“He threatens a statement in print; he has a letter ready for the 'Times,'” muttered Temple.
“This is what we have come to in England. In our stupid worship of what we call public opinion, we have raised up the most despotic tribunal that ever decided a human destiny. I declare solemnly, I 'd almost as soon be an American. I vow to heaven that, with the threat of Printing-House Square over me, I don't see how much worse I had been if born in Kansas or Ohio!”
“It is a regular statement of the Lisconnor Mine, drawn up for the money article, and if only a tithe of it be true—”
“Why should it be true, sir?” cried the noble Lord, in a tone that was almost a scream. “The public does not want truth,—what they want is a scandal—a libellous slander on men of rank, men of note like myself. The vulgar world is never so happy as when it assumes to cancel great public services by some contemptible private scandal. Lord Culduff has checkmated the Russian Ambassador. I know that, but Moses has three acceptances of his protested for nonpayment. Lord Culduflf has outwitted the Tuileries. Why does n't he pay his bootmaker? That's their chanson, sir—that's the burden of their low vulgar song. As if I, and men of my stamp, were amenable to every petty rule and miserable criticism that applies to a clerk in Somerset House. They exact from us the services of a giant, and then would reduce us to their own dwarfish standard whenever there is question of a moral estimate.”
He walked to and fro as he spoke, his excitement increasing at every word, the veins in his forehead swelling and the angles of his mouth twitching with a spasmodic motion. “There, sir,” cried he, with a wave of his hand; “let there be no more mention of this man. I shall want to see a draft of the educational project, as soon as it is completed. That will do;” and with this he dismissed him.
No sooner was the door closed on his departure, than Lord Culduflf poured some scented water into a small silver ewer, and proceeded to bathe his eyes and temples, and then, sitting down before a little mirror, he smoothed his eyebrows, and patiently disposed the straggling hairs into line. “Who 's there? come in,” cried he, impatiently, as a tap was heard at the door, and Mr. Cutbill entered, with the bold and assured look of a man determined on an insolence.
“So, my Lord, your servants have got orders not to admit me,—the door is to be shut against me!” said he, walking boldly forward and staring fiercely at the other's face.
“Quite true, however you came to know it,” said Culduflf, with a smile of the easiest, pleasantest expression imaginable. “I told Temple Bramleigh this morning to give the orders you speak of. I said it in these words: Mr. Cutbill got in here a couple of days ago, when I was in the middle of a despatch, and we got talking of this, that, and t'other, and the end was, I never could take up the clew of what I had been writing. A bore interrupts but does not distract you: a clever man is sure, by his suggestiveness, to lead you away to other realms of thought: and so I said, a strict quarantine against two people—I'll neither see Antonelli nor Cutbill.”
It was a bold shot, and few men would have had courage for such effrontery; but Lord Culduff could do these things with an air of such seeming candor and naturalness, nothing less than a police-agent could have questioned its sincerity. Had a man of his own rank in life “tried it on” in this fashion, Cutbill would have detected the impudent fraud at once. It was the superb dignity, the consummate courtesy of this noble Viscount, aided by every appliance of taste and luxury around him, that assured success here.
“Take that chair, Cutbill, and try a cheroot—I know you like a cheroot. And now for a pleasant gossip; for I will give myself a holiday this morning.”