It was about a fortnight after this Sunday at Richmond that the list of Birthday honours came out, and it was a surprise to nobody that Mr. Brereton's name appeared as the recipient of a peerage. For respectability and cash are things that in themselves confer such nobility on their fortunate possessor that it is only right and proper to stamp him with a coronet like writing-paper. Respectability no doubt has been, and will again be, dispensed with, but cash cannot be replaced except by exceptional achievements of some kind, of which Andrew was hopelessly incapable. And as it would clearly be absurd to bar a man from his birth from the possibility of attaining to the ranks of hereditary legislators, custom, slowly broadening down, has brought it about that since achievement in great deeds is within the reach but of the few, plenty of good gold, bestowed on plenty of good or party institutions, paves the way, so to speak, to what has been called by politicians who wrangle hotly in another place "the upper snows."
Marie Alston, who had known of the impending honours some days before, was talking it over with Jim Spencer.
"I don't say I like the principle," she was saying; "but, things being as they are, I think it a most suitable thing. Oh, my dear Jim, you know me sufficiently well to know that I think such a system all wrong from top to bottom. But, after all, it is in a piece with the rest. Plutocracy, not the King nor the Houses of Parliament, rules us, and naturally plutocracy says, 'I will have all that is within reach.' Why not? And peerages are certainly within reach. Of course the list is rather pronounced. Mr. Maxwell, I see, has been made a Baronet. But, after all, who else is there? Can you think of any eminent men whom one would wish to see peers? I can't. And there are few people richer than the Maxwells, I believe. It is no use screaming."
Jim shrugged his shoulders.
"At that rate, I could be made a peer," he said.
"Are you rich enough? How nice for you! And vice versâ, perhaps, Jack should be made a commoner. No doubt that reform will follow next. At least, perhaps Jack shouldn't because he really has the makings of an eminent man, but half the House of Peers, anyhow, should be made commoners. No doubt they would be if it were not for the innate snobbishness of the average Englishman. The average Englishman knows quite well that there is nothing whatever remarkable or admirable about quantities of peers except their peerages; yet, because they are peers, he loves and reverences them, and reserves them compartments, and incidentally takes toll off them as well."
Jim Spencer raised his eyebrows.
"Of course you are right," he said, "but you say these things, and don't take them seriously. You used to be serious, Marie."
"Ah, you do me an injustice," she said quickly. "I am just as serious as ever I was, but I realize that it is no use being serious in public. People have no time to spare from their amusements nowadays for anything serious. But in private I am serious. I was serious in private to-day, for instance."
"Well, be serious now, and tell me what you were serious about."