When he got up on his dog-cart, correctly attired in the garb and the gaiters of a squire of high degree, and drove over to quarter sessions, he felt as if he had been a justice of the peace and the master of Vale Royal all his life. He really handled horses very well; his driving was somewhat too flashy and reckless for English taste, but the animal had never been foaled which he would not have been able to break in; he who had ridden bronchos barebacked, and raced blue grass trotters, and this power stood him in good stead in such a horsy county as Woldshire.
The snow was gone and the weather was open. There was the prospect of political changes in the air, and, in the event of a general election, his chiefs of party desired that he should represent his county instead of continuing member for that unsound and uncertain metropolitan division, which he did actually represent. To feel the way and introduce him politically in the borough before there should be any question of his being put up for it, those who were interested in the matter had got up a gathering of county notabilities on a foreign question of the moment, which was supposed, as all foreign questions always are, to involve the entire existence of England. He had been told what to say on these questions, and although it seemed to him “awful rot,” like everything inculcated by his leaders, he said it obediently, and refreshed himself afterwards by some personal statements. Amongst men, on public matters he always showed to advantage. He was common, ignorant, absurd, very often; but he was a man, a man who could hold his own and had a head on his shoulders. That mastery of fate which had made him what he was gave meaning to his dull features, and light to his dull eyes. No one, as modern existence is constituted, could separate him altogether from the weight of his ruthless will, and the greatness of his accomplished purpose; he stood on a solid basis of acquired gold. Before a fine lady he shook in his shoes, and before a prince he trembled; but at a mass-meeting he was still the terrible, the formidable, the indomitable, “bull-dozing boss” of Kerosene City. His stout hands gripped the rail in front of him, while their veins stood out like cords, and his rough rasping voice made its way through the wintry air of England, as it had done through a blizzard on the plains of the West.
“I’ve been a workingman myself, gentlemen,” he said, amidst vociferous cheers, “and if I’m a rich man to-day it’s been by my own hand and my own head as I’ve become so. I’ve come home to die” (a voice in the crowd: “You’ll live a hundred years!”), “but before I die I want to do what good I can to my country and my fellow-countrymen.” (Vociferous cheers.) “Blood’s thicker than water, gentlemen——”
The applause here was so deafening that he was forced to pause; this phrase never fails to raise a tempest of admiration, probably because no one can ever possibly say what it is intended to mean.
“I know the institutions of my country, gentlemen,” he continued, “and I am proud to take my humble share in holding them steady through stormy weather. I have lived for over thirty years, gentlemen, in a land where the institutions are republican, and I wish to speak of that great republic with the sincere respect I feel. But a republican form of government would be wholly unfitted for Great Britain.”
“Why so?” asked a voice in the crowd.
Mr. Massarene did not feel called on to answer so indiscreet a question; he continued as though no one had spoken.
“The foundations of her greatness lie embedded in the past, and are inseparably allied with her institutions. The courage, honor and patriotism of her nobility” (the marquis with a gratified expression played with his watch-chain), “the devotion, purity, and self-sacrifice of her church” (the prelate patted the black silk band on his stomach and purred gently like a cat), “the examples of high virtue and wisdom which have adorned her throne” (the lord-lieutenant looked ecstatic and adoring, as a pilgrim of Lourdes before the shrine)—“all these, gentlemen, have made her what she is, the idol of her sons, the terror of her foes, the bulwark at once of religious faith and of religious freedom. The great glory of our country, sirs, is that poor and rich are equal before the law” (“Yah!” from a rude man below), “and that the roughest, most friendless lad may by probity and industry reach her highest honors. I myself left Queenstown, gentlemen, a young fellow with three pounds in my pocket and a change of clothes in a bundle, and that I have the honor of addressing you here to-day is due to the fact that I toiled honestly from morning till night for more than thirty years in exile. It was the hope of coming back, sirs, and settling on my native soil, which kept the heart up in me through hunger and thirst, and heat and cold, and such toil as here you know nothing about. I was a poor working lad, gentlemen, with three pounds in my pocket, and yet here I stand to-day the equal of prince and peer” (the marquis frowned, the bishop fidgetted, the lord-lieutenant coughed, but Mr. Massarene was emballé, and heeded not these hints of disapprobation). “What do you want with republican institutions, my friends, when under a monarchy the doors of wealth and honor open wide to the laboring man who has had sense and self-denial enough to work his way upward?” (“They open to a golden key, damn your jaw!” cried a vulgar being in the mob below.) “who by honesty and economy, and incessant toil, has come to put his legs under the same mahogany with the highest of the land. You talk of golden keys, sir—the only key to success is the key of character. Before I give my hand, sir, whether to prince or pauper, I ask—what is his character?”
“Dear me, dear me, this is very irrelevant,” murmured the lord-lieutenant, much distressed.
“Damned inconvenient,” murmured the marquis with a chuckle. The bishop folded his hands and looked rapt and pious. But the mayor of the borough, with desperation, plucked at the orator’s coat-tails.