"If the Knight does n't like to vote with the Government, of course there is no use in Bob doing it; so he 'll be a Patriot, my Lady,--and why not? Ha! ha! ha! they 'll be breaking the windows all over Dublin, and he may as well save the gla.s.s!--ay!"

"Forgive me, sir, if I cannot see how this has any reference to my family."

"I'm coming to it--coming fast, my Lady. We were thinking then how we could help the Knight, and do a good turn to ourselves; and the way we hit upon was this: to reduce the interest on the whole debt to five per cent, make a settlement of half the amount on Miss Darcy, and then, if the young lady had no objection to my grandson, Beecham--"

"Stop, sir," said Lady Eleanor; "I never could suppose you meant to offend me intentionally,--I cannot permit of your doing so through inadvertence or ignorance. I will therefore request that this conversation may cease. Age has many privileges, Mr. Hickman, but there are some it can never confer: one of these is the right to insult a lady and--a mother."

The last words were sobbed rather than spoken: affection and pride, both outraged together, almost choked her utterance, and Lady Eleanor sat down trembling in every limb, while the old man, only half conscious of the emotion he had evoked, peered at her in stolid amazement through his spectacles.

Any one who knew nothing of old Hickman's character might well have pitied his perplexity at that moment; doubts of every kind and sort pa.s.sed through his mind as rapidly as his timeworn faculties permitted, and at last he settled down into the conviction that Lady Eleanor might have thought his demand respecting fortune too exorbitant, although not deeming the proposition, in other respects, ineligible. To this conclusion the habits of his own mind insensibly disposed him.

"Ay, my Lady," said he, after a pause, "'tis a deal of money, no doubt; but it won't be going out of the family, and that's more than could be said if you refuse the offer."

"Sir!" exclaimed Lady Eleanor, in a tone that to any one less obtusely endowed would have been an appeal not requiring repet.i.tion; but the old man had only senses for his own views, and went on:--

"They tell me that Mr. Lionel is just as free with his money as his father; throws it out with both hands, horse-racing and high play, and every extravagance he can think of. Well, and if that's true, my Lady, sure it 's well worth while to think that you 'll have a decent house to put your head under when your daughter's married to Beecham. He has no wasteful ways, but can look after the main chance as well as any boy ever I seen. This notion about Miss Helen is the only thing like expense I ever knew him take up, and sure"--here he dropped his voice to soliloquy--"sure, maybe, that same will pay well, after all--ay!"

"My head! my head is bursting with blood," sighed Lady Eleanor; but the last words alone reached Hickman's ears.

"Ay! blood's a fine thing, no doubt of it, but, faith, it won't pay interest on a mortgage; nor I never heard of it staying the execution of a writ! 'T is little good blood I had in my veins, and yet I contrived to sc.r.a.pe a trifle together notwithstanding--ay!"

"I do not feel myself very well, Mr. Hickman," said Lady Eleanor; "may I request you will send my daughter to me, and excuse me if I wish you a good morning."

"Shall I hint anything to the young lady about what we were saying?"

said he, in a tone of most confidential import.

"At your peril, sir!" said Lady Eleanor, with a look that at once seemed to transfix him; and the old man, muttering his adieu, hobbled from the room, while Lady Eleanor leaned back in her chair, overcome by the conflict of her emotions.

"Is he gone?" said Lady Eleanor, faintly, as her daughter entered.

"Yes, Mamma; but are you ill? You look dreadfully pale and agitated."

"Wearied--fatigued, my dear, nothing more. Tell Captain Forester I must release him from his engagement to us to-day; I cannot come to dinner."

And, so saying, she covered her eyes with her hand, and seemed lost in deep thought.

CHAPTER XIV. "THE MECHANISM OP CORRUPTION"

"Well, Heffernan," said Lord Castlereagh, as they sat over their wine alone in a small dining-room of the Secretary's Lodge,--"well, even with Hackett, we shall be run close. I don't fancy the thought of another division so nearly matched; our fellows don't see the honor of a Thermopylae."

"Very true, my Lord; and the desertions are numerous, as they always will be when men receive the bounty before they are enlisted."

"Yes; but what would you do? We make a man a Commissioner or a sinecurist for his vote,--he vacates his seat on taking office; and, instead of standing the brunt of another election, coolly says, 'That, differing as he must do from his const.i.tuents on an important measure, he restores the trust they had committed into his hands--'"

"'He hopes unsullied,'--don't forget that, my Lord."

"Yes,--'he hopes unsullied,--and prefers to retire from the active career of politics, carrying with him the esteem and regard of his former friends, rather than endanger their good opinion by supporting measures to which they are conscientiously opposed.'"

"Felicitous conjuncture, that unites patriotism and profit!" exclaimed Heffernan. "Happy man, that can draw tears from the Mob, and two thousand a year from the Treasury!"

"And yet I see no remedy for it," sighed the Secretary.

"There is one, notwithstanding; but it demands considerable address and skill. You have always been too solicitous about the estimation of the men you bought were held in,--always thinking of what would be said and thought of them. You pushed the system so far that the fellows themselves caught up the delusion, and began to fancy they had characters to lose. All this was wrong,--radically, thoroughly wrong.

When the butcher smears a red streak round a lamb's neck,--we call it 'raddling' in Ireland, my Lord,--any child knows he 's destined for the knife; now, when you 'raddled' your flock, you wanted the world to believe you were going to make pets of them, and you said as much, and so often that the beasts themselves believed it, and began cutting their gambols accordingly. Why not have paraded them openly to the shambles?

It was their bleating you wanted, and nothing else."

"You forget, Heffernan, how many men would have refused our offers if we had not made a show, at least, of respect for their scruples."

"I don't think so, my Lord; you offered a bonus on prudery, and hence you met nothing but coyness. I'd have taken another line with them."

"And what might that be?" asked Lord Castlereagh, eagerly.

"Compromise them," said Heffernan, sternly. "I never knew the man yet, nor woman either, that you could n't place in such a position of entanglement that every effort to go right should seem a struggle to do wrong; and _vice versa_. You don't agree with me! Well, my Lord, I ask you if, in your experience of public men, you have ever met one less likely to be captured in this way than my friend Darcy?"

"From what I have seen and heard of the Knight of Gwynne, I acknowledge his character has all those elements of frankness and candor which should except him from such an embarra.s.sment."

"Well, he 's in the net already," said Heffernan, rubbing his hands gleefully.

"Why, you told me he refused to join us, and actually saw through your negotiation."

"So he did, and, in return for his keen-sightedness, I 've compromised him with his party,--you did n't perceive it, but the trick succeeded to perfection. When the Knight told me that he would not vote on the Union, or any measure pertaining to it, I waited for Ponsonby's motion, and made Holmes and Dawson spread the rumor at Daly's and through town that Darcy was to speak on the division, well knowing he would not rise.

About eleven o'clock, just as Toler sat down, Prendergast got up to reply, but there was a shout of 'Darcy! Darcy!' and Prendergast resumed his seat amid great confusion. At that moment I left the bench beside you, and walked over to Darcy's side of the House, and whispered a few words in his ear--an invitation to sup, I believe it was; but while he was answering me, I nodded towards you, and, as I went down the steps, muttered loud enough to be heard, 'All right!' Every eye was turned at once towards him, and he, having no intention of speaking, nor having made any preparation, felt both confused and amazed, and left the House about five minutes afterwards, while Prendergast was bungling out his tiresome reply. Before Darcy reached the Club House, the report was current that he was bought, and old Gillespie was circ.u.mstantially recounting how that his t.i.tle was 'Lord Darcy in England,'--'Baron Gwynne in that part of the United Kingdom called Ireland.'"

"Not even success, Heffernan," said the Secretary, with an air of severity,--"not even success will excuse a trick of this kind."

Heffernan looked steadily towards him, as if he half doubted the sincerity of the speech; it seemed something above or beyond his comprehension.

"Yes," said Lord Castlereagh, "you heard me quite correctly. I repeat it, advantages obtained in this fashion are too dearly purchased."

"What an admirable actor John Kemble is, my Lord," said Heffernan, with a quiet smile; "don't you think so?"

Lord Castlereagh nodded his a.s.sent: the transition was too abrupt to please him, and he appeared to suspect that it concealed some other object than that of changing the topic.

"Kemble," continued Heffernan, while he sipped his wine carelessly,--"

Kemble is, I suspect strongly, the greatest actor we have ever had on the English stage. Have you seen him in 'Macbeth'?"

"Several times, and always with renewed pleasure," said the Secretary, gradually recovering from his reserve.

"What a force of pa.s.sion he throws into the part! How terrible he makes the conflict between a great purpose and a weak nature! Do you remember his horror at the murderers who come to tell of Banquo's death? The sight of their b.l.o.o.d.y hands shocks him as though they were not the evidences of his own success."

Lord Castlereagh's calm countenance became for a second crimson, and his lip trembled with struggling indignation; and then, as if subduing the temptation of anger, he broke into a low, easy laugh, and with an imitation at Kemble's manner, called out, "There 's blood upon thy face!"

"Talking of a b.l.o.o.d.y hand, my Lord," said Heffernan, at once resuming his former easy jocularity, "reminds me of that Mr. Hickman, or Hickman O'Reilly, as the fashion is to call him: is he to have the baronetcy?"

"Not, certainly, if we can secure him without it."