The Palliser Novels Part 225

"I thought the d.u.c.h.ess was a great friend of yours," said Mr. Wharton.

"I don't care much for such friends.h.i.+p. She threw me over most shamefully."

"And therefore, of course, you are justified in taking away her character. I never saw the d.u.c.h.ess of Omnium in my life, and should probably be very uncomfortable if I found myself in her society; but I believe her to be a good sort of woman in her way." Emily sat perfectly silent, knowing that her husband had been rebuked, but feeling that he had deserved it. He, however, was not abashed; but changed the conversation, das.h.i.+ng into city rumours, and legal reforms. The old man from time to time said sharp little things, showing that his intellect was not senile, all of which his son-in-law bore imperturbably. It was not that he liked it, or was indifferent, but that he knew that he could not get the good things which Mr. Wharton could do for him without making some kind of payment. He must take the sharp words of the old man, - and take all that he could get besides.

When the two men were alone together after dinner, Mr. Wharton used a different tone. "If you are to come," he said, "you might as well do it as soon as possible."

"A day or two will be enough for us."

"There are one or two things you should understand. I shall be very happy to see your friends at any time, but I shall like to know when they are coming before they come."

"Of course, sir."

"I dine out a good deal."

"At the club," suggested Lopez.

"Well; - at the club or elsewhere. It doesn't matter. There will always be dinner here for you and Emily, just as though I were at home. I say this, so that there need be no questionings or doubts about it hereafter. And don't let there ever be any question of money between us."

"Certainly not."

"Everett has an allowance, and this will be tantamount to an allowance to Emily. You have also had 3500. I hope it has been well expended; - except the 500 at that election, which has, of course, been thrown away."

"The other was brought into the business."

"I don't know what the business is. But you and Emily must understand that the money has been given as her fortune."

"Oh, quite so; - part of it, you mean."

"I mean just what I say."

"I call it part of it, because, as you observed just now, our living here will be the same as though you made Emily an allowance."

"Ah; - well; you can look at it in that light if you please. John has the key of the cellar. He's a man I can trust. As a rule I have port and sherry at table every day. If you like claret I will get some a little cheaper than what I use when friends are here."

"What wine I have is quite indifferent to me."

"I like it good, and I have it good. I always breakfast at 9.30. You can have yours earlier if you please. I don't know that there's anything else to be said. I hope we shall get into the way of understanding each other, and being mutually comfortable. Shall we go upstairs to Emily and Mrs. Roby?" And so it was determined that Emily was to come back to her old house about eight months after her marriage.

Mr. Wharton himself sat late into the night, all alone, thinking about it. What he had done, he had done in a morose way, and he was aware that it was so. He had not beamed with smiles, and opened his arms lovingly, and, bidding G.o.d bless his dearest children, told them that if they would only come and sit round his hearth he should be the happiest old man in London. He had said little or nothing of his own affection even for his daughter, but had spoken of the matter as one of which the pecuniary aspect alone was important. He had found out that the saving so effected would be material to Lopez, and had resolved that there should be no s.h.i.+rking of the truth in what he was prepared to do. He had been almost asked to take the young married couple in, and feed them, - so that they might live free of expense. He was willing to do it, - but was not willing that there should be any soft-worded, high-toned false pretension. He almost read Lopez to the bottom, - not, however, giving the man credit for dishonesty so deep or cleverness so great as he possessed. But as regarded Emily, he was also actuated by a personal desire to have her back again as an element of happiness to himself. He had pined for her since he had been left alone, hardly knowing what it was that he had wanted. And now as he thought of it all, he was angry with himself that he had not been more loving and softer in his manner to her. She at any rate was honest. No doubt of that crossed his mind. And now he had been bitter to her, - bitter in his manner, - simply because he had not wished to appear to have been taken in by her husband. Thinking of all this, he got up, and went to his desk, and wrote her a note, which she would receive on the following morning after her husband had left her. It was very short.

Dearest E.

I am so overjoyed that you are coming back to me.

A. W.

He had judged her quite rightly. The manner in which the thing had been arranged had made her very wretched. There had been no love in it; - nothing apparently but a.s.sertions on one side that much was being given, and on the other acknowledgments that much was to be received. She was aware that in this her father had condemned her husband. She also had condemned him; - and felt, alas, that she also had been condemned. But this little letter took away that sting. She could read in her father's note all the action of his mind. He had known that he was bound to acquit her, and he had done so with one of the old long-valued expressions of his love.

VOLUME II.

CHAPTER XLI.

The Value of a Thick Skin Sir Orlando Drought must have felt bitterly the quiescence with which he sank into obscurity on the second bench on the opposite side of the House. One great occasion he had on which it was his privilege to explain to four or five hundred gentlemen the insuperable reasons which caused him to break away from those right honourable friends to act with whom had been his comfort and his duty, his great joy and his unalloyed satisfaction. Then he occupied the best part of an hour in abusing those friends and all their measures. This no doubt had been a pleasure, as practice had made the manipulation of words easy to him, - and he was able to revel in that absence of responsibility which must be as a fresh perfumed bath to a minister just freed from the trammels of office. But the pleasure was surely followed by much suffering when Mr. Monk, - Mr. Monk who was to a.s.sume his place as Leader of the House, - only took five minutes to answer him, saying that he and his colleagues regretted much the loss of the Right Honourable Baronet's services, but that it would hardly be necessary for him to defend the Ministry on all those points on which it had been attacked, as, were he to do so, he would have to repeat the arguments by which every measure brought forward by the present Ministry had been supported. Then Mr. Monk sat down, and the business of the House went on just as if Sir Orlando Drought had not moved his seat at all.

"What makes everybody and everything so dead?" said Sir Orlando to his old friend Mr. Boffin as they walked home together from the House that night. They had in former days been staunch friends, sitting night after night close together, united in opposition, and sometimes, for a few halcyon months, in the happier bonds of office. But when Sir Orlando had joined the Coalition, and when the sterner spirit of Mr. Boffin had preferred principles to place, - to use the language in which he was wont to speak to himself and to his wife and family of his own abnegation, - there had come a coolness between them. Mr. Boffin, who was not a rich man, nor by any means indifferent to the comforts of office, had felt keenly the injury done to him when he was left hopelessly in the cold by the desertion of his old friends. It had come to pa.s.s that there had been no salt left in the opposition. Mr. Boffin in all his parliamentary experience had known nothing like it. Mr. Boffin had been sure that British honour was going to the dogs and that British greatness was at an end. But the secession of Sir Orlando gave a little fillip to his life. At any rate he could walk home with his old friend and talk of the horrors of the present day.

"Well, Drought, if you ask me, you know, I can only speak as I feel. Everything must be dead when men holding different opinions on every subject under the sun come together in order that they may carry on a government as they would a trade business. The work may be done, but it must be done without spirit."

"But it may be all important that the work should be done," said the Baronet, apologising for his past misconduct.

"No doubt; - and I am very far from judging those who make the attempt. It has been made more than once before, and has, I think, always failed. I don't believe in it myself, and I think that the death-like torpor of which you speak is one of its worst consequences." After that Mr. Boffin admitted Sir Orlando back into his heart of hearts.

Then the end of the Session came, very quietly and very early. By the end of July there was nothing left to be done, and the world of London was allowed to go down into the country almost a fortnight before its usual time.

With many men, both in and out of Parliament, it became a question whether all this was for good or evil. The Boffinites had of course much to say for themselves. Everything was torpid. There was no interest in the newspapers, - except when Mr. Slide took the tomahawk into his hands. A member of Parliament this Session had not been by half so much bigger than another man as in times of hot political warfare. One of the most moving sources of our national excitement seemed to have vanished from life. We all know what happens to stagnant waters. So said the Boffinites, and so also now said Sir Orlando. But the Government was carried on and the country was prosperous. A few useful measures had been pa.s.sed by unambitious men, and the Duke of St. Bungay declared that he had never known a Session of Parliament more thoroughly satisfactory to the ministers.

But the old Duke in so saying had spoken as it were his public opinion, - giving, truly enough, to a few of his colleagues, such as Lord Drummond, Sir Gregory Grogram and others, the results of his general experience; but in his own bosom and with a private friend he was compelled to confess that there was a cloud in the heavens. The Prime Minister had become so moody, so irritable, and so unhappy, that the old Duke was forced to doubt whether things could go on much longer as they were. He was wont to talk of these things to his friend Lord Cantrip, who was not a member of the Government, but who had been a colleague of both the Dukes, and whom the old Duke regarded with peculiar confidence. "I cannot explain it to you," he said to Lord Cantrip. "There is nothing that ought to give him a moment's uneasiness. Since he took office there hasn't once been a majority against him in either House on any question that the Government has made its own. I don't remember such a state of things, - so easy for the Prime Minister, - since the days of Lord Liverpool. He had one thorn in his side, our friend who was at the Admiralty, and that thorn like other thorns has worked itself out. Yet at this moment it is impossible to get him to consent to the nomination of a successor to Sir Orlando." This was said a week before the Session had closed.

"I suppose it is his health," said Lord Cantrip.

"He's well enough as far as I can see; - though he will be ill unless he can relieve himself from the strain on his nerves."

"Do you mean by resigning?"

"Not necessarily. The fault is that he takes things too seriously. If he could be got to believe that he might eat, and sleep, and go to bed, and amuse himself like other men, he might be a very good Prime Minister. He is over troubled by his conscience. I have seen a good many Prime Ministers, Cantrip, and I've taught myself to think that they are not very different from other men. One wants in a Prime Minister a good many things, but not very great things. He should be clever but need not be a genius; he should be conscientious but by no means strait-laced; he should be cautious but never timid, bold but never venturesome; he should have a good digestion, genial manners, and, above all, a thick skin. These are the gifts we want, but we can't always get them, and have to do without them. For my own part, I find that though Smith be a very good Minister, the best perhaps to be had at the time, when he breaks down Jones does nearly as well."

"There will be a Jones, then, if your Smith does break down?"

"No doubt. England wouldn't come to an end because the Duke of Omnium shut himself up at Matching. But I love the man, and, with some few exceptions, am contented with the party. We can't do better, and it cuts me to the heart when I see him suffering, knowing how much I did myself to make him undertake the work."

"Is he going to Gatherum Castle?"

"No; - to Matching. There is some discomfort about that."

"I suppose," said Lord Cantrip, - speaking almost in a whisper, although they were closeted together, - "I suppose the d.u.c.h.ess is a little troublesome."

"She's the dearest woman in the world," said the Duke of St. Bungay. "I love her almost as I do my own daughter. And she is most zealous to serve him."

"I fancy she overdoes it."

"No doubt."

"And that he suffers from perceiving it," said Lord Cantrip.

"But a man hasn't a right to suppose that he shall have no annoyances. The best horse in the world has some fault. He pulls, or he s.h.i.+es, or is slow at his fences, or doesn't like heavy ground. He has no right to expect that his wife shall know everything and do everything without a mistake. And then he has such faults of his own! His skin is so thin. Do you remember dear old Brock? By heavens; - there was a covering, a hide impervious to fire or steel! He wouldn't have gone into tantrums because his wife asked too many people to the house. Nevertheless, I won't give up all hope."

"A man's skin may be thickened, I suppose."

"No doubt; - as a blacksmith's arm."

But the Duke of St. Bungay, though he declared that he wouldn't give up hope, was very uneasy on the matter. "Why won't you let me go?" the other Duke had said to him.

"What; - because such a man as Sir Orlando Drought throws up his office?"

But in truth the Duke of Omnium had not been instigated to ask the question by the resignation of Sir Orlando. At that very moment the "People's Banner" had been put out of sight at the bottom of a heap of other newspapers behind the Prime Minister's chair, and his present misery had been produced by Mr. Quintus Slide. To have a festering wound and to be able to show the wound to no surgeon, is wretchedness indeed! "It's not Sir Orlando, but a sense of general failure," said the Prime Minister. Then his old friend had made use of that argument of the ever-recurring majorities to prove that there had been no failure. "There seems to have come a lethargy upon the country," said the poor victim. Then the Duke of St. Bungay knew that his friend had read that pernicious article in the "People's Banner," for the Duke had also read it and remembered that phrase of a "lethargy on the country," and understood at once how the poison had rankled.

It was a week before he would consent to ask any man to fill the vacancy made by Sir Orlando. He would not allow suggestions to be made to him and yet would name no one himself. The old Duke, indeed, did make a suggestion, and anything coming from him was of course borne with patience. Barrington Erle, he thought, would do for the Admiralty. But the Prime Minister shook his head. "In the first place he would refuse, and that would be a great blow to me."

"I could sound him," said the old Duke. But the Prime Minister again shook his head and turned the subject. With all his timidity he was becoming autocratic and peevishly imperious. Then he went to Lord Cantrip, and when Lord Cantrip, with all the kindness which he could throw into his words, stated the reasons which induced him at present to decline office, he was again in despair. At last he asked Phineas Finn to move to the Admiralty, and, when our old friend somewhat reluctantly obeyed, of course he had the same difficulty in filling the office Finn had held. Other changes and other complications became necessary, and Mr. Quintus Slide, who hated Phineas Finn even worse than the poor Duke, found ample scope for his patriotic indignation.

This all took place in the closing week of the Session, filling our poor Prime Minister with trouble and dismay, just when other people were complaining that there was nothing to think of and nothing to do. Men do not really like leaving London before the grouse calls them, - the grouse, or rather the fas.h.i.+on of the grouse. And some ladies were very angry at being separated so soon from their swains in the city. The tradesmen too were displeased, - so that there were voices to re-echo the abuse of the "People's Banner." The d.u.c.h.ess had done her best to prolong the Session by another week, telling her husband of the evil consequences above suggested, but he had thrown wide his arms and asked her with affected dismay whether he was to keep Parliament sitting in order that more ribbons might be sold! "There is nothing to be done," said the Duke almost angrily.

"Then you should make something to be done," said the d.u.c.h.ess, mimicking him.

CHAPTER XLII.

Retribution The d.u.c.h.ess had been at work with her husband for the last two months in the hope of renewing her autumnal festivities, but had been lamentably unsuccessful. The Duke had declared that there should be no more rural crowds, no repet.i.tion of what he called London turned loose on his own grounds. He could not forget the necessity which had been imposed upon him of turning Major Pountney out of his house, or the change that had been made in his gardens, or his wife's attempt to conquer him at Silverbridge. "Do you mean," she said, "that we are to have n.o.body?" He replied that he thought it would be best to go to Matching. "And live a Darby and Joan life?" said the d.u.c.h.ess.

"I said nothing of Darby and Joan. Whatever may be my feelings I hardly think that you are fitted for that kind of thing. Matching is not so big as Gatherum, but it is not a cottage. Of course you can ask your own friends."

"I don't know what you mean by my own friends. I endeavour always to ask yours."

"I don't know that Major Pountney, and Captain Gunner, and Mr. Lopez were ever among the number of my friends."

"I suppose you mean Lady Rosina?" said the d.u.c.h.ess. "I shall be happy to have her at Matching if you wish it."

"I should like to see Lady Rosina De Courcy at Matching very much."

"And is there to be n.o.body else? I'm afraid I should find it rather dull while you two were opening your hearts to each other." Here he looked at her angrily. "Can you think of anybody besides Lady Rosina?"

"I suppose you will wish to have Mrs. Finn?"

"What an arrangement! Lady Rosina for you to flirt with, and Mrs. Finn for me to grumble to."

"That is an odious word," said the Prime Minister.

"What; - flirting? I don't see anything bad about the word. The thing is dangerous. But you are quite at liberty if you don't go beyond Lady Rosina. I should like to know whether you would wish anybody else to come?" Of course he made no becoming answer to this question, and of course no becoming answer was expected. He knew that she was trying to provoke him because he would not let her do this year as she had done last. The house, he had no doubt, would be full to overflowing when he got there. He could not help that. But as compared with Gatherum Castle the house at Matching was small, and his domestic authority sufficed at any rate for shutting up Gatherum for the time.

I do not know whether at times her sufferings were not as acute as his own. He, at any rate, was Prime Minister, and it seemed to her that she was to be reduced to nothing. At the beginning of it all he had, with unwonted tenderness, asked her for her sympathy in his undertaking, and, according to her powers, she had given it to him with her whole heart. She had thought that she had seen a way by which she might a.s.sist him in his great employment, and she had worked at it like a slave. Every day she told herself that she did not, herself, love the Captain Gunners and Major Pountneys, nor the Sir Orlandos, nor, indeed, the Lady Rosinas. She had not followed the bent of her own inclination when she had descended to sheets and towels, and busied herself to establish an archery-ground. She had not shot an arrow during the whole season, nor had she cared who had won and who had lost. It had not been for her own personal delight that she had kept open house for forty persons throughout four months of the year, in doing which he had never taken an ounce of the labour off her shoulders by any single word or deed! It had all been done for his sake, - that his reign might be long and triumphant, that the world might say that his hospitality was n.o.ble and full, that his name might be in men's mouths, and that he might prosper as a British Minister. Such, at least, were the a.s.sertions which she made to herself, when she thought of her own grievances and her own troubles. And now she was angry with her husband. It was very well for him to ask for her sympathy, but he had none to give her in return! He could not pity her failures, - even though he had himself caused them! If he had a grain of intelligence about him he must, she thought, understand well enough how sore it must be for her to descend from her princely entertainments to solitude at Matching, and thus to own before all the world that she was beaten. Then when she asked him for advice, when she was really anxious to know how far she might go in filling her house without offending him, he told her to ask Lady Rosina De Courcy! If he chose to be ridiculous he might. She would ask Lady Rosina De Courcy. In her active anger she did write to Lady Rosina De Courcy a formal letter, in which she said that the Duke hoped to have the pleasure of her ladys.h.i.+p's company at Matching Park on the 1st of August. It was an absurd letter, somewhat long, written very much in the Duke's name, with overwhelming expressions of affection, instigated in the writer's mind partly by the fun of the supposition that such a man as her husband should flirt with such a woman as Lady Rosina. There was something too of anger in what she wrote, some touch of revenge. She sent off this invitation, and she sent no other. Lady Rosina took it all in good part, and replied saying that she should have the greatest pleasure in going to Matching. She had declared to herself that she would ask none but those he had named, and in accordance with her resolution she sent out no other written invitations.

He had also told her to ask Mrs. Finn. Now this had become almost a matter of course. There had grown up from accidental circ.u.mstances so strong a bond between these two women, that it was taken for granted by both their husbands that they should be nearly always within reach of one another. And the two husbands were also on kindly, if not affectionate, terms with each other. The nature of the Duke's character was such that, with a most loving heart, he was hardly capable of that opening out of himself to another which is necessary for positive friends.h.i.+p. There was a stiff reserve about him, of which he was himself only too conscious, which almost prohibited friends.h.i.+p. But he liked Mr. Finn both as a man and a member of his party, and was always satisfied to have him as a guest. The d.u.c.h.ess, therefore, had taken it for granted that Mrs. Finn would come to her, - and that Mr. Finn would come also during any time that he might be able to escape from Ireland. But, when the invitation was verbally conveyed, Mr. Finn had gone to the Admiralty, and had already made his arrangements for going to sea, as a gallant sailor should. "We are going away in the 'Black Watch' for a couple of months," said Mrs. Finn. Now the "Black Watch" was the Admiralty yacht.

"Heavens and earth!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the d.u.c.h.ess.

"It is always done. The First Lord would have his epaulets stripped if he didn't go to sea in August."

"And must you go with him?"

"I have promised."

"I think it very unkind, - very hard upon me. Of course you knew that I should want you."

"But if my husband wants me too?"

"Bother your husband! I wish with all my heart I had never helped to make up the match."

"It would have been made up just the same, Lady Glen."

"You know that I cannot get on without you. And he ought to know it too. There isn't another person in the world that I can really say a thing to."

"Why don't you have Mrs. Grey?"

"She's going to Persia after her husband. And then she is not wicked enough. She always lectured me, and she does it still. What do you think is going to happen?"

"Nothing terrible, I hope," said Mrs. Finn, mindful of her husband's new honours at the Admiralty, and hoping that the Duke might not have repeated his threat of resigning.

"We are going to Matching."

"So I supposed."

"And whom do you think we are going to have?"

"Not Major Pountney?"

"No; - not at my asking."

"Nor Mr. Lopez?"

"Nor yet Mr. Lopez. Guess again."

"I suppose there will be a dozen to guess."

"No," shrieked the d.u.c.h.ess. "There will only be one. I have asked one, - at his special desire, - and as you won't come I shall ask n.o.body else. When I pressed him to name a second he named you. I'll obey him to the letter. Now, my dear, who do you think is the chosen one, - the one person who is to solace the perturbed spirit of the Prime Minister for the three months of the autumn?"

"Mr. Warburton, I should say."