Sybil, Or, The Two Nations, Earl of Beaconsfield Benjamin Disraeli [chrysanthemum read aloud TXT] 📗

doubt not, what with the garden and neighbourhood and so on; besides, in a manner, he is master of his own time. His work is not like ours; and though the pull on the brain is sometimes great, I have often wished I had a talent that way. It’s a drear life to do the same thing every day at the same hour. But I never could express my ideas except with my tongue; and there I feel tolerably at home.”

“It will be a pity to see this room without these books,” said Egremont, encouraging conversation on domestic subjects.

“So it will,” said Gerard. “I have got very few of my own. But my daughter will be able to fill the shelves in time, I warrant.”

“Your daughter—she is coming to live with you?”

“Yes; that is the reason why Stephen quits us. He only remained here until Sybil could keep my house, and that happy day is at hand.”

“That is a great compensation for the loss of your friend,” said Egremont.

“And yet she talks of flitting,” said Gerard, in a rather melancholy tone. “She hankers after the cloister. She has passed a still, sweet life in the convent here; the Superior is the sister of my employer and a very saint on earth; and Sybil knows nothing of the real world except its sufferings. No matter,” he added more cheerfully; “I would not have her take the veil rashly, but if I lose her it may be for the best. For the married life of a woman of our class in the present condition of our country is a lease of woe,” he added shaking his head, “slaves, and the slaves of slaves? Even woman’s spirit cannot stand against it; and it can bear against more than we can, master.”

“Your daughter is not made for the common cares of life,” said Egremont.

“We’ll not talk of them,” said Gerard. “Sybil has an English heart, and that’s not easily broken. And you, comrade, you are a traveller in these parts, eh?”

“A kind of traveller; something in the way of your friend Morley—connected with the press.”

“Indeed! a reporter, eh? I thought you had something about you a little more knowing than we provincials.”

“Yes; a reporter; they want information in London as to the real state of the country, and this time of the year, Parliament not sitting—Ah; I understand, a flying commission and a summer tour. Well, I often wish I were a penman; but I never could do it. I’ll read any day as long as you like, but that writing, I could never manage. My friend Morley is a powerful hand at it. His journal circulates a good deal about here; and if as I often tell him he would only sink his high-flying philosophy and stick to old English politics, he might make a property of it. You’ll like to know him?”

“Much.”

“And what first took you to the press, if I may ask!”

“Why—my father was a gentleman—“, said Egremont in a hesitating tone, “and I was a younger son.”

“Ah!” said Gerard, “that is as bad as being a woman.”

“I had no patrimony,” continued Egremont, “and I was obliged to work; I had no head I believe for the law; the church was not exactly in my way; and as for the army, how was I to advance without money or connexions! I had had some education, and so I thought I would turn it to account.”

“Wisely done! you are one of the working classes, and will enlist I hope in the great struggle against the drones. The natural friends of the people are younger sons, though they are generally enlisted against us. The more fools they; to devote their energies to the maintenance of a system which is founded on selfishness and which leads to fraud; and of which they are the first victims. But every man thinks he will be an exception.”

“And yet,” said Egremont, “a great family rooted in the land, has been deemed to be an element of political strength.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Gerard, “there is a great family in this country and rooted in it, of which we have heard much less than they deserved, but of which I suspect we shall hear very soon enough to make us all think a bit.”

“In this county?”

“Ay; in this county and every other one; I mean the PEOPLE.”

“Ah!” said Egremont, “that family has existed for a long time.”

“But it has taken to increase rapidly of late, my friend—how may I call you?”

“They call me, Franklin.”

“A good English name of a good English class that has disappeared. Well, Mr Franklin, be sure of this, that the Population Returns of this country are very instructive reading.”

“I can conceive so.”

“I became a man when the bad times were beginning,” said Gerard; “I have passed through many doleful years. I was a Franklin’s son myself, and we had lived on this island at least no worse for a longer time than I care to recollect as little as what I am now. But that’s nothing; I am not thinking of myself. I am prosperous in a fashion; it is the serfs I live among of whom I am thinking. Well, I have heard, in the course of years, of some specifics for this constant degradation of the people; some thing or some person that was to put all right; and for my part, I was not unready to support any proposal or follow any leader. There was reform, and there was paper money, and no machinery, and a thousand other remedies; and there were demagogues of all kinds, some as had as myself, and some with blood in their veins almost as costly as flows in those of our great neighbour here. Earl de Mowbray, and I have always heard that was very choice: but I will frankly own to you, I never had much faith in any of these proposals or proposers; but they were a change, and that is something. But I have been persuaded of late that there is something going on in this country of more efficacy; a remedial power, as I believe, and irresistible; but whether remedial or not, at any rate a power that will mar all or cure all. You apprehend me? I speak of the annual arrival of more than three hundred thousand strangers in this island. How will you feed them? How will you clothe them? How will you house them? They have given up butcher’s meat; must they give up bread? And as for raiment and shelter, the rags of the kingdom are exhausted and your sinks and cellars already swarm like rabbit warrens.

“‘Tis an awful consideration,” said Egremont musing.

“Awful,” said Gerard; “‘tis the most solemn thing since the deluge. What kingdom can stand against it? Why go to your history—you’re a scholar,—and see the fall of the great Roman empire—what was that? Every now and then, there came two or three hundred thousand strangers out of the forests and crossed the mountains and rivers. They come to us every year and in greater numbers. What are your invasions of the barbarous nations,