“Permit me to suppose that you did: very true; but the party I belong to is as sure of return as the pendulum of that clock is sure to obey the mechanism that moves it from left to right. Our successors profess to come in upon a popular question. All administrations who do that are necessarily short-lived. Either they do not go far enough to please present supporters, or they go so far as to arm new enemies in the rivals who outbid them with the people. ‘T is the history of all revolutions, and of all reforms. Our own administration in reality is destroyed for having passed what was called a popular measure a year ago, which lost us half our friends, and refusing to propose another popular measure this year, in the which we are outstripped by the men who hallooed us on to the last. Therefore, whatever our successors do, we shall by the law of reaction, have another experiment of power afforded to ourselves. It is but a question of time; you can wait for it,—whether I can is uncertain. But if I die before that day arrives, I have influence enough still left with those who will come in, to obtain a promise of a better provision for you than that which you have lost. The promises of public men are proverbially uncertain; but I shall entrust your cause to a man who never failed a friend, and whose rank will enable him to see that justice is done to you,—I speak of Lord L’Estrange.”
“Oh, not he; he is unjust to me; he dislikes me; he—”
“May dislike you (he has his whims), but he loves me; and though for no other human being but you would I ask Harley L’Estrange a favour, yet for you I will,” said Egerton, betraying, for the first time in that dialogue, a visible emotion,—“for you, a Leslie, a kinsman, however remote, to the wife from whom I received my fortune! And despite all my cautions, it is possible that in wasting that fortune I may have wronged you. Enough: you have now before you the two options, much as you had at first; but you have at present more experience to aid you in your choice. You are a man, and with more brains than most men; think over it well, and decide for yourself. Now to bed, and postpone thought till the morrow. Poor Randal, you look pale!”
Audley, as he said the last words, put his hand on Randal’s shoulder, almost with a father’s gentleness; and then suddenly drawing himself up, as the hard inflexible expression, stamped on that face by years, returned, he moved away and resettled to Public Life and the iron box.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Early the next day Randal Leslie was in the luxurious business-room of Baron Levy. How unlike the cold Doric simplicity of the statesman’s library! Axminster carpets, three inches thick; portieres a la Francaise before the doors; Parisian bronzes on the chimney-piece; and all the receptacles that lined the room, and contained title-deeds and postobits and bills and promises to pay and lawyer-like japan boxes, with many a noble name written thereon in large white capitals—“making ruin pompous,” all these sepulchres of departed patrimonies veneered in rosewood that gleamed with French polish, and blazed with ormulu. There was a coquetry, an air of petit maitre, so diffused over the whole room, that you could not, for the life of you, recollect you were with a usurer! Plutus wore the aspect of his enemy Cupid; and how realize your idea of Harpagon in that baron, with his easy French “Mon cher,” and his white, warm hands that pressed yours so genially, and his dress so exquisite, even at the earliest morn? No man ever yet saw that baron in a dressing-gown and slippers! As one fancies some feudal baron of old (not half so terrible) everlastingly clad in mail, so all one’s notions of this grand marauder of civilization were inseparably associated with varnished boots and a camellia in the button-hole.
“And this is all that he does for you!” cried the baron, pressing together the points of his ten taper fingers. “Had he but let you conclude your career at Oxford, I have heard enough of your scholarship to know that you would have taken high honours, been secure of a fellowship, have betaken yourself with content to a slow and laborious profession, and prepared yourself to die on the woolsack.”
“He proposes to me now to return to Oxford,” said Randal. “It is not too late!”
“Yes, it is,” said the baron. “Neither individuals nor nations ever go back of their own accord. There must be an earthquake before a river recedes to its source.”