CHAPTER XIV.

PRIVATE INFLUENCE.

THE Curate had just penned a brief and manly request for an immediate interview with his grand connection, and was about to address it, when a latch-key was put almost noiselessly into the lock of the street door, and a soft, rather weary voice, which had nevertheless a tone of command in it, said, "Have there been any calls or letters to-day, James?"

"Yes, Sir Mowledy, there has," replied the servant, indicating a heap of cards and letters on the hall table by a respectful inclination of the head-and then he also indicated the Curate, who looked up, and his grand connection, colouring slightly, advanced and very cordially shook hands with him.

The Minister was a pale, fair, tired man, who wore his hat so far back on his head that it seemed to rest upon his shoulders, and who had a mooning, rather disconsolate gait. He was not more than five or six and thirty, but he was quite bald, and his fair delicate complexion seemed withered. He looked like a man who had been blighted, or who had never come to complete maturity. His manners were at once earnest and absent. He tried with all his strength to understand any question which was brought before him, although it might be of the most serious and complicated nature. His misfortune was that he had not much strength whether of mind or body, and therefore finding it usually impossible to master the facts and circumstances submitted to him for decision, his attention wandered away, and he began to muse, poor gentleman, on what he was going to have for dinner; on his grapes and peaches, of which he grew very fine kinds at one of his country houses; or on the probability of his wife scolding him if he was not home for afternoon tea.

"Come into the library," said the Minister to his kinsman, with that perfect conventional ease and simplicity which marks a gentleman. "I am glad to see you. You must dine with us on Sunday if you stay in town. It is the only day we have a family meeting." The Minister was really glad to see his relation, and would, if he had had energy enough, have served him very readily: for they had been old schoolfellows at Winchester, though the Curate had been on the foundation of that noble college, and the Baronet's heir as a town boy had felt rather ashamed of him till he knew better.

The village clergyman explained his errand in the strong simple language natural to him. He told his kinsman how the physician in attendance at one of the great London hospitals had received poor Madge, when she was taken there a few weeks ago; and having found out who she was, had written to him as incumbent of her parish, and therefore her natural protector, ex officio. He said that he had known her and all her family for

many years, and had never seen or heard any evil of them, had never suspected anything doubtful but upon two occasions many years before ; ❤ and even then nothing had arisen to confirm his suspicions; that he believed Madge to be a thoroughly honest and blameless woman, who was certainly the mainstay of her humble household, and that if she were wrongfully condemned, owing to any error or miscarriage of justice, her husband and children would drift away into ruin also.

It was almost touching to see how painfully the Minister tried to comprehend him as he spoke. Sir Mowledy drew his chair quite close up to the Curate's chair, so that their knees almost touched; and once or twice he laid his hand upon the Curate's shoulder, as if to establish a more perfect magnetic current between them. It was of no use; the Right Honourable Baronet could not change his nature, and before the Curate's simple story was half told, his mind was far away on the southern wall of the Cheshire garden, where his peaches grew. Had he been a man of any strength of mind or vigour of character, of course he would not have been a Minister of State in these our times. We must take people as we find them, and when we look for power in a Constitutional country, where all the envies, hatreds, and jealousies of mankind conspire against wisdom and reason, we may be sure to find it very near to mediocrity. Sir Mowledy would have made an admirable gardener, he made a still better British Privy Councillor and Secretary of State. When the Curate had done speaking, he looked up with that agreeable and amiable smile which had so often disarmed an adversary in the House of Commons, and said good-naturedly, "What's the matter?"

"I want your help," answered Mr. Mowledy. "I ask you as Minister for Mundane Affairs, and therefore practically invested with the Crown's prerogative of mercy, to look into this case yourself, to sift the evidence thoroughly, remembering all which I, upon my honour and conscience, and between friends and kindred, have said to you; and I pray you to give such weight to my appeal as shall not suffer the innocent to be condemned, or as shall temper justice with pity."

"Of course," replied the Minister, catching at words which he read in petitions at least a dozen times a day. "Appeals for justice and pity are deserving of the best consideration of the Government at all times; but," he added, with an air of quiet wisdom very becoming, and which he had lately learned from an actor at Covent Garden Theatre, "I am in some doubt whether I, with the most entire desire to comply with your request, can venture so far upon my ministerial functions as to interfere in any way whatsoever in my official capacity with a business which is," he thought for a minute for a phrase in use at his office, and then added gently, "which is strictly within the competence of her Majesty's judges."

"Can you give me absolutely no hope ?" asked the Curate, dispirited by this new view of the case, which sounded so reasonable, and which was so heart-breaking. "I entreat you to consider this poor ignorant woman, without friends or money; and nevertheless, as I truly believe, a helpless

victim, caught in a tangled web of circumstantial evidence, which cannot be unravelled without much aid and succour."

The Minister shook his head with mild disapproval, to show he took an interest in the conversation, and he bent courteously forward as if to listen more intently. In fact, he was thinking whether his tea-cake that afternoon would be buttered with some Brittany butter which he had ordered as he walked down to his office in the morning.

"Let me have your promise that the magistrate's decision will, at all events, be revised by competent authority," pleaded the Curate.

"Come, come up to tea, and I will present you to Lady Selina. We can talk of this melancholy business afterwards," answered the Minister, bringing the interview blandly to a close, for he was hungry and really anxious about his Brittany butter. The Curate's last words had, therefore, fallen on his ear like strokes of lead upon sponge, leaving no echo.

So the good clergyman, who was not a man of the world, and did not know how to force an advantage or extort a pledge, even when fortune had given him that rare and precious thing, an opportunity, followed his grand connection up the handsomely carpeted stairs which led to Lady Selina's tea-table and boudoir. There he found assembled almost all the female magpies in London whose mates or relations wanted anything from the Mundane Office. Poor magpies! Sir Mowledy could give them nothing; but they persisted in thinking otherwise, and Lady Selina was not sorry to keep up the delusion, for she had married two daughters and a niece upon it.

Her ladyship received Mr. Mowledy very graciously, being far too expert and well trained a hostess, and also too great a lady, to be ashamed of her husband's poor relation; and feeling, as all noble ladies do, a deep and sincere respect for any member of the Church, however poverty-stricken, who conducted himself decorously. She knew everything, too; all the great London ladies do; for there is assuredly a noble road to learning, which is perpetual gossip. She had heard many good accounts of Mr. Mowledy; and also the terrible story about fermented liquor, which she now saw, by one glance at that pale grand face of his, was and must be a slander. Therefore Lady Selina placed him beside her at the tea-table, and spoke, as great ladies only can speak, to him; but he soon found it was impossible for him to plead his cause with her while all those magpies were screaming and fluttering around. Presently, too, the Minister, after reading a telegram from the Government whip, hurried suddenly off to the House of Commons, so that the Curate could not get another word with him; and as Lady Selina asked her sister, Lady Lobby, to drive her down to Westminster to hear the great debate on the Nonending question, which was to come off that night, the Curate took his departure, and found himself in the street as the sun went down, having achieved no practical result at all by the efforts he had made. "There is nothing left but prayer," thought the good man very solemnly, and he offered up a silent supplication for help and counsel to the King of kings,

CHAPTER XV.
ABADDON.

MR. MOWLEDY was not a man who could persuade his conscience to abandon a duty because difficulties came in his way while doing it. For whosoever in this world purposes to accomplish any good thing shall always find difficulties arise and confront and war with him. If we had in these times the smallest faith in that which we profess to believe, and if we were not decorous Pharisees, who take the Divine word indeed into our mouths, but put it sacrilegiously away from our hearts and understandings, we should be willing to acknowledge that the leader of the opposition, or, in other words, the Devil, is a real presence upon earth, and not merely a bogey invented with horns and hoofs to frighten children. One of his names is Satan, and it signifies in the plain homely language of Holy Writ which we find it so hard to comprehend, merely an "Adversary, or an Accuser in a court of justice." His more common name of Devil comes from the Greek Diabolos, which also means a calumniator, and he is called a serpent because he is exceeding wise, crafty, and subtle. He can take any shape, that of friend or foe: of friend to cajole or mislead; of foe to frighten or to fight; for the Psalms compare him to a dog, and dogs will bite. Mr. Mowledy had seen him thrice in one day: as a fowler in Mr. Rushout; as a dog in Mr. Krorl; and as an adder hidden under the kind words and inanities of his grand connection.

His title, which is the Tempter, implies his constant practice. He is for ever on the watch to catch us. He is surprisingly artful, lying in wait for us, and waylaying our very virtues in unsuspected places, and whispering profit, pleasure, rest, or decency, good manners, politeness. "Hold, enough, thou well doer! Forbear to do good-for propriety's sake!" is a frequent form of his persuasive eloquence in London society. It is related of him that once in the country of the Gadarenes he threw a young man who was bent on a good errand bodily down, and tare him. It was therefore only according to his nature that he should try to trip up Mr. Mowledy. Many, as the Curate knew, he has cast into prison, being come down to us having power; so that Madge was in no visionary danger, because, in all probability, she was innocent, and therefore had the Tormentor, the Prince of Darkness, the very God of this World himself for an enemy.

Now Mr. Mowledy being by no means a Pharisee, but a prayerful Christian man, who saw with his eyes and heard with his ears whatsoever had been written aforetime for his instruction, had seldom any hesitation in recognising the Devil when he saw him. He knew the Evil One instantly, and exorcised him silently, having specially in his mind the sixth, seventh, and eighth verses of the fourth chapter of St. Luke as he walked meditating through the London streets in the eventide. Having

thought for some time very intently on these three verses of the Gospel according to St. Luke, he remembered the eleventh verse of the fourth chapter of St. Matthew, in which the wondrous story of a great temptation, and a greater resistance to it, is beautifully rounded off and perfected.

As he mused upon these things with a pure and single heart, taking Heaven's light only for his guide through the slough of Despond, he suddenly thought of Dr. Porteous, who had cheated him the last time hey met out of some small change, and who had often defrauded or overreached him in mean and shabby ways. He wondered how the remembrance of such a man should recur to him at such a time. Was it the voice of the tempter, or was it a suggestion of economic though worldly wisdom? The extremity of the case decided him; and after a momentary hesitation, Mr. Mowledy directed his steps steadily towards Melina Place, Lambeth, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left.

CHAPTER XVI.
A CYNIC.

THE Curate found the Rector of the rich hereditary benefice of Wakefieldin-the-Marsh reading the Morning Post newspaper in his dingy parlour within the rules of the King's Bench Prison. His attention was directed to the column of fashionable intelligence, and he was reading a grateful account of the festivities which were then celebrating the majority of his nephew by his mother's side, Minto Petty-Pells, Lord Hanaper. There was a strong smell of Hodges' cordial gin and boiling water, mingled with the odours of departed Irish stew, about the Doctor's apartments, and the wife or sister he led about was now clothed, and in her right wig, drinking in the highly-titled names which Dr. Porteous pronounced aloud with much unction and some family pride. She, too, was proud of those illustrious personages, though their splendour only shed a reflected or second-hand light upon her; but she knew that her washerwoman who came once a fortnight, and the beer-boy who came thrice a day, and the muffin-man, and the milk-woman would all respect her more when they read in the Weekly Dispatch, or the Sunday Times, or Lloyd's Newspaper how Dr. Porteous had been a guest at Minto Court, and did not read that the reverend gentleman had only obtained a day rule (by purchase from the marshal of his prison-house) to enable him to be present, and had returned to his place of durance, as in duty bound, at night. She was, therefore, upon her best behaviour. She made the Doctor's gin-and-water with taste and judgment; she cut just the proper quantity of lemon-peel into it; and, as she stood behind him resting upon the back of his chair and looking down over his shoulder, a something, that had once been beauty and grace came like the light of other days into her countenance and lingered there the very faded ghost of loveliness. There was a time