Pelham — Volume 06

"Well," said he, with a sneer, "you have not taken your seat yet. I suppose Lord Dawton's representative, whose place you are to supply, is like Theseus, sedet eternumque sedebit. A thousand pities you can't come in before next week; we shall then have fiery motions in the Lower House, as the astrologers say."

I smiled. "Ah, mon cher!" said I, "Sparta hath many a worthier son than me! Meanwhile, how get on the noble Lords Lesborough and Lincoln? 'sure such a pair were never seen, so justly formed to meet by nature!'"

"Pooh!" said Vincent, coarsely, "they shall get on well enough, before you get in. Look to yourself, and remember that 'Caesar plays the ingrate.'"

Vincent turned away; my eyes were rivetted on the ground; the beautiful Lady—passed by me; "What, you in a reverie?" said she, laughing; "our very host will turn thoughtful next!"

"Nay," said I, "in your absence would you have me glad? However, if Moore's mythology be true—Beauty loves Folly the better for borrowing something from Reason; but, come, this is a place not for the grave, but the giddy. Let us join the waltzers."

"I am engaged."

"I know it! do you think I would dance with any woman who was not engaged?—there would be no triumph to one's vanity in that case. Allons, ma belle, you must prefer me to an engagement;" and so saying, I led off my prize.

Her intended partner was Mr. V—; just as we had joined the dancers, he spied us out, and approached with his long, serious, respectful face; the music struck up, and the next moment poor V. was very nearly struck down. Fraught with the most political spite, I whirled up against him; apologized with my blandest smile, and left him wiping his mouth, and rubbing his shoulder, the most forlorn picture of Hope in adversity, that can possibly be conceived.

I soon grew wearied of my partner, and leaving her to fate, rambled into another room. There, seated alone, was Lady Roseville. I placed myself beside her; there was a sort of freemasonry between her and myself; each knew something more of the other than the world did, and we read his or her heart, by other signs than words. I soon saw that she was in no mirthful mood; so much the better—she was the fitter companion for a baffled aspirant like me.

The room we were in was almost deserted, and finding ourselves uninterrupted, the stream of our conversation flowed into sentiment.

"How little," said Lady Roseville, "can the crowd know of the individuals who compose it. As the most opposite colours may be blended into one, and so lose their individual hues, and be classed under a single name, so every one here will go home, and speak of the 'gay scene,' without thinking for a moment how many breaking hearts may have composed it."

"I have often thought," said I, "how harsh we are in our judgments of others—how often we accuse those persons of being worldly, who merely seem so to the world; who, for instance, that saw you in your brightest moments, would ever suppose that you could make the confession you have just made?"

"I would not make such a confession to many beside yourself," answered Lady Roseville; "nay, you need not thank me. I am some years older than you; I have lived longer in the world; I have seen much of its various characters; and my experience has taught me to penetrate and prize a character like yours. While you seem frivolous to the superficial, I know you to have a mind not only capable of the most solid and important affairs, but habituated by reflection to consider them. You appear effeminate, I know that none are more daring—indolent, none are more actively ambitious—utterly selfish, and I know that no earthly interest could bribe you into meanness or injustice—no, nor even into a venial dereliction of principle. It is from this estimate of your character, that I am frank and open to you. Besides, I recognize something in the careful pride with which you conceal your higher and deeper feelings, resembling the strongest actuating principle in my own mind. All this interests me warmly in your fate; may it be as bright as my presentiments forebode."

I looked into the beautiful face of the speaker as she concluded; perhaps, at that solitary moment, my heart was unfaithful to Ellen; but the infidelity passed away like the breath from the mirror. Coxcomb as I was, I knew well how passionless was the interest expressed for me. Libertine as I had been, I knew, also, how pure may be the friendship of a woman, provided she loves another.

I thanked Lady Roseville, warmly, for her opinion, "Perhaps," I added, "dared I solicit your advice, you would not find me wholly undeserving of your esteem."

"My advice," answered Lady Roseville, "would be, indeed, worse than useless, were it not regulated by a certain knowledge which, perhaps, you do not possess. You seem surprised. Eh bien; listen to me—are you not in no small degree lie with Lord Dawton?—do you not expect something from him worthy of your rank and merit?"

"You do, indeed, surprise me," said I. "However close my connection with Lord Dawton may be, I thought it much more secret than it appears to be. However, I own that I have a right to expect from Lord Dawton, not, perhaps, a recompense of service, but, at least, a fulfilment of promises. In this expectation I begin to believe I shall be deceived."

"You will!" answered Lady Roseville. "Bend your head lower—the walls have ears. You have a friend, an unwearied and earnest friend, with those now in power; directly he heard that Mr. V—was promised the borough, which he knew had been long engaged to you, he went straight to Lord Dawton. He found him with Lord Clandonald; however, he opened the matter immediately. He spoke with great warmth of your claims—he did more—he incorporated them with his own, which are of no mean order, and asked no other recompense for himself than the fulfilment of a long made promise to you. Dawton was greatly confused, and Lord Clandonald replied, for him, that certainly there was no denying your talents—that they were very great—that you had, unquestionably, been of much service to their party, and that, consequently, it must be politic to attach you to their interests; but that there was a certain fierte, and assumption, and he might say (mark the climax) independence about you, which could not but be highly displeasing in one so young; moreover, that it was impossible to trust to you—that you pledged yourself to no party—that you spoke only of conditions and terms—that you treated the proposal of placing you in parliament rather as a matter of favour on your part, than on Lord Dawton's—and, in a word, that there was no relying upon you. Lord Dawton then took courage, and chimed in with a long panegyric on V—, and a long account of what was due to him, and to the zeal of his family, adding, that in a crisis like this, it was absolutely necessary to engage a certain, rather than a doubtful and undecided support; that, for his part, if he placed you in parliament, he thought you quite as likely to prove a foe as a friend; that, owing to the marriage of your uncle, your expectations were by no means commensurate with your presumption, and that the same talents which made your claims to favour, as an ally, created also no small danger in placing you in any situation where you could become hurtful as an enemy. All this, and much more to the same purpose, was strenuously insisted upon by the worthy pair; and your friend was obliged to take his leave, perfectly convinced that, unless you assumed a more complaisant bearing, or gave a more decided pledge, to the new minister, it was hopeless for you to expect any thing from him, at least, for the present. The fact is, he stands too much in awe of you, and would rather keep you out of the House than contribute an iota towards obtaining you a seat. Upon all this, you may rely as certain."

"I thank you from my heart," said I, warmly, seizing and pressing Lady Roseville's hand. "You tell me what I have long suspected; I am now upon my guard, and they shall find that I can offend as well as defend. But it is no time for me to boast; oblige me by informing me of the name of my unknown friend; I little thought there was a being in the world who would stir three steps for Henry Pelham."

"'That friend," replied Lady Roseville, with a faltering voice and a glowing cheek, "was Sir Reginald Glanville."

"What!" cried I, "repeat the name to me again, or—" I paused, and recovered myself. "Sir Reginald Glanville," I resumed haughtily, "is too gracious to enter into my affairs. I must be strangely altered if I need the officious zeal of any intermeddler to redress my wrongs."

"Nay, Mr. Pelham," said the countess, hastily, "you do Glanville—you do yourself injustice. For him, there never passes a day in which he does not mention you with the highest encomiums and the most affectionate regard. He says, of late, that you have altered towards him, but that he does not blame you—he never mentions the cause; if I am not intruding, suffer me to inquire into it; perhaps (oh! how happy it would make me) I may be able to reconcile you; if you knew—if you could but guess half of the noble and lofty character of Reginald Glanville, you would suffer no petty difference to divide you."

"It is no petty difference," said I, rising, "nor am I permitted to mention the cause. Meanwhile, may God bless you, dearest Lady Roseville, and preserve that kind and generous heart from worse pangs than those of disappointed ambition, or betrayed trust."

Lady Roseville looked down—her bosom heaved violently; she felt the meaning of my words. I left her and St. J—'s Square. I returned home to court sleep as vainly as the monarch in the tragedy, and exclaim as idly as the peasant in the farce, "Oh! that there were no House of Commons in the world!"

CHAPTER LXXII

Good Mr. Knave, give me my due,
I like a tart as well as you;
But I would starve on good roast beef,
Ere I would look so like a thief.

    —The Queen of Hearts.

Nune vino pellite curas;
Cras ingens iterabimus aequor.

    Horace.

The next morning I received a note from Guloseton, asking me to dine with him at eight, to meet his chevreuil. I sent back an answer in the affirmative, and then gave myself wholly up to considering what was the best line of conduct to pursue with regard to Lord Dawton. "It would be pleasant enough," said Anger, "to go to him, to ask him boldly for the borough so often pledged to you, and in case of his refusal, to confront, to taunt, and to break with him." "True," replied that more homely and less stage effect arguer, which we term Knowledge of the world; "but this would be neither useful nor dignified—common sense never quarrels with any one. Call upon Lord Dawton, if you will—ask him for his promise, with your second best smile, and receive his excuses with your very best. Then do as you please—break with him or not—you can do either with grace and quiet; never make a scene about any thing—reproach and anger always do make a scene." "Very true," said I, in answer to the latter suggestion—and having made up my mind, I repaired a quarter before three to Lord Dawton's House.

"Ah, Pelham," said the little minister; "delighted to see you look so much the better from the country air; you will stay in town now, I hope, till the end of the season?"

"Certainly," my lord, "or, at all events, till the prorogation of parliament; how, indeed, could I do otherwise with your lordship's kind promise before my eyes. Mr.—, the member for your borough of—, has, I believe, accepted the Chiltern Hundreds? I feel truly obliged to you for so promptly fulfilling your promise to me."

"Hem! my dear Pelham, hem!" murmured Lord Dawton. I bent forward as if in the attitude of listening respect, but really the more clearly to perceive, and closely to enjoy his confusion. He looked up and caught my eye, and not being too much gratified with its involuntary expression, he grew more and more embarrassed; at last he summoned courage.

"Why, my dear Sir," he said, "I did, it is true, promise you that borough; but individual friendship must frequently be sacrificed to the public good. All our party insisted upon returning Mr. V—in place of the late member: what could I do? I mentioned your claims, they all, to a man, enlarged upon your rival's: to be sure, he is an older person, and his family is very powerful in the Lower House; in short, you perceive, my dear Pelham—that is, you are aware—you can feel for the delicacy of my situation—one could not appear too eager for one's own friends at first, and I was forced to concede."

Lord Dawton was now fairly delivered of his speech; it was, therefore, only left me to congratulate him on his offspring.

"My dear lord," I began, "you could not have pleased me better: Mr. V. is a most estimable man, and I would not, for the world, have had you suspected of placing such a trifle as your own honour—that is to say— your promise to me, before the commands—that is to say, the interests— of your party; but no more of this now. Was your lordship at the Duke of- -'s last night?"

Dawton seized joyfully the opportunity of changing the conversation, and we talked and laughed on indifferent matters till I thought it time to withdraw; this I did with the most cordial appearance of regard and esteem; nor was it till I had fairly set my foot out of his door, that I suffered myself to indulge the "black bile," at my breast. I turned towards the Green Park, and was walking slowly along the principal mall with my hands behind me, and my eyes on the ground, when I heard my own name uttered. On looking back, I perceived Lord Vincent on horseback; he stopped, and conversed with me. In the humour I was in with Lord Dawton, I received him with greater warmth than I had done of late; and he also, being in a social mood, seemed so well satisfied with our rencontre, and my behaviour, that he dismounted to walk with me.

"This park is a very different scene now," said Vincent, "from what it was in the times of 'The Merry Monarch;' yet it is still, a spot much more to my taste, than its more gaudy and less classical brother of Hyde. There is something pleasingly melancholy, in walking over places haunted by history; for all of us live more in the past than the present."

"And how exactly alike in all ages," said I, "men have been. On the very spot we are on now, how many have been actuated by the same feelings that now actuate us—how many have made perhaps exactly the same remark just made by you. It is this universal identity, which forms our most powerful link with those that have been—there is a satisfaction in seeing how closely we resemble the Agamemnons of gone times, and we take care to lose none of it, by thinking how closely we also resemble the sordidi Thersites."

"True," replied Vincent, "if wise and great men did but know, how little difference there is between them and the foolish or the mean, they would not take such pains to be wise and great; to use the Chinese proverb, 'they sacrifice a picture to get possession of its ashes.' It is almost a pity that the desire to progress should be so necessary to our being; ambition is often a fine, but never a felicitous feeling. Cyprian, in a beautiful passage on envy, calls it 'the moth of the soul:' but perhaps, even that passion is less gnawing, less a 'tabes pectoris,' than ambition. You are surprised at my heat—the fact is, I am enraged at thinking how much we forfeit, when we look up only, and trample unconsciously, in the blindness of our aspiration, on the affections which strew our path. Now, you and I have been utterly estranged from each other of late. Why?—for any dispute—any disagreement in private— any discovery of meanness—treachery, unworthiness in the other? No! merely because I dine with Lord Lincoln, and you with Lord Dawton, voila tout. Well say the Jesuits, that they who live for the public, must renounce all private ties; the very day we become citizens, we are to cease to be men. Our privacy is like Leo Decimus; [Note: See Jovius.] directly it dies, all peace, comfort, joy, and sociality are to die with it; and an iron age, 'barbara vis et dira malorum omnium incommoda' [Note: See Jovius.] to succeed."

"It is a pity, that we struck into different paths," said I; "no pleasure would have been to me greater, than making our political interests the same; but—" "Perhaps there is no but," interrupted Vincent; "perhaps, like the two knights in the hacknied story, we are only giving different names to the same shield, because we view it on different sides; let us also imitate them in their reconciliation, as well as their quarrel, and since we have already run our lances against each other, be convinced of our error, and make up our difference."

I was silent; indeed, I did not like to trust myself to speak. Vincent continued:

"I know," said he, "and it is in vain for you to conceal it, that you have been ill-used by Dawton. Mr. V. is my first cousin; he came to me the day after the borough was given to him, and told me all that Clandonald and Dawton had said to him at the time. Believe me, they did not spare you;—the former, you have grievously offended; you know that he has quarrelled irremediably with his son Dartmore, and he insists that you are the friend and abettor of that ingenuous youth, in all his debaucheries and extravagance—tu illum corrumpi sinis. I tell you this without hesitation, for I know you are less vain than ambitious, and I do not care about hurting you in the one point, if I advance you in the other. As for me, I own to you candidly and frankly, that there is no pains I would spare to secure you to our party. Join us, and you shall, as I have often said, be on the parliamentary benches of our corps, without a moment of unnecessary delay. More I cannot promise you, because I cannot promise more to myself; but from that instant your fortune, if I augur aught aright from your ability, will be in your own hands. You shake your head—surely you must see, that there is not a difference between two vehemently opposite parties to be reconciled—aut numen aut Nebuchadrezar. There is but a verbal disagreement between us, and we must own the wisdom of the sentence recorded in Aulus Gellius, that 'he is but a madman, who splits the weight of things upon the hair-breadths of words.' You laugh at the quaintness of the quotation; quaint proverbs are often the truest."

If my reader should think lightly of me, when I own that I felt wavering and irresolute at the end of this speech, let him for a moment place himself in my situation—let him feel indignant at the treachery, the injustice, the ingratitude of one man; and, at the very height of his resentment, let him be soothed, flattered, courted, by the offered friendship and favour of another. Let him personally despise the former, and esteem the latter; and let him, above all, be convinced as well as persuaded of the truth of Vincent's remark, viz. that no sacrifice of principle, nor of measures, was required—nothing but an alliance against men, not measures. And who were those men? bound to me by a single tie— meriting from my gratitude a single consideration? No! the men, above all others, who had offered me the greatest affront, and deserved from me the smallest esteem.

But, however human feelings might induce me to waver, I felt that it was not by them only I was to decide. I am not a man whose vices or virtues are regulated by the impulse and passion of the moment; if I am quick to act, I am habitually slow to deliberate. I turned to Vincent, and pressed his hand: "I dare not trust myself to answer you now," said I: "give me till to-morrow; I shall then have both considered and determined."

I did not wait for his reply. I sprung from him, turned down the passage which leads to Pall Mall, and hastened home once more to commune with my own heart, and—not to be still.

In these confessions I have made no scruple of owning my errors and my foibles; all that could occasion mirth, or benefit to the reader were his own. I have kept a veil over the darker and stormier emotions of my soul; all that could neither amuse nor instruct him, are mine!

Hours passed on—it became time to dress—I rung for Bedos—dressed with my usual elaborateness of pains—great emotions interfere little with the mechanical operations of life—and drove to Guloseton's.