Lady Roehampton, in her stately mansion in St. James’ Square, found life
very different from what she had experienced in her Andalusian dream.
For three months she had been the constant companion of one of the most
fascinating of men, whose only object had been to charm and delight her.
And in this he had entirely succeeded. From the moment they arrived in
London, however, they seemed to be separated, and although when they
met, there was ever a sweet smile and a kind and playful word for her,
his brow, if not oppressed with care, was always weighty with thought.
Lord Roehampton was little at his office; he worked in a spacious
chamber on the ground floor of his private residence, and which was
called the Library, though its literature consisted only of Hansard,
volumes of state papers, shelves of treatises, and interminable folios
of parliamentary reports. He had not been at home a week before the
floor of the apartment was literally covered with red boxes, all
containing documents requiring attention, and which messengers were
perpetually bringing or carrying away. Then there were long meetings of
the Cabinet almost daily, and daily visits from ambassadors and foreign
ministers, which prevented the transaction of the current business, and
rendered it necessary that Lord Roehampton should sit up late in his
cabinet, and work sometimes nearly till the hours of dawn. There had
been of course too some arrears of business, for secretaries of state
cannot indulge with impunity in Andalusian dreams, but Lord Roehampton
was well served. His under-secretaries of state were capable and
experienced men, and their chief had not been altogether idle in his
wanderings. He had visited Paris, and the capital of France in those
days was the capital of diplomacy. The visit of Lord Roehampton had
settled some questions which might have lingered for years, and had
given him that opportunity of personal survey which to a statesman is
invaluable.
Although it was not the season, the great desert had, comparatively
speaking, again become peopled. There were many persons in town, and
they all called immediately on Lady Roehampton. The ministerial families
and the diplomatic corps alone form a circle, but there is also a
certain number of charming people who love London in November, and lead
there a wondrous pleasant life of real amusement, until their feudal
traditions and their domestic duties summon them back to their Christmas
homes.
Lord and Lady Roehampton gave constant dinners, and after they had tried
two or three, he expressed his wish to his wife that she should hold a
small reception after these dinners. He was a man of great tact, and he
wished to launch his wife quietly and safely on the social ocean. “There
is nothing like practising before Christmas, my love,” he would say;
“you will get your hand in, and be able to hold regular receptions in
the spring.” And he was quite right. The dinners became the mode, and
the assemblies were eagerly appreciated. The Secretary of the Treasury
whispered to an Under-Secretary of State,--“This marriage was a _coup_.
We have got another house.”
Myra had been a little anxious about the relations between Lord
Roehampton and her brother. She felt, with a woman’s instinct, that her
husband might not be overpleased by her devotion to Endymion, and she
could not resist the conviction that the disparity of age which is
easily forgotten in a wife, and especially in a wife who adores you,
assumes a different, and somewhat distasteful character, when a
great statesman is obliged to recognise it in the shape of a boyish
brother-in-law. But all went right, for the sweetness of Lord
Roehampton’s temper was inexhaustible. Endymion had paid several visits
to St. James’ square before Myra could seize the opportunity, for which
she was ever watching, to make her husband and her brother acquainted.
“And so you are one of us,” said Lord Roehampton, with his sweetest
smile and in his most musical tone, “and in office. We must try to give
you a lift.” And then he asked Endymion who was his chief, and how he
liked him, and then he said, “A good deal depends on a man’s chief. I
was under your grandfather when I first entered parliament, and I never
knew a pleasanter man to do business with. He never made difficulties;
he always encouraged one. A younker likes that.”
Lady Roehampton was desirous of paying some attention to all those who
had been kind to her brother; particularly Mr. Waldershare and Lord
Beaumaris--and she wished to invite them to her house. “I am sure
Waldershare would like to come,” said Endymion, “but Lord Beaumaris,
I know, never goes anywhere, and I have myself heard him say he never
would.”
“Yes, my lord was telling me Lord Beaumaris was quite _farouche_, and it
is feared that we may lose him. That would be sad,” said Myra, “for he
is powerful.”
“I should like very much if you could give me a card for Mr. Trenchard,”
said Endymion; “he is not in society, but he is quite a gentleman.”
“You shall have it, my dear. I have always liked Mr. Trenchard, and I
dare say, some day or other, he may be of use to you.”
The Neuchatels were not in town, but Myra saw them frequently, and
Mr. Neuchatel often dined in St. James’ Square--but the ladies always
declined every invitation of the kind. They came up from Hainault to see
Myra, but looked as if nothing but their great affection would prompt
such a sacrifice, and seemed always pining for Arcadia. Endymion,
however, not unfrequently continued his Sunday visits to Hainault,
to which Mr. Neuchatel had given him a general welcome. This young
gentleman, indeed, soon experienced a considerable change in his social
position. Invitations flocked to him, and often from persons whom he
did not know, and who did not even know him. He went by the name of Lady
Roehampton’s brother, and that was a sufficient passport.
“We are trying to get up a carpet dance to-night,” said Belinda to a
fair friend. “What men are in town?”
“Well, there is Mr. Waldershare, who has just left me.”
“I have asked him.
“Then there is Lord Willesden and Henry Grantley--I know they are
passing through town--and there is the new man, Lady Roehampton’s
brother.”
“I will send to Lord Willesden and Henry Grantley immediately, and
perhaps you will send a card, which I will write here, for me to the new
man.”
And in this way Mr. Ferrars soon found that he was what is called
“everywhere.”
One of the most interesting acquaintances that Lady Roehampton made was
a colleague of her husband, and that was Mr. Sidney Wilton, once the
intimate friend of her father. He had known herself and her brother when
they were children, indeed from the cradle. Mr. Sidney Wilton was in the
perfection of middle life, and looked young for his years. He was tall
and pensive, and naturally sentimental, though a long political career,
for he had entered the House of Commons for the family borough the
instant he was of age, had brought to this susceptibility a salutary
hardness. Although somewhat alienated from the friend of his youth
by the course of affairs, for Mr. Sidney Wilton had followed Lord
Roehampton, while Mr. Ferrars had adhered to the Duke of Wellington,
he had not neglected Ferrars in his fall, but his offers of assistance,
frankly and generously made, had been coldly though courteously
rejected, and no encouragement had been given to the maintenance of
their once intimate acquaintance.
Mr. Sidney Wilton was much struck by the appearance of Lady Roehampton.
He tried to compare the fulfilment of her promise with the beautiful
and haughty child whom he used to wonder her parents so extravagantly
spoiled. Her stature was above the average height of women and finely
developed and proportioned. But it was in the countenance--in the
pellucid and commanding brow, the deep splendour of her dark blue eyes
softened by long lashes, her short upper lip, and the rich profusion of
her dark chestnut hair--that his roused memory recalled the past; and he
fell into a mood of agitated contemplation.
The opportunities which he enjoyed of cultivating her society were
numerous, and Mr. Wilton missed none. He was frequently her guest, and
being himself the master of a splendid establishment, he could offer
her a hospitality which every one appreciated. Lord Roehampton was
peculiarly his political chief, and they had always been socially
intimate. As the trusted colleague of her husband--as one who had known
her in her childhood, and as himself a man singularly qualified, by his
agreeable conversation and tender and deferential manner, to make his
way with women--Mr. Sidney Wilton had no great difficulty, particularly
in that happy demi-season which precedes Christmas, in establishing
relations of confidence and intimacy with Lady Roehampton.
The cabinets were over: the government had decided on their measures,
and put them in a state of preparation, and they were about to disperse
for a month. The seat of Lord Roehampton was in the extreme north
of England, and a visit to it was inconvenient at this moment, and
especially at this season. The department of Lord Roehampton was very
active at this time, and he was unwilling that the first impression by
his wife of her future home should be experienced at a season little
favourable to the charms of a northern seat. Mr. Sidney Wilton was
the proprietor of the most beautiful and the most celebrated villa in
England; only twenty miles from town, seated on a wooded crest of
the swan-crowned Thames, with gardens of delight, and woods full of
pheasants, and a terrace that would have become a court, glancing over a
wide expanse of bower and glade, studded with bright halls and delicate
steeples, and the smoke of rural homes.
It was arranged that Lord and Lady Roehampton should pass their
Christmas at Gaydene with Mr. Sidney Wilton, stay as long as they liked,
go where they chose, but make it their headquarters. It was a most
successful visit; for a great deal of business was done, as well as
pleasure enjoyed. The ambassadors, who were always a little uneasy at
Christmas when everybody is away, and themselves without country homes,
were all invited down for that week. Lord Roehampton used to give them
audiences after the shooting parties. He thought it was a specific
against their being too long. He used to say, “The first dinner-bell
often brings things to a point.” After Christmas there was an
ever-varying stream of company, chiefly official and parliamentary. The
banquet and the battue did not always settle the business, the clause,
or the schedule, which the guests often came down to Gaydene ostensibly
to accomplish, but they sent men back to town with increased energy and
good humour, and kept the party in heart. Towards the end of the month
the premier came down, and for him the Blue Ribbon Covert had been
reserved, though he really cared little for sport. It was an eighteenth
century tradition that knights of the garter only had been permitted to
shoot this choice preserve, but Mr. Sidney Wilton, in this advanced age,
did not of course revive such an ultra-exclusive practice, and he was
particular in arranging the party to include Mr. Jorrocks. This was
a Radical member to whom considerable office had been given at the
reconstruction of 1835, when it was necessary that the Whigs should
conciliate the Mountain. He was a pretentious, underbred, half-educated
man, fluent with all the commonplaces of middle-class ambition, which
are humorously called democratic opinions, but at heart a sycophant
of the aristocracy. He represented, however, a large and important
constituency, and his promotion was at first looked upon as a
masterpiece of management. The Mountain, who knew Jorrocks by heart, and
felt that they had in their ranks men in every sense his superior, and
that he could be no representative of their intelligence and opinions,
and so by degrees prepare for their gradual admission to the sacred
land, at first sulked over the promotion of their late companion, and
only did not publicly deride it from the feeling that by so doing they
might be playing the game of the ministry. At the time of which we are
writing, having become extremely discontented and wishing to annoy
the government, they even affected dissatisfaction at the subordinate
position which Jorrocks occupied in the administration, and it was
generally said--had become indeed the slang of the party--that the
test of the sincerity of the ministry to Liberal principles was to put
Jorrocks in the cabinet. The countenance of the premier when this
choice programme was first communicated to him was what might have
been expected had he learnt of the sudden descent upon this isle of
an invading force, and the Secretary of the Treasury whispered in
confidence to one or two leaders of the Mountain, “that if they did not
take care they would upset the government.”
“That is exactly what we want to do,” was the reply.
So it will be seen that the position of the ministry, previous to the
meeting of parliament in 1839, was somewhat critical. In the meantime,
its various members, who knew their man, lavished every practicable
social attention on Jorrocks. The dinners they gave him were doubled;
they got their women to call on his women; and Sidney Wilton, a member
of an illustrious garter family, capped the climax by appointing him one
of the party to shoot the Blue Ribbon Covert.
Mr. Wilton had invited Endymion to Gaydene, and, as his stay there could
only be brief, had even invited him to repeat the visit. He was, indeed,
unaffectedly kind to one whom he remembered so young, and was evidently
pleased with him.
One evening, a day or two before the break-up of the party, while some
charming Misses Playfellow, with an impudent brother, who all lived
in the neighbourhood, were acting charades, Mr. Wilton said to Lady
Roehampton, by whose side he was sitting in the circle--
“I have had a very busy morning about my office. There is to be a
complete revolution in it. The whole system is to be reconstructed;
half the present people are to be pensioned off, and new blood is to be
introduced. It struck me that this might be an opening for your brother.
He is in the public service--that is something; and as there are to be
so many new men, there will be no jealousy as to his promotion. If you
will speak to him about it, and he likes it, I will appoint him one of
the new clerks; and then, if he also likes it, he shall be my private
secretary. That will give him position, and be no mean addition to
his income, you know, if we last--but that depends, I suppose, on Mr.
Jorrocks.”
Lady Roehampton communicated all this to her brother on her return to
London. “It is exactly what I wished,” she said. “I wanted you to be
private secretary to a cabinet minister, and if I were to choose any
one, except, of course, my lord, it would be Mr. Wilton. He is a perfect
gentleman, and was dear papa’s friend. I understand you will have three
hundred a year to begin with, and the same amount as his secretary.
You ought to be able to live with ease and propriety on six hundred a
year--and this reminds me of what I have been thinking of before we went
to Gaydene. I think now you ought to have a more becoming residence. The
Rodneys are good people, I do not doubt, and I dare say we shall have
an opportunity of proving our sense of their services; but they are not
exactly the people that I care for you to live with, and, at any rate,
you cannot reside any longer in a garret. I have taken some chambers
in the Albany, therefore, for you, and they shall be my contribution to
your housekeeping. They are not badly furnished, but they belonged to
an old general officer, and are not very new-fashioned; but we will go
together and see them to-morrow, and I dare say I shall soon be able to
make them _comme il faut_.”