The dull old precincts of Downing Street were more than usually astir. Hackney-coaches and cabs at an early hour, private chariots somewhat later, went to and fro along the dreary pavement, and two cabinet messengers with splashed calèches arrived in hot haste from Dover. Frequent, too, were the messages from the House; a leading Oppositionist was then thundering away against the Government, inveighing against the treacherous character of their foreign policy, and indignantly calling on them for certain despatches to their late envoy at Naples. At every cheer which greeted him from his party a fresh missive would be despatched from the Treasury benches, and the whisper, at first cautiously muttered, grew louder and louder, “Why does not Upton come down?”
So intricate has been the web of our petty entanglements, so complex the threads of those small intrigues by which we have earned our sobriquet of the “perfide Albion,” that it is difficult at this time of day to recall the exact question whose solution, in the words of the orator of the debate, “placed us either at the head of Europe, or consigned to us the fatal mediocrity of a third-rate power.” The prophecy, whichever way read, gives us unhappily no clew to the matter in hand, and we are only left to conjecture that it was an intervention in Spain, or “something about the Poles.” As is usual in such cases, the matter, insignificant enough in itself, was converted into a serious attack on the Government, and all the strength of the Opposition was arrayed to give power and consistency to the assault. As is equally usual, the cabinet was totally unprepared for defence; either they had altogether undervalued the subject, or they trusted to the secrecy with which they had conducted it; whichever of these be the right explanation, each minister could only say to his colleague, “It never came before me; Upton knows all about it.”
“And where is Upton?—why does he not come down?”—were again and again reiterated; while a shower of messages and even mandates invoked his presence.
The last of these was a peremptory note from no less a person than the Premier himself, written in three very significant words, thus: “Come, or go;” and given to a trusty whip, the Hon. Gerald Neville, to deliver.
Armed with this not very conciliatory document, the well-practised tactician drew up to the door of the Foreign Office, and demanded to see the Secretary of State.
“Give him this card and this note, sir,” said he to the well-dressed and very placid young gentleman who acted as his private secretary.
“Sir Horace is very poorly, sir; he is at this moment in a mineral bath; but as the matter you say is pressing, he will see you. Will you pass this way?”
Mr. Neville followed his guide through an infinity of passages, and at length reached a large folding-door, opening one side of which he was ushered into a spacious apartment, but so thoroughly impregnated with a thick and offensive vapor that he could barely perceive, through the mist, the bath in which Upton lay reclined, and the figure of a man, whose look and attitude bespoke the doctor, beside him.
“Ah, my dear fellow,” sighed Upton, extending two dripping fingers in salutation, “you have come in at the death. This is the last of it!”
“No, no; don't say that,” cried the other, encouragingly. “Have you had any sudden seizure? What is the nature of it?”