Sir Brook Fossbrooke Volume Ii Part 9

"There were men in the Administration once, sir, in whom I had that confidence I could have placed my office in their hands with the full conviction it would have been worthily conferred,--men above the pa.s.sions of party, and who saw in public life other ambitions than the struggles for place. I see these men no longer. They who now compose the Cabinet inspire no trust; with them I will not treat."

Exhausted by this outburst of pa.s.sion, he lay back in his chair, breathing heavily, and to all seeming overcome.

"Shall I get you anything, my Lord?" whispered Sewell.

The old man smiled faintly, and whispered, "Nothing."

"I wish, my Lord," said Sewell, as he bent over his chair,--"I wish I could dare to speak what is pa.s.sing in my mind; and that I had that place in your Lords.h.i.+p's esteem which might give my words any weight."

"Speak--say on," said he, faintly.

"What I would say is this, my Lord," said Sewell, with increased force, "that these attacks on your Lords.h.i.+p are in a great measure provoked by yourself."

"Provoked by me! and how, sir?" cried the Chief, angrily.

"In this wise, my Lord. You have always held your libellers so cheap that you actually encourage their a.s.saults. You, in the full vigor of your faculties, alive to the latest events, interested in all that science discovers or invention develops, persist in maintaining, both in your mode of living and your companions.h.i.+p, a continued reference to the past. With a wit that could keep pace with the brightest, and an imagination more alive than the youngest men can boast, you vote yourself old, and live with the old. Why, my Lord, is it any wonder that they try you on the indictment you have yourself drawn up? I have only to ask you to look across the Channel and see the men--your own contemporaries, your colleagues too--who escape these slanders, simply because they keep up with the modes and habits of the day. Their equipages their retinues, their dress, are all such as fas.h.i.+on sanctions. Nothing in their appearance reminds the world that they lived with the grandfathers of those around them; and I say, my Lord, if these men can do this, how much easier would it be for you to do it? You, whose quick intellect the youngest in vain try to cope with; you who are readier in repartee,--younger, in fact, in all the freshness of originality and in all the play of fancy, than the smartest wits of the day.

"My Lord, it has not been without a great effort of courage I have dared to speak thus boldly; but I have so often talked the subject over with my wife, and she, with a woman's wit, has so thoroughly entered into the theme, that I felt, even at the hazard of your displeasure, I ought to risk the telling you." After a pause, he added: "It was but yesterday my wife said, 'If papa,'--you know, my Lord, it is so she calls you in secret,--'if papa will only cease to dress like a church dignitary, he will not look above fifty,--fifty four or five at most.'"

"I own," said the Judge, slowly, "it has often struck me as strange how little animadversion the Press bestowed upon my English colleagues for their advanced years, and how persistently they commented on mine; and yet the history of Ireland does not point to the early decline of intellectual power. They are fond of showing the characteristics that separate us, but they have never adduced this one."

"I hope I have your Lords.h.i.+p's forgiveness for my boldness," said Sewell, with humility.

"You have more, sir,--you have my grat.i.tude for an affectionate solicitude. I will think over what you have said when I am alone."

"It will make me a very proud man if I find that my words have had weight with you. I am to tell Beattie, my Lord, that you are engaged, and cannot see him?" said he, moving towards the door.

"Yes. Say that I am occupied with my reply to this slander. Tell him if he likes to dine with me at six--"

"I beg pardon, my Lord--but my wife hoped you would dine with us to-day.

We have a few young soldiers, and two or three pretty women coming to us--"

"Make my compliments to Mrs. Sewell, and say I am charmed to accept her invitation."

Sewell took his leave with every token of respectful grat.i.tude. But no sooner had he reached the stairs than he burst into a fit of laughter.

"Would any one have believed that the old fool would have swallowed the bait? I was so terrified at my own temerity, I 'd have given the world to be out of the sc.r.a.pe! I declare, if my mother could be got rid of, we 'd have him leading something of sixteen to the altar. Well, if this acute attack of youth does n't finish him, he must have the const.i.tution of an elephant."

CHAPTER VII. HOW TO MEET A SCANDAL

When the Government of the day had found that all their efforts to induce the Chief Baron to retire from the Bench were failures,--when they saw him firmly decided to accept nothing less than that price which they would not pay,--with a littleness which, it is but fair to own, took its origin from Mr. Cholmondely Balfour, they determined to pa.s.s upon him a slight which he could not but feel most painfully.

It happened in this wise. At the time I speak of Ireland was suffering from one of those spasmodic attacks of rebellion which every now and then occur through the chronic disaffection of the country, just as certain eruptions are thrown out over the body to relieve, as is supposed, some feverish tendencies of the system.

Now, although the native thinks no more of these pa.s.sing troubles than would an old Indian of an attack of the "p.r.i.c.kly heat," to the English mind they always suggest danger, tend to increase the military force of the kingdom, and bring on in Parliament one of those Irish debates--a political sham fight--where, though there is a good deal of smoke, bustle, and confusion, n.o.body is hurt, nor, if the truth be told, is any one the better when it is over.

Through such a paroxysm was Ireland now pa.s.sing. It matters little to our purpose to give it a specific name, for the Whiteboy or the Rockite, the Terry-alt, the Ribbonman, or the Fenian are the same; there being only one character in this dreary drama, however acute Viceroys and energetic secretaries may affect to think they are "a.s.sisting" at the representation of a perfectly new piece, with new scenery, dresses, and decorations.

In ordinary disturbances in Ireland, whenever they rose above the dignity of local mischief, the a.s.sistance and sympathy of France was always used as a sort of menace to England. It was a threat very certain to irritate, if it did no more. As, however, by course of time, we grew to form closer relations with France,--to believe, or affect to believe,--I am not very sure which,--that we had outlived old grudges, and had become rather ashamed of old rivalries, France could not be employed as the bugbear it had once been. Fortunately for Irish rebellion, America was quite prepared to take the vacant post, and with this immense additional gain, that the use of our own language enabled our disaffected in the States to revile us with a freedom and a vigor which, if there be that benefit which is said to exist in "seeing ourselves as others see us," ought unquestionably to redound to our future good.

The present movement had gone so far as to fill the public mind with terror, and our jails with suspected traitors. To try these men a special commission had been named by the Government, from which, contrary to custom, the Chief Baron had been omitted. Nor was this all.

The various newspapers supposed to be organs, or at least advocates, of the Ministry, kept up a continuous stream of comment on the grave injury to a country, at a crisis like that then present, to have one of its chief judicial seats occupied by one whose age and infirmities totally disabled him from rendering those services which the Crown and the nation alike had a right to expect from him.

Stories, for the most part untrue, of the Chief Baron's mistakes on the Bench appeared daily. Imaginary suitors, angry solicitors, and such-like--the Bar was too dignified to join in the cry--wrote letters averring this, that, or the other cruel wrong inflicted upon them through the "senile incapacity of this obstructive and vain old man."

Never was there a less adroit tactic. Every insult they hurled at him only suggested a fresh resolve to hold his ground. To attack such a man was to evoke every spark of vigorous resistance in his nature, to stimulate energies which nothing short of outrage could awaken, and to call into activity powers which, in the ordinary course of events, would have fallen into decline and decay. As he expressed it, "in trying to extinguish the lamp they have only trimmed the wick." When, through Sewell's pernicious counsels, the old Judge determined to convince the world of his judicial fitness by coming out a young man, dressed in the latest fas.h.i.+on, and affecting in his gait and manner the last fopperies of the day, all the reserve which respect for his great abilities had imposed was thrown aside, and the papers now a.s.sailed him with a ridicule that was downright indecent. The print shops, too, took up the theme, and the windows were filled with caricatures of every imaginable degree of absurdity.

There was one man to whom these offensive attacks gave pain only inferior to what they inflicted on the Chief himself,--this was his friend Haire. To have lived to see the great object of all his homage thus treated by an ungrateful country, seemed to him the direst of all calamities. Over and over did he ponder with himself whether such depravity of public feeling portended the coming decline of the nation, and whether such gross forgetfulness of great services was not to be taken as a sign of approaching dissolution.

It was true that since the Sewells had taken up their residence at the Priory he had seen but little of his distinguished friend. All the habits, the hours, and the a.s.sociations of the house had been changed.

The old butler, who used to receive Haire when he arrived on terms of humble friends.h.i.+p, telling him in confidence, before he went in, the temper in which he should find the Judge, what crosses or worries had recently befallen him, and what themes it might be discreet to avoid,--he was pensioned off, and in his place a smart Englishman, Mr.

Cheetor, now figured,--a gentleman whose every accent, not to speak of his dress, would have awed poor Haire into downright subjection. The large back hall, through which you pa.s.sed into the garden,--a favorite stroll of Haire's in olden times,--was now a billiard room, and generally filled with fine ladies and gentlemen engaged in playing; the very sight of a lady with a billiard cue, and not impossibly a cigarette, being shocks to the old man's notions only short of seeing the fair delinquent led off to the watchhouse. The drowsy quietude of the place, so grateful after the crush and tumult of a city, was gone; and there was the clang of a pianoforte, the rattle of the billiard b.a.l.l.s, the loud talk and loud laughter of morning visitors, in its stead. The quaint old gray liveries were changed for coats of brilliant claret color. Even to the time-honored gla.s.s of brandy-and-water which welcomed Haire as he walked out from town there was revolution; and the measure of the old man's discomfiture was complete as the silvery-tongued butler offered him his choice of hock and seltzer or claret-cup!

"Does the Chief like all this? Is it possible that at his age these changes can please him?" muttered Haire, as he sauntered one day homeward, sad and dispirited; and it would not have been easy to resolve the question.

There was so much that flattered the old Judge's vanity,--so much that addressed itself to that consciousness that his years were no barrier to his sentiments, that into all that went on in life, whatever of new that men introduced into their ways or habits, he was just as capable of entering as the youngest amongst them; and this avidity to be behind in nothing showed itself in the way he would read the sporting papers, and make himself up in the odds at Newmarket and the last news of the Cambridge Eleven. It is true, never was there a more ready-money payment than the admiration he reaped from all this; and enthusiastic cornets went so far as to lament how the genius that might have done great things at Doncaster had been buried in a Court of Exchequer. "I wish he 'd tell us who 'll win the Riggles-worth"--"I 'd give a fifty to know what he thinks of Polly Perkins for the cup," were the dropping utterances of mustachioed youths who would have turned away inattentive on any mention of his triumphs in the Senate or at the Bar.

"I declare, mother," said Sewell, in one of those morning calls at Merrion Square in which he kept her alive to the events of the Priory,--"I declare, mother, if we could get _you_ out of the way, I think he 'd marry again. He 's uncommonly tender towards one of those Lascelles girls, nieces of the Viceroy, and I am certain he would propose for her."

"I'm sure I'm very sorry I should be an obstacle to him, especially as it prevents him from crowning the whole folly of his life."

"She's a great horsewoman, and he has given me a commission to get him a saddle-horse to ride with her."

"Which of course you will not."

"Which of course I will, though. I'm going about it now. He has been very intractable about stable matters. .h.i.therto; the utmost we could do was to exchange the old long-tailed coach-horses, and get rid of that vile old chariot; but if we get him once launched into riding hacks, we 'll have something to mount us."

"And when his granddaughter returns, will not all go back to the former state?"

"First of all, she's not coming. There's a split in that quarter, and in all likelihood an irremediable one."

"How so? What has she done?"

"She has fallen in love with a young fellow as poor as herself; and her brother Tom has written to the Chief to know if he sees any reason why they should not marry. The very idea of an act of such insubordination as falling in love of course outraged him. He took my wife into his counsels besides, and she, it would appear, gave a most unfavorable character of the suitor,--said he was a gambler,--and we all know what a hopeless thing that is!--that his family had thrown him off; that he had gone through the whole of his patrimony, and was, in short, just as bad 'a lot' as could well be found."

"She was quite right to say so," burst in Lady Lendrick. "I really do not see how she could have done otherwise."

"Perhaps not; the only possible objection was, that there was no truth in it all."

"Not true!"

"Not a word of it, except what relates to his quarrel with his family.

As for the rest, he is pretty much like other fellows of his age and time of life. He has done the sort of things they all do, and hitherto has come fairly enough out of them."

"But what motive could she have had for blackening him?"

"Ask her, mother," said he, with a grin of devilish spite-fulness,--"just ask her; and even if she won't tell you, your woman's wit will find out the reason without her aid."