"I know not, Randal Leslie, whether you thought me needlessly cautious, or wantonly unkind, when I told you never to expect from me more than such advance to your career as my then position could effect,--never to expect from my liberality in life, nor from my testament in death, an addition to your private fortunes. I see by your gesture what would be your reply, and I thank you for it. I now tell you, as yet in confidence, though before long it can be no secret to the world, that my pecuniary affairs have been so neglected by me in my devotion to those of the State, that I am somewhat like the man who portioned out his capital at so much a day, calculating to live just long enough to make it last. Unfortunately he lived too long." Audley smiled--but the smile was cold as a sunbeam upon ice-and went on with the same firm, unfaltering accents. "The prospects that face me I am prepared for; they do not take me by surprise. I knew long since how this would end, if I survived the loss of office. I knew it before you came to me, and therefore I spoke to you as I did, judging it manful and right to guard you against hopes which you might otherwise have naturally entertained.

On this head, I need say no more. It may excite your surprise, possibly your blame, that I, esteemed methodical and practical enough in the affairs of the State, should be so imprudent as to my own."

"Oh, sir! you owe no account to me."

"To you, at least, as much as to any one. I am a solitary man; my few relations need nothing from me. I had a right do spend what I possessed as I pleased; and if I have spent it recklessly as regards myself, I have not spent it ill in its effect on others. It has been my object for many years to have no Private Life,--to dispense with its sorrows, joys, affections; and as to its duties, they did not exist for me. I have said." Mechanically, as he ended, the minister's hand closed the lid of one of the iron boxes, and on the closed lid he rested his firm foot.

"But now," he resumed, "I have failed to advance your career. True, I warned you that you drew into a lottery; but you had more chance of a prize than a blank. A blank, however, it has turned out, and the question becomes grave,--What are you to do?"

Here, seeing that Egerton came to a full pause, Randal answered readily,

"Still, sir, to go by your advice."

"My advice," said Audley, with a softened look, "would perhaps be rude and unpalatable. I would rather place before you an option. On the one hand, recommence life again. I told you that I would keep your name on your college books. You can return, you can take your degree, after that, you can go to the Bar,--you have just the talents calculated to succeed in that profession. Success will be slow, it is true; but, with perseverance, it will be sure. And, believe me, Leslie, Ambition is only sweet while it is but the loftier name for Hope. Who would care for a fox's brush if it had not been rendered a prize by the excitement of the chase?"

"Oxford--again! It is a long step back in life," said Randal, drearily, and little heeding Egerton's unusual indulgence of ill.u.s.tration. "A long step back--and to what? To a profession in which one never begins to rise till one's hair is gray. Besides, how live in the mean while?"

"Do not let that thought disturb you. The modest income that suffices for a student at the Bar, I trust, at least, to insure you from the wrecks of my fortune."

"Ah, sir, I would not burden you further. What right have I to such kindness, save my name of Leslie?" And in spite of himself, as Randal concluded, a tone of bitterness, that betrayed reproach, broke forth.

Egerton was too much the man of the world not to comprehend the reproach, and not to pardon it.

"Certainly," he answered calmly, "as a Leslie you are ent.i.tled to my consideration, and would have been ent.i.tled perhaps to more, had I not so explicitly warned you to the contrary. But the Bar does not seem to please you?"

"What is the alternative, sir? Let me decide when I hear it," answered Randal, sullenly. He began to lose respect for the roan who owned he could do so little for him, and who evidently recommended him to shift for himself.

If one could have pierced into Egerton's gloomy heart as he noted the young man's change of tone, it may be a doubt whether one would have seen there pain or pleasure,--pain, for merely from the force of habit he had begun to like Randal, or pleasure at the thought that he might have reason to withdraw that liking. So lone and stoical had grown the man who had made it his object to have no private life! Revealing, however, neither pleasure nor pain, but with the composed calmness of a judge upon the bench, Egerton replied,--

"The alternative is, to continue in the course you have begun, and still to rely on me."

"Sir, my dear Mr. Egerton," exclaimed Randal, regaining all his usual tenderness of look and voice, "rely on you! But that is all I ask. Only"

"Only, you would say, I am going out of power, and you don't see the chance of my return?"

"I did not mean that."

"Permit me to suppose that you did: very true; but the party I belong to is as sure of return as the pendulum of that clock is sure to obey the mechanism that moves it from left to right. Our successors profess to come in upon a popular question. All administrations who do that are necessarily short-lived. Either they do not go far enough to please present supporters, or they go so far as to arm new enemies in the rivals who outbid them with the people. 'T is the history of all revolutions, and of all reforms. Our own administration in reality is destroyed for having pa.s.sed what was called a popular measure a year ago, which lost us half our friends, and refusing to propose another popular measure this year, in the which we are outstripped by the men who hallooed us on to the last. Therefore, whatever our successors do, we shall by the law of reaction, have another experiment of power afforded to ourselves. It is but a question of time; you can wait for it,--whether I can is uncertain. But if I die before that day arrives, I have influence enough still left with those who will come in, to obtain a promise of a better provision for you than that which you have lost.

The promises of public men are proverbially uncertain; but I shall entrust your cause to a man who never failed a friend, and whose rank will enable him to see that justice is done to you,--I speak of Lord L'Estrange."

"Oh, not he; he is unjust to me; he dislikes me; he--"

"May dislike you (he has his whims), but he loves me; and though for no other human being but you would I ask Harley L'Estrange a favour, yet for you I will," said Egerton, betraying, for the first time in that dialogue, a visible emotion,--"for you, a Leslie, a kinsman, however remote, to the wife from whom I received my fortune! And despite all my cautions, it is possible that in wasting that fortune I may have wronged you. Enough: you have now before you the two options, much as you had at first; but you have at present more experience to aid you in your choice. You are a man, and with more brains than most men; think over it well, and decide for yourself. Now to bed, and postpone thought till the morrow. Poor Randal, you look pale!"

Audley, as he said the last words, put his hand on Randal's shoulder, almost with a father's gentleness; and then suddenly drawing himself up, as the hard inflexible expression, stamped on that face by years, returned, he moved away and resettled to Public Life and the iron box.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Early the next day Randal Leslie was in the luxurious business-room of Baron Levy. How unlike the cold Doric simplicity of the statesman's library! Axminster carpets, three inches thick; portieres a la Francaise before the doors; Parisian bronzes on the chimney-piece; and all the receptacles that lined the room, and contained t.i.tle-deeds and postobits and bills and promises to pay and lawyer-like j.a.pan boxes, with many a n.o.ble name written thereon in large white capitals--"making ruin pompous," all these sepulchres of departed patrimonies veneered in rosewood that gleamed with French polish, and blazed with ormulu. There was a coquetry, an air of pet.i.t maitre, so diffused over the whole room, that you could not, for the life of you, recollect you were with a usurer! Plutus wore the aspect of his enemy Cupid; and how realize your idea of Harpagon in that baron, with his easy French "Mon cher," and his white, warm hands that pressed yours so genially, and his dress so exquisite, even at the earliest morn? No man ever yet saw that baron in a dressing-gown and slippers! As one fancies some feudal baron of old (not half so terrible) everlastingly clad in mail, so all one's notions of this grand marauder of civilization were inseparably a.s.sociated with varnished boots and a camellia in the b.u.t.ton-hole.

"And this is all that he does for you!" cried the baron, pressing together the points of his ten taper fingers. "Had he but let you conclude your career at Oxford, I have heard enough of your scholarship to know that you would have taken high honours, been secure of a fellowship, have betaken yourself with content to a slow and laborious profession, and prepared yourself to die on the woolsack."

"He proposes to me now to return to Oxford," said Randal. "It is not too late!"

"Yes, it is," said the baron. "Neither individuals nor nations ever go back of their own accord. There must be an earthquake before a river recedes to its source."

"You speak well," answered Randal, "and I cannot gainsay you. But now!"

"Ah, the now is the grand question in life, the then is obsolete, gone by,--out of fashion; and now, mon cher, you come to ask my advice?"

"No, Baron, I come to ask your explanation."

"Of what?"

"I want to know why you spoke to me of Mr. Egerton's ruin; why you spoke to me of the lands to be sold by Mr. Thornhill; and why you spoke to me of Count Peschiera. You touched on each of those points within ten minutes, you omitted to indicate what link can connect them."

"By Jove," said the baron, rising, and with more admiration in his face than you could have conceived that face, so smiling and so cynical, could exhibit,--"by Jove, Randal Leslie, but your shrewdness is wonderful. You really are the first young man of your day; and I will 'help you,' as I helped Audley Egerton. Perhaps you will be more grateful."

Randal thought of Egerton's ruin. The parallel implied by the baron did not suggest to him the rare enthusiasm of grat.i.tude. However, he merely said, "Pray, proceed; I listen to you with interest."

"As for politics, then," said the baron, "we will discuss that topic later. I am waiting myself to see how these new men get on. The first consideration is for your private fortunes. You should buy this ancient Leslie property--Rood and Dulmansberry--only L20,000 down; the rest may remain on mortgage forever--or at least till I find you a rich wife,--as in fact I did for Egerton. Thornhill wants the L20,000 now,--wants them very much."

"And where," said Randal, with an iron smile, "are the L20,000 you ascribe to me to come from?"

"Ten thousand shall come to you the day Count Peschiera marries the daughter of his kinsman with your help and aid; the remaining ten thousand I will lend you. No scruple, I shall hazard nothing, the estates will bear that additional burden. What say you,--shall it be so?"

"Ten thousand pounds from Count Peschiera!" said Randal, breathing hard. "You cannot be serious? Such a sum--for what?--for a mere piece of information? How otherwise can I aid him? There must be trick and deception intended here."

"My dear fellow," answered Levy, "I will give you a hint. There is such a thing in life as being over-suspicious. If you have a fault, it is that. The information you allude to is, of course, the first a.s.sistance you are to give. Perhaps more may be needed, perhaps not. Of that you will judge yourself, since the L10,000 are contingent on the marriage aforesaid."

"Over-suspicious or not," answered Randal, "the amount of the sum is too improbable, and the security too bad, for me to listen to this proposition, even if I could descend to--"

"Stop, mon cher. Business first, scruples afterwards. The security too bad; what security?"

"The word of Count di Peschiera."

"He has nothing to do with it, he need know nothing about it. 'T is my word you doubt. I am your security."

Randal thought of that dry witticism in Gibbon, "Abu Rafe says he will be witness for this fact, but who will be witness for Abu Rafe?" but he remained silent, only fixing on Levy those dark observant eyes, with their contracted, wary pupils.

"The fact is simply this," resumed Levy: "Count di Peschiera has promised to pay his sister a dowry of L20,000, in case he has the money to spare. He can only have it to spare by the marriage we are discussing. On my part, as I manage his affairs in England for him, I have promised that, for the said sum of L20,000, I will guarantee the expenses in the way of that marriage, and settle with Madame di Negra.

Now, though Peschiera is a very liberal, warm-hearted fellow, I don't say that he would have named so large a sum for his sister's dowry, if in strict truth he did not owe it to her. It is the amount of her own fortune, which by some arrangements with her late husband, not exactly legal, he possessed himself of. If Madame di Negra went to law with him for it, she could get it back. I have explained this to him; and, in short, you now understand why the sum is thus a.s.sessed. But I have bought up Madame di Negra's debts, I have bought up young Hazeldean's (for we must make a match between these two a part of our arrangements).

I shall present to Peschiera, and to these excellent young persons, an account that will absorb the whole L20,000. That sum will come into my hands. If I settle the claims against them for half the money, which, making myself the sole creditor, I have the right to do, the moiety will remain. And if I choose to give it to you in return for the services which provide Peschiera with a princely fortune, discharge the debts of his sister, and secure her a husband in my promising young client, Mr.

Hazeldean, that is my lookout,--all parties are satisfied, and no one need ever be the wiser. The sum is large, no doubt; it answers to me to give it to you; does it answer to you to receive it?"

Randal was greatly agitated; but vile as he was, and systematically as in thought he had brought himself to regard others merely as they could be made subservient to his own interest, still, with all who have not hardened themselves in actual crime, there is a wide distinction between the thought and the act; and though, in the exercise of ingenuity and cunning, he would have had few scruples in that moral swindling which is mildly called "outwitting another," yet thus nakedly and openly to accept a bribe for a deed of treachery towards the poor Italian who had so generously trusted him--he recoiled. He was nerving himself to refuse, when Levy, opening his pocket-book, glanced over the memoranda therein, and said, as to himself, "Rood Manor--Dulmansberry, sold to the Thornhills by Sir Gilbert Leslie, knight of the shire; estimated present net rental L2,250 7s. 0d. It is the greatest bargain I ever knew. And with this estate in hand, and your talents, Leslie, I don't see why you should not rise higher than Audley Egerton. He was poorer than you once!"

The old Leslie lands--a positive stake in the country--the restoration of the fallen family; and on the other hand, either long drudgery at the Bar,--a scanty allowance on Egerton's bounty, his sister wasting her youth at slovenly, dismal Rood, Oliver debased into a boor!--or a mendicant's dependence on the contemptuous pity of Harley L'Estrange,--Harley, who had refused his hand to him, Harley, who perhaps would become the husband of Violante! Rage seized him as these contrasting pictures rose before his view. He walked to and fro in disorder, striving to re-collect his thoughts, and reduce himself from the pa.s.sions of the human heart into the mere mechanism of calculating intellect. "I cannot conceive," said he, abruptly, "why you should tempt me thus,--what interest it is to you!"