He
was beginning to enjoy himself there. He had found himself, had lost
that craven fear of the Speaker that paralyzes most new members. He
knew when to speak and when to be silent; and when he spoke
unsuspected gifts of biting sarcasm, clever characterization,
convincing scorn of the uneducated minister type came to his aid.
His tongue played round his victims, unequipped as they were with
his vast experience of reality, vaguely discursive, on the surface
as are most lawyers, at a loss for similes and tropes as are most
men of business, or dull of wits as are most of the fine flowers of
the public schools, stultified with the classics and scripture
history. He knew that unless there was some radical change of
government he could not be a minister; but he cared little for that.
He was rich--thanks to his wife--he was recovering his influence and
his European and American reputation as a great discoverer, a deep
thinker. He enjoyed pulverizing the Ministry over their suffrage
insincerities and displaying his contempt of the politician elected
only for his money influence in borough, county, or in the
subscription lists of the Chief Whip. Though his pulses still beat a
little quicker when he held Vivie's hand in his at some reception of
Lady Feenix's or a dinner party at the Gorings--Vivie as the child
of a "fallen" woman had a prescriptive right of entrance to Diana's
circle--he had not the slightest intention of running away with her,
of nipping his career in two, just as he might be scaling the last
heights to the citadel of fame: either as a politician of the new
type, the type of high education, or as one of the giants of
inductive science.
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