‘The bishop says that Tancred is a visionary,’ said the duchess to her husband, with an air of great displeasure. ‘Why, it is because he is a visionary that we sent him to the bishop. I want to have his false imaginings removed by one who has the competent powers of learning and argument, and the authority of a high and holy office. A visionary, indeed! Why, so are the Puseyites; they are visionaries, and his lordship has been obliged to deal with them; though, to be sure, if he spoke to Tancred in a similar fashion, I am not surprised that my son has returned unchanged! This is the most vexatious business that ever occurred to us. Something must be done; but what to fix on? What do you think, George? Since speaking to the bishop, of which you so much approved, has failed, what do you recommend?’
While the duchess was speaking, she was seated in her boudoir, looking into the Green Park; the duke’s horses were in the courtyard, and he was about to ride down to the House of Lords; he had just looked in, as was his custom, to say farewell till they met again.
‘I am sorry that the interview with the bishop has failed,’ said the duke, in a hesitating tone, and playing with his riding-stick; and then walking up to the window and looking into the Park, he said, apparently after reflection, ‘I always think the best person to deal with a visionary is a man of the world.’
‘But what can men of the world know of such questions?’ said the duchess, mournfully.
‘Very little,’ said her husband, ‘and therefore they are never betrayed into arguments, which I fancy always make people more obstinate, even if they are confuted. Men of the world have a knack of settling everything without discussion; they do it by tact. It is astonishing how many difficulties I have seen removed—by Eskdale, for example—which it seemed that no power on earth could change, and about which we had been arguing for months. There was the Cheadle churches case, for example; it broke up some of the oldest friendships in the county; even Hungerford and Ilderton did not speak. I never had a more anxious time of it; and, as far as I was personally concerned, I would have made any sacrifice to keep a good understanding in the county. At last I got the business referred to Eskdale, and the affair was ultimately arranged to everybody’s satisfaction. I don’t know how he managed: it was quite impossible that he could have offered any new arguments, but he did it by tact. Tact does not remove difficulties, but difficulties melt away under tact.’
‘Heigho!’ sighed the duchess. ‘I cannot understand how tact can tell us what is religious truth, or prevent my son from going to the Holy Sepulchre.’
‘Try,’ said the duke.
‘Shall you see our cousin to-day, George?’
‘He is sure to be at the House,’ replied the duke, eagerly. ‘I tell you what I propose, Kate: Tancred is gone to the House of Commons to hear the debate on Maynooth; I will try and get our cousin to come home and dine with us, and then we can talk over the whole affair at once. What say you?’
‘Very well.’
‘We have failed with a bishop; we will now try a man of the world; and if we are to have a man of the world, we had better have a firstrate one, and everybody agrees that our cousin——’
‘Yes, yes, George,’ said the duchess, ‘ask him to come; tell him it is very urgent, that we must consult him immediately; and then, if he be engaged, I dare say he will manage to come all the same.’
Accordingly, about half-past eight o’clock, the two peers arrived at Bellamont House together. They were unexpectedly late; they had been detained at the House. The duke was excited; even Lord Esk-dale looked as if something had happened. Something had happened; there had been a division in the House of Lords. Rare and startling event! It seemed as if the peers were about to resume their functions. Divisions in the House of Lords are now-a-days so thinly scattered, that, when one occurs, the peers cackle as if they had laid an egg. They are quite proud of the proof of their still procreative powers. The division to-night had not been on a subject of any public interest or importance; but still it was a division, and, what was more, the Government had been left in a minority. True, the catastrophe was occasioned by a mistake. The dictator had been asleep during the debate, woke suddenly from a dyspeptic dream, would make a speech, and spoke on the wrong side. A lively colleague, not yet sufficiently broken in to the frigid discipline of the High Court of Registry, had pulled the great man once by his coat-tails, a House of Commons practice, permitted to the Cabinet when their chief is blundering, very necessary sometimes for a lively leader, but of which Sir Robert highly disapproves, as the arrangement of his coat-tails, next to beating the red box, forms the most important part of his rhetorical accessories. The dictator, when he at length comprehended that he had made a mistake, persisted in adhering to it; the division was called, some of the officials escaped, the rest were obliged to vote with their ruthless master; but his other friends, glad of an opportunity of asserting their independence and administering to the dictator a slight check in a quiet inoffensive way, put him in a minority; and the Duke of Bellamont and Lord Eskdale had contributed to this catastrophe.
Dinner was served in the library; the conversation during it was chiefly the event of the morning. The duchess, who, though not a partisan, was something of a politician, thought it was a pity that the dictator had ever stepped out of his military sphere; her husband, who had never before seen a man’s coat-tails pulled when he was speaking, dilated much upon the singular circumstance of Lord Spur so disporting himself on the present occasion; while Lord Eskdale, who had sat for a long time in the House of Commons, and who was used to everything, assured his cousin that the custom, though odd, was by no means irregular. ‘I remember,’ said his lordship, ‘seeing Ripon, when he was Robinson, and Huskisson, each pulling one of Canning’s coat-tails at the same time.’
Throughout dinner not a word about Tancred. Lord Eskdale neither asked where he was nor how he was. At length, to the great relief of the duchess, dinner was finished; the servants had disappeared. The duke pushed away the table; they drew their chairs round the hearth; Lord Eskdale took half a glass of Madeira, then stretched his legs a little, then rose, stirred the fire, and then, standing with his back to it and his hands in his pockets, said, in a careless tone approaching to a drawl, ‘And so, duchess, Tancred wants to go to Jerusalem?’
‘George has told you, then, all our troubles?’ ‘Only that; he left the rest to you, and I came to hear it.’
Whereupon the duchess went off, and spoke for a considerable time with great animation and ability, the duke hanging on every word with vigilant interest, Lord Eskdale never interrupting her for an instant; while she stated the case not only with the impassioned feeling of a devoted mother, but occasionally with all the profundity of a theologian. She did not conceal from him the interview between Tancred and the bishop; it was her last effort, and had failed; and so, ‘after all our plans,’ she ended, ‘as far as I can form an opinion, he is absolutely more resolved than ever to go to Jerusalem.’
‘Well,’ said his lordship, ‘it is at least better than going to the Jews, which most men do at his time of life.’
‘I cannot agree even to that,’ said the duchess; ‘for I would rather that he should be ruined than die.’
‘Men do not die as they used,’ said his lordship. ‘Ask the annuity offices; they have all raised their rates.’
‘I know nothing about annuity offices, but I know that almost everybody dies who goes to those countries; look at young Fernborough, he was just Tancred’s age; the fevers alone must kill him.’
‘He must take some quinine in his dressing-case,’ said Lord Eskdale.
‘You jest, Henry,’ said the duchess, disappointed, ‘when I am in despair.’
‘No,’ said Lord Eskdale, looking up to the ceiling, ‘I am thinking how you may prevent Tancred from going to Jerusalem, without, at the same time, opposing his wishes.’
‘Ay, ay,’ said the duke, ‘that is it.’ And he looked triumphantly to his wife, as much as to say, ‘Now you see what it is to be a man of the world.’
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