The Knight Of Gwynne, Vol. 1. Lever Charles James
at his departure, turn sharply round, and say, ‘Won’t you vote with us, Knight?’ What between surprise and courtesy, he may be taken too short for reflection, and if he say but ‘Yes,’ ever so low, he’s yours. That’s my advice to you. It may seem a poor chance, but I fairly own I see no better one.”
“I should have thought rank might be acceptable in such a quarter,” said the Secretary, proudly.
“He has it, my Lord, – at least as much as would win all the respect any rank could confer; and besides, these new peerages have no prestige in their favor yet a while; we must wait for another generation. This claret is perfect now, but I should not say it were quite so delicate in flavor the first year it was bottled. The squibs and epigrams on the new promotions are remembered where the blazons of the Heralds’ College are forgotten; that unlucky banker, for instance, that you made a Viscount the other day, both his character and his credit have suffered for it.”
“What was that you allude to? – an epigram, was it?”
“Yes, very short, but scarcely sweet. Here it is: —
“‘With a name that is borrowed, a title that’s bought, – ’
you, remember, my Lord, how true both allegations are, —
“‘With a name that is borrow’d, a title that’s bought, Sir William would fain be a gentleman thought; While his Wit is mere cunning, his Courage but vapor, His Pride is but money, his Money but paper.’”
“Very severe, certainly,” said his Lordship, in the same calm tone he ever spoke. “Not your lines, Mr. Heffernan?”
“No, my Lord; a greater than Con Heffernan indited these, – one who did not scruple to reply to yourself in the House in an imitation of your own inimitable manner.”
“Oh, I know whom you mean, – a very witty person indeed,” said the Secretary, smiling; “and if we were to be laughed out of office, he might lead the Opposition. But these are very business-like, matter-of-fact days we ‘re fallen upon. The cabinet that can give away blue ribbons may afford to be indifferent to small jokers. But to revert to matters more immediate: you must start at once, Forester, for the West, see the Knight, and do whatever you can to bring him towards us. I say carte blanche for the terms; I only wish our other elevations to the peerage had half the pretension he has; and, whatever our friend Mr. Heffernan may say, I opine to the mere matter of compact, which says, so much for so much.”
“Here’s success to the mission, however its negotiations incline,” said Heffernan, as he drained off his glass and rose to depart. “We shall see you again within ten days or a fortnight, I suppose?”
“Oh, certainly; I’ll not linger in that wild district an hour longer than I must.” And so, with good night and good wishes, the party separated, – Forester to make his preparations for a journey which, in those days, was looked on as something formidable.
CHAPTER II. A TRAVELLING ACQUAINTANCE
Whatever the merits or demerits of the great question, the legislative union between England and Ireland, – and assuredly we have neither the temptation of duty nor inclination to discuss such here, – the means employed by Ministers to carry the measure through Parliament were in the last degree disgraceful. Never was bribery practised with more open effrontery, never did corruption display itself with more daring indifference to public opinion; the Treasury office was an open mart, where votes were purchased, and men sold their country, delighted, as a candid member of the party confessed, – delighted “to have a country to sell.”
The ardor of a political career, like the passion for the chase, would seem in its high excitement to still many compunctious murmurings of conscience which in calmer moments could not fail to be heard and acknowledged: the desire to succeed, that ever-present impulse to win, steels the heart against impressions which, under less pressing excitements, had been most painful to endure; and, in this way, honorable and high-minded men have often stooped to acts which, with calmer judgment to guide them, they would have rejected with indignation.
Such was Dick Forester’s position at the moment. An aide-de-camp on the staff of the Viceroy, a near relative of the Secretary, he was intrusted with many secret and delicate negotiations, affairs in which, had he been a third party, he would have as scrupulously condemned the tempter as the tempted; the active zeal of agency allayed, however, all such qualms of conscience, and every momentary pang of remorse was swallowed up in the ardor for success.
Few men will deny in the abstract the cruelty of many field-sports they persist in following; fewer still abandon them on such scruples; and while Forester felt half ashamed to himself of the functions committed to him, he would have been sorely disappointed if he had been passed over in the selection of his relative’s political adherents.
Of this nature were some of Dick Forester’s reflections as he posted along towards the West; nor was the scene through which he journeyed suggestive of pleasanter thoughts. If any of our readers should perchance be acquainted with that dreary line of country which lies along the great western road of Ireland, they will not feel surprised if the traveller’s impressions of the land were not of the brightest or fairest. The least reflective of mortals cannot pass through a dreary and poverty-stricken district without imbibing some of the melancholy which broods over the place. Forester was by no means such, and felt deeply and sincerely for the misery he witnessed on every hand, and was in the very crisis of some most patriotic scheme of benevolence, when his carriage arrived in front of the little inn of Kilbeggan. Resisting, without much violence to his inclinations, the civil request of the landlord to alight, he leaned back to resume the broken thread of his lucubrations, while fresh horses were put to. How long he thus waited, or what progress his benign devices accomplished in the mean while, this true history is unable to record; enough if we say that when he next became aware of the incidents then actually happening around him, he discovered that his carriage was standing fast in the same place as at the moment of his arrival, and the rain falling in torrents, as before.
To let down the glass and call out to the postilions was a very natural act; to do so with the addition of certain expletives not commonly used in good society, was not an extraordinary one. Forester did both; but he might have spared his eloquence and his indignation, for the postilions were both in the stable, and his servant agreeably occupied in the bar over the comforts of a smoking tumbler of punch. The merciful schemes so late the uppermost object of his thoughts were routed in a moment, and, vowing intentions of a very different purport to the whole household, he opened the door and sprang out. Dark as the night was, he could see that there were no horses to the carriage, and, with redoubled anger at the delay, he strode into the inn.
“Holloa, I say – house here! Linwood! Where the devil is the fellow?”
“Here, sir,” cried a smart-looking London servant, as he sprang from the bar with his eyes bolting out of his head from the heat of the last mouthful, swallowed in a second. “I’ve been a trying for horses, sir; but they’ve never got ‘em, though they ‘ve been promising to let us have a pair this half-hour.”
“No horses! Do you mean that they’ve not got a pair of posters in a town like this?”
“Yes, indeed, sir,” interposed a dirty waiter in a nankeen jacket; for the landlord was too indignant at the rejection of his proposal to appear again, “we’ve four pair, besides a mare in foal; but there’s a deal of business on the line this week past, and there’s a gentleman in the parlor now has taken four of them.”
“Taken four! Has he more than one carriage?”
“No, sir, a light chariot it is; but he likes to go fast.”
“And so do I – when I can,” muttered Forester, the last words being an addition almost independent of him. “Could n’t you tell him that there’s a gentleman here very much pressed to push on, and would take it as a great favor if he’d divide the team?”
“To be sure, sir, I’ll go and speak to him,” said the waiter, as he hurried away on the errand.
“I see how it is, sir,” said