It was a dark December night when Mr. Ferrars returned to Hurstley. His
wife, accompanied by the gardener with a lantern, met him on the green.
She embraced him, and whispered, “Is it very bad, love? I fear you have
softened it to me?”
“By no means bad, and I told you the truth: not all, for had I, my
letter would have been too late. He said nothing about the cabinet, but
offered me a high post in his government, provided I could secure my
seat. That was impossible. During the month I was in town I had realised
that. I thought it best, therefore, at once to try the other tack, and
nothing could be more satisfactory.”
“Did you say anything about India?” she said in a very low voice.
“I did not. He is an honourable man, but he is cold, and my manner is
not distinguished for _abandon_. I thought it best to speak generally,
and leave it to him. He acknowledged my claim, and my fitness for such
posts, and said if his government lasted it would gratify him to meet my
wishes. Barron says the government will last. They will have a majority,
and if Stanley and Graham had joined them, they would have had not an
inconsiderable one. But in that case I should probably not have had the
cabinet, if indeed he meant to offer it to me now.”
“Of course he did,” said his wife. “Who has such claims as you have?
Well, now we must hope and watch. Look cheerful to the children, for
they have been very anxious.”
With this hint the meeting was not unhappy, and the evening passed with
amusement and interest. Endymion embraced his father with warmth, and
Myra kissed him on both cheeks. Mr. Ferrars had a great deal of gossip
which interested his wife, and to a certain degree his children. The
latter of course remembered Zenobia, and her sayings and doings were
always amusing. There were anecdotes, too, of illustrious persons which
always interest, especially when in the personal experience of those
with whom we are intimately connected. What the Duke, or Sir Robert, or
Lord Lyndhurst said to papa seemed doubly wiser or brighter than if
it had been said to a third person. Their relations with the world
of power, and fashion, and fame, seemed not to be extinct, at least
reviving from their torpid condition. Mr. Ferrars had also brought a
German book for Myra; and “as for you, Endymion,” he said, “I have been
much more successful for you than for your father, though I hope I shall
not have myself in the long run to complain. Our friends are faithful to
us, and I have got you put down on the private list for a clerkship both
in the Foreign Office and the Treasury. They are the two best things,
and you will have one of the first vacancies that will occur in either
department. I know your mother wishes you to be in the Foreign
Office. Let it be so if it come. I confess, myself, remembering your
grandfather’s career, I have always a weakness for the Treasury, but so
long as I see you well planted in Whitehall, I shall be content. Let
me see, you will be sixteen in March. I could have wished you to wait
another year, but we must be ready when the opening occurs.”
The general election in 1834-5, though it restored the balance of
parties, did not secure to Sir Robert Peel a majority, and the anxiety
of the family at Hurstley was proportionate to the occasion. Barron was
always sanguine, but the vote on the Speakership could not but alarm
them. Barron said it did not signify, and that Sir Robert had resolved
to go on and had confidence in his measures. His measures were
excellent, and Sir Robert never displayed more resource, more energy,
and more skill, than he did in the spring of 1835. But knowledge of
human nature was not Sir Robert Peel’s strong point, and it argued some
deficiency in that respect, to suppose that the fitness of his measures
could disarm a vindictive opposition. On the contrary, they rather
whetted their desire of revenge, and they were doubly loth that he
should increase his reputation by availing himself of an opportunity
which they deemed the Tory party had unfairly acquired.
After the vote on the Speakership, Mr. Ferrars was offered a
second-class West Indian government. His wife would not listen to it. If
it were Jamaica, the offer might be considered, though it could scarcely
be accepted without great sacrifice. The children, for instance, must be
left at home. Strange to say, Mr. Ferrars was not disinclined to accept
the inferior post. Endymion he looked upon as virtually provided for,
and Myra, he thought, might accompany them; if only for a year. But he
ultimately yielded, though not without a struggle, to the strong feeling
of his wife.
“I do not see why I also should not be left behind,” said Myra to her
brother in one of their confidential walks. “I should like to live in
London in lodgings with you.”
The approaching appointment of her brother filled her from the first
with the greatest interest. She was always talking of it when they were
alone--fancying his future life, and planning how it might be happier
and more easy. “My only joy in life is seeing you,” she sometimes said,
“and yet this separation does not make me unhappy. It seems a chance
from heaven for you. I pray every night it may be the Foreign Office.”
The ministry were still sanguine as to their prospects in the month
of March, and they deemed that public opinion was rallying round Sir
Robert. Perhaps Lord John Russell, who was the leader of the opposition,
felt this, in some degree, himself, and he determined to bring affairs
to a crisis by notice of a motion respecting the appropriation of the
revenues of the Irish Church. Then Barron wrote to Mr. Ferrars that
affairs did not look so well, and advised him to come up to town, and
take anything that offered. “It is something,” he remarked, “to have
something to give up. We shall not, I suppose, always be out of office,
and they get preferred more easily whose promotion contributes to
patronage, even while they claim its exercise.”
The ministry were in a minority on the Irish Church on April 2, the
day on which Mr. Ferrars arrived in town. They did not resign, but
the attack was to be repeated in another form on the 6th. During the
terrible interval Mr. Ferrars made distracted visits to Downing Street,
saw secretaries of state, who sympathised with him not withstanding
their own chagrin, and was closeted daily and hourly with
under-secretaries, parliamentary and permanent, who really alike wished
to serve him. But there was nothing to be had. He was almost meditating
taking Sierra Leone, or the Gold Coast, when the resignation of Sir
Robert Peel was announced. At the last moment, there being, of course,
no vacancy in the Foreign Office, or the Treasury, he obtained from
Barron an appointment for Endymion, and so, after having left Hurstley
five months before to become Governor-General of India, this man, “who
had claims,” returned to his mortified home with a clerkship for his son
in a second-rate government office.