As Agincourt turned his steps slowly towards the house, he marvelled with himself what amount of guidance she had given him.
CHAPTER XIX. JOE'S DIPLOMACY
MR. O'Shea's man was not one to put his light under a bushel; so, when he received at the post-office a very portentous-looking letter, heavily sealed, and marked “On Her Majesty's Service,” he duly stopped the two or three English loungers he saw about to show them the document, on pretence of asking if any demand for postage could be made; if it had not been wrongfully detained; if they thought it had been opened and read; and so on,—all these inquiries having for their object to inform the general public that the Member for Inch was in close relation and correspondence with Downing Street.
In sooth, the letter had as significant an external as any gentleman in pursuit of a place might have desired. In color, texture, and fashion there was nothing wanting to its authenticity, and it might, without any disparagement to its outside, have named Mr. O'Shea a Governor of the Bahamas, or a Mahogany Commissioner at Ruatan. It was, in fact, a document that, left negligently in the way, might have made a dun appeasable, and a creditor patient. There were few men it might not in some degree have imposed on, but of that few the O'Shea himself was one. He knew well—too well—that it foretold neither place nor employment; that it was the shell of a very small kernel; nothing more, in short, than a note from an old friend and schoolfellow, then acting as the Private Secretary of a Cabinet Minister,—one who, indeed, kept his friend O'Shea fully informed as to everything that fell vacant, but, unhappily, accompanied the intelligence with a catalogue of the applicants, usually something like the list of the Smiths in a Directory.
So little impatient was O'Shea for the contents, that he had half eaten his breakfast and looked through “Punch” before he broke the seal. The enclosure was from the hand of his friend Tom Radwell, but whose peculiar drollery it was to correspond in the form of a mock despatch. The note, therefore, though merely containing gossip, was written with all attention to margin and calligraphy, and even in places affected the solemn style of the Office. It was headed “Secret and Confidential,” and opened thus:—
“Sir,—By your despatch of the 18th ult, containing four enclosures,—three protested bills, and your stepmother's I O for 18L. 5s.,—I am induced to believe that no material change has occurred in the situation of your affairs,—a circumstance the more to be deplored, inasmuch as her Majesty's Government cannot at this moment, with that due regard imposed on them for the public service, undertake either to reconsider your claims, or by an extraordinary exercise of the powers vested in them by the Act of Teddy the Tiler, chap. 4, secs. 9 and 10, appoint you in the way and manner you propose. So much, my dear Gorman, old Rivers declared to me this morning, confidentially adding, I wish that Irish party would understand that, when we could buy them altogether in a basket, as in O'Connell's day, the arrangement was satisfactory; but to have to purchase them separately—each potato by himself—is a terrible loss of time, and leads to no end of higgling. Why can't you agree amongst yourselves,—make your bargain, and then divide the spoils quietly? It is the way your forefathers understood the law of commonage, and nobody ever grumbled that his neighbor had a cow or a pig too many! The English of all this is, they don't want you just now, and they won't have you, for you 're an article that never kept well, and, even when bonded, your loss by leakage is considerable.
“Every Irishman I ever met makes the same mistake of offering himself for sale when the commodity is not wanted. If you see muffs and boas in Regent Street in July, ain't they always ticketed 'a great sacrifice'? Can't you read the lesson? But so it is with you. You fancy you 'll induce people to travel a bad road by putting up a turnpike.
“I 'm sorry to say all this to you, but I see plainly politics will not do any longer as a pursuit. It is not only that all appointments are so scrutinized nowadays, but that every man's name in a division is weighed and considered in a fashion that renders a mere majority of less moment than the fact of how it was composed. If I cannot manage something for you in the West Indies, you must try Cheltenham.
“Rivers has just sent for me.