“At all events, has he any other course open to him?”
“He thinks he has; at least, he thinks that, with your help and co-operation, there may be another course. The attack is to come from below the gangway on the Opposition side. It was to sit with these men you contested a county, and spent nigh twenty thousand pounds. You have great claims on the party. You know them all personally, and have much influence with them. Why, then, not employ it in his behalf?”
“To suppress the motion, you mean?”
Temple nodded.
“They 'd not listen to it, not endure it for a moment. Norton would n't give up an attack for which he had prepared himself if he were to find out, in the interval, that the object of it was an angel. As I heard him say one day at 'the Reform,' 'Other men have their specialities. One fellow takes sugar, one the malt-duties, one Servia, or maybe, Ireland; my line is a good smashing personality. Show me a fellow—of course I mean a political opponent—who has been giving himself airs as a colonial governor, or “swelling” it as a special envoy at a foreign court, and if I don't find something in his despatches to exhibit him as a false prophet, a dupe, or a blunderer, and if I can't make the House laugh at him, don't call me Rigby Norton.' He knows he does these things better than any man in England, and he does them in a spirit that never makes him an enemy.”
“Culduff says that N. is terribly hard up. He was hit heavily at Goodwood, and asked for time to pay.”
“Just what he has been doing for the last twenty years. There are scores of ships that no underwriters would accept making safe voyages half across the globe. No, no; he 'll rub on for many a day, in the same fashion. Besides, if he should n't, what then?”
Temple made a significant gesture with his thumb in the palm of his hand.
“That's all your noble friend knows about England, then. See what comes of a man passing his life among foreigners. I suppose a Spanish or an Italian deputy might n't give much trouble, nor oppose any strenuous resistance to such a dealing; but it won't do here,—it will not.”
“Lord Culduff knows the world as well as most men, sir.”