in disgust

at your indolence and apathy.”

Alarmed at this threat, Randal lifted his accusing eyes to heaven and

withdrew.

Meanwhile Audley had drawn close to Lady Lansmere, who was leaning, in

thought, over the balustrade of the terrace. “Do you note,” said Audley,

whispering, “how Harley sprang forward when the fair Italian came in

sight? Trust me, I was right. I know little of the young lady, but I

have conversed with her. I have gazed on the changes in her face. If

Harley ever love again, and if ever love influence and exalt his mind,

wish with me that his choice may yet fall where I believe that his heart

inclines it.”

LADY LANSMERE.--“Ah, that it were so! Helen, I own, is charming;

but--but--Violante is equal in birth! Are you not aware that she is

engaged to your young friend Mr. Leslie?”

AUDLEY.--“Randal told me so; but I cannot believe it. In fact, I have

taken occasion to sound that fair creature’s inclinations, and if I know

aught of women, her heart is not with Randal. I cannot believe her to be

one whose affections are so weak as to be easily constrained; nor can

I suppose that her father could desire to enforce a marriage that is

almost a misalliance. Randal must deceive himself; and from something

Harley just let fall, in our painful but brief conversation, I suspect

that his engagement with Miss Digby is broken off. He promises to tell

me more later. Yes,” continued Audley, mournfully, “observe Violante’s

countenance, with its ever-varying play; listen to her voice, to which

feeling seems to give the expressive music, and tell me whether you

are not sometimes reminded of--of--In one word, there is one who,

even without rank or fortune, would be worthy to replace the image of

Leonora, and be to Harley--what Leonora could not; for sure I am that

Violante loves him.”

Harley, meanwhile, had lingered with Riccabocca and Violante, speaking

but on indifferent subjects, obtaining short answers from the first,

and none from the last, when the sage drew him a little aside, and

whispered, “She has consented to sacrifice herself to my sense of

honour. But, O Harley! if she be unhappy, it will break my heart. Either

you must give me sufficient proof of Randal’s unworthiness, to absolve

me from my promise, or I must again entreat, you to try and conciliate

the poor child in his favour. All you say has weight with her; she

respects you as--a second father.”

Harley did not seem peculiarly flattered by that last assurance; but

he was relieved from an immediate answer by the appearance of a man who

came from the direction of the stables, and whose dress, covered with

dust, and travel-stained, seemed like that of a foreign courier. No

sooner did Harley catch sight of this person, than he sprang forward,

and accosted him briefly and rapidly.

“You have been quick; I did not expect you so soon. You discovered the

trace? You gave my letter--”

“And have brought back the answer, my Lord,” replied the man, taking the

letter from a leathern pouch at his side. Harley hastily broke open

the seal, and glanced over the contents, which were comprised in a few

lines.

“Good. Say not whence you came. Do not wait here; return at once to

London.”

Harley’s face seemed so unusually cheerful as he rejoined the Italians,

that the duke exclaimed,--

“A despatch from Vienna? My recall!”

“From Vienna, my dear friend! Not possible yet. I cannot calculate

on hearing from the prince till a day or two before the close of this

election. But you wish me to speak to Violante. Join my mother yonder.

What can she be saying to Mr. Egerton? I will address a few words apart

to your fair daughter, that may at least prove the interest in her fate

taken by--her second father.”

“Kindest of friends!” said the unsuspecting pupil of Machiavelli, and

he walked towards the terrace. Violante was about to follow. Harley

detained her.

“Do not go till you have thanked me; for you are not the noble Violante

for whom I take you, unless you acknowledge gratitude to any one who

delivers you from the presence of an admirer in Mr. Randal Leslie.”

VIOLANTE.--“Ought I to hear this of one whom--whom--”

HARLEY.--“One whom your father obstinately persists in obtruding on your

repugnance? Yet, O dear child, you who, when almost an infant, ere yet

you knew what snares and pitfalls, for all who trust to another, lie

under the sward at our feet, even when decked the fairest with the

flowers of spring; you who put your small hands around my neck, and

murmured in your musical voice, ‘Save us,--save my father,’--you at

least I will not forsake, in a peril worse than that which menaced you

then,--a peril which affrights you more than that which threatened

you in the snares of Peschiera. Randal Leslie may thrive in his meaner

objects of ambition; those I fling to him in scorn: but you!

the presuming varlet!” Harley paused a moment, half stifled with

indignation. He then resumed, calmly, “Trust to me, and fear not. I will

rescue this hand from the profanation of Randal Leslie’s touch; and then

farewell, for life, to every soft emotion. Before me expands the

welcome solitude. The innocent saved, the honest righted, the perfidious

stricken by a just retribution,--and then--what then? Why, at least I

shall have studied Machiavelli with more effect than your wise father;

and I shall lay him aside, needing no philosophy to teach me never again

to be deceived.” His brow darkened; he turned abruptly away, leaving

Violante lost in amaze, fear, and a delight, vague, yet more vividly

felt than all.

CHAPTER XXI.

That night, after the labours of the day, Randal had gained the

sanctuary of his own room, and seated himself at his table, to prepare

the heads of the critical speech he would have now very soon to deliver

on the day of nomination,--critical speech when, in the presence of foes

and friends, reporters from London, and amidst all the jarring interests

that he sought to weave into the sole self-interest of Randal Leslie,

he would be called upon to make the formal exposition of his political

opinions. Randal Leslie, indeed, was not one of those speakers whom

either modesty, fastidiousness, or conscientious desire of truth

predisposes towards the labour of written composition. He had too much

cleverness to be in want of fluent period or ready commonplace,--the

ordinary materials of oratorical impromptu; too little taste for the

Beautiful to study what graces of diction will best adorn a noble

sentiment; too obtuse a conscience to care if the popular argument

were purified from the dross which the careless flow of a speech wholly

extemporaneous rarely fails to leave around it. But this was no ordinary

occasion. Elaborate study here was requisite, not for the orator,

but the hypocrite. Hard task, to please the Blues, and not offend the

Yellows; appear to side with Audley Egerton, yet insinuate sympathy with

Dick Avenel; confront, with polite smile, the younger opponent whose

words had lodged arrows in his vanity, which rankled the more gallingly

because they had raised the skin of his conscience.

He had dipped his pen into the ink and smoothed the paper before him,

when a knock was heard at the door.

“Come in,” said he, impatiently. Levy entered saunteringly.

“I am come to talk over matters with you, mon cher,” said the baron,

throwing himself on the sofa. “And, first, I wish you joy of your

prospects of success.”

Randal postponed his meditated composition with a quick sigh, drew his

chair towards the sofa, and lowered his voice into a whisper. “You think

with me, that the chance of my success--is good?”

“Chance! Why, it is a rubber of whist, in which your partner gives you

all the winnings, and in which the adversary is almost sure to revoke.

Either Avenel or his nephew, it is true, must come in; but not both. Two

parvenus aspiring to make a family seat of an earl’s borough! Bah! too

absurd!”

“I hear from Riccabocca (or rather the Duke di Serrano) that this same

young Fairfield is greatly indebted to the kindness of Lord L’Estrange.

Very odd that he should stand against the Lansmere interest.”

“Ambition, mon cher. You yourself are under some obligations to Mr.

Egerton. Yet, in reality, he has more to apprehend from you than from

Mr. Fairfield.”

“I disown obligations to Mr. Egerton. And if the electors prefer me to

him (whom, by-the-by, they once burned in effigy), it is no fault

of mine: the fault, if any, will rest with his own dearest friend,

L’Estrange. I do not understand how a man of such clear sense as

L’Estrange undoubtedly possesses, should be risking Egerton’s election

in his zeal for mine. Nor do his formal courtesies to myself deceive me.

He has even implied that he suspects me of connivance with Peschiera’s

schemes on Violante. But those suspicions he cannot support. For of

course, Levy, you would not betray me--”

“I! What possible interest could I serve in that?”

“None that I can discover, certainly,” said Randal, relaxing into a

smile. “And when I get into parliament, aided by the social position

which my marriage will give me, I shall have so many ways to serve you.

No, it is certainly your interest not to betray me; and I shall count on

you as a witness, if a witness can be required.”

“Count on me, certainly, my dear fellow,” said the baron. “And I suppose

there will be no witness the other way. Done for eternally is my poor

dear friend Peschiera, whose cigars, by-the-by, were matchless;--I

wonder if there will be any for sale. And if he were not so done for, it

is not you, it is L’Estrange, that he would be tempted to do for!”

“We may blot Peschiera out of the map of the future,” rejoined Randal.

“Men from whom henceforth we have nothing to hope or to fear are to us

as the races before the deluge.”

“Fine remark,” quoth the baron, admiringly. “Peschiera, though not

without brains, was a complete failure. And when the failure of one I

have tried to serve is complete, the rule I have adopted through life is

to give him up altogether.”

“Of course,” said Randal.

“Of course,” echoed the baron. “On the other hand, you know that I like

pushing forward young men of mark and promise. You really are amazingly

clever; but how comes it you don’t speak better? Do you know, I doubt

whether you will do in the House of Commons all that I expected from

your address and readiness in private life.”

“Because I cannot talk trash vulgar enough for a mob? Pooh! I shall

succeed wherever knowledge is really power. Besides, you must allow for

my infernal position. You know, after all, that Avenel, if he can only

return himself or his nephew, still holds in his hands the choice of

the candidate upon our side. I cannot attack him; I cannot attack his

insolent nephew--”

“Insolent!--not that, but bitterly eloquent. He hits you hard. You are

no match for him, Randal, before a popular audience; though, en petit

comite, the devil himself were hardly a match for you. But now to a

somewhat more serious point. Your election you will win, your bride is

promised to you; but the old Leslie lands, in the present possession of

Squire Thornhill, you have not gained,--and your chance of gaining them

is in great jeopardy. I did not like to tell you this morning,--it would

have spoiled your temper for canvassing; but I have received a letter

from Thornhill himself. He has had an offer for the property, which is

only L1000 short of what he asks. A city alderman, called Jobson, is the

bidder; a man, it seems, of large means and few words. The alderman has

fixed the date on which he must have a definite answer; and that date

falls on the --th, two days after that fixed for the poll at Lansmere.

The brute declares he will close with another investment, if Thornhill

does not then come in to his terms. Now, as Thornhill will accept these

terms unless I can positively promise him better, and as those funds on

which you calculated (had the marriage of Peschiera with Violante, and

Frank Hazeldean with Madame di Negra, taken place) fail you, I see no

hope for your being in time with the money,--and the old lands of the

Leslies must yield their rents to a Jobson.”

“I care for nothing on earth like those old lands of my forefathers,”

said Randal, with unusual vehemence; “I reverence so little amongst the

living, and I do reverence the dead. And my marriage will take place so

soon; and the dower would so amply cover the paltry advance required.”

“Yes; but the mere prospect of a marriage to the daughter of a man whose

lands are still sequestered would be no security to a money-lender.”

“Surely,” said Randal, “you, who once offered to assist me when my

fortunes were more precarious, might now accommodate me with this loan,

as a friend, and keep the title-deeds of the estate as--”

“As a money-lender,” added the baron, laughing pleasantly. “No, mon

cher, I will still lend you half the sum required in advance, but

the other half is more than I can afford as friend, or hazard as

money-lender; and it would damage my character,--be out of all

rule,--if, the estates falling by your default of payment into my own

hands, I should appear to be the real purchaser of the property of my

own distressed client. But, now I think of it, did not Squire Hazeldean

promise you his assistance in this matter?”

“He did so,” answered Randal, “as soon as the marriage between Frank

and Madame di Negra was off his mind. I meant to cross over to Hazeldean

immediately after the election. How can I leave the place till then?”

“If you do, your election is lost. But why not write to the squire?”

“It is against my maxim to write where I can speak. However, there is

no option; I will write at once. Meanwhile, communicate with Thornhill;

keep up his hopes; and be sure, at least, that he does not close with

this greedy alderman before the day fixed for decision.”

“I have done all that already, and my letter is gone. Now, do your part:

and if you write as cleverly as you talk, you would coax the money

out from a stonier heart than poor Mr. Hazeldean’s. I leave you now;

good-night.”

Levy took up his candlestick, nodded, yawned, and went. Randal still

suspended the completion of his speech, and indited the following

epistle:--

MY DEAR MR. HAZELDEAN,--I wrote to you a few hasty lines on leaving

town, to inform you that the match you so dreaded was broken off,

and proposing to defer particulars till I could visit your kind and

hospitable roof, which I trusted to do for a few hours during my

stay at Lansmere, since it is not a day’s journey hence to

Hazeldean. But I did not calculate on finding so sharp a contest.

In no election throughout the kingdom do I believe that a more

notable triumph, or a more stunning defeat, for the great landed

interest can occur. For in this town--so dependent on agriculture--

we are opposed by a low and sordid manufacturer, of the most

revolutionary notions, who has, moreover, the audacity to force his

own nephew--that very boy whom I chastised for impertinence on your

village green, son of a common carpenter--actually the audacity, I

say, to attempt to force this peasant of a nephew, as well as

himself, into the representation of Lansmere, against the earl’s

interest, against your distinguished brother,--of myself I say

nothing. You should hear the language in which these two men

indulge against all your family! If we are beaten by such persons

in a borough supposed to be so loyal as Lansmere, every one with a

stake in the country may tremble at such a prognostic of the ruin

that must await not only our old English Constitution, but the

existence of property itself. I need not say that on such an

occasion I cannot spare myself. Mr. Egerton is ill too. All the

fatigue of the canvass devolves on me. I feel, my dear and revered

friend, that I am a genuine Hazeldean, fighting your battle; and

that thought carries me through all. I cannot, therefore, come to

you till the election is over; and meanwhile you, and my dear Mrs.

Hazeldean, must be anxious to know more about the affair that so

preyed on both your hearts than I have yet informed you, or can well

trust to a letter. Be assured, however, that the worst is over; the

lady has gone abroad. I earnestly entreated Frank (who showed me

Mrs. Hazeldean’s most pathetic letter to him) to hasten at once to

the Hall and relieve your minds. Unfortunately he would not be

ruled by me, but talked of going abroad too--not, I trust (nay, I

feel assured), in pursuit of Madame di Negra; but still--In short, I

should be so glad to see you, and talk over the whole. Could you

not come hither--I pray do. And now, at the risk of your thinking

that in this I am only consulting my own interest (but no--your

noble English heart will never so misiudge me!), I will add with

homely frankness, that if you could accommodate me immediately with

the loan you not long since so generously offered, you would save

those lands once in my family from passing away from us forever. A

city alderman--one Jobson--is meanly taking advantage of Thornhill’s

necessities, and driving a hard bargain for those lands. He has

fixed the --th inst. for Thornhill’s answer, and Levy (who is here

assisting Mr. Egerton’s election) informs me that Thornhill will

accept his offer, unless I am provided with L10,000 beforehand; the

other L10,000, to complete the advance required, Levy will lend me.

Do not be surprised at the usurer’s liberality; he knows that I am

about shortly to marry a very great heiress (you will be pleased

when you learn whom, and will then be able to account for my

indifference to Miss Sticktorights), and her dower will amply serve

to repay his loan and your own, if I may trust to your generous

affection for the grandson of a Hazeldean! I have the less scruple

in this appeal to you, for I know bow it would grieve you that a

Jobson, who perhaps never knew a grandmother, should foist your own

kinsman from the lands of his fathers. Of one thing I am

convinced,--we squires and sons of squires must make common cause

against those great moneyed capitalists, or they will buy us all out

in a few generations. The old race of country gentlemen is already

much diminished by the grasping cupidity of such leviathans; and if

the race be once extinct, what will become of the boast and strength

of England?

Yours, my dear Mr. Hazeldean, with most affectionate and grateful

respect,

RANDAL LESLIE.

CHAPTER XXII.

Nothing to Leonard could as yet be more distasteful or oppressive than

his share in this memorable election. In the first place, it chafed

the secret sores of his heart to be compelled to resume the name of

Fairfeld, which was a tacit disavowal of his birth. It had been such

delight to him that the same letters which formed the name of Nora

should weave also that name of Oran, to which he had given distinction,

which he had associated with all his nobler toils, and all his hopes of

enduring fame,--a mystic link between his own career and his mother’s

obscurer genius. It seemed to him as if it were rendering to her

the honours accorded to himself,--subtle and delicate fancy of the

affections, of which only poets would be capable, but which others

than poets may perhaps comprehend! That earlier name of Fairfield was

connected in his memory with all the ruder employments, the meaner

trials of his boyhood; the name of Oran, with poetry and fame. It was

his title in the ideal world, amongst all fair shapes and spirits. In

receiving the old appellation, the practical world, with its bitterness

and strife, returned to him as at the utterance of a spell. But in

coming to Lansmere he had no choice. To say nothing of Dick, and Dick’s

parents with whom his secret would not be safe, Randal Leslie knew that

he had gone by the name of Fairfield,--knew his supposed parentage, and

would be sure to proclaim them. How account for the latter name without

setting curiosity to decipher the anagram it involved, and perhaps

guiding suspicion to his birth from Nora, to the injury of her memory,

yet preserved from stain?

His feelings as connected with Nora--sharpened and deepened as they all

had been by his discovery of her painful narrative-were embittered still

more by coming in contact with her parents. Old John was in the same

helpless state of mind and body as before,--neither worse nor better;

but waking up at intervals with vivid gleams of interest in the election

at the wave of a blue banner, at the cry of “Blue forever!” It was the

old broken-clown charger, who, dozing in the meadows, starts at the roll

of the drum. No persuasions Dick could employ would induce his father to

promise to vote even one Yellow. You might as well have expected the

old Roman, with his monomaniac cry against Carthage, to have voted for

choosing Carthaginians for consuls. But poor John, nevertheless, was

not only very civil, but very humble to Dick,--“very happy to oblige the

gentleman.”

“Your own son!” bawled Dick; “and here is your own grandson.”

“Very happy to serve you both; but you see you are the wrong colour.”

Then as he gazed at Leonard, the old man approached him with trembling

knees, stroked his hair, looked into his face, piteously. “Be thee my

grandson?” he faltered. “Wife, wife, Nora had no son, had she? My memory

begins to fail me, sir; pray excuse it; but you have a look about the

eyes that--” Old John began to weep, and his wife led him away.

“Don’t come again,” she said to Leonard, harshly, when she returned.

“He’ll not sleep all night now.” And then, observing that the tears

stood in Leonard’s eyes, she added, in softened tones, “I am glad to see

you well and thriving, and to hear that you have been of great service

to my son Richard, who is a credit and an honour to the family, though

poor John cannot vote for him or for you against his conscience; and he

should not be asked,” she added, firing up; “and it is a sin to ask it,

and he so old, and no one to defend him but me. But defend him I will

while I have life!”

The poet recognized woman’s brave, loving, wife-like heart here, and

would have embraced the stern grandmother, if she had not drawn back

from him; and, as she turned towards the room to which she had led her

husband, she said over her shoulder,--

“I’m not so unkind as I seem, boy; but it is better for you, and for

all, that you should not come to this house again,--better that you had

not come into the town.”

“Fie, Mother!” said Dick, seeing that Leonard, bending his head,

silently walked from the room. “You should be prouder of your grandson

than you are of me.”

“Prouder of him who may shame us all yet?”

“What do you mean?”

But Mrs. Avenel shook her head and vanished.

“Never mind her, poor old soul,” said Dick, as he joined Leonard at the

threshold; “she always had her tempers. And since there is no vote to be

got in this house, and one can’t set a caucus on one’s own father,--at

least in this extraordinary rotten and prejudiced old country, which is

quite in its dotage,--we’ll not come here to be snubbed any more. Bless

their old hearts, nevertheless!”

Leonard’s acute sensibility in all that concerned his birth, deeply

wounded by Mrs. Avenel’s allusions, which he comprehended better than

his uncle did, was also kept on the edge by the suspense to which he

was condemned by Harley’s continued silence as to the papers confided

to that nobleman. It seemed to Leonard almost unaccountable that Harley

should have read those papers, be in the same town with himself, and

yet volunteer no communication. At length he wrote a few lines to Lord

L’Estrange, bringing the matter that concerned him so deeply before

Harley’s recollection, and suggesting his own earnest interest in any

information that could supply the gaps and omissions of the desultory

fragments. Harley, in replying to this note, said, with apparent reason,

“that it would require a long personal interview to discuss the subject

referred to, and that such an interview, in the thick of the contest

between himself and a candidate opposed to the Lansmere party, would

be sure to get wind, be ascribed to political intrigues, be impossible

otherwise to explain, and embarrass all the interests confided to their

respective charge. That for the rest, he had not been unmindful of

Leonard’s anxiety, which must now mainly be to see justice done to the

dead parent, and learn the name, station, and character of the parent

yet surviving. And in this Harley trusted to assist him as soon as the

close of the poll would present a suitable occasion.” The letter was

unlike Harley’s former cordial tone: it was hard and dry. Leonard

respected L’Estrange too much to own to himself that it was unfeeling.

With all his rich generosity of nature, he sought excuses for what he

declined to blame. Perhaps something in Helen’s manner or words had led

Harley to suspect that she still cherished too tender an interest in the

companion of her childhood; perhaps under this coldness of expression

there lurked the burning anguish of jealousy. And, oh, Leonard so well

understood, and could so nobly compassionate even in his prosperous

rival, that torture of the most agonizing of human passions, in which

all our reasonings follow the distorted writhings of our pain.

And Leonard himself, amidst his other causes of disquiet, was at once

so gnawed and so humbled by his own jealousy. Helen, he knew, was still

under the same roof as Harley. They, the betrothed, could see each other

daily, hourly. He would soon hear of their marriage. She would be borne

afar from the very sphere of his existence,--carried into a loftier

region, accessible only to his dreams. And yet to be jealous of one to

whom both Helen and himself were under such obligations debased him in

his own esteem,--jealousy here was so like ingratitude. But for Harley,

what could have become of Helen, left to his boyish charge,--he who had

himself been compelled, in despair, to think of sending her from his

side, to be reared into smileless youth in his mother’s humble cottage,

while he faced famine alone, gazing on the terrible river, from the

bridge by which he had once begged for very alms,--begged of that Audley

Egerton to whom he was now opposed as an equal; or flying from the

fiend that glared at him under the lids of the haunting Chatterton? No,

jealousy here was more than agony,--it was degradation, it was crime!

But, all! if Helen were happy in these splendid nuptials! Was he sure

even of that consolation? Bitter was the thought either way,--that she

should wholly forget him, in happiness from which he stood excluded as a

thing of sin; or sinfully herself remember, and be wretched!

With that healthful strength of will which is more often proportioned to

the susceptibility of feeling than the world suppose, the young man at

last wrenched himself for awhile from the iron that had entered into his

soul, and forced his thoughts to seek relief in the very objects from

which they otherwise would have the most loathingly recoiled. He aroused

his imagination to befriend his reason; he strove to divine some motive

not explained by Harley, not to be referred to the mere defeat, by

counter-scheme, of the scheming Randal, nor even to be solved by

any service to Audley Egerton, which Harley might evolve from the

complicated meshes of the election,--some motive that could more

interest his own heart in the contest, and connect itself with Harley’s

promised aid in clearing up the mystery of his parentage. Nora’s memoir

had clearly hinted that his father was of rank and station far beyond

her own. She had thrown the glow of her glorious fancies over the

ambition and the destined career of the lover in whom she had merged her

ambition as poetess, and her career as woman. Possibly the father might

be more disposed to own and to welcome the son, if the son could achieve

an opening, and give promise of worth, in that grand world of public

life in which alone reputation takes precedence of rank. Possibly, too,

if the son thus succeeded, and became one whom a proud father could with

pride acknowledge, possibly he might not only secure a father’s welcome,

but vindicate a mother’s name. This marriage, which Nora darkly hinted

she had been led to believe was fraudulent, might, after all, have

been legal,--the ceremony concealed, even till now, by worldly shame at

disparity of rank. But if the son could make good his own footing--there

where rank itself owned its chiefs in talent--that shame might vanish.

These suppositions were not improbable; nor were they uncongenial to

Leonard’s experience of Harley’s delicate benignity of purpose. Here,

too, the image of Helen allied itself with those of his parents, to

support his courage and influence his new ambition. True, that she was

lost to him forever. No worldly success, no political honours, could now

restore her to his side. But she might hear him named with respect in

those circles in which alone she would hereafter move, and in which

parliamentary reputation ranks higher than literary fame. And perhaps in

future years, when love, retaining its tenderness, was purified from its

passion, they might thus meet as friends. He might without a pang take

her children on his knees, and say, perhaps in their old age, when he

had climbed to a social equality even with her high-born lord, “It

was the hope to regain the privilege bestowed on our childhood, that

strengthened me to seek distinction when you and happiness forsook my

youth.” Thus regarded, the election, which had before seemed to him so

poor and vulgar an exhibition of vehement passions for petty objects,

with its trumpery of banners and its discord of trumpets, suddenly grew

into vivid interest, and assumed dignity and importance. It is ever thus

with all mortal strife. In proportion as it possesses, or is void of,

the diviner something that quickens the pulse of the heart, and elevates

the wing of the imagination, it presents a mockery to the philosopher,

or an inspiration to the bard. Feel that something, and no contest is

mean! Feel it not, and, like Byron, you may class with the slaughter of

Cannae that field which, at Waterloo, restored the landmarks of nations;

or may jeer with Juvenal at the dust of Hannibal, because he sought to

deliver Carthage from ruin, and free a world from Rome.

CHAPTER XXIII.

Once then, grappling manfully with the task he had undertaken, and

constraining himself to look on what Riccabocca would have called “the

southern side of things,” whatever there was really great in principle

or honourable to human nature, deep below the sordid details and pitiful

interests apparent on the face of the agitated current, came clear to

his vision. The ardour of those around him began to be contagious:

the generous devotion to some cause apart from self, which pervades an

election, and to which the poorest voter will often render sacrifices

that may be called sublime; the warm personal affection which community

of zeal creates for the defender of beloved opinions,--all concurred to

dispel that indifference to party politics, and counteract that disgust

of their baser leaven, which the young poet had first conceived. He

even began to look with complacency, for itself, on a career of toil and

honours strange to his habitual labours and intellectual ambition. He

threw the poetry of idea within him (as poets ever do) into the prose of

action to which he was hurried forward. He no longer opposed Dick Avenel

when that gentleman represented how detrimental it would be to his

business at Screwstown if he devoted to his country the time and the

acumen required by his mill and its steamengine; and how desirable it

would be, on all accounts, that Leonard Fairfield should become the

parliamentary representative of the Avenels. “If, therefore,” said

Dick, “two of us cannot come in, and one must retire, leave it to me

to arrange with the Committee that you shall be the one to persist. Oh,

never fear but what all scruples of honour shall be satisfied. I

would not for the sake of the Avenels have a word said against their

representative.”

“But,” answered Leonard, “if I grant this, I fear that you have some

intention of suffering the votes that your resignation would release to

favour Leslie at the expense of Egerton.”

“What the deuce is Egerton to you?”

“Nothing, except through my gratitude to his friend Lord L’Estrange.”

“Pooh! I will tell you a secret. Levy informs me privately that

L’Estrange will be well satisfied if the choice of Lansmere fall upon

Leslie instead of Egerton; and I think I convinced my Lord--for I saw

him in London--that Egerton would have no chance, though Leslie might.”

“I must think that Lord L’Estrange would resist to the utmost any

attempt to prefer Leslie--whom he despises--to Egerton, whom he honours.

And, so thinking, I too would resist it, as you may judge by the

speeches which have so provoked your displeasure.”

“Let us cut short a yarn of talk which, when it comes to likings and

dislikings, might last to almighty crack: I’ll ask you to do nothing

that Lord L’Estrange does not sanction. Will that satisfy you?”

“Certainly, provided I am assured of the sanction.”

And now, the important day preceding the poll, the day in which the

candidates were to be formally nominated, and meet each other in all the

ceremony of declared rivalship, dawned at last. The town-hall was the

place selected for the occasion; and before sunrise, all the streets

were resonant with music, and gay with banners.

Audley Egerton felt that he could not--without incurring some

just sarcasm on his dread to face the constituency he had formerly

represented, and by the malcontents of which he had been burned in

effigy--absent himself from the townhall, as he had done from balcony

and hostel. Painful as it was to confront Nora’s brother, and wrestle

in public against all the secret memories that knit the strife of the

present contest with the anguish that recalled the first,--still the

thing must be done; and it was the English habit of his life to face

with courage whatever he had to do.

CHAPTER XXIV.

The chiefs of the Blue party went in state from Lansmere Park; the

two candidates in open carriages, each attended with his proposer and

seconder. Other carriages were devoted to Harley and Levy, and the

principal members of the Committee. Riccabocca was seized with a fit of

melancholy or cynicism, and declined to join the procession. But just

before they started, as all were assembling without the front door, the

postman arrived with his welcome bag. There were letters for Harley,

some for Levy, many for Egerton, one for Randal Leslie.

Levy, soon hurrying over his own correspondence, looked, in the familiar

freedom wherewith he usually treated his particular friends, over

Randal’s shoulder.

“From the squire?” said he. “Ah, he has written at last! What made him

delay so long? Hope he relieves your mind?”

“Yes,” cried Randal, giving way to a joy that rarely lighted up

his close and secret countenance,--“yes, he does not write from

Hazeldean,--not there when my letter arrived, in London, could not rest

at the Hall,--the place reminded him too much of Frank;--went again to

town, on the receipt of my first letter concerning the rupture of the

marriage, to see after his son, and take up some money to pay off his

post-obit. Read what he says:--

“‘So, while I was about a mortgage--never did I guess that I should

be the man to encumber the Hazeldean estate--I thought I might as

well add L20,000 as L10,000 to the total. Why should you be

indebted at all to that Baron Levy? Don’t have dealings with money-

lenders. Your grandmother was a Hazeldean; and from a Hazeldean you

shall have the whole sum required in advance for those Rood lands,--

good light soil some of them. As to repayment, we’ll talk of that

later. If Frank and I come together again, as we did of old, why,

my estates will be his some day, and he’ll not grudge the mortgage,

so fond as he always was of you; and if we don’t come together, what

do I care for hundreds or thousands, either more or less? So I

shall be down at Lansmere the day after to-morrow, just in the thick

of your polling. Beat the manufacturer, my boy, and stick up for

the land. Tell Levy to have all ready. I shall bring the money

down in good bank-notes, and a brace of pistols in my coat pocket to

take care of them in ease robbers get scent of the notes and attack

me on the road, as they did my grandfather sixty years ago, come

next Michaelmas. A Lansmere election puts one in mind of pistols.

I once fought a duel with an officer in his Majesty’s service, R.N.,

and had a ball lodged in my right shoulder, on account of an

election at Lansmere; but I have forgiven Audley his share in that

transaction. Remember me to him kindly. Don’t get into a duel

yourself; but I suppose manufacturers don’t fight,--not that I blame

them for that--far from it.’”

The letter then ran on to express surprise, and hazard conjecture, as to

the wealthy marriage which Randal had announced as a pleasing surprise

to the squire.

“Well,” said Levy, returning the letter, “you must have written as

cleverly as you talk, or the squire is a booby indeed.”

Randal smiled, pocketed his letter, and responding to the impatient call

of his proposer, sprang lightly into the carriage.

Harley, too, seemed pleased with the letters delivered to himself, and

now joined Levy, as the candidates drove slowly off.

“Has not Mr. Leslie received from the squire an answer to that letter of

which you informed me?”

“Yes, my Lord, the squire will be here to-morrow.”

“To-morrow? Thank you for apprising me; his rooms shall be prepared.”

“I suppose he will only stay to see Leslie and myself, and pay the

money.”

“Aha! Pay the money. Is it so, then?”

“Twice the sum, and, it seems, as a gift, which Leslie only asked as a

loan. Really, my Lord, Mr. Leslie is a very clever man; and though I am

at your commands, I should not like to injure him. With such matrimonial

prospects, he could be a very powerful enemy; and if he succeed in

parliament, still more so.”

“Baron, these gentlemen are waiting for you. I will follow by myself.”

CHAPTER XXV.

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 he 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, he 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!”

CHAPTER XXVI.

If the vigour of Harley’s address had taken by surprise both friend

and foe, not one in that assembly--not even the conscience-stricken

Egerton--felt its effect so deeply as the assailed and startled Leonard.

He was at first perfectly stunned by sarcasms which he so ill deserved;

nor was it till after the assembly had broken up, that Leonard could

even conjecture the cause which had provoked the taunt and barbed

its dart. Evidently Harley had learned (but learned only in order to

misconceive and to wrong) Leonard’s confession of love to Helen Digby.

And now those implied accusations of disregard to the duties of common

life not only galled the young man’s heart, but outraged his honour. He

felt the generous indignation of manhood. He must see Lord L’Estrange

at once, and vindicate himself,--vindicate Helen; for thus to accuse one

was tacitly to asperse the other.

Extricating himself from his own enthusiastic partisans, Leonard went

straight on foot towards Lansmere House. The Park palings touched

close upon the town, with a shall turnstile for foot passengers. And as

Leonard, availing himself of this entrance, had advanced some hundred

yards or so through the park, suddenly, in the midst of that very copse

in which Avenel had appointed to meet Leslie, he found himself face to

face with Helen Digby herself.

Helen started, with a faint cry. But Leonard, absorbed in his own desire

to justify both, hailed the sight, and did not pause to account for his

appearance, nor to soothe her agitation.

“Miss Digby!” he exclaimed, throwing into his voice and manner that

respect which often so cruelly divides the past familiarity from the

present alienation, “Miss Digby, I rejoice to see you,--rejoice to ask

your permission to relieve myself from a charge that in truth wounds

even you, while levelled but at me. Lord L’Estrange has just implied, in

public, that I--I--who owe him so much, who have honoured him so

truly, that even the just resentment I now feel half seems to me the

ingratitude with which he charges me, has implied that--ah! Miss Digby,

I can scarcely command words to say what it so humiliates me to have

heard. But you know how false is all accusation that either of us could

deceive our common benefactor. Suffer me to repeat to your guardian what

I presumed to say to you when we last met, what you answered, and state

how I left your presence.”

“Oh, Leonard! yes; clear yourself in his eyes. Go! Unjust that he is,

ungenerous Lord L’Estrange!”

“Helen Digby!” cried a voice, close at hand. “Of whom do you speak

thus?”

At the sound of that voice Helen and Leonard both turned, and beheld

Violante standing before them, her young beauty rendered almost sublime

by the noble anger that lit her eyes, glowed in her cheeks, animated her

stately form.

“Is it you who thus speak of Lord L’Estrange? You, Helen Digby,--you!”

From behind Violante now emerged Mr. Dale. “Softly, children,” he said;

and placing one hand on Violante’s shoulder, he extended the other to

Leonard. “What is this? Come hither to me, Leonard, and explain.”

Leonard walked aside with the parson, and in a few sentences gave vent

to his swelling heart.

The parson shared in Leonard’s resentment; and having soon drawn

from him all that had passed in his memorable interview with Helen,

exclaimed,--

“Enough! Do not yet seek Lord L’Estrange yourself; I am going to see

him,--I am here at his request. His summons, indeed, was for to-morrow;

but the squire having written me a hurried line, requesting me to meet

him at Lansmere tomorrow and proceed with him afterwards in search of

poor Frank, I thought I might have little time for communications with

Lord L’Estrange, unless I forestalled his invitation and came to-day.

Well that I did so! I only arrived an hour since, found he was gone

to the town-hall, and joined the young ladies in the Park. Miss Digby,

thinking it natural that I might wish to say something in private to

my old young friend Violante, walked a few paces in advance. Thus,

fortunately, I chanced to be here, to receive your account, and I trust

to remove misunderstanding. Lord L’Estrange must now be returned. I will

go back to the house. You, meanwhile, return to the town, I beseech you.

I will come to you afterwards at your inn. Your very appearance in these

grounds, even the brief words that have passed between Helen and you,

might only widen the breach between yourself and your benefactor. I

cannot bear to anticipate this. Go back, I entreat you. I will explain

all, and Lord L’Estrange shall right you! That is,--that must be his

intention!”

“IS--must be his intention--when he has just so wronged me!”

“Yes, yes,” faltered the poor parson, mindful of his promise to

L’Estrange not to reveal his own interview with that nobleman, and yet

not knowing otherwise how to explain or to soothe; but still believing

Leonard to be Harley’s son, and remembering all that Harley had so

pointedly said of atonement, in apparent remorse for crime, Mr. Dale

was wholly at a loss himself to understand why Harley should have thus

prefaced atonement by an insult. Anxious, however, to prevent a meeting

between Harley and Leonard while both were under the influence of such

feelings towards each other, he made an effort over himself, and so

well argued in favour of his own diplomacy, that Leonard reluctantly

consented to wait for Mr. Dale’s report.

“As to reparation or excuse,” said he, proudly, “it must rest with Lord

L’Estrange. I ask it not. Tell him only this,--that if the instant

I heard that she whom I loved and held sacred for so many years was

affianced to him, I resigned even the very wish to call her mine--if

that were desertion of man’s duties, I am guilty. If to have prayed

night and day that she who would have blessed my lonely and toilsome

life may give some charm to his, not bestowed by his wealth and his

greatness--if that were ingratitude, I am ungrateful; let him still

condemn me. I pass out of his sphere,--a thing that has crossed it a

moment, and is gone. But Helen he must not blame, suspect; even by a

thought. One word more. In this election, this strife for objects

wholly foreign to all my habits, unsuited to my poverty, at war with

aspirations so long devoted to fairer goals, though by obscurer paths,

I obeyed but his will or whim,--at a moment too when my whole soul

sickened for repose and solitude. I had forced myself at last to take

interest in what I had before loathed. But in every hope for the future,

every stimulant to ambition, Lord L’Estrange’s esteem still stood before

me. Now, what do I here longer? All of his conduct, save his contempt

for myself, is an enigma. And sinless he repeat a wish, which I would

fain still regard as a law, I retire from the contest he has embittered;

I renounce the ambition he has poisoned; and, mindful of those humble

duties which he implies that I disdain, I return to my own home.”

The parson nodded assent to each of these sentences; and Leonard,

passing by Violante and Helen, with a salutation equally distant to

both, retraced his steps towards the town.

Meanwhile Violante and Helen had also been in close conference, and that

conference had suddenly endeared each to the other; for Helen, taken

by surprise, agitated, overpowered, had revealed to Violante that

confession of another attachment, which she had made to Lord L’Estrange,

the rupture of her engagement with the latter. Violante saw that Harley

was free. Harley, too, had promised to free herself. By a sudden

flash of conviction, recalling his words, looks, she felt that she was

beloved,--deemed that honour alone (while either was yet shackled) had

forbidden him to own that love. Violante stood a being transformed,

“blushing celestial rosy red,” heaven at her heart, joy in her

eyes,--she loved so well, and she trusted so implicitly! Then from

out the overflow of her own hope and bliss she poured forth such sweet

comfort to Helen, that Helen’s arm stole around her; cheek touched

cheek,--they were as sisters.

At another moment, Mr. Dale might have felt some amazement at the sudden

affection which had sprung up between these young persons; for in

his previous conversation with Violante, he had, as he thought, very

artfully, and in a pleasant vein, sounded the young Italian as to her

opinion of her fair friend’s various good qualities, and Violante

had rather shrunk from the title of “friend;” and though she had the

magnanimity to speak with great praise of Helen, the praise did not

sound cordial. But the good man was at this moment occupied in preparing

his thoughts for his interview with Harley; he joined the two girls

in silence, and, linking an arm of each within his own, walked slowly

towards the house. As he approached the terrace he observed Riccabocca

and Randal pacing the gravel walk side by side.

Violante, pressing his arm, whispered, “Let us go round the other way; I

would speak with you a few minutes undisturbed.”

Mr. Dale, supposing that Violante wished to dispense with the presence

of Helen, said to the latter, “My dear young lady, perhaps you will

excuse me to Dr. Riccabocca,--who is beckoning to me, and no doubt very

much surprised to see me here,--while I finish what I was saying to

Violante when we were interrupted.”

Helen left them, and Violante led the parson round through the

shrubbery, towards the side door in another wing of the house.

“What have you to say to me?” asked Mr. Dale, surprised that she

remained silent.

“You will see Lord L’Estrange. Be sure that you convince him of

Leonard’s honour. A doubt of treachery so grieves his noble heart that

perhaps it may disturb his judgment.”

“You seem to think very highly of the heart of this Lord L’Estrange,

child!” said the parson, in some surprise. Violante blushed, but went on

firmly, and with serious earnestness: “Some words which he-that is,

Lord L’Estrange--said to me very lately, make me so glad that you are

here,--that you will see him; for I know how good you are, and how wise,

dear, dear Mr. Dale! He spoke as one who had received some grievous

wrong, which had abruptly soured all his views of life. He spoke of

retirement, solitude,--he on whom his country has so many claims. I know

not what he can mean, unless it be that his--his marriage with Helen

Digby is broken off.”

“Broken off! Is that so?”

“I have it from herself. You may well be astonished that she could even

think of another after having known him!” The parson fixed his eyes very

gravely on the young enthusiast. But though her cheek glowed, there was

in her expression of face so much artless, open innocence, that Mr. Dale

contented himself with a slight shake of the head, and a dry remark,--

“I think it quite natural that Helen Digby should prefer Leonard

Fairfield. A good girl, not misled by vanity and ambition,--temptations

of which it behoves us all to beware; nor least, perhaps, young ladies

suddenly brought in contact with wealth and rank. As to this nobleman’s

merits, I know not yet whether to allow or to deny them; I reserve my

judgment till after our interview. This is all you have to say to me?”

Violante paused a moment. “I cannot think,” she said, half smiling,--“I

cannot think that the change that has occurred in him,--for changed he

is,--that his obscure hints as to injury received, and justice to be

done, are caused merely by his disappointment with regard to Helen. But

you can learn that; learn if he be so very much disappointed. Nay, I

think not!”

She slipped her slight hand from the parson’s arm, and darted away

through the evergreens. Half concealed amidst the laurels, she turned

back, and Mr. Dale caught her eye, half arch, half melancholy; its light

came soft through a tear.

“I don’t half like this,” muttered the parson; “I shall give Dr.

Riccabocca a caution.” So muttering, he pushed open the side door, and

finding a servant, begged admittance to Lord L’Estrange.

Harley at that moment was closeted with Levy, and his countenance was

composed and fearfully stern. “So, so, by this time to-morrow,” said he,

“Mr. Egerton will be tricked out of his election by Mr. Randal Leslie!

good! By this time to-morrow his ambition will be blasted by the

treachery of his friends! good! By this time to-morrow the bailiffs will

seize his person,--ruined, beggared, pauper, and captive,--all because

he has trusted and been deceived! good! And if he blame you, prudent

Baron Levy, if he accuse smooth Mr. Randal Leslie, forget not to say,

‘We were both but the blind agents of your friend Harley L’Estrange. Ask

him why you are so miserable a dupe.’”

“And might I now ask your Lordship for one word of explanation?”

“No, sir!--it is enough that I have spared you. But you were never

my friend; I have no revenge against a man whose hand I never even

touched.”

The baron scowled, but there was a power about his tyrant that cowed him

into actual terror. He resumed, after a pause, “And though Mr. Leslie

is to be member for Lansmere,--thanks to you,--you still desire that I

should--”

“Do exactly as I have said. My plans now never vary a hair’s breadth.”

The groom of the chambers entered.

“My Lord, the Reverend Mr. Dale wishes to know if you can receive him.”

“Mr. Dale! he should have come to-morrow. Say that I did not expect

him to-day; that I am unfortunately engaged till dinner, which will be

earlier than usual. Show him into his room; he will have but little

time to change his dress. By the way, Mr. Egerton dines in his own

apartment.”

CHAPTER XXVII.

The leading members of the Blue Committee were invited to dine at the

Park, and the hour for the entertainment was indeed early, as there

might be much need yet of active exertion on the eve of a poll in a

contest expected to be so close, and in which the inflexible Hundred

and Fifty “Waiters upon Providence” still reserved their very valuable

votes.

The party was gay and animated, despite the absence of Audley Egerton,

who, on the plea of increased indisposition, had shut himself up in his

rooms the instant that he had returned from the town-hall, and sent word

to Harley that he was too unwell to join the party at dinner.

Randal was really in high spirits, despite the very equivocal success

of his speech. What did it signify if a speech failed, provided the

election was secure? He was longing for the appointment with Dick Avenel

which was to make “all right!” The squire was to bring the money for the

purchase of the coveted lands the next morning. Riccabocca had assured

him, again and again, of Violante’s hand. If ever Randal Leslie could be

called a happy man, it was as he sat at that dinner taking wine with Mr.

Mayor and Mr. Alderman, and looking, across the gleaming silver plateau,

down the long vista into wealth and power.

The dinner was scarcely over, when Lord L’Estrauge, in a brief speech,

reminded his guests of the work still before them; and after a toast to

the health of the future members for Lansmere, dismissed the Committee

to their labours.

Levy made a sign to Randal, who followed the baron to his own room.

“Leslie, your election is in some jeopardy. I find, from the

conversation of those near me at dinner, that Egerton has made such way

amongst the Blues by his speech, and they are so afraid of losing a man

who does them so much credit, that the Committee men not only talk of

withholding from you their second votes and of plumping Egerton, but of

subscribing privately amongst themselves to win over that coy body of a

Hundred and Fifty, upon whom I know that Avenel counts in whatever votes

he may be able to transfer to you.”

“It would be very unhandsome in the Committee, which pretends to act for

both of us, to plump Egerton,” said Randal, with consistent anger; “but

I don’t think they can get those Hundred and Fifty without the most open

and exortant bribery,--an expense which Egerton will not pay, and which

it would be very discreditable to Lord L’Estrange or his father to

countenance.”

“I told them flatly,” returned Levy, “that, as Mr. Egerton’s agent, I

would allow no proceedings that might vitiate the election, but that I

would undertake the management of these men myself; and I am going into

the town in order to do so. I have also persuaded the leading Committee

men to reconsider their determination to plump Egerton; they have

decided to do as L’Estrange directs, and I know what he will say.

You may rely on me,” continued the baron, who spoke with a dogged

seriousness, unusual to his cynical temper, “to obtain for you the

preference over Audley, if it be in my power to do so. Meanwhile, you

should really see Avenel this very night.”

“I have an appointment with him at ten o’clock; and judging by his

speech against Egerton, I cannot doubt on his aid to me, if convinced

by his poll-books that he is not able to return both himself and his

impertinent nephew. My speech, however sarcastically treated by Mr.

Fairfield, must at least have disposed the Yellow party to vote rather

for me than for a determined opponent like Egerton.”

“I hope so; for your speech and Fairfield’s answer have damaged you

terribly with the Blues. However, your main hope rests on my power

to keep those Hundred and Fifty rascals from splitting their votes

on Egerton, and to induce them, by all means short of bringing myself

before a Committee of the House of Commons for positive bribery,--which

would hurt most seriously my present social position,--to give one vote

to you. I shall tell them, as I have told the Committee, that Egerton is

safe, and will pay nothing; but that you want the votes, and that

I--in short, if they can be bought upon tick, I will buy them. Avenel,

however, can serve you best here; for as they are all Yellows at heart,

they make no scruple of hinting that they want twice as much for voting

Blue as they will take for voting Yellow. And Avenel being a townsman,

and knowing their ways, could contrive to gain them, and yet not bribe.”