The Palliser Novels Part 247

"On the contrary, I have but little to think of, - and my thoughts must be very much engaged, indeed, when they shall be too full to admit of my seeing you."

"Of course we are all anxious about this Bill." The Prime Minister smiled. Anxious! Yes, indeed. His anxiety was of such a nature that it kept him awake all night, and never for a moment left his mind free by day. "And of course we must be prepared as to what shall be done either in the event of success or of failure."

"You might as well read that," said the other. "It only reached me this morning, or I should have told you of it." The letter was a communication from the Solicitor-General containing his resignation. He had now studied the County Suffrage Bill closely, and regretted to say that he could not give it a conscientious support. It was a matter of sincerest sorrow to him that relations so pleasant should be broken, but he must resign his place, unless, indeed, the clauses as to redistribution could be withdrawn. Of course he did not say this as expecting that any such concession would be made to his opinion, but merely as indicating the matter on which his objection was so strong as to over-rule all other considerations. All this he explained at great length.

"The pleasantness of the relations must have been on one side," said the veteran. "He ought to have gone long since."

"And Lord Drummond has already as good as said that unless we will abandon the same clauses, he must oppose the Bill in the Lords."

"And resign, of course."

"He meant that, I presume. Lord Ramsden has not spoken to me."

"The clauses will not stick in his throat. Nor ought they. If the lawyers have their own way about law they should be contented."

"The question is, whether in these circ.u.mstances we should postpone the second reading?" asked the Prime Minister.

"Certainly not," said the other Duke. "As to the Solicitor-General you will have no difficulty. Sir Timothy was only placed there as a concession to his party. Drummond will no doubt continue to hold his office till we see what is done in the Lower House. If the second reading be lost there, - why then his lords.h.i.+p can go with the rest of us."

"Rattler says we shall have a majority. He and Roby are quite agreed about it. Between them they must know," said the Prime Minister, unintentionally pleading for himself.

"They ought to know, if any men do; - but the crisis is exceptional. I suppose you think that if the second reading is lost we should resign?"

"Oh, - certainly."

"Or, after that, if the Bill be much mutilated in Committee? I don't know that I shall personally break my own heart about the Bill. The existing difference in the suffrages is rather in accordance with my prejudices. But the country desires the measure, and I suppose we cannot consent to any such material alteration as these men suggest." As he spoke he laid his hand on Sir Timothy's letter.

"Mr. Monk would not hear of it," said the Prime Minister.

"Of course not. And you and I in this measure must stick to Mr. Monk. My great, indeed my only strong desire in the matter, is to act in strict unison with you."

"You are always good and true, Duke."

"For my own part I shall not in the least regret to find in all this an opportunity of resigning. We have done our work, and if, as I believe, a majority of the House would again support either Gresham or Monk as the head of the entire Liberal party, I think that that arrangement would be for the welfare of the country."

"Why should it make any difference to you? Why should you not return to the Council?"

"I should not do so; - certainly not at once; probably never. But you, - who are in the very prime of your life - "

The Prime Minister did not smile now. He knit his brows and a dark shadow came across his face. "I don't think I could do that," he said. "Caesar could hardly have led a legion under Pompey."

"It has been done, greatly to the service of the country, and without the slightest loss of honour or character in him who did it."

"We need hardly talk of that, Duke. You think then that we shall fail; - fail, I mean, in the House of Commons. I do not know that failure in our House should be regarded as fatal."

"In three cases we should fail. The loss of any material clause in Committee would be as bad as the loss of the Bill."

"Oh, yes."

"And then, in spite of Messrs. Rattler and Roby, - who have been wrong before and may be wrong now, - we may lose the second reading."

"And the third chance against us?"

"You would not probably try to carry on the Bill with a very small majority."

"Not with three or four."

"Nor, I think, with six or seven. It would be useless. My own belief is that we shall never carry the Bill into Committee."

"I have always known you to be right, Duke."

"I think that general opinion has set in that direction, and general opinion is generally right. Having come to that conclusion I thought it best to tell you, in order that we might have our house in order." The Duke of Omnium, who with all his haughtiness and all his reserve, was the simplest man in the world and the least apt to pretend to be that which he was not, sighed deeply when he heard this. "For my own part," continued his elder, "I feel no regret that it should be so."

"It is the first large measure that we have tried to carry."

"We did not come in to carry large measures, my friend. Look back and see how many large measures Pitt carried, - but he took the country safely through its most dangerous crisis."

"What have we done?"

"Carried on the Queen's Government prosperously for three years. Is that nothing for a minister to do? I have never been a friend of great measures, knowing that when they come fast, one after another, more is broken in the rattle than is repaired by the reform. We have done what Parliament and the country expected us to do, and to my poor judgment we have done it well."

"I do not feel much self-satisfaction, Duke. Well; - we must see it out, and if it is as you antic.i.p.ate, I shall be ready. Of course I have prepared myself for it. And if, of late, my mind has been less turned to retirement than it used to be, it has only been because I have become wedded to this measure, and have wished that it should be carried under our auspices." Then the old Duke took his leave, and the Prime Minister was left alone to consider the announcement that had been made to him.

He had said that he had prepared himself, but, in so saying, he had hardly known himself. Hitherto, though he had been troubled by many doubts, he had still hoped. The report made to him by Mr. Rattler, backed as it had been by Mr. Roby's a.s.surances, had almost sufficed to give him confidence. But Mr. Rattler and Mr. Roby combined were as nothing to the Duke of St. Bungay. The Prime Minister knew now, - he felt that he knew, that his days were numbered. The resignation of that lingering old bishop was not completed, and the person in whom he believed would not have the see. He had meditated the making of a peer or two, having hitherto been very cautious in that respect, but he would do nothing of the kind if called upon by the House of Commons to resign with an uncompleted measure. But his thoughts soon ran away from the present to the future. What was now to come of himself? How should he use his future life, - he who as yet had not pa.s.sed his forty-seventh year? He regretted much having made that apparently pretentious speech about Caesar, though he knew his old friend well enough to be sure that it would never be used against him. Who was he that he should cla.s.s himself among the big ones of the world? A man may indeed measure small things by great, but the measurer should be careful to declare his own littleness when he ill.u.s.trates his position by that of the topping ones of the earth. But the thing said had been true. Let the Pompey be who he might, he, the little Caesar of the day, could never now command another legion.

He had once told Phineas Finn that he regretted that he had abstained from the ordinary amus.e.m.e.nts of English gentlemen. But he had abstained also from their ordinary occupations, - except so far as politics is one of them. He cared nothing for oxen or for furrows. In regard to his own land he hardly knew whether the farms were large or small. He had been a scholar, and after a certain fitful fas.h.i.+on he had maintained his scholars.h.i.+p, but the literature to which he had been really attached had been that of blue-books and newspapers. What was he to do with himself when called upon to resign? And he understood, - or thought that he understood, - his position too well to expect that after a while, with the usual interval, he might return to power. He had been Prime Minister, not as the leading politician on either side, not as the king of a party, but, - so he told himself, - as a stop-gap. There could be nothing for him now till the insipidity of life should gradually fade away into the grave.

After a while he got up and went off to his wife's apartment, the room in which she used to prepare her triumphs and where now she contemplated her disappointments. "I have had the Duke with me," he said.

"What; - at last?"

"I do not know that he could have done any good by coming sooner."

"And what does his Grace say?"

"He thinks that our days are numbered."

"Psha! - is that all? I could have told him that ever so long ago. It was hardly necessary that he should disturb himself at last to come and tell us such well-ventilated news. There isn't a porter at one of the clubs who doesn't know it."

"Then there will be the less surprise, - and to those who are concerned perhaps the less mortification."

"Did he tell you who was to succeed you?" asked the d.u.c.h.ess.

"Not precisely."

"He ought to have done that, as I am sure he knows. Everybody knows except you, Plantagenet."

"If you know, you can tell me."

"Of course, I can. It will be Mr. Monk."

"With all my heart, Glencora. Mr. Monk is a very good man."

"I wonder whether he'll do anything for us. Think how dest.i.tute we shall be! What if I were to ask him for a place! Would he not give it us?"

"Will it make you unhappy, Cora?"

"What; - your going?"

"Yes; - the change altogether."

She looked him in the face for a moment before she answered, with a peculiar smile in her eyes to which he was well used, - a smile half ludicrous and half pathetic, - having in it also a dash of sarcasm. "I can dare to tell the truth," she said, "which you can't. I can be honest and straightforward. Yes, it will make me unhappy. And you?"

"Do you think that I cannot be honest too, - at any rate to you? It does fret me. I do not like to think that I shall be without work."

"Yes; - Oth.e.l.lo's occupation will be gone, - for awhile; for awhile." Then she came up to him and put both her hands on his breast. "But yet, Oth.e.l.lo, I shall not be all unhappy."

"Where will be your contentment?"

"In you. It was making you ill. Rough people, whom the tenderness of your nature could not well endure, trod upon you, and worried you with their teeth and wounded you everywhere. I could have turned at them again with my teeth, and given them worry for worry; - but you could not. Now you will be saved from them, and so I shall not be discontented." All this she said looking up into his face, still with that smile which was half pathetic and half ludicrous.

"Then I will be contented too," he said as he kissed her.

CHAPTER LXXIII.

Only the Duke of Omnium The night of the debate arrived, but before the debate was commenced Sir Timothy Beeswax got up to make a personal explanation. He thought it right to state to the House how it came to pa.s.s that he found himself bound to leave the Ministry at so important a crisis in its existence. Then an observation was made by an honourable member of the Government, - presumably in a whisper, but still loud enough to catch the sharp ears of Sir Timothy, who now sat just below the gangway. It was said afterwards that the gentleman who made the observation, - an Irish gentleman named Fitzgibbon, conspicuous rather for his loyalty to his party than his steadiness, - had purposely taken the place in which he then sat, that Sir Timothy might hear the whisper. The whisper suggested that falling houses were often left by certain animals. It was certainly a very loud whisper, - but, if gentlemen are to be allowed to whisper at all, it is almost impossible to restrain the volume of the voice. To restrain Mr. Fitzgibbon had always been found difficult. Sir Timothy, who did not lack pluck, turned at once upon his a.s.sailant, and declared that words had been used with reference to himself which the honourable member did not dare to get upon his legs and repeat. Larry Fitzgibbon, as the gentleman was called, looked him full in the face, but did not move his hat from his head or stir a limb. It was a pleasant little episode in the evening's work, and afforded satisfaction to the House generally. Then Sir Timothy went on with his explanation. The details of this measure, as soon as they were made known to him, appeared to him, he said, to be fraught with the gravest and most pernicious consequences. He was sure that the members of her Majesty's Government, who were hurrying on this measure with what he thought was indecent haste, - ministers are always either indecent in their haste or treacherous in their delay, - had not considered what they were doing, or, if they had considered, were blind as to its results. He then attempted to discuss the details of the measure, but was called to order. A personal explanation could not be allowed to give him an opportunity of antic.i.p.ating the debate. He contrived, however, before he sat down, to say some very heavy things against his late chief, and especially to congratulate the Duke on the services of the honourable gentleman, the member for Mayo, - meaning thereby Mr. Laurence Fitzgibbon.

It would perhaps have been well for everybody if the measure could have been withdrawn and the Ministry could have resigned without the debate, - as everybody was convinced what would be the end of it. Let the second reading go as it might, the Bill could not be carried. There are measures which require the hopeful heartiness of a new Ministry, and the thorough-going energy of a young Parliament, - and this was one of them. The House was as fully agreed that this change was necessary, as it ever is agreed on any subject, - but still the thing could not be done. Even Mr. Monk, who was the most earnest of men, felt the general slackness of all around him. The commotion and excitement which would be caused by a change of Ministry might restore its proper tone to the House, but in its present condition it was unfit for the work. Nevertheless Mr. Monk made his speech, and put all his arguments into lucid order. He knew it was for nothing, but nevertheless it must be done. For hour after hour he went on, - for it was necessary to give every detail of his contemplated proposition. He went through it as sedulously as though he had expected to succeed, and sat down about nine o'clock in the evening. Then Sir Orlando moved the adjournment of the House till the morrow, giving as his reason for doing so the expedience of considering the details he had heard. To this no opposition was made, and the House was adjourned.

On the following day the clubs were all alive with rumours as to the coming debate. It was known that a strong party had been formed under the auspices of Sir Orlando, and that with him Sir Timothy and other politicians were in close council. It was of course necessary that they should impart to many the secrets of their conclave, so that it was known early in the afternoon that it was the intention of the Opposition not to discuss the Bill, but to move that it be read a second time that day six months. The Ministry had hardly expected this, as the Bill was undoubtedly popular both in the House and the country; and if the Opposition should be beaten in such a course, that defeat would tend greatly to strengthen the hands of the Government. But if the foe could succeed in carrying a positive veto on the second reading, it would under all the circ.u.mstances be tantamount to a vote of want of confidence. "I'm afraid they know almost more than we do as to the feeling of members," said Mr. Roby to Mr. Rattler.

"There isn't a man in the House whose feeling in the matter I don't know," said Rattler, "but I'm not quite so sure of their principles. On our own side, in our old party, there are a score of men who detest the Duke, though they would fain be true to the Government. They have voted with him through thick and thin, and he has not spoken a word to one of them since he became Prime Minister. What are you to do with such a man? How are you to act with him?"

"Lupton wrote to him the other day about something," answered the other, "I forget what, and he got a note back from Warburton as cold as ice, - an absolute slap in the face. Fancy treating a man like Lupton in that way, - one of the most popular men in the House, related to half the peerage, and a man who thinks so much of himself! I shouldn't wonder if he were to vote against us; - I shouldn't indeed."

"It has all been the old Duke's doing," said Rattler, "and no doubt it was intended for the best; but the thing has been a failure from the beginning to the end. I knew it would be so. I don't think there has been a single man who has understood what a Ministerial Coalition really means except you and I. From the very beginning all your men were averse to it in spirit."

"Look how they were treated!" said Mr. Roby. "Was it likely that they should be very staunch when Mr. Monk became Leader of the House?"

There was a Cabinet Council that day which lasted but a few minutes, and it may easily be presumed that the Ministers decided that they would all resign at once if Sir Orlando should carry his amendment. It is not unlikely that they were agreed to do the same if he should nearly carry it, - leaving probably the Prime Minister to judge what narrow majority would const.i.tute nearness. On this occasion all the gentlemen a.s.sembled were jocund in their manner, and apparently well satisfied, - as though they saw before them an end to all their troubles. The Spartan boy did not even make a grimace when the wolf bit him beneath his frock, and these were all Spartan boys. Even the Prime Minister, who had fortified himself for the occasion, and who never wept in any company but that of his wife and his old friend, was pleasant in his manner and almost affable. "We shan't make this step towards the millennium just at present," he said to Phineas Finn as they left the room together, - referring to words which Phineas had spoken on a former occasion, and which then had not been very well taken.

"But we shall have made a step towards the step," said Phineas, "and in getting to a millennium even that is something."

"I suppose we are all too anxious," said the Duke, "to see some great effects come from our own little doings. Good-day. We shall know all about it tolerably early. Monk seems to think that it will be an attack on the Ministry and not on the Bill, and that it will be best to get a vote with as little delay as possible."

"I'll bet an even five-pound note," said Mr. Lupton at the Carlton, "that the present Ministry is out to-morrow, and another that no one names five members of the next Cabinet."

"You can help to win your first bet," said Mr. Beauchamp, a very old member, who, like many other Conservatives, had supported the Coalition.

"I shall not do that," said Lupton, "though I think I ought. I won't vote against the man in his misfortunes, though, upon my soul, I don't love him very dearly. I shall vote neither way, but I hope that Sir Orlando may succeed."

"If he do, who is to come in?" said the other. "I suppose you don't want to serve under Sir Orlando?"

"Nor certainly under the Duke of Omnium. We shall not want a Prime Minister as long as there are as good fish in the sea as have been caught out of it."

There had lately been formed a new Liberal club, established on a broader basis than the Progress, and perhaps with a greater amount of aristocratic support. This had come up since the Duke had been Prime Minister. Certain busy men had never been quite contented with the existing state of things, and had thought that the Liberal party, with such a.s.sistance as such a club could give it, would be strong enough to rule alone. That the great Liberal party should be impeded in its work and its triumph by such men as Sir Orlando Drought and Sir Timothy Beeswax was odious to the club. All the Pallisers had, from time immemorial, run straight as Liberals, and therefore the club had been unwilling to oppose the Duke personally, though he was the chief of the Coalition. And certain members of the Government, Phineas Finn, for instance, Barrington Erle, and Mr. Rattler were on the committee of the club. But the club, as a club, was not averse to a discontinuance of the present state of things. Mr. Gresham might again become Prime Minister, if he would condescend so far, or Mr. Monk. It might be possible that the great Liberal triumph contemplated by the club might not be achieved by the present House; - but the present House must go shortly, and then, with that a.s.sistance from a well-organised club, which had lately been so terribly wanting, - the lack of which had made the Coalition necessary, - no doubt the British const.i.tuencies would do their duty, and a Liberal Prime Minister, pure and simple, might reign, - almost for ever. With this great future before it, the club was very lukewarm in its support of the present Bill. "I shall go down and vote for them of course," said Mr. O'Mahony, "just for the look of the thing." In saying this Mr. O'Mahony expressed the feeling of the club, and the feeling of the Liberal party generally. There was something due to the Duke, but not enough to make it inc.u.mbent on his friends to maintain him in his position as Prime Minister.

It was a great day for Sir Orlando. At half-past four the House was full, - not from any desire to hear Sir Orlando's arguments against the Bill, but because it was felt that a good deal of personal interest would be attached to the debate. If one were asked in these days what gift should a Prime Minister ask first from the fairies, one would name the power of attracting personal friends. Eloquence, if it be too easy, may become almost a curse. Patriotism is suspected, and sometimes sinks almost to pedantry. A Jove-born intellect is hardly wanted, and clashes with the inferiorities. Industry is exacting. Honesty is unpractical. Truth is easily offended. Dignity will not bend. But the man who can be all things to all men, who has ever a kind word to speak, a pleasant joke to crack, who can forgive all sins, who is ever prepared for friend or foe but never very bitter to the latter, who forgets not men's names, and is always ready with little words, - he is the man who will be supported at a crisis such as this that was now in the course of pa.s.sing. It is for him that men will struggle, and talk, and, if needs be, fight, as though the very existence of the country depended on his political security. The present man would receive no such defence; - but still the violent deposition of a Prime Minister is always a memorable occasion.

Sir Orlando made his speech, and, as had been antic.i.p.ated, it had very little to do with the Bill, and was almost exclusively an attack upon his late chief. He thought, he said, that this was an occasion on which they had better come to a direct issue with as little delay as possible. If he rightly read the feeling of the House, no Bill of this magnitude coming from the present Ministry would be likely to be pa.s.sed in an efficient condition. The Duke had frittered away his support in that House, and as a Minister had lost that confidence which a majority of the House had once been willing to place in him. We need not follow Sir Orlando through his speech. He alluded to his own services, and declared that he was obliged to withdraw them because the Duke would not trust him with the management of his own office. He had reason to believe that other gentlemen who had attached themselves to the Duke's Ministry had found themselves equally crippled by this pa.s.sion for autocratic rule. Hereupon a loud chorus of disapprobation came from the Treasury bench, which was fully answered by opposing noises from the other side of the House. Sir Orlando declared that he need only point to the fact that the Ministry had been already s.h.i.+vered by the secession of various gentlemen. "Only two," said a voice. Sir Orlando was turning round to contradict the voice when he was greeted by another. "And those the weakest," said the other voice, which was indubitably that of Larry Fitzgibbon. "I will not speak of myself," said Sir Orlando pompously; "but I am authorised to tell the House that the n.o.ble lord who is now Secretary of State for the Colonies only holds his office till this crisis shall have pa.s.sed."

After that there was some sparring of a very bitter kind between Sir Timothy and Phineas Finn, till at last it seemed that the debate was to degenerate into a war of man against man. Phineas, and Erle, and Laurence Fitzgibbon allowed themselves to be lashed into anger, and, as far as words went, had the best of it. But of what use could it be? Every man there had come into the House prepared to vote for or against the Duke of Omnium, - or resolved, like Mr. Lupton, not to vote at all; and it was hardly on the cards that a single vote should be turned this way or that by any violence of speaking. "Let it pa.s.s," said Mr. Monk in a whisper to Phineas. "The fire is not worth the fuel."

"I know the Duke's faults," said Phineas; "but these men know nothing of his virtues, and when I hear them abuse him I cannot stand it."

Early in the night, - before twelve o'clock, - the House divided, and even at the moment of the division no one quite knew how it would go. There would be many who would of course vote against the amendment as being simply desirous of recording their opinion in favour of the Bill generally. And there were some who thought that Sir Orlando and his followers had been too forward, and too confident of their own standing in the House, in trying so violent a mode of opposition. It would have been better, these men thought, to have insured success by a gradual and persistent opposition to the Bill itself. But they hardly knew how thoroughly men may be alienated by silence and a cold demeanour. Sir Orlando on the division was beaten, but was beaten only by nine. "He can't go on with his Bill," said Rattler in one of the lobbies of the House. "I defy him. The House wouldn't stand it, you know." "No minister," said Roby, "could carry a measure like that with a majority of nine on a vote of confidence!" The House was of course adjourned, and Mr. Monk went at once to Carlton Terrace.

"I wish it had only been three or four," said the Duke, laughing.

"Why so?"

"Because there would have been less doubt."

"Is there any at present?"

"Less possibility for doubt, I will say. You would not wish to make the attempt with such a majority?"

"I could not do it, Duke!"

"I quite agree with you. But there will be those who will say that the attempt might be made, - who will accuse us of being faint-hearted because we do not make it."

"They will be men who understand nothing of the temper of the House."

"Very likely. But still, I wish the majority had only been two or three. There is little more to be said, I suppose."

"Very little, your Grace."

"We had better meet to-morrow at two, and, if possible, I will see her Majesty in the afternoon. Good night, Mr. Monk."

"Good night, Duke."

"My reign is ended. You are a good deal an older man than I, and yet probably yours has yet to begin." Mr. Monk smiled and shook his head as he left the room, not trusting himself to discuss so large a subject at so late an hour of the night.