Name and Fame: A Novel

by Adeline Sergeant

Whatever may have been the intention of Nature when she produced Sir John Pynsent, there was no doubt as to his own conception of the part which he was fitted to play in the world.

He considered himself, and indeed he was, above all things, a manipulator of men. His talents in this direction had been displayed at school and at college, and when he settled down to political life in London, and impulsively began to suggest, to persuade, to contrive, and to organize, everyone with whom he came in contact acknowledged a superior mind, or, at any rate, a more ingenious and fertile mind. He had refused to bind himself down to an office, as his friends wanted him to do, or to take part in the direction of a "Central Association" for dealing with men in the lump. It was absurd to think of tying Sir John to a place, or a routine, or a pledge of any kind. His art was to be ubiquitous; he aspired to be the great permeator of the Conservative party; and by sheer force of activity he soon became the best known and most popular of the younger generation of Tories.

His triumphs as a manager of men were not confined to public life. He was one of a numerous family, and he managed them all. Every Pynsent deferred to Sir John's opinion, not merely because he was the head of the house, but because he had assumed the command, and justified the assumption by his shrewdness and common-sense.

The one person in the family who gave most anxiety was his half-sister, Anna. Sir John's father had married a second time, when his son was a youth at Eton, and Anna, the fruit of this union, inherited, not only her mother's jointure of twenty thousand pounds, but a considerable fortune from her mother's elder brother, who had been a manufacturer in Vanebury. This fortune had been allowed to accumulate for the last eighteen years, as her father, and after him, her brother, had provided her with a home, and disdained to touch "Nan's money." Sir John was a very good brother to her, and it was even rumored that he had married early chiefly for the purpose of providing Nan with an efficient chaperon. Whether this was true or not, he had certainly married a woman who suited him admirably; Lady Pynsent sympathized in all his tastes and ambitions, gave excellent dinner parties, and periodically brought a handsome boy into the world to inherit the family name and embarrass the family resources. At present there were five of these boys, but as the family resources were exceedingly large, and Sir John was a most affectionate parent, the advent of each had been hailed with increasing satisfaction.

It was a great relief to Sir John's mind to find that his wife and his sister were such good friends. He might be a manipulator of man, but he was not—he acknowledged to himself—always successful in his manipulation of women. If Selina had found Nan in the way, or if Nan had been jealous of Selina and Selina's babies, Sir John felt that he would have been placed on the horns of a dilemma. But this had not been the case. Nan was in the schoolroom when Lady Pynsent first arrived at Culverley, and the child had been treated with kindness and discretion. Nan repaid the kindness by an extravagant fondness for her little nephews, who treated her abominably, and the discretion by an absolute surrender of her will to Lady Pynsent's as far as her intercourse with the outer world was concerned. With her inner life, she considered that Lady Pynsent had not much to do, and it was in its manifestation that Sir John observed the signs which made him anxious.

Nan, he said to himself, was a handsome girl, and one whom many men were sure to admire. Also, she had sixty thousand pounds of her own, of which she would be absolute mistress when she was twenty-one. It was a sum which was sure to attract fortune-hunters; and how could he tell whether Nan would not accept her first offer, and then stick to an unsuitable engagement with all the obstinacy which she was capable of displaying? Nan sometimes made odd friends, and would not give them up at anybody's bidding. How about the man she married? She would have her own way in that matter—Sir John was sure of it—and, after refusing all the eligible young men within reach, would (he told his wife repeatedly) end by taking up with a crooked stick at last.

"I don't think she'll do that," said Lady Pynsent when her husband appealed in this way to her. "Nan is very difficile. She is more likely to remain unmarried than marry an unsuitable man."

"Unmarried!" Sir John threw up his hands. "She must marry! Why, if she doesn't marry, she is just the girl to take up a thousand fads—to make herself the laughing-stock of the county!"

"She will not do that; she has too much good taste."

"Good taste won't avail her! You know what her plans are already, to live in Vanebury as soon as she is twenty-one, and devote herself to the welfare of the working-people! Don't you call that a fad? Won't she make a laughing stock of herself and of us too? Why, it's worse than Radicalism—it's pure Socialism and Quixotry," said poor Sir John, who was proud of his Toryism.