Endymion - Benjamin Disraeli
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They found an echo in the heart of Sidney Wilton, who, seated near
the entrance of the ball-room, watched every arrival with anxious
expectation. But the anxiety vanished for a moment under the influence
of the fantastic and frolic strain. It seemed a harbinger of happiness
and joy. He fell into a reverie, and wandered with a delightful
companion in castles of perpetual sunshine, and green retreats, and
pleasant terraces.
But the lady never came.
"Where can your sister be?" said Lady Montfort to Endymion. "She
promised me to come early; something must have happened. Is she ill?"
"Quite well; I saw her before I left Hill Street. She wished me to come
alone, as she would not be here early.
"I hope she will be in time for the royal supper table; I quite count on
her."
"She is sure to be here."
Lord Hainault was in earnest conversation with Baron Sergius, now the
minister of King Florestan at the Court of St. James'. It was a wise
appointment, for Sergius knew intimately all the English statesmen of
eminence, and had known them for many years. They did not look upon him
as the mere representative of a revolutionary and parvenu sovereign; he
was quite one of themselves, had graduated at the Congress of Vienna,
and, it was believed, had softened many subsequent difficulties by his
sagacity. He had always been a cherished guest at Apsley House, and it
was known the great duke often consulted him. "As long as Sergius sways
his councils, He will indulge in no adventures," said Europe. "As long
as Sergius remains here, the English alliance is safe," said England.
After Europe and England, the most important confidence to obtain was
that of Lord Hainault, and Baron Sergius had not been unsuccessful in
that respect.
"Your master has only to be liberal and steady," said Lord Hainault,
with his accustomed genial yet half-sarcastic smile, "and he may have
anything he likes. But we do not want any wars; they are not liked in
the City."
"Our policy is peace," said Sergius.
"I think we ought to congratulate Sir Peter," said Mr. Waldershare to
Adriana, with whom he had been dancing, and whom he was leading back to
Lady Hainault. "Sir Peter, here is a lady who wishes to congratulate you
on your deserved elevation."
"Well, I do not know what to say about it," said the former Mr. Vigo,
highly gratified, but a little confused; "my friends would have it."
"Ay, ay," said Waldershare, "'at the request of friends;' the excuse I
gave for publishing my sonnets." And then, advancing, he delivered
his charge to her _chaperon_, who looked dreamy, abstracted, and
uninterested.
"We have just been congratulating the new baronet, Sir Peter Vigo," said
Waldershare.
"Ah!" said Lady Hainault with a contemptuous sigh, "he is, at any rate,
not obliged to change his name. The desire to change one's name does
indeed appear to me to be a singular folly. If your name had been
disgraced, I could understand it, as I could understand a man then going
about in a mask. But the odd thing is, the persons who always want to
change their names are those whose names are the most honoured."
"Oh, you are here!" said Mr. St. Barbe acidly to Mr. Seymour Hicks. "I
think you are everywhere. I suppose they will make you a baronet next.
Have you seen the batch? I could not believe my eyes when I read it.
I believe the government is demented. Not a single literary man among
them. Not that I wanted their baronetcy. Nothing would have tempted me
to accept one. But there is Gushy; he, I know, would have liked it. I
must say I feel for Gushy; his works only selling half what they did,
and then thrown over in this insolent manner!"
"Gushy is not in society," said Mr. Seymour Hicks in a solemn tone of
contemptuous pity.
"That is society," said St. Barbe, as he received a bow of haughty grace
from Mrs. Rodney, who, fascinating and fascinated, was listening to the
enamoured murmurs of an individual with a very bright star and a very
red ribbon.
"I dined with the Rodneys yesterday," said Mr. Seymour Hicks; "they do
the thing well."
"You dined there!" exclaimed St. Barbe. "It is very odd, they have
never asked me. Not that I would have accepted their invitation. I avoid
parvenus. They are too fidgety for my taste. I require repose, and only
dine with the old nobility."
CHAPTER LXXXXIX
The Right Honourable Job Thornberry and Mrs. Thornberry had received
an invitation to the Montfort ball. Job took up the card, and turned it
over more than once, and looked at it as if it were some strange animal,
with an air of pleased and yet cynical perplexity; then he shrugged
his shoulders and murmured to himself, "No, I don't think that will do.
Besides, I must be at Hurstley by that time."
Going to Hurstley now was not so formidable an affair as it was in
Endymion's boyhood. Then the journey occupied a whole and wearisome
day. Little Hurstley had become a busy station of the great Slap-Bang
railway, and a despatch train landed you at the bustling and flourishing
hostelry, our old and humble friend, the Horse Shoe, within the
two hours. It was a rate that satisfied even Thornberry, and almost
reconciled him to the too frequent presence of his wife and family at
Hurstley, a place to which Mrs. Thornberry had, it would seem, become
passionately attached.
"There is a charm about the place, I must say," said Job to himself,
as he reached his picturesque home on a rich summer evening; "and yet I
hated it as a boy. To be sure, I was then discontented and unhappy, and
now I have every reason to be much the reverse. Our feelings affect
even scenery. It certainly is a pretty place; I really think one of the
prettiest places in England."
Job was cordially welcomed. His wife embraced him, and the younger
children clung to him with an affection which was not diminished by the
remembrance that their father never visited them with empty hands. His
eldest son, a good-looking and well-grown stripling, just home for the
holidays, stood apart, determined to show he was a man of the world, and
superior to the weakness of domestic sensibility. When the hubbub was a
little over, he advanced and shook hands with his father with a certain
dignity.
"And when did you arrive, my boy? I was looking up your train in
Bradshaw as I came along. I made out you should get the branch at
Culvers Gate."
"I drove over," replied the son; "I and a friend of mine drove tandem,
and I'll bet we got here sooner than we should have done by the branch."
"Hem!" said Job Thornberry.
"Job," said Mrs. Thornberry, "I have made two engagements for you this
evening. First, we will go and see your father, and then we are to drink
tea at the rectory."
"Hem!" said Job Thornberry; "well, I would rather the first evening
should have been a quiet one; but let it be so."
The visit to the father was kind, dutiful, and wearisome. There was not
a single subject on which the father and son had thoughts in common. The
conversation of the father took various forms of expressing his wonder
that his son had become what he was, and the son could only smile, and
turn the subject, by asking after the produce of some particular field
that had been prolific or obstinate in the old days. Mrs. Thornberry
looked absent, and was thinking of the rectory; the grandson who
had accompanied them was silent and supercilious; and everybody felt
relieved when Mrs. Thornberry, veiling her impatience by her fear of
keeping her father-in-law up late, made a determined move and concluded
the domestic ceremony.
The rectory afforded a lively contrast to the late scene. Mr. and Mrs.
Penruddock were full of intelligence and animation. Their welcome of
Mr. Thornberry was exactly what it ought to have been; respectful, even
somewhat differential, but cordial and unaffected. They conversed on all
subjects, public and private, and on both seemed equally well informed,
for they not only read more than one newspaper, but Mrs. Penruddock had
an extensive correspondence, the conduct of which was one of the chief
pleasures and excitements of her life. Their tea-equipage, too, was a
picture of abundance and refinement. Such pretty china, and such various
and delicious cakes! White bread, and brown bread, and plum cakes, and
seed cakes, and no end of cracknels, and toasts, dry or buttered. Mrs.
Thornberry seemed enchanted and gushing with affection,--everybody was
dear or dearest. Even the face of John Hampden beamed with condescending
delight as he devoured a pyramid of dainties.
Just before the tea-equipage was introduced Mrs. Penruddock rose from
her seat and whispered something to Mrs. Thornberry, who seemed pleased
and agitated and a little blushing, and then their hostess addressed Job
and said, "I was mentioning to your wife that the archbishop was here,
and that I hope you would not dislike meeting him."
And very shortly after this, the archbishop, who had been taking a
village walk, entered the room. It was evident that he was intimate with
the occupiers of Hurstley Hall. He addressed Mrs. Thornberry with the
ease of habitual acquaintance, while John Hampden seemed almost to rush
into his arms. Job himself had seen his Grace in London, though he
had never had the opportunity of speaking to him, but yielded to his
cordiality, when the archbishop, on his being named, said, "It is a
pleasure to meet an old friend, and in times past a kind one."
It was a most agreeable evening. The archbishop talked to every one,
but never seemed to engross the conversation. He talked to the ladies of
gardens, and cottages, and a little of books, seemed deeply interested
in the studies and progress of the grandson Thornberry, who evidently
idolised him; and in due course his Grace was engaged in economical
speculations with Job himself, who was quite pleased to find a priest as
liberal and enlightened as he was able and thoroughly informed. An hour
before midnight they separated, though the archbishop attended them to
the hall.
Mrs. Thornberry's birthday was near at hand, which Job always
commemorated with a gift. It had commenced with some severe offering,
like "Paradise Lost," then it fell into the gentler form of Tennyson,
and, of late, unconsciously under the influence of his wife, it had
taken the shape of a bracelet or a shawl.
This evening, as he was rather feeling his way as to what might please
her most, Mrs. Thornberry embracing him, and hiding her face on his
breast, murmured, "Do not give me any jewel, dear Job. What I should
like would be that you should restore the chapel here."
"Restore the chapel here! oh, oh!" said Job Thornberry.
CHAPTER XC
The archbishop called at Hurstley House the next day. It was a visit
to Mr. Thornberry, but all the family were soon present, and clustered
round the visitor. Then they walked together in the gardens, which
had become radiant under the taste and unlimited expenditure of Mrs.
Thornberry; beds glowing with colour or rivalling mosaics, choice
conifers with their green or purple fruit, and rare roses with their
fanciful and beauteous names; one, by the by, named "Mrs. Penruddock,"
and a very gorgeous one, "The Archbishop."
As they swept along the terraces, restored to their pristine comeliness,
and down the green avenues bounded by copper beeches and ancient yews,
where men were sweeping away every leaf and twig that had fallen in the
night and marred the consummate order, it must have been difficult
for the Archbishop of Tyre not to recall the days gone by, when this
brilliant and finished scene, then desolate and neglected, the abode of
beauty and genius, yet almost of penury, had been to him a world of deep
and familiar interest. Yes, he was walking in the same glade where he
had once pleaded his own cause with an eloquence which none of his most
celebrated sermons had excelled. Did he think of this? If he did, it
was only to wrench the thought from his memory. Archbishops who are
yet young, who are resolved to be cardinals, and who may be popes, are
superior to all human weakness.
"I should like to look at your chapel," said his Grace to Mr.
Thornberry; "I remember it a lumber room, and used to mourn over its
desecration."
"I never was in it," said Job, "and cannot understand why my wife is so
anxious about it as she seems to be. When we first went to London, she
always sate under the Reverend Socinus Frost, and seemed very satisfied.
I have heard him; a sensible man--but sermons are not much in my way,
and I do not belong to his sect, or indeed any other."
However, they went to the chapel all the same, for Mrs. Thornberry
was resolved on the visit. It was a small chamber but beautifully
proportioned, like the mansion itself--of a blended Italian and Gothic
style. The roof was flat, but had been richly gilt and painted, and was
sustained by corbels of angels, divinely carved. There had been some
pews in the building; some had fallen to pieces, and some remained, but
these were not in the original design. The sacred table had disappeared,
but two saintly statues, sculptured in black oak, seemed still to guard
the spot which it had consecrated.
"I wonder what became of the communion table?" said Job.
"Oh! my dear father, do not call it a communion table," exclaimed John
Hampden pettishly.
"Why, what should I call it, my boy?"
"The altar."
"Why, what does it signify what we call it? The thing is the same."
"Ah!" exclaimed the young gentleman, in a tone of contemptuous
enthusiasm, "it is all the difference in the world. There should be a
stone altar and a reredos. We have put up a reredos in our chapel at
Bradley. All the fellows subscribed; I gave a sovereign."
"Well, I must say," said the archbishop, who had been standing in
advance with Mrs. Thornberry and the children, while this brief and
becoming conversation was taking place between father and son, "I
think you could hardly do a better thing than restore this chapel, Mr.
Thornberry, but there must be no mistake about it. It must be restored
to the letter, and it is a style that is not commonly understood. I have
a friend, however, who is a master of it, the most rising man in his
profession, as far as church architecture is concerned, and I will get
him just to run down and look at this, and if, as I hope, you resolve to
restore it, rest assured he will do you justice, and you will be proud
of your place of worship."
"I do not care how much we spend on our gardens," said Job, "for they
are transitory pleasures, and we enjoy what we produce; but why I should
restore a chapel in a house which does not belong to myself is not so
clear to me."
"But it should belong to yourself," rejoined the archbishop. "Hurstley
is not in the market, but it is to be purchased. Take it altogether,
I have always thought it one of the most enviable possessions in the
world. The house, when put in order, would be one of the ornaments of
the kingdom. The acreage, though considerable, is not overwhelming, and
there is a range of wild country of endless charm. I wandered about it
in my childhood and my youth, and I have never known anything equal to
it. Then as to the soil and all that, you know it. You are a son of
the soil. You left it for great objects, and you have attained those
objects. They have given you fame as well as fortune. There would be
something wonderfully dignified and graceful in returning to the land
after you have taken the principal part in solving the difficulties
which pertained to it, and emancipating it from many perils."
"I am sure it would be the happiest day of my life, if Job would
purchase Hurstley," said Mrs. Thornberry.
"I should like to go to Oxford, and my father purchase Hurstley," said
the young gentleman. "If we have not landed property, I would sooner
have none. If we have not land, I should like to go into the Church, and
if I may not go to Oxford, I would go to Cuddesdon at once. I know it
can be done, for I know a fellow who has done it."
Poor Job Thornberry! He had ruled multitudes, and had conquered
and commanded senates. His Sovereign had made him one of her privy
councillors, and half a million of people had returned him their
representative to parliament. And here he stood silent, and a little
confused; sapped by his wife, bullied by his son, and after having
passed a great part of his life in denouncing sacerdotalism, finding his
whole future career chalked out, without himself being consulted, by
a priest who was so polite, sensible, and so truly friendly, that his
manner seemed to deprive its victims of every faculty of retort or
repartee. Still he was going to say something when the door opened, and
Mrs. Penruddock appeared, exclaiming in a cheerful voice, "I thought
I should find you here. I would not have troubled your Grace, but
this letter marked 'private, immediate, and to be forwarded,' has been
wandering about for some time, and I thought it was better to bring it
to you at once."
The Archbishop of Tyre took the letter, and seemed to start as he read
the direction. Then he stood aside, opened it, and read its contents.
The letter was from Lady Roehampton, desiring to see him as soon as
possible on a matter of the utmost gravity, and entreating him not to
delay his departure, wherever he might be.
"I am sorry to quit you all," said his Grace; "but I must go up to town
immediately. The business is urgent."
CHAPTER XCI
Endymion arrived at home very late from the Montfort ball, and rose
in consequence at an unusually late hour. He had taken means to become
sufficiently acquainted with the cause of his sister's absence the night
before, so he had no anxiety on that head. Lady Roehampton had really
intended to have been present, was indeed dressed for the occasion;
but when the moment of trial arrived, she was absolutely unequal to the
effort. All this was amplified in a little note from his sister, which
his valet brought him in the morning. What, however, considerably
surprised him in this communication was her announcement that her
feelings last night had proved to her that she ought not to remain in
London, and that she intended to find solitude and repose in the little
watering-place where she had passed a tranquil autumn during the first
year of her widowhood. What completed his astonishment, however, was the
closing intimation that, in all probability, she would have left town
before he rose. The moment she had got a little settled she would write
to him, and when business permitted, he must come and pay her a little
visit.
"She was always capricious," exclaimed Lady Montfort, who had not
forgotten the disturbance of her royal supper-table.
"Hardly that, I think," said Endymion. "I have always looked on Myra as
a singularly consistent character."
"I know, you never admit your sister has a fault."
"You said the other day yourself that she was the only perfect character
you knew."
"Did I say that? I think her capricious."
"I do not think you are capricious," said Endymion, "and yet the world
sometimes says you are."
"I change my opinion of persons when my taste is offended," said Lady
Montfort. "What I admired in your sister, though I confess I sometimes
wished not to admire her, was that she never offended my taste."
"I hope satisfied it," said Endymion.
"Yes, satisfied it, always satisfied it. I wonder what will be her lot,
for, considering her youth, her destiny has hardly begun. Somehow or
other, I do not think she will marry Sidney Wilton."
"I have sometimes thought that would be," said Endymion.
"Well, it would be, I think, a happy match. All the circumstances would
be collected that form what is supposed to be happiness. But tastes
differ about destinies as well as about manners. For my part, I think
to have a husband who loved you, and he clever, accomplished, charming,
ambitious, would be happiness; but I doubt whether your sister cares
so much about these things. She may, of course does, talk to you more
freely; but with others, in her most open hours, there seems a secret
fund of reserve in her character which I never could penetrate,
except, I think, it is a reserve which does not originate in a love of
tranquillity, but quite the reverse. She is a strong character."
"Then, hardly a capricious one."
"No, not capricious; I only said that to tease you. I am capricious;
I know it. I disregard people sometimes that I have patronised and
flattered. It is not merely that I have changed my opinion of them, but
I positively hate them."
"I hope you will never hate me," said Endymion.
"You have never offended my taste yet," said Lady Montfort with a smile.
Endymion was engaged to dine to-day with Mr. Bertie Tremaine. Although
now in hostile political camps, that great leader of men never permitted
their acquaintance to cease. "He is young," reasoned Mr. Bertie
Tremaine; "every political party changes its principles on an average
once in ten years. Those who are young must often then form new
connections, and Ferrars will then come to me. He will be ripe and
experienced, and I could give him a good deal. I do not want numbers. I
want men. In opposition, numbers often only embarrass. The power of the
future is ministerial capacity. The leader with a cabinet formed will
be the minister of England. He is not to trouble himself about numbers;
that is an affair of the constituencies."
Male dinners are in general not amusing. When they are formed, as they
usually are, of men who are supposed to possess a strong and common
sympathy--political, sporting, literary, military, social--there is
necessarily a monotony of thought and feeling, and of the materials
which induce thought and feeling. In a male dinner of party politicians,
conversation soon degenerates into what is termed "shop;" anecdotes
about divisions, criticism of speeches, conjectures about office,
speculations on impending elections, and above all, that heinous subject
on which enormous fibs are ever told, the registration. There are,
however, occasional glimpses in their talk which would seem to intimate
that they have another life outside the Houses of Parliament. But that
extenuating circumstance does not apply to the sporting dinner. There
they begin with odds and handicaps, and end with handicaps and odds, and
it is doubtful whether it ever occurs to any one present, that there
is any other existing combination of atoms than odds and handicaps.
A dinner of wits is proverbially a place of silence; and the envy and
hatred which all literary men really feel for each other, especially
when they are exchanging dedications of mutual affection, always ensure,
in such assemblies, the agreeable presence of a general feeling of
painful constraint. If a good thing occurs to a guest, he will not
express it, lest his neighbour, who is publishing a novel in numbers,
shall appropriate it next month, or he himself, who has the same
responsibility of production, be deprived of its legitimate appearance.
Those who desire to learn something of the manoeuvres at the Russian and
Prussian reviews, or the last rumour at Aldershot or the military clubs,
will know where to find this feast of reason. The flow of soul in these
male festivals is perhaps, on the whole, more genial when found in a
society of young gentlemen, graduates of the Turf and the Marlborough,
and guided in their benignant studies by the gentle experience and the
mild wisdom of White's. The startling scandal, the rattling anecdote,
the astounding leaps, and the amazing shots, afford for the moment a
somewhat pleasing distraction, but when it is discovered that all these
habitual flim-flams are, in general, the airy creatures of inaccuracy
and exaggeration--that the scandal is not true, the anecdote has no
foundation, and that the feats and skill and strength are invested with
the organic weakness of tradition, the vagaries lose something of the
charm of novelty, and are almost as insipid as claret from which the
bouquet has evaporated.
The male dinners of Mr. Bertie Tremaine were an exception to the general
reputation of such meetings. They were never dull. In the first place,
though to be known at least by reputation was an indispensable condition
of being present, he brought different classes together, and this, at
least for once, stimulates and gratifies curiosity. His house too was
open to foreigners of celebrity, without reference to their political
parties or opinions. Every one was welcome except absolute assassins.
The host too had studied the art of developing character and
conversation, and if sometimes he was not so successful in this respect
as he deserved, there was no lack of amusing entertainment, for in these
social encounters Mr. Bertie Tremaine was a reserve in himself, and if
nobody else would talk, he would avail himself of the opportunity of
pouring forth the treasures of his own teeming intelligence. His various
knowledge, his power of speech, his eccentric paradoxes, his pompous
rhetoric, relieved by some happy sarcasm, and the obvious sense, in all
he said and did, of innate superiority to all his guests, made these
exhibitions extremely amusing.