CHAPTER XV. CHIEF SECRETARY BALFOUR
Mr. Balfour returned to Ireland a greater man than he left it. He had been advanced to the post of Chief Secretary, and had taken his seat in the House as member for Muddle-port. Political life was, therefore, dawning very graciously upon him, and his ambition was budding with every prospect of success.
The Secretary's lodge in the Phoenix Park is somewhat of a pretty residence, and with its gardens, its shrubberies, and conservatory, seen on a summer's day when broad cloud-shadows lie sleeping on the Dublin mountains, and the fragrant white thorn scents the air, must certainly be a pleasant change from the din, the crush, and the turmoil of “town” at the fag end of a season. English officials call it damp. Indeed, they have a trick of ascribing this quality to all things Irish; and national energy, national common-sense, and national loyalty seem to them to be ever in a diluted form. Even our drollery is not as dry as our neighbors'.
In this official residence Mr. Balfour was now installed, and while Fortune seemed to shower her favors so lavishly upon him, the quid amarum was still there,—his tenure was insecure. The party to which he belonged had contrived to offend some of its followers and alienate others, and, without adopting any such decided line as might imply a change of policy, had excited a general sense of distrust in those who had once followed it implicitly. In the emergencies of party life, the manouvre known to soldiers as a “change of front” is often required. The present Cabinet were in this position. They had been for some sessions trading on their Protestantism. They had been Churchmen pur sang. Their bishops, their deans, their colonial appointments, had all been of that orthodox kind that defied slander; and as it is said that a man with a broad-brimmed hat and drab gaiters may indulge unsuspected in vices which a more smartly got-up neighbor would bring down reprobation upon his head for practising, so may a Ministry under the shadow of Exeter Hall do a variety of things denied to less sacred individuals. “The Protestant ticket” had carried them safely over two sessions, but there came now a hitch in which they needed that strange section called “the Irish party,” a sort of political flying column, sufficiently uncertain always to need watching, and if not very compact or highly disciplined, rash and bold enough to be very damaging in moments of difficulty. Now, as Private Secretary, Balfour had snubbed this party repeatedly. They had been passed over in promotion, and their claims to advancement coldly received. The amenities of the Castle—that social Paradise of all Irish men and women—had been denied them. For them were no dinners, no mornings at the Lodge, and great were the murmurs of discontent thereat. A change, however, had come; an English defection had rendered Irish support of consequence, and Balfour was sent over to, what in the slang of party is called, conciliate, but which, in less euphuistic phrase, might be termed to employ a system of general and outrageous corruption.
Some averred that the Viceroy, indignantly refusing to be a party to this policy, feigned illness and stayed away; others declared that his resignation had been tendered and accepted, but that measures of state required secrecy on the subject; while a third section of guessers suggested that, when the coarse work of corruption had been accomplished by the Secretary, his Excellency would arrive to crown the edifice.
At all events, the Ministry stood in need of these “free lances,” and Cholmondely Balfour was sent over to secure them. Before all governmental changes there is a sort of “ground swell” amongst the knowing men of party that presages the storm; and so, now, scarcely had Balfour reached the Lodge than a rumor ran that some new turn of policy was about to be tried, and that what is called the “Irish difficulty” was going to be discounted into the English necessity.
The first arrival at the Lodge was Pemberton. He had just been defeated at his election for Mallow, and ascribed his failure to the lukewarmness of the Government, and the indifference with which they had treated his demands for some small patronage for his supporters. Nor was it mere indifference; there was actual reason to believe that favor was shown to his opponent, and that Mr. Heffernan, the Catholic barrister of extreme views, had met the support of more than one of those known to be under Government influence. There was a story of a letter from the Irish Office to Father O'Hea, the parish priest. Some averred they had read it, declaring that the Cabinet only desired to know “the real sentiments of Ireland, what Irishmen actually wished and wanted,” to meet them. Now, when a Government official writes to a priest, his party is always in extremis.
Pemberton reached the Lodge feverish, irritated, and uneasy. He had, not very willingly, surrendered a great practice at the Bar to enter life as a politician, and now what if the reward of his services should turn out to be treachery and betrayal? Over and over again had he been told he was to have the Bench; but the Chief Baron would neither die nor retire, nor was there any vacancy amongst the other courts. Nor had he done very well in Parliament; he was hasty and irritable in reply, too discursive in statement, and, worse than these, not plodding enough nor sufficiently given to repetition to please the House; for the “assembled wisdom” is fond of its ease, and very often listens with a drowsy consciousness that if it did not catch what the orator said aright, it was sure to hear him say it again later on. He had made no “hit” with the House, and he was not patient enough nor young enough to toil quietly on to gain that estimation which he had hoped to snatch at starting.
Besides all these grounds of discontent, he was vexed at the careless way in which his party defended him against the attacks of the Opposition. Nothing, probably, teaches a man his value to his own set so thoroughly as this test; and he who is ill defended in his absence generally knows that he may retire without cause of regret. He came out, therefore, that morning, to see Balfour, and, as the phrase is, “have it out with him.” Balfour's instructions from the “other side,” as Irishmen playfully denominate England, were to get rid of Pemberton as soon as possible; but, at the same time, with all the caution required, not to convert an old adherent into an enemy.
Balfour was at breakfast, with an Italian greyhound on a chair beside him, and a Maltese terrier seated on the table, when Pemberton was announced. He lounged over his meal, alternating tea with the “Times,” and now and then reading scraps of the letters which lay in heaps around him.