The Palliser Novels (497 page)

Emily was about to answer, hardly knowing what to say, when the door was opened and Mrs. Roby came into the room. The lady was not announced, and Emily had heard no knock at the door. She was forced to go through some ceremony of introduction. “This is my aunt, Mrs. Roby,” she said. “Aunt Harriet, the Duchess of Omnium.” Mrs. Roby was beside herself, — not all with joy. That feeling would come afterwards as she would boast to her friends of her new acquaintance. At present there was the embarrassment of not quite knowing how to behave herself. The Duchess bowed from her seat, and smiled sweetly, — as she had learned to smile since her husband had become Prime Minister. Mrs. Roby curtsied, and then remembered that in these days only housemaids ought to curtsey.

“Anything to our Mr. Roby?” said the Duchess, continuing her smile, — “ours as he was till yesterday at least.” This she said in an absurd wail of mock sorrow.

“My brother-in-law, your Grace,” said Mrs. Roby, delighted.

“Oh indeed. And what does Mr. Roby think about it, I wonder? But I dare say you have found, Mrs. Roby, that when a crisis comes, — a real crisis, — the ladies are told nothing. I have.”

“I don’t think, your Grace, that Mr. Roby ever divulges political secrets.”

“Doesn’t he indeed! What a dull man your brother-in-law must be to live with, — that is as a politician! Good-bye, Mrs. Lopez. You must come and see me and let me come to you again. I hope, you know, — I hope the time may come when things may once more be bright with you.” These last words she murmured almost in a whisper, as she held the hand of the woman she wished to befriend. Then she bowed to Mrs. Roby, and left the room.

“What was it she said to you?” asked Mrs. Roby.

“Nothing in particular, Aunt Harriet.”

“She seems to be very friendly. What made her come?”

“She wrote some time ago to say she would call.”

“But why?”

“I cannot tell you. I don’t know. Don’t ask me, aunt, about things that are passed. You cannot do it without wounding me.”

“I don’t want to wound you, Emily, but I really think that that is nonsense. She is a very nice woman; — though I don’t think she ought to have said that Mr. Roby is dull. Did Mr. Wharton know that she was coming?”

“He knew that she said she would come,” replied Emily very sternly, so that Mrs. Roby found herself compelled to pass on to some other subject. Mrs. Roby had heard the wish expressed that something “once more might be bright,” and when she got home told her husband that she was sure that Emily Lopez was going to marry Arthur Fletcher. “And why the
d––––
shouldn’t she?” said Dick. “And that poor man destroying himself not much more than twelve months ago! I couldn’t do it,” said Mrs. Roby. “I don’t mean to give you the chance,” said Dick.

The Duchess when she went away suffered under a sense of failure. She had intended to bring about some crisis of female tenderness in which she might have rushed into future hopes and joyous anticipations, and with the freedom which will come from ebullitions of feeling, have told the widow that the peculiar circumstances of her position would not only justify her in marrying this other man but absolutely called upon her to do it. Unfortunately she had failed in her attempt to bring the interview to a condition in which this would have been possible, and while she was still making the attempt that odious aunt had come in. “I have been on my mission,” she said to Mrs. Finn afterwards.

“Have you done any good?”

“I don’t think I’ve done any harm. Women, you know, are so very different! There are some who would delight to have an opportunity of opening their hearts to a Duchess, and who might almost be talked into anything in an ecstasy.”

“Hardly women of the best sort, Lady Glen.”

“Not of the best sort. But then one doesn’t come across the very best, very often. But that kind of thing does have an effect; and as I only wanted to do good, I wish she had been one of the sort for the occasion.”

“Was she — offended?”

“Oh dear, no. You don’t suppose I attacked her with a husband at the first word. Indeed, I didn’t attack her at all. She didn’t give me an opportunity. Such a Niobe you never saw.”

“Was she weeping?”

“Not actual tears. But her gown, and her cap, and her strings were weeping. Her voice wept, and her hair, and her nose, and her mouth. Don’t you know that look of subdued mourning? And yet they say that that man is dying for love. How beautiful it is to see that there is such a thing as constancy left in the world.”

When she got home she found that her husband had just returned from the old Duke’s house, where he had met Mr. Monk, Mr. Gresham, and Lord Cantrip. “It’s all settled at last,” he said cheerfully.

When the ex-Prime Minister was left by himself after the departure of his old friend his first feeling had been one of regret that he had been weak enough to doubt at all. He had long since made up his mind that after all that had passed he could not return to office as a subordinate. That feeling as to the impropriety of Cæsar descending to serve under others which he had been foolish enough to express, had been strong with him from the very commencement of his Ministry. When first asked to take the place which he had filled the reason strong against it had been the conviction that it would probably exclude him from political work during the latter half of his life. The man who has written Q.C. after his name must abandon his practice behind the bar. As he then was, although he had already been driven by the unhappy circumstance of his peerage from the House of Commons which he loved so well, there were still open to him many fields of political work. But if he should once consent to stand on the top rung of the ladder, he could not, he thought, take a lower place without degradation. Till he should have been placed quite at the top no shifting his place from this higher to that lower office would injure him in his own estimation. The exigencies of the service and not defeat would produce such changes as that. But he could not go down from being Prime Minister and serve under some other chief without acknowledging himself to have been unfit for the place he had filled. Of all that he had quite assured himself. And yet he had allowed the old Duke to talk him into a doubt!

As he sat considering the question he acknowledged that there might have been room for doubt, though in the present emergency there certainly was none. He could imagine circumstances in which the experience of an individual in some special branch of his country’s service might be of such paramount importance to the country as to make it incumbent on a man to sacrifice all personal feeling. But it was not so with him. There was nothing now which he could do, which another might not do as well. That blessed task of introducing decimals into all the commercial relations of British life, which had once kept him aloft in the air, floating as upon eagle’s wings, had been denied him. If ever done it must be done from the House of Commons; and the people of the country had become deaf to the charms of that great reform. Othello’s occupation was, in truth, altogether gone, and there was no reason by which he could justify to himself the step down in the world which the old Duke had proposed to him.

Early on the following morning he left Carlton Terrace on foot and walked as far as Mr. Monk’s house, which was close to St. James’s Street. Here at eleven o’clock he found his late Chancellor of the Exchequer in that state of tedious agitation in which a man is kept who does not yet know whether he is or is not to be one of the actors in the play just about to be performed. The Duke had never before been in Mr. Monk’s very humble abode, and now caused some surprise. Mr. Monk knew that he might probably be sent for, but had not expected that any of the ex-Prime Ministers of the day would come to him. People had said that not improbably he himself might be the man, — but he himself had indulged in no such dream. Office had had no great charms for him; — and if there was one man of the late Government who could lay it down without a personal regret, it was Mr. Monk. “I wish you to come with me to the Duke’s house in St. James’s Square,” said the late Prime Minister. “I think we shall find him at home.”

“Certainly. I will come this moment.” Then there was not a word spoken till the two men were in the street together. “Of course I am a little anxious,” said Mr. Monk. “Have you anything to tell me before we get there?”

“You of course must return to office, Mr. Monk.”

“With your Grace — I certainly will do so.”

“And without, if there be the need. They who are wanted should be forthcoming. But perhaps you will let me postpone what I have to say till we see the Duke. What a charming morning; — is it not? How sweet it would be down in the country.” March had gone out like a lamb, and even in London the early April days were sweet, — to be followed, no doubt, by the usual nipping inclemency of May. “I never can get over the feeling,” continued the Duke, “that Parliament should sit for the six winter months, instead of in summer. If we met on the first of October, how glorious it would be to get away for the early spring!”

“Nothing less strong than grouse could break up Parliament,” said Mr. Monk; “and then what would the pheasants and the foxes say?”

“It is giving up almost too much to our amusements. I used to think that I should like to move for a return of the number of hunting and shooting gentlemen in both Houses. I believe it would be a small minority.”

“But their sons shoot, and their daughters hunt, and all their hangers-on would be against it.”

“Custom is against us, Mr. Monk; that is it. Here we are. I hope my friend will not be out, looking up young Lords of the Treasury.” The Duke of St. Bungay was not in search of cadets for the Government, but was at this very moment closeted with Mr. Gresham, and Mr. Gresham’s especial friend Lord Cantrip. He had been at this work so long and so constantly that his very servants had their ministerial-crisis manners and felt and enjoyed the importance of the occasion. The two newcomers were soon allowed to enter the august conclave, and the five great senators greeted each other cordially. “I hope we have not come inopportunely,” said the Duke of Omnium. Mr. Gresham assured him almost with hilarity that nothing could be less inopportune; — and then the Duke was sure that Mr. Gresham was to be the new Prime Minister, whoever might join him or whoever might refuse to do so. “I told my friend here,” continued our Duke, laying his hand upon the old man’s arm, “that I would give him his answer to a proposition he made me within twenty-four hours. But I find that I can do so without that delay.”

“I trust your Grace’s answer may be favourable to us,” said Mr. Gresham, — who indeed did not doubt much that it would be so, seeing that Mr. Monk had accompanied him.

“I do not think that it will be unfavourable, though I cannot do as my friend has proposed.”

“Any practicable arrangement — ” began Mr. Gresham, with a frown, however, on his brow.

“The most practicable arrangement, I am sure, will be for you to form your Government without hampering yourself with a beaten predecessor.”

“Not beaten,” said Lord Cantrip.

“Certainly not,” said the other Duke.

“It is because of your success that I ask your services,” said Mr. Gresham.

“I have none to give, — none that I cannot better bestow out of office than in. I must ask you, gentlemen, to believe that I am quite fixed. Coming here with my friend Mr. Monk, I did not state my purpose to him; but I begged him to accompany me, fearing lest in my absence he should feel it incumbent on himself to sail in the same boat with his late colleague.”

“I should prefer to do so,” said Mr. Monk.

“Of course it is not for me to say what may be Mr. Gresham’s ideas; but as my friend here suggested to me that, were I to return to office, Mr. Monk would do so also, I cannot be wrong in surmising that his services are desired.” Mr. Gresham bowed assent. “I shall therefore take the liberty of telling Mr. Monk that I think he is bound to give his aid in the present emergency. Were I as happily placed as he is in being the possessor of a seat in the House of Commons, I too should hope that I might do something.”

The four gentlemen, with eager pressure, begged the Duke to reconsider his decision. He could take this office and do nothing in it, — there being, as we all know, offices the holders of which are not called upon for work, — or he could take that place which would require him to labour like a galley slave. Would he be Privy Seal? Would he undertake the India Board? But the Duke of Omnium was at last resolute. Of this administration he would not at any rate be a member. Whether Cæsar might or might not at some future time condescend to command a legion, he could not do so when the purple had been but that moment stripped from his shoulders. He soon afterwards left the house with a repeated request to Mr. Monk that he would not follow his late chief’s example.

“I regret it greatly,” said Mr. Gresham when he was gone.

“There is no man,” said Lord Cantrip, “whom all who know him more thoroughly respect.”

“He has been worried,” said the old Duke, “and must take time to recover himself. He has but one fault, — he is a little too conscientious, a little too scrupulous.” Mr. Monk, of course, did join them, making one or two stipulations as he did so. He required that his friend Phineas Finn should be included in the Government. Mr. Gresham yielded, though poor Phineas was not among the most favoured friends of that statesman. And so the Government was formed, and the crisis was again over, and the lists which all the newspapers had been publishing for the last three days were republished in an amended and nearly correct condition. The triumph of the “People’s Banner,” as to the omission of the Duke, was of course complete. The editor had no hesitation in declaring that he, by his own sagacity and persistency, had made certain the exclusion of that very unfit and very pressing candidate for office.

The list was filled up after the usual fashion. For a while the dilettanti politicians of the clubs, and the strong-minded women who take an interest in such things, and the writers in newspapers, had almost doubted whether, in the emergency which had been supposed to be so peculiar, any Government could be formed. There had been, — so they had said, — peculiarities so peculiar that it might be that the much-dreaded deadlock had come at last. A Coalition had been possible and, though antagonistic to British feelings generally, had carried on the Government. But what might succeed the Coalition, nobody had known. The Radicals and Liberals together would be too strong for Mr. Daubeny and Sir Orlando. Mr. Gresham had no longer a party of his own at his back, and a second Coalition would be generally spurned. In this way there had been much political excitement, and a fair amount of consequent enjoyment. But after a few days the old men had rattled into their old places, — or, generally, old men into new places, — and it was understood that Mr. Gresham would be again supported by a majority.