Part 2

“Well, one Sunday night when we had people to supper, by some accident they were brought in. The servant handed the dish to father. Father looked at him and slowly rose to his feet. ‘Don’t you know, you idiot,’ he bellowed, ‘that I don’t like potatoes baked in their skins?’ He took them out of the dish, one by one, while the servant stood petrified, and threw them with all his might at the pictures on the walls. Each picture had its potato till the dish was empty. Then he sat down again calmly and began to eat his supper.”

“I shall certainly put down nothing in my biography which tends to cast ridicule or odium on the memory of a great man,” said Canon Spratte, frigidly. “My motto is: _De mortuis nil nisi bonum_.”

On this principle the _Life and Letters_ was written. To testify to filial admiration there were in St. Gregory’s Vicarage no less than three portraits of the first Earl Spratte, but the most characteristic was a copy of that which the Chancellor himself, with due regard to his fame and importance, had bequeathed to the National Portrait Gallery. It showed the great man seated, his hands grasping the arms of his chair with the savage vigour that was customary with him. They were strong, large hands, and the tendons stood out from the brutal force wherewith he held them. He looked the spectator full in the face, sitting very squarely, bent forward in the despotic attitude which all who had appeared before him knew so well. He wore the full-bottomed wig of his office and the gorgeous robes, edged with gold. His head was thrust out and he stared from under his shaggy brows with an expression of ruthless violence; his strong features were set in a villainous scowl; his hard, cruel mouth was clenched as though he were determined that nothing should affect his will. And the idea which the fine portrait gave, was borne out by the memoirs of the time.

Springing, notwithstanding the Canon’s grandiloquence, from the dregs of commercial life, Josiah Spratte had fought his way to the greatest prize of his calling by an indomitable will and a truculent savagery that spared neither enemies nor friends. Though endowed by nature with no great subtlety of mind, he had a gift of fluent speech, an imperturbable self-confidence, and a physique of extraordinary vigour. He was unhampered by any thought for the susceptibilities of others, and he was regardless of good manners. He bullied his way to the Woolsack by the weight of his personality and the harsh roar of his voice. From the outset of his career, as a junior, he treated his leaders with unhidden contempt. He used the solicitors who gave him briefs like vermin, dealing with them as might a harsh master with a set of ignorant and rebellious school-boys. They hated him, but were impressed withal, and quickly brought him more work than he could do. Then, beginning to feel his power, he browbeat the court so that weak judges were like wax in his hands and juries trembled at his ferocious glance. He went into Parliament and trampled impartially upon his associates and his opponents. He excited more hatred than any one of his generation, for he was insolent, overbearing, and impatient of contradiction; but in a short while the Government was forced to make him Attorney-General. From the beginning his mind had been set on the ultimate goal, and he waited till the Chancellor of that time died. This was the most critical point of his life, for all concerned understood perfectly at what Josiah Spratte aimed; but now all the bitterness, anger, and loathing he had so wilfully aroused, were banded against him; and he had to fight as well against the rivalry of some and the bitterness of others. But like a lion at bay, with magnificent self-confidence, he squared himself to bear down all obstacles. The Government was undecided. A certain eminent lawyer, Sir Robert Parkleigh, had claims upon it which were undeniable. Having held office in a previous administration he had waived his right to promotion on the understanding that his reward should be great thereafter: he was a man of vigorous understanding, learned, urbane and of great family. The appointment would be very popular. But the Attorney-General was not a man to be trifled with, and a go-between was sent unofficially to learn his views.

“I suppose Parkleigh will get the Chancellorship,” said this person, in the course of an amiable conversation.

“You suppose nothing of the sort,” shouted Josiah Spratte. His face grew red with passion and his scowl deepened as the veins of his forehead stood out like knotted cords. He fixed on the man those piercing eyes which seemed to read into the soul, discovering shameful secrets. “You’ve been sent to find out what I thought about the Chancellorship? It’s what I suspected. Don’t deny it!”

Beads of sweat stood on the other’s brow as the Attorney-General towered over him, threatening and peremptory. He vowed he had received no such mission.

“Don’t deny it, I tell you,” cried Josiah Spratte. Then, furiously, he walked up and down the room. “Tell them,” he hissed at length, with undescribable venom, “Tell them that if Parkleigh is made Chancellor, I’ll kick the Government out. By God, they shan’t stay in a month!”

While the appointment was pending, a great lady, suffering under some brutal affront, sought to beard the lion.

“Do you know what people are saying about you, Mr. Attorney? They’re wondering who this sprat is that we are asked to swallow.”

Sir Josiah looked at her.

“Tell your friends, Madam, to be thankful the sprat is not a whale, because even if he were, by God they’d have to swallow him. And what’s more, they’d have to pretend they liked him!”

Shortly afterwards the Prime Minister wrote a very civil note to his subordinate offering him the much-coveted place. Josiah Spratte was raised to the Peerage. A second term of office was rewarded by new honour, and he became Earl Spratte of Beachcombe and Viscount Rallington.

But the great lawyer carried also into private life the tones with which he cowed juries and sent witnesses fainting from the box. He never spoke but to command and gave no order without a string of oaths. When he fell into a temper, which happened several times a day, he could be heard from top to bottom of the house. His wife, his servants, trembled before him; his children in his presence spoke in whispers, and he took pleasure in humiliating them with brutal raillery. He met his match but twice. The first time was at his club when he was playing whist. This was his favourite relaxation, and he was always to be found in the card-room about six o’clock waiting for a rubber. One day by chance a fourth could not be found, and the Chancellor himself went into the smoking-room to look for a player. It was a sunny afternoon in July, and the place was deserted, except for a young guardsman who sat comfortably sleeping in an arm-chair. Without hesitation Lord Spratte shook him violently till he was wide awake, and asked if he knew the game. He answered that he played very badly and would much sooner resume his nap; but Lord Spratte declined to hear excuses, and dragged him by sheer force into the card-room. The soldier had only spoken the truth when he described himself as a bad player, and since he was the Chancellor’s partner, things did not go very smoothly. The elder man took no trouble to hide his annoyance when the other made a mistake, and expressed his opinion of the subaltern’s intelligence with more bluntness than civility.

“Oh, confound you, shut up!” cried the guardsman at last. “How d’you expect a fellow to play if you go on ragging him like a fish-wife?”

“I don’t think you know who I am, sir,” answered the Chancellor, with frowning brows.

“Oh yes, I do! You’re the Lord Chancellor, aren’t you? But you might mind your manners for all that. You’re not in your dirty police-court now.”

For the rest of that rubber the distinguished lawyer never opened his mouth.

But next time he was worsted in debate the results were more serious. Lord Spratte, still restless after the attainment of his ambition, was seized with the desire to found a great family; and on this account wished his eldest son, who had assumed the title of Viscount Rallington, to marry a certain heiress of important connections. The lady was not unwilling, but Rallington stubbornly refused. At first, white with rage, Lord Spratte asked how he dared to cross him; and he showered upon his son that abundant vituperation of which he was the finest master in England. But without effect. The Chancellor was so astounded at this display of spirit that for once in his life he condescended to argue. His son stood firm. Then the old man burst out again with violent temper.

“And who the devil are you?” he cried. “Haven’t I raised you from the gutter? What would you be without me? By God, you shall do whatever I tell you.”

Rallington lost all patience. He put off the timidity with which for years he had endured so much and went up to his father.

“Look here, don’t talk to me like that. I’ll marry a barmaid if I choose, and be damned to you!”

The Chancellor’s hair stood on end with wrath, and he gasped for breath. His passion was such that for a minute he could not speak. Then his son, driven at length to open rebellion, poured out the hatred which had so long accumulated. He reminded him of the tyranny with which he had used his whole family, and the terror in which he had held them. He had robbed them of all freedom, so that they were slaves to his every whim. To his angry violence and to his selfishness all their happiness had been sacrificed.

“You’ve been a bullying ruffian all your life, and no one has had the pluck to stand up to you. I’m sick of it, and I won’t stand it any more. D’you hear?”

At last the Chancellor found words, and beset his son with a torrent of blasphemy, and with foul-mouthed abuse.

“Be quiet!” said the other, standing up to him. “How dare you speak to me like that! It’s no good trying to bully me now.”

“By God, I’ll knock you down.”

Rallington thrust his face close to his father’s, and for a moment fear seized the old man. Here at length was some one whom he could not cow, and he hated his son.

“You’d better not touch me. You can’t thrash me now as you could when I was a boy. I recommend you to take great care.”

Lord Spratte raised his hands, but a trembling came suddenly upon him, so that he could not move.

“Get out of my house,” he screamed. “Get out of my house.”

“I’m only too glad to go.”

The arteries beat in the old man’s head so that he thought some horrible thing would happen to him. He poured out brandy and drank it, but it tasted like water. He sat for hours with clenched fists and scowling brow; and at last with a savage laugh he took his will and with his own hand wrote a codicil in which he deprived his eldest son of every penny he could. This relieved him and he breathed more freely. Presently he called his family together and told them without a word of explanation that Rallington was his son no longer.

“If any of you mention his name, or if I hear that you have had any communication with him, you shall go as he went.”

The pair never met again, for Rallington went abroad and died, unmarried, one month before his father. Thomas, the next son, who had been known all his life as Tommy Tiddler, succeeded the Chancellor as second Earl Spratte of Beachcombe.

* * * * *

But the excellent Theodore, with proper devotion, took care in his biography not even to hint at this characteristic violence. He wrote with a flowing, somewhat pompous style; and the moral pointed by these two handsome volumes was that with uprightness, sobriety, and due allegiance to the Church by law established, it was possible to reach the highest honours. The learned Canon traced the ancestry of his family to very remote periods. He had no difficulty in convincing himself that the plebeian surname was but a vulgar error for _des Prats_; and to the outspoken ridicule of his elder brother, was able after much study to announce that a member of the English branch of the Montmorencys had assumed the name in the seventeenth century upon his marriage with a French heiress. With these distinguished antecedents it was no wonder that Josiah Spratte should appear a benevolent old gentleman of mild temper and pious disposition, apt to express himself in well-balanced periods. He would have made an excellent churchwarden or a secretary to charitable institutions, but why precisely he should have become Lord Chancellor of England nowhere appeared. In short, the eloquent divine, with the best intentions in the world, wrote a life of his father which was not only perfectly untrue, but also exceedingly tedious.

The book had a certain success with old ladies, who put it beside their works of devotion and had it read to them in hours of mental distress. Sometimes, when they were persons of uncommon importance, the Canon himself consented to read to them; and then, so spirited was his delivery, so well-modulated his voice, it seemed as improving as one of his own sermons. But the _Life and Letters_ certainly had no more assiduous nor enthusiastic reader than the author thereof.

“I don’t think I’m a vain man,” he remarked, “but I can’t help feeling this is exactly how a biography ought to be written.”

There was a knock at the door, and the Canon, replacing the volume at which he had glanced, took out in its stead the first book of Hooker’s _Ecclesiastical Polity_. He had far too keen a sense of decorum to appear one man to the world and to his immediate relatives another. No unforeseen accident had ever found him other than self-contained, oratorical, and didactic. Not even his family was privileged to see him _en robe de chambre_.

It was his son who knocked. Lionel had been taking an early service at St. Gregory’s, and had not yet seen his father.

“Come in, come in,” said the Canon. “Good morning, Lionel.”

“I hope I’m not disturbing you, father. I want to book some certificates.”

“You can never disturb me when you are fulfilling the duties of your office, my boy. Pray sit down.”

He put the _Ecclesiastical Polity_ open on the desk.

“Hulloa, are you reading this?” asked the curate. “I’ve not looked at it since I was at Oxford.”

“Then you make a mistake, Lionel. Hooker’s _Ecclesiastical Polity_ is not only a monument of the English Church, but also a masterwork of the English language. That is my complaint with the clergy of the present day, that they neglect the great productions of their fathers. Stevenson you read, and you read Renan, atheist though he is; but Hooker you have not looked at since you were at Oxford.”

“I see that Andover is dead, father,” said Lionel, to change the conversation.

“I look upon it as an uncommon happy release.”

“I wonder if they really will offer you the bishopric?”

“My dear boy, that is not a subject upon which I allow my thoughts to dwell. I will not conceal from you that, as the youngest surviving son of the late Lord Chancellor, I think I have some claims upon my country. And I have duties towards it as well, so that if the bishopric is offered to me I shall not hesitate to accept. You remember St. Paul’s words to Timothy? _This is a true saying, if a man desire the office of a bishop he desireth a good work._ But in these matters there is so much ignoble wire-pulling, so much backstairs influence to which my character is not suited and to which I could not bring myself to descend.”

Presently, however, when Canon Spratte strolled along Piccadilly on the way to his club, it occurred to him that the day before he had given his tailor an order for two pairs of trousers. His circumstances had taught him neither to spend money recklessly, nor to despise a certain well-bred economy; and it was by no means impossible that he would have no use for those particular articles of clothing. He walked up Savile Row.

“Mr. Marsden, will you inquire whether those garments I ordered yesterday have been cut yet?”

The tailor passed the question down his speaking-tube.

“No, sir,” he said. “Not yet.”

“Then will you delay them till further notice?”

“Certainly, sir.”

Canon Spratte was going out of the shop when he noticed on a fashion plate the costume of a bishop.

“Ah, do you make gaiters, Mr. Marsden?” said he, stopping.

“Yes, sir.”

“They’re very difficult things to cut. So many of my friends wear very ill-fitting gaiters. Fine day, isn’t it? Good-morning.”

III

When Canon Spratte reached the _Athenæum_ he found a note waiting for him.

_MY DEAR CANON_,

_I should very much like to have a little talk with you. I find it difficult to say in so many words upon what topic, but perhaps you will guess. I think it better to see you before I do anything further, and therefore should be grateful if you could give me five minutes as soon as possible._

_Yours ever faithfully,_

_WROXHAM._

He read it, and a smile of self-satisfaction played quickly on his lips. He divined at once that the writer wished to ask Winnie to marry him.

“I foresaw it when the boy was fourteen,” he exclaimed.

His own wife had died ten years before. She was a pale, mild creature, and had been somewhat overwhelmed by her husband’s greatness. When he was still a curate, handsome and debonair, the Canon had fallen in love with the youngest daughter of Lord Frampstone. It was an alliance, (Theodore Spratte would never have condescended to a marriage,) of which the Chancellor thoroughly approved; and the girl, dazzled by her suitor’s courtly brilliance, had succumbed at once to his fascinations. She remained dazzled to the end of her life. He never unbent. He treated her always as though she were a congregation. Even in the privacies of domestic life he was talking to a multitude; and his wife, if sometimes she wished he would descend to her level and vouchsafe to be familiar, never ceased blindly to admire him. She sighed for a little simple love, but the Canon could not forget that he was a son of a great Lord Chancellor and she the daughter of a noble house. She was confused by his oratorical outbursts, his wit, his grandiose ways; and gradually, unnoticed in the white brilliance of her husband’s glory, she vanished out of existence. The Canon’s only complaint was that his wife had never lived up to the position which was hers by right. She cared nothing for social success, and was happiest in the bosom of her family.

“Upon my word, my dear, you might as well be the wife of a dissenting minister,” he exclaimed often.

But her death gave him an opportunity to prove his own regard and to make up for her previous shortcomings. He ordered a funeral of the utmost magnificence; and the gentle lady, who had longed only for peace, was buried with as great parade as if she had been a princess of the blood. On a large brass tablet, emblazoned with his own arms and with those of her family, the lamenting husband, who prided himself not a little on his skilful Latinity, placed a Ciceronian epitaph which caused amazement and admiration in all beholders.

The recollection of his wife flashed at this moment through the Canon’s mind, and putting his own sentiments into her meek breast, he flourished the letter and chuckled to himself.

“I wish she were alive to see this day.”

Lord Wroxham, left fatherless in early boyhood, was head of a family than which there was none in England more ancient and more distinguished. Canon Spratte called a servant.

“Will you ask the porter if Lord Wroxham is in the club?”

“Yes, sir. I saw him come in half-an-hour ago.”

“Ha!”

Canon Spratte put a cigarette between his lips and jauntily went to the smoking-room. He caught sight at once of his prospective son-in-law, but made no sign that he observed him. He strolled across the room.

“Canon Spratte!” said the young man, rising and turning very red.

“Ah, my dear boy,” said the Canon, cordially holding out his hand. “Are you here? I’m delighted to see you. I was just going to write you a note.”

Wroxham was a young man of five-and-twenty, slender and of moderate height, with short crisp hair and a small moustache. His eyes were prominent and short-sighted, and he wore gold-rimmed _pince-nez_. His appearance was a little insignificant, but his pleasant, earnest face, if not handsome, was very kindly. He was nervous, and had evidently no great facility in expressing himself.

Canon Spratte, aware of his confusion, took his arm and led him to a more secluded place.

“Come and sit in the window, dear boy, and tell me what it is you wish to say.”

When the Canon desired to be charming, none could excel him. There was such a sympathetic warmth in his manner that, if you were not irritated by a slightly patronizing air, your heart never failed to go out to him.

“Have a cigarette,” he said, producing a golden case of considerable value. “Give me a match, there’s a good fellow.”

He beamed on the youth, but still Wroxham hesitated.

“You got my note, Canon?”

“Yes, yes. So charming of you to write to me. I’ve known you so long, dear boy--if there’s anything I can do for you, command me.”

Wroxham had often come with Lionel from Eton to spend part of his holidays in the Canon’s hospitable house.

“Well, the fact is--I want to ask Winnie to marry me, with your permission.”

Canon Spratte restrained the smile of triumph which struggled to gain possession of his mouth. When he answered, his manner was perfectly sympathetic, but somewhat grave as befitted the occasion.

“My dear Harry, I will not conceal from you that your sentiments have not been altogether hidden from me. And you will understand that if I had not approved of them I should scarcely have allowed you to come so frequently to my house.”

Wroxham smiled, but found nothing very apposite to say.

“I have had for years the very greatest affection for you; and of late, since you took your seat in the House of Lords, I have had also esteem and admiration. It is an excellent sign when a young man of your position throws himself so earnestly into affairs of State. I think you have a great future before you.”

He put up his hand to request silence, as he saw the other wished to make some remark. Canon Spratte did not suffer interruption kindly.

“But in these matters one is a father first and last. I have reason to believe that you are a steady young man, without vices, and I think you have an excellent temper, than which nothing is more necessary in married life. But you must allow me to inquire a little into your circumstances.”

The young man very simply explained that he possessed three houses, a great many acres of land, and an income of twenty thousand a year. Canon Spratte listened gravely.

“I should like to leave all the affairs about settlements in your hands, Canon. I’ll do whatever you think fit.”

“All that sounds very satisfactory,” answered the Canon, at last. “I am not the man to go into pecuniary details. Thank God, I can honestly say I’m not mercenary, and I think we can leave all business details to our respective lawyers. My dear boy, I give you full permission to pay your addresses to Winnie.”

Wroxham flushed, and taking off his glasses, rubbed them with a handkerchief.

“Do you think she cares for me?”

The Canon took both his hands.

“My dear fellow, you need have no fear on that point. Of course, I leave my children complete liberty of action, but I don’t think I am indiscreet in assuring you that Winnie is--well, very fond of you.”

“I’m so glad,” said Wroxham, a happy smile breaking on his lips.

“Come to luncheon to-morrow and have a talk with my little girl afterwards. I’ll arrange it so that you shall be undisturbed.”

“It’s awfully good of you.”

“Not at all! Not at all! But now I really must be running off. I’m lunching with Lady Vizard, to meet the Princess of Wartburg-Hochstein.”

IV