Part 73 (1/2)

”Not at all,” said Mr. Stistick. ”There is accommodation for only--”

”Well, we'll ask Lady Harcourt. What do you say, Lady Harcourt?”

Lady Harcourt felt herself by no means inclined to enter into the joke on either side; so she said, with her gravest smile, ”I'm sure Mr. Stistick understands very well what he's talking about.”

”What do you say, ma'am?” said the judge, turning round to the lady on his left.

”Mr. Stistick is always right on such matters,” said the lady.

”See what it is to have a character. It absolutely enables one to upset the laws of human nature. But still I do say, Mr. Solicitor, that the majority of them were probably boys.”

”Boys!” exclaimed the member of Parliament. ”Boys! I don't think you can have understood a word that we have been saying.”

”I don't think I have,” said the baron.

”There are five hundred and fifty-five thousand male children between--”

”Oh--h--h! male children! Ah--h--h! Now I see the difference; I beg your pardon, Mr. Stistick, but I really was very stupid. And you mean to explain all this to Lord John in the present session?”

”But, Stistick, who is the one man?” said Sir Henry.

”The one man is Lord Boanerges. He, I believe, is the only man living who really understands the social wants of this kingdom.”

”And everything else also,” sneered the baron. The baron always sneered at cleverness that was external to his own profession, especially when exhibited by one who, like the n.o.ble lord named, should have confined his efforts to that profession.

”So Boanerges is to take in hand these male children? And very fitting, too; he was made to be a schoolmaster.”

”He is the first man of the age; don't you think so, Sir Henry?”

”He was, certainly, when he was on the woolsack,” said Sir Henry.

”That is the normal position always a.s.sumed by the first man of his age in this country.”

”Though some of them when there do hide their lights under a bushel,”

said the judge.

”He is the first law reformer that perhaps ever lived,” said Mr.

Stistick, enthusiastically.

”And I hope will be the last in my time,” said his enemy.

”I hope he will live to complete his work,” said the politician.

”Then Methuselah will be a child to him, and Jared and Lamech little babies,” said the judge.

”In such case he has got his work before him, certainly,” said Mr.

Solicitor.

And so the battle was kept up between them, and George Bertram and Lady Harcourt sat by and listened; or more probably, perhaps, sat by and did not listen.

But when her ladys.h.i.+p and Mrs. Stistick had retreated--Oh, my readers, fancy what that next hour must have been to Caroline Harcourt!--How Gothic, how barbarous are we still in our habits, in that we devote our wives to such wretchedness as that! O, lady, has it ever been your lot to sit out such hour as that with some Mrs. Stistick, who would neither talk, nor read, nor sleep; in whose company you could neither talk, nor read, nor yet sleep? And if such has been your lot, have you not asked yourself why in this civilized country, in this civilized century, you should be doomed to such a senseless, sleepless purgatory?--But when they were gone, and when the judge, radiant with fun and happiness, hastened to fill his claret beaker, then Bertram by degrees thawed, and began to feel that after all the world was perhaps not yet dead around him.