“You are quite right It would be most indiscreet to do so.”
“Indeed, if I were rash enough to risk the step, it would redound to nothing, since I am quite persuaded that he believes that whenever he retires from public life or quits this world altogether, a general chaos will ensue, and that all sorts of ignorant and incompetent people will jostle the clever fellows out of the way, just because the one great directing mind of the age has left the scene and departed.”
“All his favors to you have certainly not bought your gratitude, Dudley.”
“I don't suspect it is a quality I ever laid up a large stock of, mother,—not to say that I have always deemed it a somewhat unworthy thing to swallow the bad qualities of a man simply because he was civil to you personally.”
“His kindness might at least secure your silence.”
“Then it would be a very craven silence. But I 'll join issue with you on the other counts. What is this great kindness for which I am not to speak my mind about him? He has housed and fed me: very good things in their way, but benefits which never cost him anything but his money. Now, what have I repaid him with? My society, my time, my temper, I might say my health, for he has worried me to that degree some days that I have been actually on the verge of a fever. And if his overbearing insolence was hard to endure, still harder was it to stand his inordinate vanity without laughter. I ask you frankly, isn't he the vainest man, not that you ever met, but that you ever heard of?”
“Vain he is, but not without some reason. He has had great triumphs, great distinctions in life.”
“So he has told me. I have listened for hours long to descriptions of the sensation he created in the House—it was always the Irish House, by the way—by his speech on the Regency Bill, or some other obsolete question; and how Flood had asked the House to adjourn and recover their calm and composure, after the overwhelming power of the speech they had just listened to; and how, at the Bar, Plunkett once said to a jury, 'Short of actual guilt, there is no such misfortune can befall a man as to have Sergeant Lendrick against him.' I wish I was independent,—I mean, rich enough, to tell him what I think of him; that I had just five minutes—I 'd not ask more—to convey my impression of his great and brilliant qualities! and to show him that, between the impulses of his temper and his vanity together, he is, in matters of the world, little better than a fool! What do you think he is going to do at this very moment? I had not intended speaking of it, but you have pushed me to it. In revenge for the Government having passed him over on the Commission, he is going to supply some of these 'Celt' rascals with means to employ counsel, and raise certain questions of legality, which he thinks will puzzle Pemberton to meet. Of course, rash and indiscreet as he is, this is not to be done openly. It is to be accomplished in secret, and through me! I am to go to-morrow morning at eleven o'clock to the Richmond Jail. I have the order for my admission in my pocket. I am there to visit Heaven knows whom; some scoundrel or other,—just as likely a Government spy as a rebel, who will publish the whole scheme to the world. At all events, I am to see and have speech of the fellow, and ascertain on what evidence he was committed to prison, and what kind of case he can make as to his innocence. He is said to be a gentleman,—the very last reason, to my thinking, for taking him up; for whenever a gentleman is found in any predicament beneath him, the presumption is that he ought to be lower still. The wise judge, however, thinks otherwise, and says, 'Here is the very opportunity I wanted.'”
“It is a most disagreeable mission, Dudley. I wish sincerely you could have declined it.”
“Not at all. I stand to win, no matter how it comes off: if all goes right, the Chief must make me some acknowledgment on my success; if it be a failure, I 'll take care to be so compromised that I must get away out of the country, and I leave to yourself to say what recompense will be enough to repay a man for the loss of his home, and of his wife and his children.”