Sybil by Benjamin Disraeli (epub e reader TXT) 📕

years. If the whigs go out to-morrow, mark me, they will disappoint all their friends. Their underlings have promised so many, that treachery is inevitable, and if they deceive some they may as well deceive all. Perhaps they may distribute a coronet or two among themselves: and I shall this year make three: and those are the only additions to the peerage which will occur for many years. You may rely on that. For the tories will make none, and I have some thoughts of retiring from business."

It is difficult to express the astonishment, the perplexity, the agitation, that pervaded the countenance of Sir Vavasour while his companion thus coolly delivered himself. High hopes extinguished and excited at the same moment; cherished promises vanishing, mysterious expectations rising up; revelations of astounding state secrets; chief ministers voluntarily renouncing their highest means of influence, and an obscure private individual distributing those distinctions which sovereigns were obliged to hoard, and to obtain which the first men in the country were ready to injure their estates and to sacrifice their honour! At length Sir Vavasour said, "You amaze me Mr Hatton. I could mention to you twenty members of Boodle's, at least, who believe they will be made peers the moment the tories come in."

"Not a man of them," said Hatton peremptorily. "Tell me one of their names, and I will tell you whether they will be made peers."

"Well then there is Mr Tubbe Sweete, a county member, and his son in parliament too--I know he has a promise."

"I repeat to you, Sir Vavasour, the tories will not make a single peer; the candidates must come to me; and I ask you what can I do for a Tubbe Sweete, the son of a Jamaica cooper? Are there any old families among your twenty members of Brookes'?"

"Why I can hardly say," said Sir Vavasour; "there is Sir Charles Featherly, an old baronet."

"The founder a lord mayor in James the First's reign. That is not the sort of old family that I mean," said Mr Hatton.

"Well there is Colonel Cockawhoop," said Sir Vavasour. "The Cockawhoops are a very good family I have always heard."

"Contractors of Queen Anne: partners with Marlborough and Solomon Medina; a very good family indeed: but I do not make peers out of good families, Sir Vavasour; old families are the blocks out of which I cut my Mercurys."

"But what do you call an old family?" said Sir Vavasour.

"Yours," said Mr Hatton, and he threw a full glance on the countenance on which the light rested.

"We were in the first batch of baronets," said Sir Vavasour.

"Forget the baronets for a while," said Hatton. "Tell me, what was your family before James the First?"

"They always lived on their lands," said Sir Vavasour. "I have a room full of papers that would perhaps tell us something about them. Would you like to see them?"

"By all means: bring them all here. Not that I want them to inform me of your rights: I am fully acquainted with them. You would like to be a peer, sir. Well, you are really Lord Vavasour, but there is a difficulty in establishing your undoubted right from the single writ of summons difficulty. I will not trouble you with technicalities, Sir Vavasour: sufficient that the difficulty is great though perhaps not unmanageable. But we have no need of management. Your claim on the barony of Lovel is very good: I could recommend your pursuing it, did not another more inviting still present itself. In a word, if you wish to be Lord Bardolf, I will undertake to make you so, before, in all probability, Sir Robert Peel obtains office; and that I should think would gratify Lady Firebrace."

"Indeed it would," said Sir Vavasour, "for if it had not been for this sort of a promise of a peerage made--I speak in great confidence Mr Hatton--made by Mr Taper, my tenants would have voted for the whigs the other day at the ----shire election, and the conservative candidate would have been beaten. Lord Masque had almost arranged it, but Lady Firebrace would have a written promise from a high quarter, and so it fell to the ground."

"Well we are independent of all these petty arrangements now," said Mr Hatton.

"It is very wonderful," said Sir Vavasour, rising from his chair and speaking as it were to himself. "And what do you think our expenses will be in this claim?" he inquired.

"Bagatelle!" said Mr Hatton. "Why a dozen years ago I have known men lay out nearly half a million in land and not get two per cent for their money, in order to obtain a borough influence which might ultimately obtain them a spick and span coronet; and now you are going to put one on your head, which will give you precedence over every peer on the roll, except three (and I made those), and it will not cost you a paltry twenty or thirty thousand pounds. Why I know men who would give that for the precedence alone.--Here!" and he rose and took up some papers from a table: "Here is a case; a man you know, I dare say; an earl, and of a decent date as earls go: George the First. The first baron was a Dutch valet of William the Third. Well I am to terminate an abeyance in his favour through his mother, and give him one of the baronies of the Herberts. He buys off the other claimant who is already ennobled with a larger sum than you will expend on your ancient coronet. Nor is that all. The other claimant is of French descent and name; came over at the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Well, besides the hush money, my client is to defray all the expense of attempting to transform the descendant of the silkweaver of Lyons into the heir of a Norman conqueror. So you see, Sir Vavasour, I am not unreasonable. Pah! I would sooner gain five thousand pounds by restoring you to your rights, than fifty thousand in establishing any of these pretenders in their base assumptions. I must work in my craft, Sir Vavasour, but I love the old English blood, and have it in my veins."

"I am satisfied, Mr Hatton." said Sir Vavasour: "let no time be lost. All I regret is, that you did not mention all this to me before; and then we might have saved a great deal of trouble and expence."

"You never consulted me," said Mr Hatton. "You gave me your instructions, and I obeyed them. I was sorry to see you in that mind, for to speak frankly, and I am sure now you will not be offended, my lord, for such is your real dignity, there is no title in the world for which I have such a contempt as that of a baronet."

Sir Vavasour winced, but the future was full of glory and the present of excitement; and he wished Mr Hatton good morning, with a promise that he would himself bring the papers on the morrow.

Mr Hatton was buried for a few moments in a reverie, during which he played with the tail of the Persian cat.


Book 4 Chapter 8

We left Sybil and Egremont just at the moment that Gerard arrived at the very threshold which they had themselves reached.

"Ah! my father," exclaimed Sybil, and then with a faint blush of which she was perhaps unconscious, she added, as if apprehensive Gerard would not recall his old companion, "you remember Mr Franklin?"

"This gentleman and myself had the pleasure of meeting yesterday," said Gerard embarrassed, while Egremont himself changed colour and was infinitely confused. Sybil felt surprised that her father should have met Mr Franklin and not have mentioned a circumstance naturally interesting to her. Egremont was about to speak when the street-door was opened. And were they to part again, and no explanation? And was Sybil to be left with her father, who was evidently in no haste, perhaps had no great tendency, to give that explanation? Every feeling of an ingenuous spirit urged Egremont personally to terminate this prolonged misconception.

"You will permit me, I hope," he said, appealing as much to Gerard as to his daughter, "to enter with you for a few moments."

It was not possible to resist such a request, yet it was conceded on the part of Gerard with no cordiality. So they entered the large gloomy hail of the house, and towards the end of a long passage Gerard opened a door, and they all went into a spacious melancholy room, situate at the back of the house, and looking upon a small square plot of dank grass, in the midst of which rose a very weather-stained Cupid, with one arm broken, and the other raised in the air with a long shell to its mouth. It seemed that in old days it might have been a fountain. At the end of the plot the blind side of a house offered a high wall which had once been painted in fresco. Though much of the coloured plaster had cracked and peeled away, and all that remained was stained and faded, still some traces of the original design might yet be detected: festive wreaths, the colonnades and perspective of a palace.

The wails of the room itself were waincsotted in pannels of dark-stained wood; the window-curtains were of coarse green worsted, and encrusted with dust so ancient and irremovable, that it presented almost a lava-like appearance; the carpet that had once been bright and showy, was entirely threadbare, and had become grey with age. There were several heavy mahogany arm-chairs in the room, a Pembroke table, and an immense unwieldy sideboard, garnished with a few wine-glasses of a deep blue colour. Over the lofty uncouth mantel was a portrait of the Marquis of Granby, which might have been a sign, and opposite to him, over the sideboard, was a large tawdry-coloured print, by Bunbury, of Ranelagh in its most festive hour. The general appearance of the room however though dingy, was not squalid: and what with its spaciousness, its extreme repose, and the associations raised by such few images as it did suggest, the impression on the mind of the spectator was far from unpleasing, partaking indeed of that vague melancholy which springs from the contemplation of the past, and which at all times softens the spirit.

Gerard walked to the window and looked at the grass-plot; Sybil seating herself, invited their guest to follow her example; Egremont, not without agitation, seemed suddenly to make an effort to collect himself, and then, in a voice not distinguished by its accustomed clearness, he said, "I explained yesterday to one who I hope I may still call my friend, why I assumed a name to which I have no right."

Sybil started a little, slightly stared, but did not speak.

"I should be happy if you also would give me credit, in taking that step, at least for motives of which I need not be ashamed; even," he added in a hesitating voice, "even if you deemed my conduct indiscreet."

Their eyes met: astonishment was imprinted on the countenance of Sybil, but she uttered not a word; and her father, whose back was turned to them, did not move.

"I was told," continued Egremont, "that an impassable gulf divided the Rich from the Poor; I was told that the Privileged and the People formed Two Nations, governed by different laws, influenced by different manners, with no thoughts or sympathies in common; with an innate inability of mutual comprehension. I believed that if