Endymion | Page 4

ambassador. "What are the
accounts this afternoon?"
"Here is a gentleman who will tell us," said Zenobia, as Mr. Ferrars
entered and saluted her.
"And what is your news from Chiswick?" she inquired.
"They say at Brookes', that he will be at Downing Street on Monday."
"I doubt it," said Zenobia, but with an expression of disappointment.
Zenobia invited Mr. Ferrars to join her immediate circle. The great
personage and the ambassador were confidentially affable to one whom
Zenobia so distinguished. Their conversation was in hushed tones, as
become the initiated. Even Zenobia seemed subdued, and listened; and
to listen, among her many talents, was perhaps her rarest. Mr. Ferrars
was one of her favourites, and Zenobia liked young men who she
thought would become Ministers of State.
An Hungarian Princess who had quitted the opera early that she might

look in at Zenobia's was now announced. The arrival of this great lady
made a stir. Zenobia embraced her, and the great personage with
affectionate homage yielded to her instantly the place of honour, and
then soon retreated to the laughing voices in the distance that had
already more than once attracted and charmed his ear.
"Mind; I see you to-morrow," said Zenobia to Mr. Ferrars as he also
withdrew. "I shall have something to tell you."

CHAPTER III
The father of Mr. Ferrars had the reputation of being the son of a once
somewhat celebrated statesman, but the only patrimony he inherited
from his presumed parent was a clerkship in the Treasury, where he
found himself drudging at an early age. Nature had endowed him with
considerable abilities, and peculiarly adapted to the scene of their
display. It was difficult to decide which was most remarkable, his
shrewdness or his capacity of labour. His quickness of perception and
mastery of details made him in a few years an authority in the office,
and a Secretary of the Treasury, who was quite ignorant of details, but
who was a good judge of human character, had the sense to appoint
Ferrars his private secretary. This happy preferment in time opened the
whole official world to one not only singularly qualified for that kind of
life, but who possessed the peculiar gifts that were then commencing to
be much in demand in those circles. We were then entering that era of
commercial and financial reform which had been, if not absolutely
occasioned, certainly precipitated, by the revolt of our colonies.
Knowledge of finance and acquaintance with tariffs were then rare gifts,
and before five years of his private secretaryship had expired, Ferrars
was mentioned to Mr. Pitt as the man at the Treasury who could do
something that the great minister required. This decided his lot. Mr. Pitt
found in Ferrars the instrument he wanted, and appreciating all his
qualities placed him in a position which afforded them full play. The
minister returned Ferrars to Parliament, for the Treasury then had
boroughs of its own, and the new member was preferred to an
important and laborious post. So long as Pitt and Grenville were in the

ascendant, Mr. Ferrars toiled and flourished. He was exactly the man
they liked; unwearied, vigilant, clear and cold; with a dash of natural
sarcasm developed by a sharp and varied experience. He disappeared
from the active world in the latter years of the Liverpool reign, when a
newer generation and more bustling ideas successfully asserted their
claims; but he retired with the solace of a sinecure, a pension, and a
privy-councillorship. The Cabinet he had never entered, nor dared to
hope to enter. It was the privilege of an inner circle even in our then
contracted public life. It was the dream of Ferrars to revenge in this
respect his fate in the person of his son, and only child. He was
resolved that his offspring should enjoy all those advantages of
education and breeding and society of which he himself had been
deprived. For him was to be reserved a full initiation in those costly
ceremonies which, under the names of Eton and Christ Church, in his
time fascinated and dazzled mankind. His son, William Pitt Ferrars,
realised even more than his father's hopes. Extremely good-looking, he
was gifted with a precocity of talent. He was the marvel of Eton and the
hope of Oxford. As a boy, his Latin verses threw enraptured tutors into
paroxysms of praise, while debating societies hailed with acclamation
clearly another heaven-born minister. He went up to Oxford about the
time that the examinations were reformed and rendered really efficient.
This only increased his renown, for the name of Ferrars figured among
the earliest double-firsts. Those were days when a crack university
reputation often opened the doors of the House of Commons to a young
aspirant; at least, after a season.