CHAPTER XX.

A STORM BREWING.

The elections were over; Parliament had met; the nobles of the land had returned to town as well as their toadies, and admirers, and imitators; and all was gay and glittering in the parks, at the clubs, and in Belgravian _salons_. The _quidnuncs_ of society were as busy as bees. In our time the Church and the theatre are in equal request, and it is hard to say who is the winner in the race for public favour, the last new star at the theatre or the last pulpit pet; the last strong man of the music-hall, the newest favourite of the ring. We are a catholic-minded people, and are grateful to anyone who will give us something to talk about.

For once the shopkeepers of Regent Street and Bond Street were in good spirits. There was every prospect of a successful season. London was full, and there was no end of society balls and dinners. An Austrian archduke was to appear on the scene. One of the richest of the American Bonanza kings had taken a great house in Grosvenor Square.

The deserted palace of Buckingham would once more open its doors, and there were to be Drawing-rooms, whether as regards numbers or brilliancy rivalling any that had ever been held.

We had a strong Government, with a strong majority behind, and speculators on the Stock Exchange were buying for a rise. The Rothschilds of London and Paris and Vienna had all agreed that there should be peace, and it was also understood that a great German Chancellor had kindly condescended to intimate that for the present, at any rate, the sword might be sheathed, and that honest peasant lads, instead of being served up as food for powder, might be usefully employed in agricultural occupations, much to the joy of hotel-keepers on the Rhine, at Baden-Baden and elsewhere. Even in the valleys and mountains of the Alps, in the new nation of Italy, in the gilded palaces of the Sultan on the Bosphorus, there was unusual light-heartedness, for the Eastern Question was indefinitely postponed. The talk of the clubs had ceased to have any reference to politics. A great calm had settled everywhere in the East of London, where poverty makes men Radicals and Social Democrats, and in the West, where the only burning question of the hour is how to put off the day of reckoning to a more convenient season.

If it had not been for the occasional appearance of a wealthy American heiress, whose father had ‘struck ile,’ of a fair Anonyma on horseback, in an exquisitely-appointed equipage in some fashionable thoroughfare, or for a whisper of a scandal in high life, or for a wild adventure now and then of a man about town, or the unexpected collapse of a favourite on the turf, or the disgraceful bankruptcy of a pious banker, society would have been duller than ditch water. As it was, what to do with the heavy hours intervening between luncheon and dinner seemed a problem too difficult for human ingenuity—even when most fitly trained and fairly developed—to solve.

It was precisely at this trying hour Sir Watkin Strahan might be seen lolling idly and discontentedly in one of the many armchairs which adorned the smoking-room of his Piccadilly club. By his side was an emptied glass, the ashes of a defunct cigar, and the usual journals which are humorously supposed to be comic, or to be remarkably witty, or to represent society. He did not look particularly pleased, not even when a brother member, evidently a chip of the same block, seated himself by his side, exclaiming:

‘Holloa, Sir Watkin, what brings yon up to town? I thought you were carrying all before you at Sloville.’

‘Sloville be d---d!’

‘Certainly, my dear friend, if you wish it. What’s Hecuba to me?’

‘Now, look at me, and drop that style of remark.’

We comply with the Baronet’s suggestion, and look at him. He was, after all, a handsome man, carefully dressed and fitted to shine in Belgravia; soft and gentle in manner, sleek as a tiger. Time had dealt gently with him, had spared his head of hair, and saved him from the obesity which attacks most men after a certain age. Mr. Disraeli tells us that the English aristocracy do not read, and live much in the open air. Hence their juvenility. At a distance Sir Watkin looked anywhere between five-and-twenty and fifty. To-day, however, he looked nearer the latter than the former. He did not look like a good man, such as you read of in evangelical biographies or on the tombstones in churchyards and cemeteries. There was a scowl on his forehead, anger in his eye and in his tones.

‘Well,’ said another friend, ‘all I can say is I have just seen ---,’ naming the Liberal whip, ‘and he’s terribly cut up. He thought you were safe for Sloville.’

‘So I should have been if it had not been for that infernal Wentworth. My canvassers and election agent made me feel quite certain of success. I believe they humbugged me frightfully.’

‘Oh, they always do that. It is their nature.’

‘But it is none the less disagreeable. My own opinion is, there was a good deal of bribery. Money seemed very plentiful. The Carlton had a finger in the pie. Old Shrouder was there; and he is always at his old game. There is not another such a rascal in all England.’

‘That’s saying a great deal. I wonder how the old scamp has managed to keep out of Newgate.’

‘Lord bless you, man! you know none of our hands are very clean; but I am sure I could get the new M.P. unseated on petition.’

‘What, and claim the vacant seat?’

‘No, alas! that won’t do. How can I say what my agent was up to, or what was done by idiotic friends? The law is so particular. They make out everything to be bribery nowadays. It is precious hard nowadays for a gentleman to get into Parliament, and that is a rascally shame. We have been in the place for a hundred years. There is not a charity in it I don’t support. I have spent a fortune in nursing the town. All I can say is, next Christmas some of the free and independent will feel rather silly when they miss the coals and blankets, and find the key of the wine cellar lost.’

‘I can’t make it out; there must be some other reason. Do you think that fellow Wentworth had anything to do with your defeat?’ asked the Baronet’s friend. ‘You know he seems to be rather high-minded, and these men are in the way at an election.’

‘Well, he might, with his nonsense, have kept some of the voters away. I did hear some ill-natured gossip about myself, but I can’t trace it to him.’

‘Oh!’ said his friend; ‘that’s what I was waiting for. The British mob won’t stand that sort of thing, though they ill-use their wives every day.’

‘Why, I never said what the gossip was.’

‘No, but I know. You’re not a saint, Sir Watkin.’

‘Nor you either. The people, somehow or other, had got it into their heads that I behaved badly to a Sloville girl.’

‘A thing you could never think of doing,’ said his friend, with affected indignation.

‘No, it is too near home,’ said the Baronet.

‘But you know I have always said to you that the way in which you went on with women would, one day or other, get you into a scrape. Stick to the married ones, and leave the young ones alone. That is my plan. If you get into a mess then, the woman is bound to help you out. The chances, you see, are two to one in your favour. But there is a better plan still.’

‘What is that?’

‘Leave ’em alone. They all mean mischief.’

‘Well, it is not everyone who is such a cool hand as you are.’

‘So much the worse for other people,’ was the reply. ‘But in the case of that Sloville girl, I really don’t see you have anything to reproach yourself with. She ran away from you, did she not? and I don’t see how any mischief could be made of that. I suppose she is still able to carry on the highly respectable calling of a dressmaker; I think she was that. She was an uncommonly fine girl; there was quite a style about her; and a girl like that can’t take much harm—that is, as long as she keeps her good looks.’

‘Oh no, the girl is all right. She is now the popular Miss Howard, of the --- Theatre.’

‘The deuce she is! Why, then, don’t you make it up with her? A bracelet and a dinner at the Star and Garter will do the trick.’

‘I fear not. The fact is, I met her accidentally a short time ago, and she held her head as high as Lucifer.’

‘Only acting, my dear boy. ’Tis only pretty Fanny’s way. ’Tis well—she might have come to you for money.’

‘I wish she had. That would have given me a pull on her.’

‘She might have served you with an action for breach of promise.’

‘That would have been too ridiculous.’

‘She was young. I don’t feel sure that she might not have had you up under the Act which makes the parent the guardian of the child till she is sixteen.’

‘Oh no, she was older than that.’

‘Perhaps she wants to excite you. She knows now that you are a single man, and she thinks it well to begin the renewal of her acquaintance with a little seasonable aversion.’

‘The fact is, she not only treated me with aversion, but she cut me dead.’

‘Shocking!’ said his friend.

‘Yes, it was. I was always fond of her, and I am mad to get hold of her again.’

‘That ought not to be difficult to Sir Watkin Strahan.’

‘Perhaps not. But there is a man in the case—a newspaper fellow—the fellow, in short, who had the impudence to come down to Sloville to contest the borough. I believe he lost me the seat. I believe the girl got him to do it out of revenge.’

‘Then, I would be even with him.’

‘So I will before I’ve done with him. You may be sure I’ll have my revenge,’ said the Baronet angrily.

‘Yes, I can trust you for that,’ said his friend. ‘You are a good fellow, Sir Watkin, but you neither forget nor forgive.’

‘No, we don’t in our family, and we have found it answer our purpose very well.’

‘But, come, liquor up. Never mind the women; leave them to themselves.’

‘Ah, that is easier said than done. I suppose I must give up this sort of life. I must marry again, and reform, and settle down into a quiet life, look after my tenants, attend the parish church, do my duty as a magistrate and a breeder of fat cattle, as my fathers before me. They seem to have been all highly beloved and deeply regretted. That is, if I read aright the inscriptions on their monuments in Sloville Church.’

‘They must have been if they were at all like their latest representative,’ said his friend sarcastically.

‘You be blowed!’ was the uncomplimentary reply. ‘I tell you what. I see the girl is acting to-night. I have nothing better to do—I’ll go and see her.’

‘Shall I come with you?’

‘No, I thank you; I’d rather go alone.’

‘You had better take me with you. You’ll get into another scrape. You always do when I am not with you.’

‘Thanks, but I think I am old enough to run alone. If I want your valuable aid I shall send for you.’

‘Do—I shall be here all right. It amuses me more to have a quiet rubber than to be tearing all over London by night after anything in petticoats.’

‘Ah, you are a philosopher.’

‘I wish I could return the compliment.’

‘By-the-by,’ said the Baronet, changing the subject, ‘did you ever hear of the curious predicament I am in?’

‘What do you mean—the birth and disappearance of the baby?’

‘Exactly so. You were in Italy at the time, or I should have liked to have talked it over. My lady, as you know, did me the favour to present me with a son and heir. I am not a judge of babies myself, nor am I particularly partial to them, but it was a creditable baby, so far as I can judge. I imagine its lungs were sound by the way in which it squealed. It had the regulation number of limbs, the family proboscis, and apparently the parental eyes. The women all voted it a sweet little innocent, and the image of its father.’

‘That’s a matter of course,’ said the friend.

‘Well, one day the child was missing.’

‘I remember hearing of it. It was said your lady was in delicate health at the time, and the shock caused her death.’

‘I believe it had something to do with it; but the fact was with all her admirable qualities she had peculiar notions, and that led to little unpleasantnesses between us at times, and she worried herself about trifles in a way I am sure that was not good for her, and I must own that when the child was missing, naturally, she was very much cut up.’

‘And the father?’ said the friend.

‘I took it more calmly, I own. You can’t expect a man of the world, like myself, to have been broken-hearted about the loss of a little bit of flesh like that. Had it lived to become a young man, and to have plagued his poor father as I plagued mine, or as most young fellows do, I should have been prostrated with grief, I dare say. As it was, I bore the loss with the heroism of a martyr, and the resignation of a saint.’

‘You need not tell me that; I can quite believe it,’ remarked his friend with a smile.

‘Well, as I have said, her ladyship worried herself a good deal unnecessarily. I never can understand why women have such particular ideas. I suppose they learn them from the parson. Now, there was Lady ---’ (naming the wife of a volatile premier forgotten now, but much beloved by the British public for his spirited foreign policy and his low Church bishops). ‘I had the honour of dining with her ladyship at the time there was a little scandal afloat respecting his lordship’s proceedings with a governess who had made her appearance in the family of one of his relatives. The thing was in the papers, and it was nonsense pretending to ignore it. Somehow or other it was incidentally alluded to.

‘“Ah,” said her ladyship, turning to me with one of her most bewitching smiles, “that is so like my dear old man.”

‘Her ladyship was a sensible woman, and loved her gay Lothario not a bit the less for his little peccadilloes. I never saw a more harmonious pair. They were a model couple, and if they had gone to Dunmow for the flitch of bacon, they would have won it. I never could get my lady to look at things in such a sensible manner, and I do fear that at times she fretted herself a good deal, and we know that is bad for health. One of our nursemaids was a perfect Hebe. I could not resist the temptation. I believe some ill-natured female aroused my lady’s suspicions. At any rate, one cold winter’s evening she forced herself into my sanctum. I did not happen to be alone. Hebe, as I called her, was with me. We had a scene. I took the mail train that same night to Paris. The poor girl, I understand, was turned out of the house the moment I had gone. My opinion is she stole that baby out of revenge. It was missing about a month after. I must own her ladyship took every step she could to prove that the girl had stolen the child. We had detectives hard at work, and when the child was restored in a mysterious way, the matter dropped. Then, alas! the child died, and the mother too. That was many years ago, and from that day to this I never have been able to hear anything of the woman. The child is buried in the family vault, but I have been much troubled lately.’

‘As how?’

‘Why, suppose the child is not dead. That the one restored was someone else’s. That I have a son and heir suddenly about to be sprung upon me, at an inconvenient season. That would be awkward, to say the least.’

‘D--- awkward,’ was the sympathetic reply.

‘Suppose, for the sake of argument, I were to marry again, and have a family, and another son and heir, and a claimant came forward for the family title and estate.’

‘Ah, that would be a nice business for the lawyers, and a godsend for the newspapers.’

‘Undoubtedly, but a bad one for everyone else, especially if the costs were to come out of the estate.’

‘Well, the lawyers would have to be paid.’

‘You may trust them for that, but I want to keep out of their clutches. In case of a second marriage all this business will have to be gone into; but marry I will, if it is only to spite the presumptive heir, a man whom I always hated as a sneaking boy, and I don’t love the man now he fancies he is going to step into my shoes, or, if not, who feels that his family will. I am bound to marry, if only out of spite.’

‘The best thing you can do, Sir Watkin, and I wish you well through it. I am not a marrying man myself. I never was. I am getting too old for it, and I could not afford it if I wished. When we are young we have dreams of love in a cottage, and try to persuade ourselves that what is enough for one is enough for two; that there is nothing half so sweet as love’s young dream. But, oh, the terrible awakening, when the dream is over, and the grim-reality of poverty stalks in at the door, and the husband has endless toil, and the wife endless sorrow, and even then the wolf is not kept from the door; and things are worse when the happy couple come to their senses and feel what fools they have been. There is little room for love then. I believe matrimony is the sin of the age. No one can pretend now that to increase and multiply is the whole duty of man. The world is over-peopled, half of the people of England cannot get a decent living as it is. Why am I to drag a respectable woman down into the depths of poverty? Why, I ask, is she to drag me down? I have my comforts, my clubs, my amusements, my occupations, my position in society. Were I married I should lose them all, unless I married a Miss Kilmansegg with her golden leg. But your case is different, Sir Watkin. You are bound to marry. It is a duty you to owe to your ancestors, who have given you title and fortune, to continue the family.’

It may be that some may not approve of this style of talk. They may question the need of great hereditary families. They may go so far as to insinuate that the happiness of such few individuals is often inconsistent with the welfare of the many; that the system which keeps up such is an artificial one; that the true aim of legislation should be the greatest happiness of the greatest number. Respectability in wonder may well ask what next? But in the coming era respectability will have a good deal to wonder about.