The Duke was in the gallery of the House of Commons which is devoted to the use of peers, and Silverbridge having heard that his father was there, had come up to him. It was then about half-past five, and the House had settled down to business. Prayers had been read, petitions had been presented, and Ministers had gone through their course of baiting with that equanimity and air of superiority which always belongs to a well-trained occupant of the Treasury bench.
The Duke was very anxious that his son should attend to his parliamentary duties, but he was too proud a man and too generous to come to the House as a spy. It was his present habit always to be in his own place when the Lords were sitting, and to remain there while the Lords sat. it was not, for many reasons, an altogether satisfactory occupation, but it was the best which his life afforded him. He would never, however, come across into the other House, without letting his son know of his coming, and Lord Silverbridge had on this occasion been on the look out, and had come up to his father at once. 'Don't' let me take you away,' said the Duke, 'if you are particularly interested in your Chief's defence,' for Sir Timothy Beeswax was defending some measure of legal reform in which he was said to have fallen into trouble.
'I can hear it up here you know, sir.'
'Hardly if you are talking to me.'
'To tell the truth it's a matter I don't much care about. They've got into some mess as to the number of Judges and what they ought to do. Finn was saying that they had so arranged that there was one Judge who never could possibly do anything.'
'If Mr Finn said so it would probably be so, with some allowance for Irish exaggeration. He is a clever man, with less of his country's hyperbole than others;--but still not without his share.'
'You know him well, I suppose.'
'Yes;--as one man does know another in the political world.'
'But he is a friend of yours? I don't mean an "honourable friend", which is great bosh; but you know him at home.'
'Oh yes;--certainly. He has been staying with me at Matching. In public life such intimacies come from politics.'
'You don't care much about him then.'
The Duke paused a moment before he answered. 'Yes I do;--and in what I said just now perhaps I wronged him. I have been under obligations to Mr Finn,--in a matter as to which he behaved very well. I have found him to be a gentleman. If you come across him in the House I would wish you to be courteous to him. I have not seen him since we came from abroad. I have been able to see nobody. But if ever again I should entertain my friends at my table, Mr Finn would be one who would always be welcome there.'
This he said with a sadly serious air as though wishing that his words should be noted. At the present moment he was remembering that he owed recompense to Mrs Finn, and was making an effort to pay the debt. 'But your leader is striking out into unwonted eloquence. Surely we ought to listen to him.'
Sir Timothy was a fluent speaker, and when there was nothing to be said was possessed of a great plenty of words. And he was gifted with that peculiar power which enables a man to have the last word in every encounter,--a power which we are apt to call repartee, with is in truth the readiness which come from continual practice.
You shall meet two men of whom you shall know the one to be endowed with the brilliancy of true genius, and the other to be possessed of but moderate parts, and shall find the former never able to hold his awn against the latter. In a debate, the man of moderate parts will seem to be greater than the man of genius. But this skill of tongue, this glibness of speech is hardly an affair of intellect at all. It is--as is style to the writer,--not the wares which he has to take to market, but the vehicle in which they may be carried. Of what avail to you is it to have filled granaries with corn if you cannot get your corn to the consumer?
Now Sir Timothy was a great vehicle, but he had not in truth much corn to send. He could turn a laugh against an adversary;--no man better. He could seize, at the moment, every advantage which the opportunity might give him. The Treasury Bench on which he sat and the big box on the table before him were to him fortifications of which he knew how to use every stone. The cheers and jeers of the House had been so measured by him that he knew the value and force of every sound. Politics had never been to him a study; but to parliamentary strategy he had devoted all his faculties. No one knew so well as Sir Timothy how to make arrangements for business, so that every detail should be troublesome to his opponents. He could foresee a month beforehand that on a certain day a Royal concert would make the House empty, and would generously give that day to a less observant adversary. He knew how to blind the eyes of members to the truth. Those on the opposite side of the House would find themselves checkmated by his astuteness,--when with all their pieces on the board, there should be none which they could move. And this to him was Government! It was to these purposes that he conceived that a great Statesman should devote himself!
Parliamentary management! That in his mind, was under the Constitution of ours the one act essential for Government.