She wanted to say that she hoped the Marshire-de Treverell alliance was still undecided. But something in his lordship's air—a hardness she had never thought to see in his regard—forbade any reference to the subject. He conducted her to her carriage, wished her “Goodbye” in his Court manner, and led her to understand, by an unmistakable glance, that a certain marriage which had been arranged would, inasmuch as it was entirely agreeable to the will of Providence, take place.
CHAPTER III
Lord Reckage, in the meantime, had not been able to draw rein until he reached Grafton Street, where the hunter, of its own will, stopped short at a door, half glass and half mahogany, before which a groom stood watching, evidently with some suspense, for their approach. At the first sight of the animal and its rider, he hastened forward, and, seizing the bridle, assisted his master to dismount. Once on the ground, the young man satisfied his spleen by hitting the horse several vicious cuts with his whip. Then he informed the servant that it was his intention to walk home, and, with an ominous scowl, watched the “rushing beast” led from his sight. No one, except himself, was permitted to occupy that saddle.
The house which he now entered had been the town mansion for three generations of the Hampshires, but, despised by its then owner, whose young duchess wanted an Italian villa on Piccadilly, or a French château in Park Lane, the lease had been sold to a syndicate of rising politicians who formed a small organisation known, in those days, as the Mirafloreans.
“The little order,” we read in the Hon. Hercy Berenville's Memoirs, a malicious work printed for private circulation only—“the little order first came into notice under the name of the ‘Bond of Association,’ a High Church society founded by my brother, Lord Reckage. He formed his executive committee, however, on timorous and unexpected lines. He had tried to please the spiteful rather than the loyal. The loyal, he urged, were always forbearing, but the spiteful needed every attention. He disappointed alike the warmest and the most selfish among his supporters. True to his policy, he made desperate attempts to win over some vindictive men from among the Radicals, and, finally, in a fit of nervousness, declared, after five months of fruitful folly, his determination to reorganise the whole league on a strictly non-sectarian basis. He described himself as a moral philosopher. Once more he became a figure of interest, again he raised the standard, again he attracted a small company of enthusiasts, again it was expected that God's enemies would be scattered. He invited his former secretary, a Roman Catholic, to join the new society, but he made it clear that Orange, a man of real distinction, was in no sense a prominent member. The precise dogmata of Mirafloreanism—a nickname given, I believe, in ironic sympathy by Mr. Disraeli—were undefined, but the term gradually became associated with those ideals of conduct, government, and Art which poets imagine, heroes realise, and the ignorant destroy. Men of all, sundry, and opposing beliefs presumed to its credentials. Some, because the club appeared to flourish, many because it was not yet overcrowded, and a few because they were in perfect agreement with the varying opinions of its ultimate presiding genius, Disraeli himself. They worked quietly, not in the House of Commons, but outside it, delivering lectures, writing books, starting newspapers, holding meetings, and enlisting the sympathies of rich, idle, ambitious, or titled women. There seemed no end or limit to the variety of their interests, their methods of labour, or their conceit. The club—judged by the leonine measure of success—as a club did little for learning or literary men. It became a mere meeting-house for dining and drinking, but it promoted cordiality among the leading members of the young Tory party, and brought persons together who could not, in the ordinary way of life, have met each other at all. Although the more gaudy and best known among them came from the first second-rate families in England, the rank and file were formed mainly by young men of good estate and breeding—the sons of clergy, country squires, or merchants, all sprung from that class which is called Middle, because it represents civilised society neither in its rough beginnings nor in its tawdry decay.”
Berenville's remarks, it will be plainly seen, anticipate our history a little, for, at the time of which we write, the Bond of Association was still maintaining a sickly existence on its original programme. Orange had not yet been invited to join it, nor had Lord Reckage declared himself a moral philosopher.
On this particular afternoon his lordship entered, from the street, a narrow vestibule, the red walls of which were lit up by wax candles set at either end in ponderous bronze chandeliers. From this he passed into a square inner hall, paved with marble, and furnished by carved seats which had once belonged to the choir of an ancient chapel in Northumberland. Here he paused, for his attention was immediately arrested by a small group of four or five individuals who were talking with great earnestness at the foot of the oak staircase. Not that this was, in itself, an unusual event, for ever since a memorable day when the Earl of Bampton and the young Archdeacon of Soham, feeling warm, had ordered their tea to be served in that part of the building, it had been the fashion for distinguished members to assemble there, dispersing themselves in careless profusion among the statues of departed ecclesiastics or reclining pleasantly on the blue velvet divan which occupied the centre of the floor.