CHAPTER IV.—ON FABLES.
VERY amusing indeed was Edmund’s parody of the boatman’s wildly-romantic story. The travesty was composed for the benefit of Miss Craven, and the time of its communication was between the courses of the very excellent dinner which Lord Innisfail had provided for his numerous guests at his picturesque Castle overlooking Lough Suangorm—that magnificent fjord on the West Coast of Ireland. Lord Innisfail was a true Irishman. When he was away from Ireland he was ever longing to be back in it, and when he was in Ireland he was ever trying to get away from it. The result of his patriotism was a residence of a month in Connaught in the autumn, and the rest of the year in Connaught Square or Monte Carlo. He was accustomed to declare—in England—that Ireland and the Irish were magnificent. If this was his conviction, his self-abnegation, displayed by carefully avoiding both, except during a month every year, was all the greater.
And yet no one ever gave him credit for possessing the virtue of self-abnegation.
He declared—in England—that the Irish race was the finest on the face of the earth, and he invariably filled his Castle with Englishmen.
He was idolized by his Irish tenantry, and they occasionally left a few birds for his guests to shoot on his moors during the latter days of August.
Lord Innisfail was a man of about fifty years of age. His wife was forty and looked twenty-five: their daughter was eighteen and looked twenty-four.
Edmund Airey, who was trying to amuse Miss Craven by burlesquing the romance of the Princess Fither, was the representative in Parlament of an English constituency. His father had been in business—some people said on the Stock Exchange, which would be just the opposite. He had, however, died leaving his son a considerable fortune extremely well invested—a fact which tended strongly against the Stock Exchange theory. His son showed no desire to go on the turf or to live within reach to the European gaming-table. If there was any truth in the Stock Exchange theory, this fact tended to weaken the doctrine of heredity.
He had never blustered on the subject of his independence of thought or action. He had attached himself unobtrusively to the Government party on entering Parlament, and he had never occasioned the Whips a moment’s anxiety during the three years that had elapsed since the date of his return. He was always found in the Government Lobby in a division, and he was thus regarded by the Ministers as an extremely conscientious man. This is only another way of saying that he was regarded by the Opposition as an extremely unscrupulous man.
His speeches were brief, but each of them contained a phrase which told against the Opposition. He was wise enough to refrain from introducing into any speech so doubtful an auxiliary as argument, in his attempts to convince the Opposition that they were in the wrong. He had the good sense to perceive early in his career that argument goes for nothing in the House of Commons, but that trusted Governments have been turned out of office by a phrase. This power of perception induced him to cultivate the art of phrase-making. His dexterity in this direction had now and again made the Opposition feel uncomfortable; and as making the Opposition feel uncomfortable embodies the whole science of successful party-government in England, it was generally assumed that, if the Opposition could only be kept out of power after the General Election, Edmund Airey would be rewarded by an Under-Secretaryship.