After securing his room in Warwick Street, Mr. Ferrars called on his
political chiefs. Though engrossed with affairs, the moment his card was
exhibited he was seen, cordially welcomed, and addressed in confidence.
Not only were his claims acknowledged without being preferred, but an
evidently earnest hope was expressed that they might be fully satisfied.
No one had suffered more for the party and no one had worked harder
or more effectively for it. But at present nothing could be done and
nothing more could be said. All depended on Peel. Until he arrived
nothing could be arranged. Their duties were limited to provisionally
administering the affairs of the country until his appearance.
It was many days, even weeks, before that event could happen. The
messenger would travel to Rome night and day, but it was calculated that
nearly three weeks must elapse before his return. Mr. Ferrars then went
to the Carlton Club, which he had assisted in forming three or four
years before, and had established in a house of modern dimensions in
Charles Street, St. James. It was called then the Charles Street gang,
and none but the thoroughgoing cared to belong to it. Now he found it
flourishing in a magnificent mansion on Carlton Terrace, while in very
sight of its windows, on a plot of ground in Pall Mall, a palace was
rising to receive it. It counted already fifteen hundred members, who
had been selected by an omniscient and scrutinising committee, solely
with reference to their local influence throughout the country, and the
books were overflowing with impatient candidates of rank, and wealth,
and power.
Three years ago Ferrars had been one of the leading spirits of this
great confederacy, and now he entered the superb chamber, and it seemed
to him that he did not recognise a human being. Yet it was full to
overflowing, and excitement and anxiety and bustle were impressed on
every countenance. If he had heard some of the whispers and remarks,
as he entered and moved about, his self-complacency would scarcely have
been gratified.
“Who is that?” inquired a young M.P. of a brother senator not much more
experienced.
“Have not the remotest idea; never saw him before. Barron is speaking to
him; he will tell us. I say, Barron, who is your friend?”
“That is Ferrars!”
“Ferrars! who is he?”
“One of our best men. If all our fellows had fought like him against the
Reform Bill, that infernal measure would never have been carried.”
“Oh! ah! I remember something now,” said the young M.P., “but anything
that happened before the election of ‘32 I look upon as an old
almanack.”
However, notwithstanding the first and painful impression of strangers
and strangeness, when a little time had elapsed Ferrars found many
friends, and among the most distinguished present. Nothing could be more
hearty than their greeting, and he had not been in the room half an hour
before he had accepted an invitation to dine that very day with Lord
Pomeroy.
It was a large and rather miscellaneous party, but all of the right
kidney. Some men who had been cabinet ministers, and some who expected
to be; several occupiers in old days of the secondary offices; both the
whips, one noisy and the other mysterious; several lawyers of repute
who must be brought into parliament, and some young men who had
distinguished themselves in the reformed house and whom Ferrars had
never seen before. “It is like old days,” said the husband of Zenobia to
Ferrars, who sate next to him; “I hope it will float, but we shall know
nothing till Peel comes.”
“He will have difficulty with his cabinet so far as the House of Commons
is concerned,” said an old privy councillor “They must have seats, and
his choice is very limited.”
“He will dissolve,” said the husband of Zenobia. “He must.”
“Wheugh!” said the privy councillor, and he shrugged his shoulders.
“The old story will not do,” said the husband of Zenobia. “We must have
new blood. Peel must reconstruct on a broad basis.”
“Well, they say there is no lack of converts,” said the old privy
councillor.
All this, and much more that he heard, made Ferrars ponder, and
anxiously. No cabinet without parliament. It was but reasonable. A
dissolution was therefore in his interest. And yet, what a prospect!
A considerable expenditure, and yet with a considerable expenditure a
doubtful result. Then reconstruction on a broad basis--what did that
mean? Neither more nor less than rival candidates for office. There was
no lack of converts. He dare say not. A great deal had developed since
his exile at Hurstley--things which are not learned by newspapers, or
even private correspondence. He spoke to Barron after dinner. He had
reason to believe Barron was his friend. Barron could give no opinion
about dissolution; all depended on Peel. But they were acting, and had
been acting for some time, as if dissolution were on the cards. Ferrars
had better call upon him to-morrow, and go over the list, and see what
would be done for him. He had every claim.
The man with every claim called on Barron on the morrow, and saw his
secret list, and listened to all his secret prospects and secret plans.
There was more than one manufacturing town where there was an opening;
decided reaction, and a genuine Conservative feeling. Barron had no
doubt that, although a man might not get in the first time he stood, he
would ultimately. Ultimately was not a word which suited Mr. Ferrars.
There were several old boroughs where the freemen still outnumbered the
ten-pounders, and where the prospects were more encouraging; but the
expense was equal to the goodness of the chance, and although Ferrars
had every claim, and would no doubt be assisted, still one could not
shut one’s eyes to the fact that the personal expenditure must be
considerable. The agricultural boroughs must be fought, at least this
time, by local men. Something might be done with an Irish borough;
expense, comparatively speaking inconsiderable, but the politics deeply
Orange.
Gloom settled on the countenance of this spoiled child of politics, who
had always sate for a close borough, and who recoiled from a contest
like a woman, when he pictured to himself the struggle and exertion and
personal suffering he would have to encounter and endure, and then with
no certainty of success. The trained statesman, who had anticipated
the mass of his party on Catholic emancipation, to become an Orange
candidate! It was worse than making speeches to ten-pounders and
canvassing freemen!
“I knew things were difficult,” said Ferrars; “but I was in hopes that
there were yet some seats that we might command.”
“No doubt there are,” said Mr. Barron; “but they are few, and they are
occupied--at least at present. But, after all, a thousand things may
turn up, and you may consider nothing definitely arranged until Sir
Robert arrives. The great thing is to be on the spot.”
Ferrars wrote to his wife daily, and kept her minutely acquainted with
the course of affairs. She agreed with Barron that the great thing was
to be on the spot. She felt sure that something would turn up. She was
convinced that Sir Robert would send for him, offer him the cabinet, and
at the same time provide him with a seat. Her own inclination was still
in favour of a great colonial or foreign appointment. She still hankered
after India; but if the cabinet were offered, as was certain, she did
not consider that William, as a man of honour, could refuse to accept
the trust and share the peril.
So Ferrars remained in London under the roof of the Rodneys. The
feverish days passed in the excitement of political life in all its
manifold forms, grave council and light gossip, dinners with only one
subject of conversation, and that never palling, and at last, even
evenings spent again under the roof of Zenobia, who, the instant her
winter apartments were ready to receive the world, had hurried up to
London and raised her standard in St. James’ Square. “It was like old
days,” as her husband had said to Ferrars when they met after a long
separation.
Was it like old days? he thought to himself when he was alone. Old days,
when the present had no care, and the future was all hope; when he was
proud, and justly proud, of the public position he had achieved, and of
all the splendid and felicitous circumstances of life that had clustered
round him. He thought of those away, and with whom during the last three
years he had so continuously and intimately lived. And his hired home
that once had been associated only in his mind with exile, imprisonment,
misfortune, almost disgrace, became hallowed by affection, and in the
agony of the suspense which now involved him, and to encounter which he
began to think his diminished nerve unequal, he would have bargained for
the rest of his life to pass undisturbed in that sweet solitude, in the
delights of study and the tranquillity of domestic love.
A little not unamiable weakness this, but it passed off in the morning
like a dream, when Mr. Ferrars heard that Sir Robert had arrived.