As Atlee sauntered along towards Downing Street, whence he purposed to despatch his telegram to Greece, he thought a good deal of his late interview with Lord Danesbury. There was much in it that pleased him. He had so far succeeded in re Kostalergi, that the case was not scouted out of court; the matter, at least, was to be entertained, and even that was something. The fascination of a scheme to be developed, an intrigue to be worked out, had for his peculiar nature a charm little short of ecstasy. The demand upon his resources for craft and skill, concealment and duplicity, was only second in his estimation to the delight he felt at measuring his intellect with some other, and seeing whether, in the game of subtlety, he had his master.
Next to this, but not without a long interval, was the pleasure he felt at the terms in which Lord Danesbury spoke of him. No orator accustomed to hold an assembly enthralled by his eloquence—no actor habituated to sway the passions of a crowded theatre—is more susceptible to the promptings of personal vanity than your ‘practised talker.’ The man who devotes himself to be a ‘success’ in conversation glories more in his triumphs, and sets a greater value on his gifts, than any other I know of.
That men of mark and station desired to meet him—that men whose position secured to them the advantage of associating with the pleasantest people and the freshest minds—men who commanded, so to say, the best talking in society—wished to confer with and to hear him, was an intense flattery, and he actually longed for the occasion of display. He had learned a good deal since he had left Ireland. He had less of that fluency which Irishmen cultivate, seldom ventured on an epigram, never on an anecdote, was guardedly circumspect as to statements of fact, and, on the whole, liked to understate his case, and affect distrust of his own opinion. Though there was not one of these which were not more or less restrictions on him, he could be brilliant and witty when occasion served, and there was an incisive neatness in his repartee in which he had no equal. Some of those he was to meet were well known amongst the most agreeable people of society, and he rejoiced that at least, if he were to be put upon his trial, he should be judged by his peers.
With all these flattering prospects, was it not strange that his lordship never dropped a word, nor even a hint, as to his personal career? He had told him, indeed, that he could not hope for success at Cradford, and laughingly said, ‘You have left Odger miles behind you in your Radicalism. Up to this, we have had no Parliament in England sufficiently advanced for your opinions.’ On the whole, however, if not followed up—which Lord Danesbury strongly objected to its being—he said there was no great harm in a young man making his first advances in political life by something startling. They are only fireworks, it is true; the great requisite is, that they be brilliant, and do not go out with a smoke and a bad smell!
Beyond this, he had told him nothing. Was he minded to take him out to Turkey, and as what? He had already explained to him that the old days in which a clever fellow could be drafted at once into a secretaryship of embassy were gone by; that though a parliamentary title was held to supersede all others, whether in the case of a man or a landed estate, it was all-essential to be in the House for that, and that a diplomatist, like a sweep, must begin when he is little.
‘As his private secretary,’ thought he, ‘the position is at once fatal to all my hopes with regard to Lady Maude.’ There was not a woman living more certain to measure a man’s pretensions by his station. ‘Hitherto I have not been “classed.” I might be anybody, or go anywhere. My wide capabilities seemed to say that if I descended to do small things, it would be quite as easy for me to do great ones; and though I copied despatches, they would have been rather better if I had drafted them also.’
Lady Maude knew this. She knew the esteem in which her uncle held him. She knew how that uncle, shrewd man of the world as he was, valued the sort of qualities he saw in him, and could, better than most men, decide how far such gifts were marketable, and what price they brought to their possessor.
‘And yet,’ cried he, ‘they don’t know one-half of me! What would they say if they knew that it was I wrote the great paper on Turkish Finance in the Mémorial Diplomatique, and the review of it in the Quarterly; that it was I who exposed the miserable compromise of Thiers with Gambetta in the Débuts, and defended him in the Daily News; that the hysterical scream of the Kreuz Zeitung, and the severe article on Bismarck in the Fortnightly, were both mine; and that at this moment I am urging in the Pike how the Fenian prisoners must be amnestied, and showing in a London review that if they are liberated, Mr. Gladstone should be attainted for high treason? I should like well to let them know all this; and I’m not sure I would not risk all the consequences to do it.’
And then he as suddenly bethought him how little account men of letters were held in by the Lady Maudes of this world; what a humble place they assigned them socially; and how small they estimated their chances of worldly success!
‘It is the unrealism of literature as a career strikes them; and they cannot see how men are to assure themselves of the quoi vivre by providing what so few want, and even they could exist without.’