Compared with the first gigantic issue, the second was a mere sideshow, which in a happier hour his Grace would have treated with sardonic contempt. After all, did it greatly matter if Muriel had the ill taste to prefer an obvious political thruster and arriviste to a state of single blessedness? The heavens were not likely to fall in either case. The man was a cad and there was no more to be said, yet even Albert John was not quite able to maintain the standpoint of High Olympus. Such a mountebank of a fellow ought not to count, yet when the best had been said there was something about the brute which rankled horribly.
Some years before, in a historic speech in the Gilded Chamber, the Duke had drawn a lurid picture of democracy knocking at the gate. His words were so nakedly obvious that in a single morning they awoke to fame throughout a flattered and delighted island. Everybody had known for a generation that democracy was knocking at the gate, but the true art of prophecy as a going concern is to predict the event the day after it happens.
His Grace of Bridport, in the course of an admired speech, left no doubt as to his own feeling in the matter. He conceived it to be his duty to hold the gate as long as possible against the mob. But his memorable remarks, a little touched, no doubt, with the crudity of one who spoke seldom, gave opportunity for a thruster in the person of a rising Scots publicist to convulse the Lower House with his fanciful portrait of the Great Panjandrum of Bridport House with little round button on top.
That had happened some years ago. But the alchemies of time had now prepared a charming comedy for the initiated. The temerarious Scotsman, moving from triumph to triumph, had determined to consolidate his fortunes by marrying the third daughter of the house of Dinneford.
When Sir Dugald’s decision became known to the Duke, his amazement took a very caustic turn. He had never forgiven the fellow for so savagely flaunting him as a trophy at the end of a pole. “Rien qui blesse comme la vérité.” It was therefore hard for his Grace to knuckle down to this adventurer. Besides, had Sir Dugald’s opinions been other than they were, one of his kidney must not look for a welcome at Bridport House.
Democracy was knocking at the gate with a vengeance. Muriel’s affair had shaken the Family to its base. For some little time past it was known that she was cultivating breadth. Her coquettings with that dangerous tendency had affected her diet, her clothes, her reading, as well as her social and mental outlook. She had formed quite a habit of emerging from the Times Book Club with all kinds of highbrows in a strap. She had made odd friendships, she had joined queer movements, and from time to time she regaled very remarkable people with tea and cake at Bridport House.
To all this there could only be one end. First she consulted her oculist and changed her glasses, and then she fell in love. She was the first of the Bridport ladies to enter that state; thus she was less a portent than a phenomenon. Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie gave her the cold shoulder, and Aunt Charlotte frowned, but there was no getting over the sinister fact that Breadth had at last undone her. Sir Dugald had recently been seen for the first time in one of the smaller and less uncomfortable drawing-rooms of Bridport House. The Dinneford ladies seldom read the newspapers, at least the political part of them, being beyond all things “healthy-minded” women; therefore they knew little of the facts of his career. Moreover, they were in happy ignorance of the attack he had launched three years ago upon their sire. But it cannot be said of Muriel that she was equally innocent. Evil communications corrupt good manners; Breadth had made a recourse to politics inevitable. And the slight importance she attached to a certain incident was, to say the least, unfilial.
In the cool, appraising eyes of Sarah, Blanche, and Marjorie, the bold Sir Dugald was set down already as a freak of nature. They were not used to that sort of person at Bridport House. Unfortunately such an attitude forbade any just perception of the man himself. His career was still in the making, and in the view of keen but unsympathetic observers who had followed it from the start, the hapless Muriel had been marked down in order that she might advance him in it. Moreover, up till now, his ambition had never known defeat, particularly when inflamed by a worthy object.
According to biographies of the People’s Champion, portrait on cover, price one shilling net, which flooded the bookstalls of his adopted country, his life had been a fine expression of the deep spiritual truth, “God helps those who help themselves.” His career had been truly remarkable, yet in the opinion of qualified judges it was only just beginning. In the person of Sir Dugald Maclean, Democracy was knocking at the gate with a vengeance. Its keepers must be up and doing lest Demos ravish the citadel within and get clear away with the pictures, the heirlooms and the gold plate.
“She must be out of her mind,” declared the Duke at the first announcement of the grisly tidings. Lady Wargrave went further. “She is out of her mind,” trumpeted the sage of Hill Street.