“Dear old Lansmere!” said he, and the simple exclamation won him the hearts of all. In fine, when he paused, as if to retire, it was amidst a storm of acclamation. Audley grasped his hand, and whispered, “I am the only one here not surprised, Harley. Now you have discovered your powers, never again let them slumber. What a life may be yours if you no longer waste it!” Harley extricated his hand, and his eye glittered. He made a sign that he had more to say, and the applause was hushed. “My Right Honourable friend chides me for the years that I have wasted. True; my years have been wasted,—no matter how nor wherefore! But his! how have they been spent? In such devotion to the public that those who know him not as I do, have said that he had not one feeling left to spare to the obscurer duties and more limited affections, by which men of ordinary talents and humble minds rivet the links of that social order which it is the august destiny of statesmen—like him who now sits beside me—to cherish and defend. But, for my part, I think that there is no being so dangerous as the solemn hypocrite, who, because he drills his cold nature into serving mechanically some conventional abstraction,—whether he calls it ‘the Constitution’ or ‘the Public,’—holds himself dispensed from whatever, in the warm blood of private life, wins attachment to goodness, and confidence to truth. Let others, then, praise my Right Honourable friend as the incorruptible politician. Pardon me if I draw his likeness as the loyal sincere man, who might say with the honest priest ‘that he could not tell a lie to gain heaven by it!’—and with so fine a sense of honour, that he would hold it a lie merely to conceal the truth.” Harley then drew a brilliant picture of the type of chivalrous honesty,—of the ideal which the English attach to the phrase of “a perfect gentleman,” applying each sentence to his Right Honourable friend with an emphasis that seemed to burst from his heart. To all of the audience, save two, it was an eulogium which the fervent sincerity of the eulogist alone saved from hyperbole. But Levy rubbed his hands, and chuckled inly; and Egerton hung his head, and moved restlessly on his seat. Every word that Harley uttered lodged an arrow in Audley’s breast. Amidst the cheers that followed this admirable sketch of the “loyal man,” Harley recognized Leonard’s enthusiastic voice. He turned sharply towards the young man: “Mr. Fairfield cheers this description of integrity, and its application; let him imitate the model set before him, and he may live to hear praise as genuine as mine from some friend who has tested his worth as I have tested Mr. Egerton’s. Mr. Fairfield is a poet: his claim to that title was disputed by one of the speakers who preceded me!—unjustly disputed! Mr. Fairfield is every inch a poet. But, it has been asked, ‘Are poets fit for the business of senates? Will they not be writing sonnets to Peggy and Moggy, when you want them to concentrate their divine imagination on the details of a beer bill?’ Do not let Mr. Fairfield’s friends be alarmed. At the risk of injury to the two candidates whose cause I espouse, truth compels me to say, that poets, when they stoop to action, are not less prosaic than the dullest amongst us; they are swayed by the same selfish interests, they are moved by the same petty passions. It is a mistake to suppose that any detail in common life, whether in public or private, can be too mean to seduce the exquisite pliances of their fancy. Nay, in public life, we may trust them better than other men; for vanity is a kind of second conscience, and, as a poet has himself said,—
“‘Who fears not to do ill, yet fears the name,
And free from conscience, is a slave to shame.’
In private life alone we do well to be on our guard against these children of fancy, for they so devote to the Muse all their treasury of sentiment, that we can no more expect them to waste a thought on the plain duties of men, than we can expect the spendthrift, who dazzles the town, ‘to fritter away his money in paying his debts.’ But all the world are agreed to be indulgent to the infirmities of those who are their own deceivers and their own chastisers. Poets have more enthusiasm, more affection, more heart than others; but only for fictions of their own creating. It is in vain for us to attach them to ourselves by vulgar merit, by commonplace obligations, strive and sacrifice as we may. They are ungrateful to us, only because gratitude is so very unpoetical a subject. We lose them the moment we attempt to bind. Their love—
“‘Light as air, at sight of human ties,
Spreads its light wings, and in a moment flies.’
“They follow their own caprices, adore their own delusions, and, deeming the forms of humanity too material for their fantastic affections, conjure up a ghost, and are chilled to death by its embrace!”
Then, suddenly aware that he was passing beyond the comprehension of his audience, and touching upon the bounds of his bitter secret (for here he was thinking, not of Leonard, but of Nora), Harley gave a new and more homely direction to his terrible irony,—turned into telling ridicule the most elevated sentiments Leonard’s speech had conveyed, hastened on to a rapid view of political questions in general, defended Leslie with the same apparent earnestness and latent satire with which he had eulogized Audley, and concluded a speech which, for popular effect, had never been equalled in that hall, amidst a diapason of cheers that threatened to bring down the rafters.
In a few minutes more the proceedings were closed, a show of hands taken. The show was declared by the Mayor, who was a thorough Blue, in favour of the Right Hon. Audley Egerton and Randal Leslie, Esquire.
Cries of “No,” “Shame,” “Partial,” etc., a poll demanded on behalf of the other two candidates, and the crowd began to pour out of the hall.
Harley was the first who vanished, retreating by the private entrance. Egerton followed; Randal lingering, Avenel came up and shook hands with him openly, but whispered privately, “Meet me to-night in Lansmere Park, in the oak copse, about three hundred yards from the turnstile, at the town end of the park. We must see how to make all right. What a confounded humbug this has been!”