Lord Culduff accompanied Colonel Bramleigh to town. He wanted a renewal
of his leave, and deemed it better to see the head of the department in
person than to address a formal demand to the office. Colonel Bramleigh,
too, thought that his Lordship's presence might be useful when the day
of action had arrived respecting the share company--a lord in the City
having as palpable a value as the most favorable news that ever sent up
the Funds.
When they reached London they separated, Bramleigh taking up his
quarters in the Burlington, while Lord Culduff--on pretence of running
down to some noble duke's villa near Richmond--snugly installed himself
in a very modest lodging off St. James's Street, where a former valet
acted as his cook and landlord, and on days of dining out assisted at
the wonderful toilet, whose success was alike the marvel and the envy of
Culduff s contemporaries.
Though a man of several clubs, his Lordship's favorite haunt was a
small unimposing-looking house close to St. James's Square, called the
“Plenipo.” Its members were all diplomatists, nothing below the head of
a mission being eligible for ballot. A Masonic mystery pervaded all
the doings of that austere temple, whose dinners were reported to be
exquisite, and whose cellar had such a fame that “Plenipo Lafitte” had a
European reputation.
Now, veteran asylums have many things recommendatory about them, but
from Greenwich and the Invalides downwards there is one especial vice
that clings to them--they are haunts of everlasting complaint. The
men who frequent them all belong to the past, their sympathies, their
associations, their triumphs and successes, all pertain to the bygone.
Harping eternally over the frivolity, the emptiness, and sometimes the
vulgarity of the present, they urge each other on to most exaggerated
notions of the time when they were young, and a deprecatory estimate of
the world then around them.
It is not alone that the days of good dinners and good conversation have
passed away, but even good manners have gone, and more strangely too,
good looks. “I protest you don't see such women now”--one of these
bewigged and rouged old debauchees would say, as he gazed at the slow
procession moving on to a drawing-room, and his compeers would concur
with him, and wonderingly declare that the thing was inexplicable.
In the sombre-looking breakfast-room of this austere temple, Lord
Culduff sat reading the “Times.” A mild, soft rain was falling without;
the water dripping tepid and dirty through the heavy canopy of a London
fog; and a large coal fire blazed within--that fierce furnace which
seems so congenial to English taste; not impossibly because it recalls
the factory and the smelting-house--the “sacred fire” that seems to
inspire patriotism by the suggestion of industry.
Two or three others sat at tables through the room, all so wonderfully
alike in dress, feature, and general appearance, that they almost seemed
reproductions of the same figure by a series of mirrors; but they were
priests of the same “caste,” whose forms of thought and expression were
precisely the same; and thus as they dropped their scant remarks on the
topics of the day, there was not an observation or a phrase of one that
might not have fallen from any of the others.
“So,” cried one, “they 're going to send the Grand Cross to the Duke of
Hochmaringen. That will be a special mission. I wonder who 'll get it?”
“Cloudesley, I'd say,” observed another; “he's always on the watch for
anything that comes into the 'extraordinaries.'”
“It will not be Cloudesley,” said a third. “He stayed away a year and
eight months when they sent him to Tripoli, and there was a rare jaw
about it for the estimates.”
“Hochmaringen is near Baden, and not a bad place for the summer,” said
Culduff. “The duchess, I think, was daughter of the margravine.”
“Niece, not daughter,” said a stern-looking man, who never turned his
eyes from his newspaper.
“Niece or daughter, it matters little which,” said Culduff, irritated
at correction on such a point.
“I protest I 'd rather take a turn in South Africa,” cried another,
“than accept one of those missions to Central Germany.”
“You 're right, Upton,” said a voice from the end of the room; “the
cookery is insufferable.”
“And the hours. You retire to bed at ten.”
“And the ceremonial. Blounte never threw off the lumbago he got from
bowing at the court of Bratensdorf.”
“They 're ignoble sort of things, at the best, and should never be
imposed on diplomatic men. These investitures should always be entrusted
to court functionaries,” said Culduff, haughtily. “If I were at the head
of F. O., I'd refuse to charge one of the 'line' with such a mission.”
And now something that almost verged on an animated discussion ensued as
to what was and what was not the real province of diplomacy; a majority
inclining to the opinion that it was derogatory to the high dignity of
the calling to meddle with what, at best, was the function of the mere
courtier.
“Is that Culduff driving away in that cab?” cried one, as he stood at
the window.
“He has carried away my hat, I see, by mistake,” said another. “What is
he up to at this hour of the morning?”
“I think I can guess,” said the grim individual who had corrected him
in the matter of genealogy; “he's off to F. O. to ask for the special
mission he has just declared that none of us should stoop to accept.”
“You 've hit it, Grindesley,” cried another. “I 'll wager a pony you
're right.”
“It's so like him.”
“After all, it's the sort of thing he's best up to. La Ferronaye told
me he was the best master of the ceremonies in Europe.”
“Why come amongst us at all, then? Why not get himself made a
gold-stick, and follow the instincts of his genius?”
“Well, I believe he wants it badly,” said one who affected a tone of
half kindliness. “They tell me he has not eight hundred a year left
him.”
“Not four. I doubt if he could lay claim to three.”
“He never had in his best day above four or five thousand, though he
tells you of his twenty-seven or twenty-eight.”
“He had originally about six; but he always lived at the rate of twelve
or fifteen, and in mere ostentation too.”
“So I 've always heard.” And then there followed a number of little
anecdotes of Culduff's selfishness, his avarice, his meanness, and such
like, told with such exactitude as to show that every act of these men's
lives was scrupulously watched, and when occasion offered mercilessly
recorded.
While they thus sat in judgment over him, Lord Culduff himself was
seated at a fire in a dingy old room in Downing Street, the Chief
Secretary for Foreign Affairs opposite him. They were talking in a tone
of easy familiarity, as men might who occupied the same social station,
a certain air of superiority, however, being always apparent in the
manner of the Minister towards the subordinate.
“I don't think you can ask for this, Culduff,” said the great man, as he
puffed his cigar tranquilly in front of him. “You've had three of these
special missions already.”
“And for the simple reason that I was the one man in England who knew
how to do them.”
“We don't dispute the way you did them; we only say all the prizes in
the wheel should not fall to the same man.”
“You have had my proxy for the last five years.”
“And we have acknowledged the support--acknowledged it by more than
professions.”
“I can only say this, that if I had been with the other side, I 'd have
met somewhat different treatment.”
“Don't believe it, Culduff. Every party that is in power inherits its
share of obligations. We have never disowned those we owe to you.”
“And why am I refused this, then?”
“If you wanted other reasons than those I have given you, I might
be able to adduce them--not willingly indeed--but under pressure,
and especially in strict confidence.” “Reasons against my having the
mission?”
“Reasons against your having the mission.”
“You amaze me, my Lord. I almost doubt that I have heard you aright I
must, however, insist on your explaining yourself. Am I to understand
that there are personal grounds of unfitness?”
The other bowed in assent.
“Have the kindness to let me know them.”
“First of all, Culduff, this is to be a family mission--the duchess is
a connection of our own royal house--and a certain degree of display
and consequent expense will be required. Your fortune does not admit of
this.”
“Push on to the more cogent reason, my Lord,” said Culduff, stiffly.
“Here, then, is the more cogent reason. The court has not
forgotten--what possibly the world may have forgotten--some of those
passages in your life for which you, perhaps, have no other remorse than
that they are not likely to recur; and as you have given no hostages for
good behavior, in the shape of a wife, the court, I say, is sure to veto
your appointment. You see it all as clearly as I do.”
“So far as I do see,” said Culduff, slowly: “the first objection is my
want of fortune, the second, my want of a wife?”
“Exactly so.”
“Well, my Lord, I am able to meet each of these obstacles; my agent has
just discovered coal on one of my Irish estates, and I am now in town to
make arrangements on a large scale to develop the source of wealth.
As to the second disability, I shall pledge myself to present the
Viscountess Culduff at the next drawing-room.”
“Married already?”
“No, but I may be within a few weeks. In fact, I mean to place myself
in such a position, that no one holding your office can pass me over by
a pretext, or affect to ignore my claim by affirming that I labor under
a disability.”
“This sounds like menace, does it not?” said the other as he threw his
cigar impatiently from him.
“A mere protocol, my Lord, to denote intention.”
“Well, I'll submit your name. I'll go further,--I'll support it. Don't
leave town for a day or two. Call on Beadlesworth and see Repsley; tell
him what you 've said to me. If you could promise it was one of his old
maiden sisters that you thought of making Lady Culduff, the thing could
be clenched at once. But I take it you have other views?”
“I have other views,” said he, gravely.
“I'm not indiscreet, and I shall not ask you more on that head. By the
way, is n't your leave up, or nearly up?”
“It expired on Wednesday last, and I want it renewed for two months.”
“Of course, if we send you on this mission, you 'll not want the leave.
I had something else to say. What was it?”
“I have not the very vaguest idea.”
“Oh! I remember. It was to recommend you not to take your wife from the
stage. There's a strong prejudice in a certain quarter as to that--in
fact, I may say it couldn't be got over.”
“I may relieve you of any apprehensions on that score. Indeed, I don't
know what fact in my life should expose me to the mere suspicion.”
“Nothing, nothing--except that impulsive generosity of your
disposition, which might lead you to do what other men would stop short
to count the cost of.”
“It would never lead me to derogate, my Lord,” said he, proudly, as he
took his hat, and bowing haughtily left the room.
“The greatest ass in the whole career, and the word is a bold one,”
said the Minister, as the door closed. “Meanwhile, I must send in
his name for this mission, which he is fully equal to. What a happy
arrangement it is, that in an age when our flunkies aspire to be
gentlemen, there are gentlemen who ask nothing better than to be
flunkies!”