Jack was never one to take umbrage; he laughed, and said, ‘I was telling you about Keppel, before we passed the toll-house.’
‘Yes, yes, Keppel; your excellent good friend Mr Keppel,’ said Tobias, with the most concentrated attention, but secretly fondling his bittern’s feather.
‘Well, Keppel, you know, has a prodigious great deal of interest, and seeing that there are two vacancies in the Centurion – two midshipmen unprovided – he has already started stirring up his relatives on my behalf. That is one of the reasons why I am in such a hurry to be in London, because I have appointed to meet him tomorrow.’ They were coming into Bedford at this time, under a threatening sky, and when they had baited their horses and set off again, the first drops were falling.
‘There is another short cut of Charles’s between Cotton End and Deadman’s Green,’ said Jack doubtfully. ‘But seeing that we are in a hurry, perhaps we had better keep to the high road. It looks quite dirty,’ he said, looking up at the towering light-grey clouds. Behind the clouds the sky showed black, and as he spoke a flash of lightning ripped across: the thunder followed close behind, and so loud as to drown his words. He grinned as he calmed the nervous chestnut, and told Tobias, in a nautical bellow, that it looked as though it might come on something prodigious. He dearly loved a storm; rain alone satisfied him, provided there was enough of it, but if it were accompanied by a very great deal of wind, then it raised his spirits to a very high pitch.
‘Have you brought your greatcoat?’ he asked Tobias. Tobias shook his head. ‘What’s in that valise?’ asked Jack, shouting over the double peal.
‘Nothing,’ said Tobias, and as far as he knew this was true – he had put nothing in the valise: it had been there, strapped behind the saddle, as much part of the harness as the big horse-pistols in front, when he had mounted, and he had paid no attention to it. But in point of fact it was filled with necessaries. ‘The poor boy cannot go out into the world without so much as a clean shirt,’ had been Mrs Chaworth’s instant reply on hearing that Tobias was on the wing. She might disapprove of Tobias in some ways, but she had a real affection for him, and she anxiously rummaged the house for things of a suitable size – Jack’s were all far too big – and Georgiana, guided by who knows what unhappy chance, crowned the whole valise-full with another pair of strong list slippers, all bedewed with tears. But Tobias was unaware of this, and the excellent greatcoat behind him remained untouched: Jack therefore left his alone, and very soon both of them were so exceedingly wet that the water ran down inside their clothes, filled their shoes, and poured from them in a stream that contended with the water and mud flung up from the road. The extreme fury of the storm was soon over: the thunder and the lightning moved away to terrify Huntingdon, Rutland and Nottingham, but the rain had set in for the day and it fell without the least respite from that moment onwards. However, Tobias was wonderfully indifferent to foul weather, and Jack, though he preferred a dry back, could put up with a wet one as well as anybody, so they rode steadily through the downpour, conversing as soon as the thunder would let them.
‘You have often mentioned interest,’ said Tobias. ‘What is this interest, I beg?’
‘Well,’ said Jack, considering, ‘it is interest, you know. That is to say, influence, if you understand me – very much the same thing as influence. Everything goes by interest, more or less. It is really a matter of doing favours: I mean, suppose you are in Parliament, and there is a fellow, a minister or a private member, who wants a bill to be passed – if he comes to you and says, “You would oblige me extremely by voting for my bill,” and you do vote for his bill, why then the fellow is bound to do as much for you, if he is a man of honour. And if you do not happen to want to do anything in the parliamentary line, but prefer to get a place under Government for one of your friends, then the fellow with the bill must do what he can to gratify you. Besides, if he don’t, he will never have your vote again, ha, ha. That is, he must do what he can within reason: if you want a thundering good place, like being the Warden of the Stannaries with a thousand a year and all the work done by the deputy-warden, you must do a great deal more for it than just vote once or twice; but if it is just a matter of having someone let into a place where he will have to work very hard every day and get precious little pay for it, which is the case in the Navy, why then there is no great difficulty.’
‘I do not understand how a private member can help you to a place.’
‘Why, don’t you see? You have two votes for the time being, your own and this other man’s: so when you go and ask your favour of the minister – the First Lord of the Admiralty, if it is the Navy – he knows that you are twice as important as if you were alone, so he is twice as willing to oblige you. And of course if you have a good many friends and relatives in the House, you are more important still, because if you were all to vote against the administration together you might bring them down and turn the ministers out. And then it is even better to be in the House of Lords, if you can manage it, because, do you see, a minister might decide that it was worth while offending a member of the Commons’ house, for at the next election he may not come in again, but a peer, once he is in, is in for the rest of his life, and he could do you an ill turn for years and years. But it is all pretty complicated, and not at all as simple as that.’
‘How do the people without interest get along?’
‘They have to rely on merit.’
‘Does that answer?’
‘Well,’ said Jack slowly, ‘valour and virtue are very good things, I am sure: but I should be sorry to have to rely upon them alone, for my part.’
Tobias made no reply, and they rode for a long way in silence through the rain. Jack looked at him from time to time, and regretted that he had been quite so talkative about the squalid side of political life.
‘You’re pretty shocked, an’t you?’ he said at last.
‘No,’ said Tobias. ‘I had always read that the world was like that. What I was thinking about was your poem which begins Historic Muse, awake’
‘Were you indeed?’ said Jack, very pleased.
‘Yes. I was wondering whether “Spain’s proud nation, dreaded now no more” was quite right: “now” could mean now, and thus confuse the reader’s mind.’
‘Oh no, Toby. Think of what goes before –
‘Twas in Eliza’s memorable reign
When Britain’s fleet, acknowledged, ruled the main,
When Heav’n and it repelled from Albion’s shore
Spain’s – and so on.
It was then that it was not dreaded now, do you see? I have composed a great deal more of it, Toby.’
Oh.’
‘Should you like to hear it?’
‘If you please.’
‘I will begin at the beginning, so that you lose none of the effect.’ ‘I know the beginning, Jack,’ said Toby piteously, ‘by heart.’ ‘Never mind,’ said Jack hurriedly, and in a very particular chant he began,
‘Historic Muse awake! And from the shade
Where long forgotten sleep the noble dead (I am sorry that
don’t rhyme better)
Some worthy chief select, whose martial flame
May rouse Britannia’s sons to love of fame …’
The verse lasted until they were so close to London that the increased traffic made declamation impossible; but still the rain fell with the same steadiness, and Jack said, as they climbed Highgate Hill, ‘I am very sorry that it has not cleared up: I wanted to show you London from here – you can see it all spread out, and the river winding, and millions of lights in the evening. Besides, I thought that you would like to hear some lines I wrote about the prospect while we were actually looking at it. It is in praise of London, considered as