Lord Kilgobbin Part 77

With a neatness and tact all his own, Atlee narrated Brumsey's blunder in a tone so simple and almost deferential, that Lord Danesbury could show the letter to any of his colleagues. The whole spirit of the doc.u.ment was regret that a very well-intentioned gentleman of good connections and irreproachable morals should be an a.s.s! Not that he employed the insufferable designation.

The Cabinet at home were on thorns lest the press--the vile Tory organs--should get wind of the case and cap the blundering government of Ireland with the almost equally gross mistake in diplomacy.

'We shall have the _Standard_ at us,' said the Premier.

'Far worse,' replied the Foreign Secretary. 'I shall have Brunow here in a white pa.s.sion to demand an apology and the recall of our man at Constantinople.'

To accuse a well-known housebreaker of a burglary that he had not committed, nor had any immediate thought of committing, is the very luckiest stroke of fortune that could befall him. He comes out not alone innocent, but injured. The persecutions by which bad men have a.s.sailed him for years have at last their ill.u.s.tration, and the calumniated saint walks forth into the world, his head high and his port erect, even though a crowbar should peep out from his coat-pocket and the jingle of false keys go with him as he went.

Far too astute to make the scandal public by the newspapers, Atlee only hinted to his chief the danger that might ensue if the secret leaked out.

He well knew that a press scandal is a nine-day fever, but a menaced publicity is a chronic malady that may go on for years.

The last lines of his letter were: 'I have made a curious and interesting acquaintance--a certain Stephanotis Bey, governor of Scutari in Albania, a very venerable old fellow, who was never at Constantinople till now. The Pasha tells me in confidence that he is enormously wealthy. His fortune was made by brigandage in Greece, from which he retired a few years ago, shocked by the sudden death of his brother, who was decapitated at Corinth with five others. The Bey is a nice, gentle-mannered, simple-hearted old man, kind to the poor, and eminently hospitable. He has invited me down to Prevesa for the pig-shooting. If I have your permission to accept the invitation, I shall make a rapid visit to Athens, and make one more effort to discover Speridionides. Might I ask the favour of an answer by telegraph? So many doc.u.ments and archives were stolen here at the time of the fire of the Emba.s.sy, that, by a timely measure of discredit, we can impair the value of all papers whatever, and I have already a ma.s.s of false despatches, notes, and telegrams ready for publication, and subsequent denial, if you advise it. In one of these I have imitated Walpole's style so well that I scarcely think he will read it without misgivings. With so much "bad bank paper" in circulation, Speridionides is not likely to set a high price on his own scrip.'

CHAPTER LIX

A LETTER-BAG

Lord Danesbury read Atlee's letter with an enjoyment not unlike the feeling an old sportsman experiences in discovering that his cover hack--an animal not worth twenty pounds--was a capital fencer; that a beast only destined to the commonest of uses should actually have qualities that recalled the steeplechaser--that the scrubby little creature with the thin neck and the shabby quarters should have a turn of speed and a 'big jump' in him, was something scarcely credible, and highly interesting.

Now political life has its handicaps like the turf, and that old jockey of many Cabinets began seriously to think whether he might not lay a little money on that dark horse Joe Atlee, and make something out of him before he was better known in 'the ring.'

He was smarting, besides, under the annoyances of that half-clever fellow Walpole, when Atlee's letter reached him, and though the unlucky Cecil had taken ill and kept his room ever since his arrival, his Excellency had never forgiven him, nor by a word or sign showed any disposition to restore him to favour.

That he was himself overwhelmed by a correspondence, and left to deal with it almost alone, scarcely contributed to reconcile him to a youth who was not really ill, but smarting, as he deemed it, under a recent defeat; and he pointed to the ma.s.s of papers which now littered his breakfast-table, and querulously asked his niece if that brilliant young gentleman upstairs could be induced to postpone his sorrows and copy a despatch.

'If it be not something very difficult or requiring very uncommon care, perhaps I could do it myself.'

'So you could, Maude, but I want you too--I shall want you to copy out parts of Atlee's last letter, which I wish to place before the Foreign Office Secretary. He ought to see what his protege Brumsey is making of it. These are the idiots who get us into foreign wars, or those apologetic movements in diplomacy, which are as bad as lost battles. What a contrast to Atlee--a rare clever dog, Atlee--and so awake, not only to one, but to every contingency of a case. I like that fellow--I like a fellow that stops all the earths! Your half-clever ones never do that; they only do enough to prolong the race; they don't win it. That bright relative of ours--Cecil--is one of those. Give Atlee Walpole's chances, and where would he be?'

A very faint colour tinged her cheek as she listened, but did not speak.

'That's the real way to put it,' continued he, more warmly. 'Say to Atlee, "You shall enter public life without any pressing need to take office for a livelihood; you shall have friends able to push you with one party, and relations and connections with the Opposition, to save you from unnecessary cavil or question; you shall be well introduced socially, and have a seat in the House before--" What's his age? five-and-twenty?'

'I should say about three-and-twenty, my lord; but it is a mere guess.'

'Three-and-twenty is he? I suspect you are right--he can't be more. But what a deal the fellow has crammed for that time--plenty of rubbish, no doubt: old dramatists and such like; but he is well up in his treaties; and there's not a speaker of eminence in the House that he cannot make contradict himself out of Hansard.'

'Has he any fortune?' sighed she, so lazily that it scarcely sounded as a question.

'I suppose not.'

'Nor any family?'

'Brothers and sisters he may have--indeed, he is sure to have; but if you mean connections--belonging to persons of admitted station--of course he has not. The name alone might show it.'

Another little sigh, fainter than before, followed, and all was still.

'Five years hence, if even so much, the plebeian name and the unknown stock will be in his favour; but we have to wade through a few dreary measures before that. I wish he was in the House--he ought to be in the House.'

'Is there a vacancy?' said she lazily.

'Two. There is Cradford, and there is that Scotch place--the something-Burg, which, of course, one of their own people will insist on.'

'Couldn't he have Cradford?' asked she, with a very slight animation.

'He might--at least if Brand knew him, he'd see he was the man they wanted.

I almost think I'll write a line to Brand, and send him some extracts of the last letter. I will--here goes.'

'If you'll tell me--'

'DEAR B.,--Read the inclosed, and say have you anybody better than the writer for your ancient borough of Cradford? The fellow can talk, and I am sure he can speak as well as he writes. He is well up in all Irish press iniquities. Better than all, he has neither prejudices nor principles, nor, as I believe, a five-pound note in the world. He is now in Greece, but I'll have him over by telegraph if you give me encouragement.

'Tell Tycross at F. O. to send Walpole to Guatemala, and order him to his post at once. G. will have told you that I shall not go back to Ireland.

The blunder of my ever seeing it was the blackest in the life of yours, DANESBUBY.'

The first letter his lords.h.i.+p opened gave him very little time or inclination to bestow more thought on Atlee. It was from the head of the Cabinet, and in the coldest tone imaginable. The writer directed his attention to what had occurred in the House the night before, and how impossible it was for any Government to depend on colleagues whose administration had been so palpably blundering and unwise. 'Conciliation can only succeed by the good faith it inspires. Once that it leaks out you are more eager to achieve a gain than confer a benefit, you cease to conciliate, and you only cajole. Now your lords.h.i.+p might have apprehended that, in this especial game, the Popish priest is your master and mine--not to add that he gives an undivided attention to a subject which we have to treat as one amongst many, and with the relations and bearings which attach it to other questions of state.

'That you cannot, with advantage to the Crown, or, indeed, to your own dignity, continue to hold your present office, is clear enough; and the only question now is in what way, consistent with the safety of the Administration, and respect for your lords.h.i.+p's high character, the relinquishment had best be made. The debate has been, on Gregory's motion, adjourned. It will be continued on Tuesday, and my colleagues opine that if your resignation was in their hands before that day, certain leaders of the Opposition would consent to withdraw their motion. I am not wholly agreed with the other members of the Cabinet on this point; but, without embarra.s.sing you by the reasons which sway my judgment, I will simply place the matter before you for your own consideration, perfectly a.s.sured, as I am, that your decision will be come to only on consideration of what you deem best for the interests of the country.

'My colleague at the Foreign Office will write to-day or to-morrow with reference to your former post, and I only allude to it now to say the unmixed satisfaction it would give the Cabinet to find that the greatest interests of Eastern Europe were once more in the keeping of the ablest diplomatist of the age, and one of the most far-sighted of modern statesmen.

'A motion for the abolition of the Irish viceroyalty is now on the notice paper, and it will be matter for consideration whether we may not make it an open question in the Cabinet. Perhaps your lords.h.i.+p would favour me with such opinions on the subject as your experiences suggest.

'The extra session has wearied out every one, and we can with difficulty make a House.--Yours sincerely, G. ANNIVEY.'

The next he opened was briefer. It ran thus:--

'DEAR DANESBURY,--You must go back at once to Turkey. That inscrutable idiot Brumsey has discovered another mare's-nest, and we are lucky if Gortschakoff does not call upon us for public apology. Brunow is outrageous and demands B.'s recall. I sent off the despatch while he was with me.

Leflo Pasha is very ill, they say dying, so that you must haste back to your old friend (query: which is he?) Kulbash, if it be not too late, as Apponyi thinks.--Yours, G.

'_P.S._--Take none of your Irish suite with you to the East. The papers are sure to note the names and attack you if you should. They shall be cared for somehow, if there be any who interest you.

'You have seen that the House was not over civil to you on Sat.u.r.day night, though A. thinks you got off well.'

'Resign!' cried he aloud, as he dashed the letter on the table. 'I think I would resign! If they asked what would tempt me to go back there, I should be sorely puzzled to name it. No; not the blue ribbon itself would induce me to face that chaos once more. As to the hint about my Irish staff, it was quite unnecessary. Not very likely, Maude, we should take Walpole to finish in the Bosporus what he has begun on the Liffey.'

He turned hastily to the _Times_, and threw his eyes over the summary of the debate. It was acrimonious and sneery. The Opposition leaders, with accustomed smoothness, had made it appear that the Viceroy's Eastern experience had misled him, and that he thought 'Tipperary was a Pashalick!'

Imbued with notions of wholesale measures of government, so applicable to Turkey, it was easy to see how the errors had affected his Irish policy.

'There was,' said the speaker, 'somebody to be conciliated in Ireland, and some one to be hanged; and what more natural than that he should forget which, or that he should make the mistake of keeping all the flattery for the rebel and the rope for the priest.' The neatness of the ill.u.s.tration took with the House, and the speaker was interrupted by 'much laughter.'

And then he went on to say that, 'as with those well-known ointments or medicines whose specific virtues lay in the enormous costliness of some of the const.i.tuents, so it must give unspeakable value to the efficacy of those healing measures for Ireland, to know that the whole British Const.i.tution was boiled down to make one of them, and every right and liberty brayed in the mortar to furnish even one dose of this precious elixir.' And then there was 'laughter' again.

'He ought to be more merciful to charlatans. Dogs do not eat dogs,'

muttered his lords.h.i.+p to himself, and then asked his niece to send Walpole to him.