It was not till Sir Horace had smoked his third cigar that he seated himself at his writing-table. He then wrote rapidly a brief note, of which he proceeded to make a careful copy. This he folded and placed in an envelope, addressing it to his Grace the Duke of Cloudeslie.
A few minutes afterwards he began to prepare for bed. The day was already breaking, and yet that sick man was unwearied and unwasted; not a trace of fatigue on features that, under the infliction of a tiresome dinner-party, would have seemed bereft of hope.
The tied-up knocker, the straw-strewn street, the closely drawn curtains announced to London the next morning that the distinguished minister was seriously ill; and from an early hour the tide of inquirers, in carriages and on foot, passed silently along that dreary way. High and mighty were the names inscribed in the porter's book; royal dukes had called in person; and never was public solicitude more widely manifested. There is something very flattering in the thought of a great intelligence being damaged and endangered in our service! With all its melancholy influences, there is a feeling of importance suggested by the idea that for us and our interests a man of commanding powers should have jeoparded his life. There is a very general prejudice, not alone in obtaining the best article for our money, but the most of it also; and this sentiment extends to the individuals employed in the public service; and it is doubtless a very consolatory reflection to the tax-paying classes that the great functionaries of state are not indolent recipients of princely incomes, but hard-worked men of office, up late and early at their duties,—prematurely old, and worn out before their time! Something of this same feeling inspires much of the sympathy displayed for a sick statesman,—a sentiment not altogether void of a certain misgiving that we have probably over-taxed the energies employed in our behalf.
Scarcely one in a hundred of those who now called and “left their names” had ever seen Sir Horace Upton in their lives. Few are more removed from public knowledge than the men who fill even the highest places in our diplomacy. He was, therefore, to the mass a mere name. Since his accession to office little or nothing had been heard of him, and of that little, the greater part was made up of sneering allusions to his habits of indolence; impertinent hints about his caprices and his tastes. Yet now, by a grand effort in the “House,” and a well got-up report of a dangerous illness the day after, was he the most marked man in all the state,—the theme of solicitude throughout two millions of people!
There was a dash of mystery, too, in the whole incident, which heightened its flavor for public taste; a vague, indistinct impression—it did not even amount to rumor—was abroad, that Sir Horace had not been “fairly treated” by his colleagues; either that they could, if they wished it, have defended the cause themselves, or that they had needlessly called him from a sick bed to come to the rescue, or that some subtle trap had been laid to ensnare him. These were vulgar beliefs, which, if they obtained little credence in the higher region of club-life, were extensively circulated, and not discredited, in less distinguished circles. How they ever got abroad at all; how they found their ways into newspaper paragraphs, terrifying timid supporters of the ministry by the dread prospect of a “smash,” exciting the hopes of Opposition with the notion of a great secession, throwing broadcast before the world of readers every species of speculation, all kinds of combination,—who knows how all this happened? Who, indeed, ever knew how things a thousand times more secret ever got wind and became club-talk ere the actors in the events had finished an afternoon's canter in the Park?
If, then, the world of London learned on the morning in question that Sir Horace Upton was very ill, it also surmised—why and wherefore it knows best—that the same Sir Horace was an ill-used man. Now, of all the objects of public sympathy and interest, next after a foreign emperor on a visit at Buckingham Palace, or a newly arrived hippopotamus at the Zoological Gardens, there is nothing your British public is so fond of as “an ill-used man.” It is essential, however, to his great success that he be ill-used in high places; that his enemies and calumniators should have been, if not princes, at least dukes and marquises and great dignitaries of the state. Let him only be supposed to be martyred by these, and there is no saying where his popularity may be carried. A very general impression is current that the mass of the nation is more or less “ill-used,”—denied its natural claims and just rewards. To hit upon, therefore, a good representation of this hard usage, to find a tangible embodiment of this great injustice, is a discovery that is never unappreciated.
To read his speech of the night before, and to peruse the ill-scrawled bulletin of his health at the hall door in the morning, made up the measure of his popularity, and the world exclaimed, “Think of the man they have treated in this fashion!” Every one framed the indictment to his own taste; nor was the wrong the less grievous that none could give it a name. Even cautious men fell into the trap, and were heard to say, “If all we hear be true, Upton has not been fairly treated.”
What an air of confirmation to all these rumors did it give, when the evening papers announced in the most striking type: Resignation of Sir Horace Upton. If the terms in which he communicated that step to the Premier were not before the world, the date, the very night of the debate, showed that the resolution had been come to suddenly.
Some of the journals affected to be in the whole secret of the transaction, and only waiting the opportune moment to announce it to the world. The dark, mysterious paragraphs in which journalists show their no-meanings abounded, and menacing hints were thrown out that the country would no longer submit to.—Heaven knows what. There was, besides all this, a very considerable amount of that catechetical inquiry, which, by suggesting a number of improbabilities, hopes to arrive at the likely, and thus, by asking questions where they had a perfect confidence they would never be answered, they seemed to overwhelm their adversaries with shame and discomfiture. The great fact, however, was indisputable,—Upton had resigned.
To the many who looked up at the shuttered windows of his sad-looking London house, this reflection occurred naturally enough,—How little the poor sufferer, on his sick bed, cared for the contest that raged around him; how far away were, in all probability, his thoughts from that world of striving and ambition whose waves came to his door-sills. Let us, in that privilege which belongs to us, take a peep within the curtained room, where a bright fire is blazing, and where, seated behind a screen, Sir Horace is now penning a note; a bland half smile rippling his features as some pleasant conceit has flashed across his mind. We have rarely seen him looking so well. The stimulating events of the last few days have done for him more than all the counsels of his doctors, and his eyes are brighter and his cheeks fuller than usual. A small miniature hangs suspended by a narrow ribbon round his neck, and a massive gold bracelet adorns one wrist,—“two souvenirs” which he stops to contemplate as he writes; nor is there a touch of sorrowful meaning in the glance he bestows upon them,—the look rather seems the self-complacent regard that a successful general might bestow on the decorations he had won by his valor. It is essentially vainglorious.