it to be unsatisfactory. No doubt the 3,000 pounds would be given; but that, as far as she could understand her father’s words, was to be the whole of her fortune. She had never known anything of her father’s affairs or his intentions, but she had certainly supposed that her fortune would be very much more than this. She had learned in some indirect way that a large sum of money would have gone with her hand to Arthur Fletcher, could she have brought herself to marry that suitor favoured by her family. And now, having learned, as she had learned, that money was of vital importance to her husband, she was dismayed at what seemed to her to be parental parsimony. But he was overjoyed,–so much so that for a while he lost that restraint over himself which was habitual to him. He ate his breakfast in a state of exultation, and talked,–not alluding specially to this 3,000 pounds,–as though he had the command of almost unlimited means. He ordered a carriage and drove her out, and bought presents for her,– things as to which they had both before decided that they should not be bought because of the expense. ‘Pray don’t spend your money for me,’ she said to him. ‘It’s nice to have you giving me things, but it would be nicer to me even than that to think that I could save you expense.’
But he was not in a mood to be denied. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to be saved from little extravagances of this sort. Owing to circumstances, your father’s money was at this moment of importance to me,–but he has answered to the whip and the money is there, and the trouble is over. We can enjoy ourselves now. Other troubles will spring up, no doubt, before long.’
She did not quite like being told that her father ‘had answered to the whip’,–but she was willing to believe that it was a phrase common among men to which it would be prudish to make objection. There was, also, something in her husband’s elation which was distasteful to her. Could it be that reverses of fortune with reference to moderate sums of money, such as this which was now coming into his hands, would always affect him in the same way? Was it not almost unmanly, or at any rate was it not undignified? And yet she tried to make the best of it, and lent herself to his holiday mood as well as she was able. ‘Shall I write and thank papa?’ she said that evening.
‘I have been thinking of that,’ he said. ‘You can write if you like, and of course you will. But I shall also write, and had better do so a post or two before you. As he has come round I suppose I ought to show myself civil. What he says about the rest of his money is of course absurd. I shall ask him nothing about it, but no doubt after a bit he will make permanent arrangements.’ Everything in the business wounded her more or less. She now perceived that he regarded this 3,000 pounds only as the first instalment of what he might get, and that his joy was due simply to this temporary success. And then he called her father absurd to her face. For a moment she thought that she would defend her father; but she could not as yet bring herself to question her husband’s words even on such a subject as that.
He did write to Mr Wharton, but in doing so he altogether laid aside that flighty manner which for a while had annoyed her. He thoroughly understood that the wording of the letter might be very important to him, and he took much trouble with it. It must be now the great work of his life to ingratiate himself with this old man, so that, at any rate at the old man’s death, he might possess at least half of the old man’s money. He must take care that there should be no division between his wife and her father of such a nature as to make the father think that his son ought to enjoy any special privilege of primogeniture or of male inheritance. And if it could be so managed that the daughter should before the old man’s death, become his favourite child, that also would be well. He was therefore very careful about the letter, which was as follows:
MY DEAR MR WHARTON
I cannot let your letter to Emily pass without thanking you myself for the very liberal response made by you to what was of course a request from myself. Let me in the first place assure you that had you, before our marriage, made any inquiry about my money affairs, I would have told you everything with accuracy; but as you did not do so I thought that I should seem to intrude upon you, if I introduced the subject. It is too long for a letter, but whenever you may like to allude to it, you will find that I will be quite open with you.
I am engaged in business which often requires the use of considerable amount of capital. It has so happened that ever since we were married the immediate use of sum of money became essential to me to save me from sacrificing a cargo of guano, which will be of greatly increased value in three months’ time, but which otherwise must have gone for what it would now fetch. Your kindness will see me through that difficulty.
Of course there is something precarious in such a business as mine,–but I am endeavouring to make it less so from day to day, and hope very shortly to bring into that humdrum groove which best befits a married man. Should I ask further assistance from you in doing this, perhaps you will not refuse it if I can succeed in making the matter clear to you. As it is I thank you sincerely for what you have done. I will ask you to pay the 3,000 pounds you have so kindly promised to my account at Messrs. Hunky and Sons, Lombard Street. They are not regular bankers, but I have an account there.
We are wandering about and enjoying ourselves mightily in the properly romantic manner. Emily sometimes seems to think that she would like to give up business, and London, and all subsidiary troubles, in order that she might settle herself for life under an Italian sky. But the idea does not generally remain with her very long. Already she is beginning to show symptoms of home sickness in regard to Manchester Square.
Yours always most faithfully,
FERDINAND LOPEZ
To this letter Lopez received no reply;–nor did he expect one. Between Emily and her father a few letters passed, not very long; nor as regarded those from Mr Wharton, were they very interesting. In none of them, however, was there any mention of money. But early in January, Lopez received a more pressing,– we might almost say an agonising letter from his friend Parker. The gist of the letter was to make Lopez understand that Parker must at once sell certain interests in a coming cargo of guano,– at whatever sacrifice,–unless he could be certified as that money which must be paid in February, and which he, Parker, must pay, should Ferdinand Lopez be at that moment be unable to meet his bond. The answer sent to Parker shall be given to the reader.
MY DEAR OLD AWFULLY SILLY, AND ABSURDLY, IMPATIENT FRIEND You are always like a toad under a harrow, and that without the slightest cause. I have money lying at Hunky’s more than double enough for those bills. Why can’t you trust a man? If you won’t trust me in saying so, you can go to Mills Happerton and ask him. But, remember, I shall be very much annoyed if you do so,– and that such an inquiry cannot but be injurious to me. If, however, you won’t believe me, you can go and ask. At any rate, don’t meddle with the guano. We should lose over 4,000 pounds each of us, if you were to do so. By George, a man should neither marry, nor leave London for a day, if he has to do with a fellow as nervous as you are. As it is I think I shall be back in a week or two before my time is properly up, lest you and one or two others should think that I have levanted altogether.
I have no hesitation in saying that more fortunes are lost in business by trembling cowardice than by any amount of imprudence or extravagance. My hair stands on end when you talk of parting with guano in December because there are bills which have to be met in February. Pluck up your heart, man, and look around, and see what is done by men with good courage.
Yours always
FERDINAND LOPEZ
These were the only communications between our married couple and their friends at home with which I need trouble my readers. Nor need I tell any further tales of their honeymoon. If the time was not one of complete and unalloyed joy to Emily,–and we must fear that it was not,–it is to be remembered that but very little complete and unalloyed joy is allowed to sojourners in that vale of tears, even though they have been but two months married. In the first week in February they appeared in the Belgrave mansion, and Emily Lopez took possession of her new home with a heart as full of love for her husband as it had been when she walked out of the church in Vere Street, though it may be that some of her sweetest illusions had already been dispelled.
CHAPTER 27
THE DUKE’S MISERY.
We must go back for a while to Gatherum Castle and see the guests whom the Duchess had collected there for her Christmas festivities. The hospitality of the Duke’s house had been maintained almost throughout the autumn. Just at the end of October they went to Matching, for what the Duchess called a quiet month–which, however, at the Duke’s urgent request, became six weeks. But even here the house was full all the time, though from deficiency of bedrooms the guests were very much less numerous. But at Matching the Duchess had been uneasy and almost cross. Mrs Finn had gone with her husband to Ireland, and she had taught herself to fancy that she could not live without Mrs Finn. And her husband had insisted upon having round him politicians of his own sort, men who really preferred work to archery, or even to hunting, and who discussed the evils of direct taxation absolutely in the drawing-room. The Duchess was assured that the country could not be governed by the support of such men as these, and was very glad to get back to Gatherum,– whither also came Phineas Finn with his wife, and St Bungay people, and Barrington Erle, and Mr Monk, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, with Lord and Lady Cantrip, and Lord and Lady Drummond,–Lord Drummond being the only representative of the other or coalesced party. And Major Pountney was there, having been urgent with the Duchess,–and having fully explained to his friend Captain Gunner that he had acceded to the wishes of his hostess only on the assurance of her Grace that the house would not be again troubled with the presence of Ferdinand Lopez. Such assurances were common between the two friends, but were innocent, as, of course, neither believed the other. And Lady Rosina was again there,–with many others. The melancholy poverty of Lady Rosina had captivated the Duke. ‘She shall come and live here, if you like,’ the Duchess had said in answer to a request from her husband on his new friend’s behalf,–‘I’ve no doubt she will be willing.’ The place was not crowded as it had been before, but still about thirty guests sat down to dinner daily, and Locock, Millepois, and Mrs Pritchard were all kept hard at work. Nor was our Duchess idle. She was always making up the party,–meaning the coalition,–doing something to strengthen the buttresses, writing letters to little people, who, little as they were, might become big by amalgamation. ‘One always has to be binding one’s faggot,’ she said to Mrs Finn, having read her Aesop, not altogether in vain. ‘Where should we have been without you?’ she had whispered to Sir Orlando Drought when that gentleman was leaving Gatherum at the termination of his second visit. She had particularly disliked Sir Orlando, and was aware that her husband had been peculiarly shy of Sir Orlando since the day on which they had walked together in the park,– and consequently, the Duchess had whispered to him. ‘Don’t bind your faggot too conspicuously,’ Mrs Finn had said to her. Then the Duchess had fallen to a seat almost exhausted by labour, mingled with regrets, and by the doubts which from time to time pervaded even her audacious spirit. ‘I’m not a god,’ she said, ‘or a Pitt, or an Italian with a long name beginning with M., that I should be able to do these things without ever making a mistake. And yet they must be done. And as for him,–he does not help me in the least. He wanders about among the clouds of the multiplication table, and thinks that a majority will drop into his mouth because he does not shut it. Can you tie the faggot any better?’ ‘I think I would leave it untied,’ said Mrs Finn. ‘You would not do anything of the kind. You’d be just as fussy as I am.’ And thus the game was carried on at Gatherum Castle from week to week.
‘But you won’t leave him?’ This was said to Phineas Finn by his wife a day or two before Christmas, and the question was introduced to ask whether Phineas Finn thought of giving up his place.
‘Not if I can help it.’
‘You like the work.’
‘That has but little to do with the question, unfortunately. I certainly like having something to do. I like earning money.’
‘I don’t know why you like that especially,’ said the wife laughing.
‘I do at any rate,–and, in a certain sense, I like authority. But in serving with the Duke I find a lack of that sympathy which one should have with one’s chief. He would never say a word to me unless I spoke to him. And when I do speak, though he is studiously civil,–much too courteous,–I know that he is bored. He has nothing to say to me about the country. When he has anything to communicate, he prefers to write a minute for Warburton, who then writes to Morton,–and so it reaches me.’
‘Doesn’t it do as well?’
‘It may do with me. There are reasons which bind me to him, which will not bind other men. Men don’t talk to me about it, because they know I am bound to him through you. But I am aware of the feeling which exists. You can’t be really loyal to a king if you never see him,–if he be always locked up in some almost divine recess.’
‘A king may make himself too common, Phineas.’
‘No doubt. A king has to know where to draw the line. But the Duke draws no intentional line at all. He is not by nature gregarious or communicative, and is therefore hardly fitted to be the head of a ministry.’
‘It will break her heart if anything goes wrong.’
‘She ought to remember that Ministries seldom live very long,’ said Phineas. ‘But she’ll recover even if she does break her heart. She is too full of vitality to be much repressed by calamity. Have you heard what is to be done about Silverbridge?’
‘The Duchess wants to get it for this man, Ferdinand Lopez.’
‘But it has not been promised yet.’
‘The seat is not vacant,’ said Mrs Finn, ‘and I don’t know when it will be vacant. I think there is a hitch about it,–and I think the Duchess is going to be made very angry.’
Throughout the autumn the Duke had been an unhappy man. While the absolute work of the Session had lasted he had found something to console him; but now, though he was surrounded by private secretaries, and though dispatch boxes went and came twice a day, though there were dozens of letters as to which he had to give some instruction,–yet, there was in truth nothing for him to do. It seemed to him that all the real work of Government had been filched from him by his colleagues, and that he was stuck up in pretended authority,–a kind of wooden Prime Minister, from whom no real ministration was demanded. His first real fear had been that he was himself unfit;–but now he was uneasy, fearing that others thought him to be unfit. There was Mr Monk with his budget, and Lord Drummond with his three or four dozen half-rebellious colonies, and Sir Orlando Drought with the House to lead and a ship to build, and Phineas Finn with his scheme of municipal Home Rule for Ireland, and Lord Ramsden with a codified Statute Book,–all full of work, all with something special to be done. But for him,–he had to arrange who should attend the Queen, what ribbons should be given away, and what middle-aged young man should move the address. He sighed as he thought of those happy days in which he used to fear that his mind and body would both give way under the pressure of decimal coinage.
But Phineas Finn had read the Duke’s character right in saying that he was neither gregarious nor communicative, and therefore but little fitted to rule Englishmen. He had thought that it was so himself, and now from day to day he was becoming more assured of his own deficiency. He could not throw himself into cordial relations with the Sir Orlando Droughts, or even the Mr Monks. But, though he had never wished to be put into his present high office, now that he was there he dreaded the sense of failure which would follow his descent from it. It is this feeling rather than genuine ambition, rather than the love of power or patronage or pay, which induces men to cling to place. The absence of real work, and the quantity of mock work, both alike made the life wearisome to him; but he could not endure the idea that it should be written in history that he had allowed himself to be made a faineant Prime Minister, and than had failed even in that. History would forget what he had done as a working Minister in recording the feebleness of the Ministry which would bear his name.
The one man with whom he could talk freely, and from whom he could take advice, was now with him, here at his Castle. He was shy at first even with the Duke of St Bungay, but that shyness he could generally overcome, after a few words. But though he was always sure of his old friend’s sympathy and of his friend’s wisdom, yet he doubted his old friend’s capacity to understand himself. The young Duke felt the old Duke to be thicker- skinned than himself and therefore unable to appreciate the thorns which so sorely worried his own flesh. ‘They talk to me about a policy,’ said the host. They were closeted at this time in the Prime Minister’s own sanctum, and there yet remained an hour before they need dress for dinner.
‘Who talks about a policy?’
‘Sir Orlando Drought especially.’ For the Duke of Omnium had never forgotten the arrogance of that advice given in the park.
‘Sir Orlando is of course entitled to speak, though I do not know that he is likely to say anything very well worth of hearing. What is his special policy?’
‘If he had any, of course, I would hear him. It is not that he wants any special thing to be done, but he thinks that I should get up some special thing in order that Parliament may be satisfied.’
‘If you wanted to create a majority that might be true. Just listen to him and have done with it.’
‘I cannot go on in that way. I cannot submit to what amounts to complaint from the gentlemen who are acting with me. Nor would they submit long to my silence. I am beginning to feel that I have been wrong.’
‘I don’t think you have been wrong at all.’
‘A man is wrong if he attempts to carry a weight too great for his strength.’
‘A certain nervous sensitiveness, from which you should free yourself as from a disease, is your only source of weakness. Think about your business as a shoemaker thinks of his. Do your best, and then let your customers judge for themselves. Caveat emptor. A man should never endeavour to price himself, but should accept the price which others put on him,–only being careful that he should learn what that price is. Your policy should be to keep your government together by a strong majority. After all, the making of new laws is too often but an unfortunate necessity laid on us by the impatience of the people. A lengthened period of quiet and therefore good government with a minimum of new laws would be the greatest benefit the country could receive. When I recommended you to comply with the Queen’s behest I did so because I thought you might inaugurate such a period more certainly than any other one man.’ This old Duke was quite content with the state of things such as he described. He had been a Cabinet Minister for more than half his life. He liked being a Cabinet Minister. He thought it well for the country generally that his party should be in power,–and if not his party in its entirety, then as much of his party as might be possible. He did not expect to be written of as Pitt or a Somers, but he thought that memoirs would speak of him as a useful nobleman,–and he was contented. He was not only not ambitious himself, but the effervescence and general turbulence of ambition in other men was distasteful to him, and the power of submitting to defeat without either shame or sorrow had become perfect with him by long practice. He would have made his brother Duke such as he was himself,–had not his brother Duke been so lamentably thin-skinned.
‘I suppose we must try it for another Session?’ said the Duke of Omnium with a lachrymose voice.
‘Of course we must,–and for others after that, I both hope and trust,’ said the Duke of St Bungay, getting up. ‘If I don’t go upstairs I shall be late, and then her Grace will look at me with unforgiving eyes.’
On the following day after lunch the Prime Minister took a walk with Lady Rosina De Courcy. He had fallen into a habit of walking with Lady Rosina almost every day of his life, till the people in the Castle began to believe that Lady Rosina was the mistress of some deep policy of her own. For there were many there who did in truth think that statecraft could never be absent from a minister’s mind, day or night. But in truth Lady Rosina chiefly made herself agreeable to the Prime Minister by never making the most distant allusion to public affairs. It might be doubted whether she even knew that the man who paid her so much honour was the Head of the British Government as well as the Duke of Omnium. She was a tall, thin, shrivelled-up old woman,–not very old, fifty perhaps, but looking at least ten years more,–very melancholy, and sometimes very cross. She had been notably religious, but that was gradually wearing off as she advanced in years. The rigid strictness of Sabbatarian practice requires the full energy of middle life. She had been left entirely alone in the world, with a very small income, and not many friends who were in any way interested in her existence. But she knew herself to be Lady Rosina De Courcy, and felt that the possession of that name ought to be more to her than money or friends, or even than brothers and sisters. ‘The weather is not frightening you,’ said the Duke. Snow had fallen, and the paths, even where they had been swept, were wet and sloppy.
‘Weather never frightens me, your Grace. I always have thick boots,–I am very particular about that;–and cork soles.’
‘Cork soles are admirable.’
‘I think I owe my life to cork soles,’ said Lady Rosina enthusiastically. ‘There is a man named Sprout in Silverbridge who makes them. Did you Grace ever try him for boots?’
‘I don’t think I ever did,’ said the Prime Minister.
‘Then you had better. He’s very good and very cheap too. Those London tradesmen never think they can charge you enough. I find I can wear Sprout’s boots the whole winter through and then have them resoled. I don’t suppose you ever think of such things?’
‘I like to keep my feet dry.’
‘I have got to calculate what they cost.’ They then passed Major Pountney, who was coming and going between the stables and the house, and who took off his hat and who saluted the host and his companion with perhaps more flowing courtesy than was necessary. ‘I never found out what that gentleman’s name is yet,’ said Lady Rosina.
‘Pountney. I think, I believe they call him Major Pountney.’
‘Oh, Pountney! There are Pountneys in Leicestershire. Perhaps he is one of them.’
‘I don’t know where he comes from,’ said the Duke,–‘nor, to tell the truth where he goes to.’ Lady Rosina looked up at him with an interested air. ‘He seems to be one of those idle men who get into people’s houses heaven knows why, and never do anything.’
‘I suppose you asked him?’ said Lady Rosina.
‘The Duchess did, I dare say.’
‘How odd it must be if she were to suppose that you had asked him.’
‘The Duchess, no doubt, knows all about it.’ Then there was a little pause. ‘She is obliged to have all sorts of people,’ said the Duke apologetically.
‘I suppose so;–when you have so many coming and going. I am sorry to say that my time is up to-morrow, so that I shall make way for somebody else.’
‘I hope you won’t think of going, Lady Rosina,–unless you are engaged elsewhere. We are delighted to have you.’
‘The Duchess has been very kind, but–‘
‘The Duchess, I fear, is almost to much engaged to see as much of her guests individually as she ought to do. To me your being here is a great pleasure.’
‘You are too good to me,–much too good. But I shall have stayed out my time, and I think, Duke, I will go to-morrow. I am very methodical, you know, and always act by rule. I have walked my two miles now, and I will go in. If you do want boots with cork soles mind you go to Sprout’s. Dear me, there is that Major Pountney again. That is four times he has been up and down that path since we have been walking here.’
Lady Rosina went in, and the Duke turned back, thinking of his friend and perhaps thinking of the cork soles of which she had to be so careful and which was so important to her comfort. It could not be that he fancied Lady Rosina to be clever, nor can we imagine that her conversation satisfied any of those wants to which he and all of us are subject. But nevertheless he liked Lady Rosina, and was never bored by her. She was natural, and she wanted nothing from him. When she talked about cork soles she meant cork soles. And then she did not tread on any of his numerous corns. As he walked on he determined that he would induce his wife to persuade Lady Rosina to stay a little longer at the Castle. In meditating upon this he made another turn in the grounds, and again came upon Major Pountney as that gentleman was returning from the stables. ‘A very cold afternoon,’ he said, feeling it to be ungracious to pass one of his own guests in his own grounds without a word of salutation.
‘Very cold indeed, your Grace,–very cold.’ The Duke had intended to pass on, but the Major managed to stop him by standing in the pathway. The Major did not in the least know his man. He had heard the Duke was shy, and therefore thought that he was timid. He had not hitherto been spoken to by the Duke,– a condition of things which he attributed to the Duke’s shyness and timidity. But, with much thought on the subject, he had resolved that he would have a few words with his host, and had therefore passed backwards and forwards between the house and the stables rather frequently. ‘Very cold indeed, but yet we’ve had beautiful weather. I don’t know when I have enjoyed myself so much altogether as I have at Gatherum Castle.’ The Duke bowed, and made a little but a vain effort to get on. ‘A splendid pile!’ said the Major, stretching his hand gracefully towards the building.
‘It’s a big house,’ said the Duke.
‘A noble mansion;–perhaps the noblest mansion in the three kingdoms,’ said Major Pountney. ‘I have seen a great many of the best country residences in England, but nothing that at all equals Gatherum.’ Then the Duke made a little effort at progression, but was still stopped by the daring Major. ‘By-the- by, your Grace, if your Grace has a few minutes to spare,–just a half a minute,–I wish you would allow me to say something.’ The Duke assumed a look of disturbance, but he bowed and walked on, allowing the Major to walk by his side. ‘I have the greatest possible desire, my Lord Duke, to enter public life.’
‘I thought you were already in the army,’ said the Duke.
‘So I am,–was on Sir Bartholomew Bone’s staff in Canada for two years, and have seen as much of what I call home service as any man going. One of my chief objects is to take up the army.’
‘I seems that you have taken it up.’
‘I mean in Parliament, your Grace. I am very fairly off as regards private means, and would stand all the racket of the expense of a contest myself,–if there were one. But the difficulty is to get a seat, and, of course, if it can be privately managed, it is very comfortable.’ The Duke looked at him again,–this time without bowing. But the Major, who was not observant, rushed on to his destruction. ‘We all know that Silverbridge will soon be vacant. Let me assure your Grace that if it might be consistent with your Grace’s plans in other respects to turn your kind countenance towards me, you would find that you have a supporter than whom none would be more staunch, and perhaps I may say one who in the House would not be the least useful!’ That portion of the Major’s speech which referred to the Duke’s kind countenance had been learned by heart, and was thrown trippingly off the tongue with a kind of twang. The Major perceived that he had not been at once interrupted when he began to open the budget of political aspirations, and had allowed himself to indulge in pleasing auguries. ‘Nothing ask and nothing have,’ had been adopted as the motto of his life, and more than once he had expressed to Captain Gunner his conviction that,–‘By George, if you’ve only cheek enough, there is nothing you cannot get.’ On this emergency the Major certainly was not deficient in cheek. ‘If I might be allowed to consider myself as your Grace’s candidate, I should indeed be a happy man,’ said the Major.
‘I think, sir,’ said the Duke, ‘that your proposition is the most unbecoming and the most impertinent that ever was addressed to me.’ The Major’s mouth fell, and he stared with all his eyes as he looked up into the Duke’s face. ‘Good afternoon,’ said the Duke, turning quickly round and walking away. The Major stood for while transfixed to the place, and cold as was the weather, was bathed in perspiration. A keen sense of having ‘put his foot in it’ almost crushed him for a time. Then he assured himself that, after all, the Duke ‘could not eat him’, and with that consolatory reflection he crept back to the house and up to his room.
To put the man down had of course been an easy task to the Duke, but he was not satisfied with that. To the Major it seemed that the Duke had passed on with easy indifference,–but, in truth, he was very far from being easy. The man’s insolent request had wounded him at many points. It was grievous to him that he should have as a guest in his own house a man whom he had been forced to insult. It was grievous to him that he himself should not have been held in personal respect high enough to protect him from such an insult. It was grievous to him that he should be openly addressed,–addressed by an absolute stranger,–as a boroughmongering lord, who would not scruple to give away a seat in Parliament as seats were given away in former days. And it was specially grievous to him that all these misfortunes should have come upon him as part of the results of his wife’s manner of exercising his hospitality. If this was to be the Prime Minister he certainly would not be Prime Minister much longer! Had any aspirant to political life dared so to address Lord Brock, or Lord de Terrier, or Mr Mildmay, the old Premiers whom he remembered? He thought not. They had managed differently. They had been able to defend themselves from such attacks by personal dignity. And would it have been possible that any man should have dared so to speak to his uncle, the late Duke? He thought not. As he shut himself up in his own room he grieved inwardly with a deep grief. After a while he walked off to his wife’s room, still perturbed in spirit. The perturbation had indeed increased from minute to minute. He would rather give up politics altogether and shut himself up in absolute seclusion than find himself subject to the insolence of any Pountney that might address him. With his wife he found Mrs Finn. Now for this lady personally he entertained what for him was a warm regard. In various matters of much importance he and she had been brought together, and she had, to his thinking, invariably behaved well. And an intimacy had been established which had enabled him to be at ease with her,–so that her presence was often a comfort to him. But at the present moment he had not wished to find anyone with his wife, and felt that she was in his way. ‘Perhaps I am disturbing you,’ he said in a tone of voice that was solemn and almost funereal.
‘Not at all,’ said the Duchess, who was in high spirits. ‘I want to get your promise about Silverbridge. Don’t mind her. Of course she knows everything.’ To be told that anybody knew everything was another shock to him. ‘I have just got a letter from Mr Lopez.’ Could it be right that his wife should be corresponding on such a subject with a person so little known as this Mr Lopez? ‘May I tell him that he shall have your interest when the seat is vacant?’
‘Certainly not,’ said the Duke, with a scowl that was terrible even to his wife. ‘I wish to speak to you, but I wish to speak to you alone.’
‘I beg a thousand pardons,’ said Mrs Finn, preparing to go.
‘Don’t stir, Marie,’ said the Duchess, ‘he is going to be cross.’
‘If Mrs Finn will allow me, with every feeling of the most perfect respect and sincerest regard, to ask her to leave me with you for a few minutes, I shall be obliged. And if, with her usual hearty kindness, she will pardon my abruptness–‘ Then he could not go on, his emotions being too great; but he put out his hand, and taking hers raised it to his lips and kissed it. The moment had become too solemn for any further hesitation as to the lady’s going. The Duchess for a moment was struck dumb, and Mrs Finn, of course, left the room.
‘Who is Major Pountney?’
‘Who is Major Pountney! How on earth should I know? He is– Major Pountney. He is about everywhere.’
‘Do not let him be asked into any house of mine again. But that is a trifle.’
‘Anything about Major Pountney must, I should think, be a trifle. Have tidings come that the heavens are going to fall? Nothing short of that could make you so solemn.’
‘In the first place, Glencora, let me ask you not to speak to me again about the seat for Silverbridge. I am not at present prepared to argue the matter with you, but I have resolved that, I will know nothing about the election. As soon as the seat is vacant, if it should be vacated, I shall take care that my determination be known in Silverbridge.’
‘Why should you abandon your privileges in that way? It is sheer weakness.’
‘The interference of any peer is unconstitutional.’
‘There is Braxon,’ said the Duchess energetically, ‘where the Marquis of Crumber returns the member regularly, in spirt of all their Reform bills, and Bamford and Cobblesborough;–and look at Lord Lumley with a whole county in his pocket, not to speak of two boroughs! What nonsense, Plantagenet! Anything is constitutional, or anything is unconstitutional, just as you choose to look at it.’ It was clear that the Duchess had really studied the subject carefully.
‘Very well, my dear, let it be nonsense. I only beg to assure you that it is my intention, and I request you to act accordingly. And there is another thing I have to say to you. I shall be sorry to interfere in any way with the pleasure which you may derive from society, but as long as I am burdened with the office which has been imposed upon me, I will not again entertain any guests in my own house.’
‘Plantagenet!’
‘You cannot turn the people out who are here now; but I beg that they may be allowed to go when the time comes, and that their place may not be filled by further invitations.’
‘But further invitations have gone out ever so long ago, and have been accepted. You must be ill, dear.’
‘Ill at ease,–yes. At any rate let none others be sent out.’ Then he remembered a kindly purpose, which he had formed early in the day, and fell back on that. ‘I should, however, be glad if you would ask Lady Rosina De Courcy to remain here.’ The Duchess stared at him, really thinking now that something was amiss with him. ‘The whole thing is a failure and I will have no more of it. It is degrading me.’ Then without allowing her a moment in which to answer him, he marched back to his own room.
But even here his spirit was not as yet at rest. That Major must not go unpunished. Though he hated all fuss and noise he must do something. So he wrote as follows to the Major:
The Duke of Omnium trusts that Major Pountney will not find it inconvenient to leave Gatherum Castle shortly. Should Major Pountney wish to remain at the Castle over the night, the Duke of Omnium hopes that he will not object to be served with his dinner and with his breakfast in his own room. A carriage with horses will be ready for Major Pountney’s use, to take him to Silverbridge, as soon as Major Pountney may express to the servants his wish to that effect.
Gatherum Castle,–December, 18–
This note the Duke sent by the hands of his own servant, having said enough to the man as to the carriage and the possible dinner in the Major’s bedroom, to make the man understand almost exactly what had occurred. A note from the Major was brought to the Duke while he was dressing. The Duke having glanced at the note threw it into the fire; and the Major that evening ate his dinner at the Palliser’s Arms Inn at Silverbridge.
CHAPTER 28
THE DUCHESS’S MIND IS TROUBLED.
It is hardly possible that one man should turn another out of his house without any people knowing it, and when the one person is a Prime Minister and the other such as Major Pountney, the affair is likely to be talked about very widely. The Duke of course never opened his mouth on the subject, except in answer to questions from the Duchess; but all the servants knew it. ‘Pritchard tells me you have sent that wretched man out of the house with a flea in his ear,’ said the Duchess.
‘I sent him out of the house, certainly.’
‘He was hardly worth your anger.’
‘He is not at all worth my anger;–but I could not sit down to dinner with a man who insulted me.’
‘What did he say, Plantagenet? I know it was something about Silverbridge.’ To this question the Duke gave no answer, but in respect to Silverbridge he was stern as adamant. Two days after the departure of the Major it was known in Silverbridge generally that in the event of there being an election the Duke’s agent would not as usual suggest a nominee. There was a paragraph on the subject in the County paper, and another in the London “Evening Pulpit”. The Duke of Omnium,–that he might show his respect to the law, not only as to the letter of the law, but as to the spirit also,–had made it known to his tenantry in and round Silverbridge generally that he would in no way influence their choice of candidate in the event of an election. But these newspapers did not say a word about Major Pountney.
The clubs of course knew all about it, and no man at any club ever knew more than Captain Gunner. Soon after Christmas he met his friend the Major on the steps of the new military club, The Active Service, which was declared by many men in the army to have left all the other military clubs ‘absolutely nowhere’. ‘Halloa, Punt!’ he said, ‘you seem to have made a mess of it at last down at the Duchess’s.’
‘I wonder what you know about it.’
‘You had to come away pretty quick, I take it.’
‘Of course I came away pretty quick.’ So much as that the Major was aware must be known. There were details which he could deny safely, as it would be impossible that they should be supported by evidence, but there were matters which must be admitted. ‘I’ll bet a fiver that beyond that you know nothing about it.’
‘The Duke ordered you off, I take it.’
‘After a fashion he did. There are circumstances in which a man cannot help himself.’ This was diplomatical because it left the Captain to suppose that the Duke was the man who could not help himself.
‘Of course I was not there,’ said Gunner, ‘and I can’t absolutely know, but I suppose you had been interfering with the Duchess about Silverbridge. Glencora will bear a great deal,–but since she has taken up politics, by George, you had better not touch her there.’ At last it came to be believed that the Major had been turned out by the order of the Duchess because he had ventured to put himself forward as an opponent to Ferdinand Lopez, and the Major felt himself really grateful to his friend the Captain for this arrangement of the story. And there came at last to be mixed up with the story some half-understood innuendo that the Major’s jealousy against Lopez had been of a double nature,–in reference both to the Duchess and the borough,–so that he escaped from much of that disgrace which naturally attracts itself to a man who has been kicked out of another man’s house. There was a mystery;–and when there is a mystery a man should never be condemned. Where there is a woman in the case a man cannot be expected to tell the truth. As for calling out or in any punishing the Prime Minister, that of course was out of the question. And so it went on till at last the Major was almost proud of what he had done, and talked about it willingly with mysterious hints, in which practice made him perfect.
But with the Duchess the affair was very serious, so much so that she was driven to call in for advice,–not only from her constant friend, Mrs Finn, but afterwards from Barrington Erle, from Phineas Finn, and lastly even from the Duke of St Bungay, to whom she was hardly willing to subject herself, the Duke being the special friend of her husband. But the matter became so important to her that she was unable to trifle with it. At Gatherum the expulsion of Major Pountney soon became a forgotten affair. When the Duchess learned the truth she quite approved of the expulsion, only hinting to Barrington Erle that the act of kicking out should have been more absolutely practical. And the loss of Silverbridge, though it hurt her sorely, could be endured. She must write to her friend Ferdinand Lopez, when the time should come, excusing herself as best she might, and must lose the exquisite delight of making a Member of Parliament out of her own hand. The newspapers, however, had taken that matter up in the proper spirit, and political capital might to some extent be made of it. The loss of Silverbridge, though it bruised, broke no bones. But the Duke again expressed himself with unusual sternness respecting her ducal hospitalities, and had reiterated the declaration of his intention to live out the remainder of his period of office in republican simplicity. ‘We have tried it and it has failed, and let there be an end of it,’ he said to her. Simple and direct disobedience to such an order was as little in her way as simple or direct obedience. She knew her husband well, and knew how he could be managed and how he could not be managed. When he declared that there should be ‘an end of it’,–meaning an end of the very system by which she hoped to perpetuate his power,–she did not dare argue with him. And yet he was so wrong! The trial had been no failure. The thing had been done and well done, and had succeeded. Was failure to be presumed because one impertinent puppy had found his way into the house? And then to abandon the system at once, whether it had failed or whether it had succeeded, would be to call the attention of all the world to an acknowledged failure,– to a failure so disreputable that its acknowledgement must lead to the loss of everything! It was known now,–so argued the Duchess to herself,–that she had devoted herself to the work of cementing and consolidating the Coalition by the graceful hospitality which the wealth of herself and her husband enabled her to dispense. She had made herself a Prime Ministress by the manner in which she opened her saloons, her banqueting halls, and her gardens. It had never been done before, and now it had been well done. There had been no failure. And yet everything was to be broken down because his nerves had received a shock!
‘Let it die out,’ Mrs Finn had said. ‘The people will come here and will go away, and then, when you are up in London, you will soon fall into your old ways.’ But this did not suit the new ambition of the Duchess. She had so fed her mind with daring hopes that she could not bear that it ‘should die out’. She had arranged a course of things in her own mind by which she should come to be known as the great Prime Minister’s wife, and she had, perhaps unconsciously, applied the epithet more to herself than to her husband. She, too, wished to be written of in memoirs, and to make a niche for herself in history. And now she was told that she was to let it ‘die out’.
‘I suppose he is a little bilious,’ Barrington Erle had said. ‘Don’t you think he’ll forget about it when he gets up to London?’ The Duchess was sure that her husband would not forget anything. He never did forget anything. ‘I want him to be told,’ said the Duchess, ‘that everybody thinks he is doing very well. I don’t mean about politics exactly, but as to keeping the party together. Don’t you think that we have succeeded?’ Barrington Erle thought upon the whole they had succeeded; but suggested at the same time that there were seeds of weakness. ‘Sir Orlando and Sir Timothy Beeswax are not sound, you know,’ said Barrington Erle. ‘He can’t make them sounder by shutting himself up like a hermit,’ said the Duchess. Barrington Erle, who had peculiar privileges of his own, promised that if he could by any means make an occasion, he would let the Duke know that their side of the Coalition was more than contented with the way in which he did his work.
‘You don’t think we’ve made a mess of it?’ said the Duchess to Phineas, asking him a question. ‘I don’t think that the Duke has made a mess of it,–or you,’ said Phineas, who had come to love the Duchess because his wife loved her. ‘But it won’t go on for ever, Duchess.’ ‘You know what I have done,’ said the Duchess, who took it for granted that Mr Finn knew all that his wife knew. ‘Has it answered?’ Phineas was silent for a moment. ‘Of course you will tell me the truth. You won’t be so bad as to flatter me now that I am much in earnest.’ ‘I almost think,’ said Phineas, ‘that the time has gone by for what one may call drawing-room influences. They used to be very great. Old Lord Brock used them extensively, though by no means as your Grace has done. But the spirit of the world has changed since then.’ ‘The spirit of the world never changes,’ said the Duchess in her soreness.
But her strongest dependence was on the old Duke. The party of the Castle was almost broken up when she consulted him. She had been so far true to her husband as not to ask another guest to the house since his command;–but they who had been asked before came and went as had been arranged. Then, when the place was nearly empty, and when Locock and Millepois and Pritchard were wondering among themselves at this general collapse, she asked her husband’s leave to invite their old friend again for a day or two. ‘I do so want to see him, and I think he’ll come,’ said the Duchess. The Duke gave his permission with a ready smile,–not because the proposed visitor was his own confidential friend, but because it suited his spirit to grant such a request as to anyone after the order that he had given. Had she named Major Pountney, I think he would have smiled and acceded.
The Duke came, and to him she poured out her whole soul. ‘It has been for him and for his honour that I have done it;–that men and women might know how really gracious he is, and how good. Of course, there has been money spent, but he can afford it without hurting the children. It has been so necessary that with a Coalition people should know each other! There was some absurd little row here. A man who was a mere nobody, one of the travelling butterfly men that fill up spaces and talk to girls, got hold of him and was impertinent. He is so thin-skinned that he could not shake the creature into the dust as you would have done. It annoyed him,–that, and I think, seeing so many strange faces,–so that he came to me and declared that as long as he remained in office he would not have another person in the house, either here or in London. He meant it literally, and he meant me to understand it literally. I had to get special leave before I could ask so dear an old friend as your Grace.’
‘I don’t think he would object to me,’ said the Duke, laughing.
‘Of course not. He was only too glad to think you would come. But he took the request as being quite the proper thing. It will kill me if this is to be carried out. After all that I have done, I could show myself nowhere. And it will be so injurious to him! Could you not tell him, Duke? No one else in the world can tell him but you. Nothing unfair has been attempted. No job has been done. I have endeavoured to make his house pleasant to people, in order that they might look upon him with grace and favour. Is that wrong? Is that unbecoming in a wife?’
The old Duke patted her on the head as though she were a little girl, and was more comforting to her than her other counsellors. He would say nothing to her husband now;–but they must both be up in London at the meeting of Parliament, and then he would tell his friend that, in his opinion, no sudden change should be made. ‘This husband of yours is a very peculiar man,’ he said smiling. ‘His honesty is not like the honesty of other men. It is more downright;–more absolutely honest; less capable of bearing even the shadow which the stain from another’s dishonesty might throw upon it. Give him credit for all that, and remember that you cannot find everything combined in the same person. He is very practical in some things, but the question is whether he is not too scrupulous to be practical in all things.’ At the close of the interview the Duchess kissed him and promised to be guided by him. The occurrences of the last few weeks had softened the Duchess much.
CHAPTER 29
THE TWO CANDIDATES FOR SILVERBRIDGE.
On his arrival in London Ferdinand Lopez found a letter waiting for him from the Duchess. This came into his hand immediately on his reaching the rooms at Belgrave Mansions and was of course the first object of his care. ‘That contains my fate,’ he said to his wife, putting his hand down upon the letter. He had talked to her much of the chance that had come in his way, and had shown himself to be very ambitious of the honour offered to him. She of course had sympathized with him, and was willing to think all good things both of the Duchess and the Duke, if they would between them put her husband into Parliament. He paused a moment still holding the letter under his hand. ‘You would hardly think that I should be such a coward that I don’t like to open it,’ he said.
‘You’ve got to do it.’
‘Unless I make you do it for me,’ he said, holding out the letter to her. ‘You will have to learn how weak I am. When I am really anxious I become like a child.’
‘I do not think you are ever weak,’ she said, caressing him. ‘If there were a thing to be done you would do it at once. But I’ll open it if you like.’ Then he tore off the envelope with an air of comic importance, and stood for a few minutes while he read it.
‘What I first perceive is that there has been a row about it,’ he said.
‘A row about it! What sort of row?’
‘My dear friend the Duchess has not quite hit it off with my less dear friend the Duke.’
‘She does not say so?’
Oh dear no! My friend the Duchess is much too discreet for that; –but I can see that it has been so.’
‘Are you to be the new member? If that is arranged I don’t care a bit about the Duke and Duchess.’
‘These things do not settle themselves quite so easily as that. I am not to have the seat at any rate without fighting for it. There’s the letter.’
The Duchess’s letter to her new adherent shall be given, but it must first be understood that many different ideas had passed through the writer’s mind between the writing of the letter and the order given by the Prime Minister to his wife concerning the borough. She of course became aware at once that Mr Lopez must be informed that she could not do for him what she had suggested that she would do. But there was no necessity of writing at the instant. Mr Grey had not yet vacated the seat, and Mr Lopez was away on his travels. The month of January was passed in comparative quiet at the Castle, and during that time it became known at Silverbridge that the election would be open. The Duke would not even make a suggestion, and would neither express, nor feel, resentment should a member be returned altogether hostile to his Ministry. By degrees the Duchess accustomed herself to this condition of affairs, and as the consternation caused by her husband’s very imperious conduct wore off, she began to ask herself whether even yet she need not quite give up the game. She could not make a Member of Parliament altogether out of her own hand, as she had once fondly hoped she might do; but still she might do something. She would in nothing disobey her husband, but if Mr Lopez were to stand for Silverbridge, it could not but be known in the borough that Mr Lopez was her friend. Therefore she wrote the following letter:
Gatherum,–January, 18–
MY DEAR MR LOPEZ,
I remember that you said that you would be at home at this time, and therefore I write to you about the borough. Things are changed since you went away, and I fear, not changed for your advantage.
We understand that Mr Grey will apply for the Chiltern Hundreds at the end of March, and that the election will take place in April. No candidates will appear as favoured from hence. We need to run a favourite, and our favourite would sometimes win,–would sometimes even have a walk over, but good times are gone. All the good times are going, I think. There is no reason that I know why you should not stand as well as anyone else. You can be early in the field;–because it is only now known that there will be no Gatherum interest. And I fancy it has already leaked out that you would have been the favourite had there been a favourite;–which might be beneficial.
I need hardly say that I do not wish my name to be mentioned in the matter.
Sincerely yours,
GLENCORA OMNIUM
Sprugeon, the ironmonger, would I do not doubt, be proud to nominate you.
‘I don’t understand much about it,’ said Emily.
‘I dare say not. It is not meant that any novice should understand much about it. Of course you will not mention her Grace’s letter.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘She intends to do the very best she can for me. I have no doubt that some understrapper from the Castle has had some communication with Mr Sprugeon. The fact is that the Duke won’t be seen in it, but that the Duchess does not mean that the borough shall quite slip through their fingers.’
‘Shall you try it?’
‘If I do I must send an agent down to see Mr Sprugeon on the sly, and the sooner I do the better. I wonder what your father will say about it.’
‘He is an old Conservative.’
‘But would he not like his son-in-law to be in Parliament?’
‘I don’t know that he would care about it very much. He seems always to laugh at people who want to get into Parliament. But if you have set your heart upon it, Ferdinand–‘
‘I have not set my heart on spending a great deal of money. When I first thought of Silverbridge the expense would have been almost nothing. It would have been a walk over, as the Duchess calls it. But now there will certainly be a contest.’
‘Give it up if you cannot afford it.’
‘Nothing venture nothing have. You don’t think your father would help me doing it? It would add almost as much to your position as to mine.’ Emily shook her head. She had always heard her father ridicule the folly of men who spent more than they could afford in the vanity of writing two letters after their name, and she now explained that it had always been so with him. ‘You would not mind asking him,’ he said.
‘I will ask him if you wish it, certainly.’ Ever since their marriage he had been teaching her,–intentionally teaching her, –that it would be the duty of both of them to get all they could from her father. She had learned the lesson, but it had been very distasteful to her. It had not induced her to think ill of her husband. She was too much engrossed with him, too much in love with him for that. But she was beginning to feel that the world in general was hard and greedy and uncomfortable. If it was proper that a father should give his daughter money when she was married, why did not her father do so without being asked? And yet, if he were unwilling to do so, would it not be better to leave him to his pleasure in the matter? But now she began to perceive that her father was to be regarded as a milch cow, and that she was to be the dairy-maid. Her husband at times would become terribly anxious on the subject. On receiving the promise of 3,000 pounds he had been elated, but since that he had continually talked of what more her father ought to do for them.
‘Perhaps I had better take the bull by the horns,’ he said, ‘and do it myself. Then I shall find out whether he really has our interest at heart, or whether he looks on you as a stranger because you’ve gone away from him.’
‘I don’t think he will look upon me as a stranger.’
‘We’ll see,’ said Lopez.
It was not long before he made the experiment. He had called himself a coward as to the opening of the Duchess’s letter, but he had in truth always courage for perils of this nature. On the day of their arrival they dined with Mr Wharton in Manchester Square, and certainly the old man had received his daughter with great delight. He had been courteous to Lopez, and Emily, amidst the pleasure of his welcome, had forgotten some of her troubles. The three were alone together, and when Emily had asked after her brother, Mr Wharton had laughed and said that Everett was an ass. ‘You have quarrelled with him?’ she said. He ridiculed the idea of any quarrel, but again said Everett was an ass.
After dinner Mr Wharton and Lopez were left together, as the old man, whether alone or in company, always sat for half an hour sipping port wine after the manner of his forefathers. Lopez had already determined that he would not let the opportunity escape him, and began his attack at once. ‘I have been invited, sir,’ he said with his sweetest smile, ‘to stand for Silverbridge.’
‘You too?’ said Mr Wharton. But though there was a certain amount of satire in the exclamation, it had been good-humoured satire.
‘Yes sir. We all get bit sooner or later, I suppose.’
‘I never was bit.’
‘Your sagacity and philosophy have been the wonder of the world, sir. There can be no doubt that in my profession a seat in the House would be of the greatest possible advantage to me. It enables a man to do a great many things which he could not touch without it.’
‘It may be so. I don’t know anything about it.’
‘And then it is a great honour.’
‘That depends on how you get it, and how you use it,–very much also on whether you are fit for it.’
‘I shall get it honestly if I do get it. I hope I may use it well. And as for my fitness, I must leave that to be ascertained when I am there. I am sorry to say there will probably be a contest.’
‘I suppose so. A seat in Parliament without a contest does not drop into every young man’s mouth.’
‘It very nearly dropped into mine.’ Then he told his father-in- law almost all the particulars of the offer which had been made to him, and of the manner in which the seat was now suggested to him. He somewhat hesitated in the use of the name of the Duchess, leaving an impression on Mr Wharton that the offer had in truth come from the Duke. ‘Should there be a contest, would you help me?’
‘In what way? I could not canvass at Silverbridge, if you mean that.’
‘I was not thinking of giving you personal trouble.’
‘I don’t know a soul in the place. I shouldn’t know that there was such a place except that it returns members of Parliament.’
‘I meant with money, sir.’
‘To pay the election bills! No, certainly not. Why should I?’
‘For Emily’s sake.’
‘I don’t think it would do Emily any good, or you either. It would certainly do me none. It is a kind of luxury that a man should not attempt unless he can afford it easily.’
‘A luxury!’
‘Yes, a luxury; just as much as a four-in-hand coach, or a yacht. Men go into Parliament because it gives them fashion, position, and power.’
‘I should go to serve my country.’
‘Success in your profession I thought you said was your object. Of course you must go as you please. If you ask me my advice, I advise you not to try it. But certainly I will not help you with money. That ass Everett is quarrelling with me at this moment because I won’t give him money to go and stand somewhere.’
‘Not at Silverbridge?’
‘I’m sure I can’t say. But don’t let me do him an injury. To give him his due, he is more reasonable than you, and only wants a promise from me that I will pay his electioneering bills for him at the next general election. I have refused him,–though for reasons which I need not mention I think him better fitted for Parliament than you. I must certainly also refuse you. I cannot imagine any circumstances which would induce me to pay a shilling towards getting you into Parliament. If you won’t drink any more wine, we’ll join Emily upstairs.’
This had been very plain speaking, and by no means comfortable to Lopez. What of personal discourtesy there had been in the lawyer’s words,–and they had certainly not been flattering,– he could throw off from him as meaning nothing. As he could not afford to quarrel with his father-in-law, he thought it probable that he might have to bear a good deal of incivility from the old man. He was quite prepared to bear it as long as he could see a chance of a reward;–though, should there be no such chance, he would be ready to avenge it. But there had been a decision in the present refusal which made him quite sure that it would be vain to repeat his request. ‘I shall find out, sir,’ he said, ‘whether it may probably be a costly affair, and if so I shall give up. You are rather hard upon me as to my motives.’
‘I only repeated what you told me yourself.’
‘I am quite sure of my own intentions, and know that I need not be ashamed of them.’
‘Not if you have plenty of money. It all depends on that. If you have plenty of money, and your fancy goes that way, it is all very well. Come, we’ll go upstairs.’
The next day he saw Everett Wharton, who welcomed him back with warm affection. ‘He’ll do nothing for me;–nothing at all. I am almost beginning to doubt whether he’ll ever speak to me again.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘I tell you everything, you know,’ said Everett. ‘In January I lost a little money at whist. They got plunging at the club, and I was in it. I had to tell him, of course. He keeps me so short that I can’t stand any blow without going to him like a school- boy.’
‘Was it much?’
‘No;–to him no more than half-a-crown to you. I had to ask him for a hundred and fifty.’
‘He refused it!’
‘No;–he didn’t do that. Had it been ten times as much, if I owed the money, he would pay it. But he blew me up, and talked about gambling,–and–and–‘
‘I should have taken that as a matter of course.’
‘But I’m not a gambler. A man now and then may fall into a thing of that kind, and if he’s decently well off and don’t do it often, he can bear it.’
‘I thought your quarrel had been altogether about Parliament.’
‘Oh no! He has been always the same about that. He told me that I was going head foremost to the dogs, and I couldn’t stand that. I shouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t lost more at cards than I have during the last two years.’ Lopez made an offer to act as go-between, to effect a reconciliation; but Everett declined the offer. ‘It would be making too much of an absurdity,’ he said. ‘When he wants to see me, I suppose he’ll send for me.’
Lopez did dispatch an agent down to Mr Sprugeon at Silverbridge, and the agent found that Mr Sprugeon was a very discreet man. Mr Sprugeon at first knew little or nothing,–seemed hardly to be aware that there was a member of Parliament for Silverbridge, and declared himself to be indifferent as to the parliamentary character of the borough. But at last he melted a little, and by degrees, over a glass of hot brandy-and-water with the agent at the Palliser Arms, confessed to a shade of opinion that the return of Mr Lopez for the borough would not be disagreeable to some person or persons who did not live quite a hundred miles away. The instructions given by Lopez to his agent were of the most cautious kind. The agent was merely to feel the ground, make a few inquiries, and do nothing. His client did not intend to stand unless he could see the way to almost certain success with very little outlay. But the agent, perhaps liking his job, did a little outstep his employer’s orders. Mr Sprugeon, when the frost of his first modesty had been thawed, introduced the agent to Mr Sprout, the maker of cork soles, and Mr Sprugeon and Mr Sprout between them had soon decided that Mr Ferdinand Lopez should be run for the borough as the ‘Castle’ candidate. ‘The Duke won’t interfere,’ said Sprugeon; ‘and, of course, the Duke’s man of business can’t do anything openly;–but the Duke’s people will know.’ Then Mr Sprout told the agent that there was already another candidate in the field, and in a whisper communicated the gentleman’s name. When the agent got back to London, he gave Lopez to understand that he must certainly put himself forward. The borough expected him. Sprugeon and Sprout considered themselves pledged to bring him forward and support him,–on behalf of the Castle. Sprugeon was quite sure that the Castle influence was predominant. The Duke’s name had never been mentioned at Silverbridge,–hardly even that of the Duchess. Since the Duke’s declaration ‘The Castle’ had taken the part which the old Duke used to play. The agent was quite sure that no one would get in for Silverbridge without having the Castle on His side. No doubt the Duke’s declaration had the ill effect of bringing in a competitor, and thus of causing expense. That could not be helped. The agent was of the opinion that the Duke had no alternative. The agent hinted that times were changing, and that though dukes were still dukes, and could still exercise ducal influences, they were driven by these changes to act in an altered form. The proclamation had been especially necessary because the Duke was Prime Minister. The agent did not think that Mr Lopez should be in the least angry with the Duke. Everything would be done that the Castle could do, and Lopez would be no doubt returned,–though, unfortunately, not without some expense. How would it cost? Any accurate answer to such a question would be impossible, but probably about 600 pounds. It might be 800 pounds;–could not possibly be above 1,000 pounds. Lopez winced as he heard these sums named, but he did not decline the contest.
Then the name of the opposition candidate was whispered to Lopez. It was Arthur Fletcher! Lopez started, and asked some question as to Mr Fletcher’s interest in the neighbourhood. The Fletchers were connected with the De Courcys, and as soon as the declaration of the Duke had been made known, the De Courcy interest had aroused itself, and had invited that rising young barrister, Arthur Fletcher, to stand for the borough on strictly conservative views. Arthur Fletcher had acceded, and a printed declaration of his purpose and political principles had been just published. ‘I have beaten him once,’ said Lopez to himself, ‘and I think I can beat him again.’
CHAPTER 30
‘YES:–A LIE!’
‘So you went to Happerton after all,’ said Lopez to his ally, Mr Sextus Parker. ‘You couldn’t believe me when I told you the money was all right! What a cur you are!’
‘That’s right;–abuse me.’
‘Well, it was horrid. Didn’t I tell you that it must necessarily injure me with the house? How are two fellows to get on together unless they can put some trust in each other? Even if I did run you into a difficulty, do you really think I’m ruffian enough to tell you that the money was there if it was untrue?’
Sexty looked like a cur and felt like a cur, as he was being thus abused. He was not angry with his friend for calling him bad names, but only anxious to excuse himself. ‘I was out of sorts,’ he said, ‘and so d-d hippish. I didn’t know what I was about.’
‘Brandy-and-soda,’ suggested Lopez.
‘Perhaps a little of that;–though, by Jove, it isn’t often I do that kind of thing. I don’t know a fellow who works harder for his wife and children than I do. But when one sees such things all round one,–a fellow utterly smashed here who had a string of hunters yesterday, and another fellow buying a house in Piccadilly and pulling it down because it isn’t big enough, who was contented with a little box in Hornsey last summer, one doesn’t quite know how to keep one’s legs.’
‘If you want to learn a lesson look at the two men, and see where the difference lies. The one has had some heart about him, and the other has been a coward.’
Parker scratched his head, balanced himself on the hind legs of his stool, and tacitly acknowledged the truth of all that his enterprising friend had said to him. ‘Has old Wharton come down well?’ at last he asked.
‘I have never said a word to old Wharton about money,’ Lopez replied,–‘except as the cost of this election I was telling you of.’
‘And he wouldn’t do anything in that?’
‘He doesn’t approve of the thing itself. I don’t doubt but that the old gentleman and I shall understand each other before long.’
‘You’ve got the length of his foot.’
‘But I don’t mean to drive him. I can get along without that. He’s an old man, and he can’t take his money along with him when he goes the great journey.’
‘There’s a brother, Lopez,–isn’t there?’
‘Yes,–there’s a brother; but Wharton has enough for two, and if he were to put either out of his will it wouldn’t be my wife. Old men don’t like parting with their money, and he’s like other old men. If it were not so I shouldn’t bother myself coming into the city at all.’
‘Has he enough for that, Lopez?’
‘I suppose he’s worth a quarter of a million.’
‘By Jove! And where did he get it?’
‘Perseverance, sir. Put by a shilling a day, and let it have its natural increase, and see what it will come to at the end of fifty years. I suppose old Wharton has been putting two or three thousand out of his professional income, at any rate for the last thirty years, and never for a moment forgetting its natural increase. That’s one way to make a fortune.’
‘It ain’t rapid enough for you and me, Lopez.’
‘No. That is the old-fashioned way, and the most sure. But, as you say, it is not rapid enough; and it robs a man of the power of enjoying his money when he has made it. But it’s a very good thing to be closely connected with a man who has already done that kind of thing. There’s not doubt about the money when it is there. It does not take to itself wings and fly away.’
‘But the man who has it sticks to it uncommon hard.’
‘Of course he does;–but he can’t take it away with him.’
‘He can leave it to hospitals, Lopez. That’s the devil.’
‘Sexty, my boy, I see you have taken an outlook into human life which does you credit. Yes, he can leave it to hospitals. But why does he leave it to hospitals?’
‘Something of being afraid about his soul, I suppose.’
‘No; I don’t believe in that. Such a man as this, who has been hard-fisted all his life, and who has had his eyes thoroughly open, who has made his own money in the sharp intercourse of man to man, and who keeps it to the last gasp,–he doesn’t believe that he’ll do his soul any good by giving it to hospitals when he can’t keep it himself any longer. His mind has freed itself from those cobwebs long since. He gives his money to hospitals because the last pleasure of which he is capable is that of spitting his relations. And it is a great pleasure to an old man, when his relations have been disgusted with him for being old and loving his money. I rather think I should do it myself.’
‘I’d give myself a chance of going to heaven, I think,’ said Parker.
‘Don’t you know that men will rob and cheat on their death-beds, and say their prayers all the time? Old Wharton won’t leave his money to hospitals if he’s well handled by those about him.’
‘And you’ll handle him well;–eh, Lopez?’
‘I won’t quarrel with him, or tell him that he’s a curmudgeon because he doesn’t do all that I want him. He’s over seventy, and he can’t carry his money with him.’
All this left so vivid an impression of the wisdom of his friend on the mind of Sextus Parker, that in spite of the harrowing fears by which he had been tormented on more than one occasion already, he allowed himself to be persuaded into certain fiscal arrangements, by which Lopez would find himself put at ease with reference to money at any rate for the next four months. He had at once told himself that this election would cost him 1,000 pounds. When various sums were mentioned in reference to such an affair, safety alone could be found in taking the outside sum;– perhaps might generally be more securely found by adding fifty per cent to that. He knew that he was wrong about the election, but he assured himself that he had had no alternative. The misfortune had been that the Duke should have made his proclamation about the borough immediately after the offer made by the Duchess. He had been almost forced to send the agent down to inquire;–and the agent, when making his inquiries, had compromised him. He must go on with it now. Perhaps some idea of the pleasantness of increased intimacy with the Duchess of Omnium encouraged him in his way of thinking. The Duchess was up in town in February, and Lopez left a card in Carlton Terrace. On the very next day the card of the Duchess was left for Mrs Lopez at the Belgrave Mansions.
Lopez went into the city every day, leaving home at about eleven o’clock, and not returning much before dinner. The young wife at first found that she hardly knew what to do with her time. Her aunt, Mrs Roby, was distasteful to her. She had already learned from her husband that he had but little respect for Mrs Roby. ‘You remember the sapphire brooch,’ he said once. ‘That was part of the price I had to pay for being allowed to approach you.’ He was sitting at the time with his hand round her waist, looking out on the beautiful scenery and talking of his old difficulties. She could not find it in her heart to be angry with him, but the idea brought to her mind was disagreeable to her. And she was thoroughly angry with Mrs Roby. Of course in these days Mrs Roby. came to see her, and of course when she was up in Manchester Square, she went to the house round the corner,–but there was no close intimacy between the aunt and the niece. And many of her father’s friends,–whom she regarded as the Hertfordshire set,–were very cold to her. She had not made herself a glory to Hertfordshire, and,–as all these people said,–had broken the heart of the best Hertfordshire young man of the day. This made a great falling-off in her acquaintance, which was the more felt as she had never been, as a girl, devoted to a large circle of dearest female friends. She whom she had loved best had been Mary Wharton, and Mary Wharton had refused to be her bridesmaid almost without an expression of regret. She saw her father occasionally. Once he came and dined with them at their rooms, on which occasion Lopez struggled hard to make up a well-sounding party. There were Roby from the Admiralty, and the Happertons, and Sir Timothy Beeswax, with whom Lopez had become acquainted at Gatherum, and old Lord Mongrober. But the barrister, who had dined out a good deal in his time, perceived the effort. Who, that ever with difficulty scraped his dinner guests together, was able afterwards to obliterate the signs of the struggle? It was, however, a first attempt, and Lopez, whose courage was good, thought that he might do better before long. If he could get into the House and make his mark there people then would dine with him fast enough. But while that was going on Emily’s life was rather dull. He had provided her with a brougham, and everything around her was even luxurious, but there came upon her gradually a feeling that by her marriage she had divided herself from her own people. She did not for a moment allow this feeling to interfere with her loyalty to him. Had she not known that this division would surely take place? Had she not married him because she loved him better than her own people? So she sat herself down to read Dante,–for they had studied Italian together during their honeymoon, and she found that he knew the language well. And she was busy with her needle. And she already began to anticipate the happiness which would come to her when a child of his should be lying in her arms.
She was of course much interested about the election. Nothing could as yet be done, because as yet there was no vacancy; but still the subject was discussed daily between them. ‘Who do you think is going to stand against me?’ he said one day with a smile. ‘A very old friend of yours.’ She knew at once who the man was and the blood came to her face. ‘I think he might as well have left it alone, you know,’ he said.
‘Did he know?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘Know;–of course he knew. He is doing it on purpose. But I beat him once, old girl, didn’t I? And I’ll beat him again.’ She liked him to call her old girl. She loved the perfect intimacy with which he treated her. But there was something which grated against her feelings in the allusion by him to the other man who had loved her. Of course she had told him the whole story. She had conceived it to be her duty to do so. But then the thing should have been over. It was necessary, perhaps, that he should tell her who was his opponent. It was impossible that she should not know when the fight came. But she did not like to hear that he had beaten Arthur Fletcher once, and that he would beat him again. By doing so he likened the sweet fragrance of her love to the dirty turmoil of an electioneering contest.
He did not understand–how could he?–that though she had never loved Arthur Fletcher, had never been able to bring herself to love him when all her friends had wished it, her feelings to him were nevertheless those of affectionate friendship;–that she regarded him as being perfect in his way, a thorough gentleman, a man who would not for worlds tell a lie, as most generous among the generous, most noble among the noble. When the other Whartons had thrown her off, he had not been cold to her. That very day, as soon as her husband had left her, she looked again at that little note. ‘I am as I always have been!’ And she remembered that farewell down by the banks of the Wye. ‘You will always have one,–one besides him,–who will love you best in the world.’ They were dangerous words for her to remember; but in recalling them to her memory she had often assured herself that they should not be dangerous to her. She had loved the one man and had not loved the other;–but yet, now when her husband talked of beating him again, she could not but remember his words.
She did not think,–or rather had not thought,–that Arthur Fletcher would willingly stand against her husband. It had occurred to her at once that he must first have become a candidate without knowing who would be his opponent. But Ferdinand had assured her as a matter of fact that Fletcher had known all about it. ‘I suppose in politics men are different,’ she said to herself. Her husband had evidently supposed that Arthur Fletcher had proposed himself as a candidate for Silverbridge, with the express object of doing an injury to the man who had carried off his love. And she repeated to herself her husband’s words, ‘He’s doing it on purpose.’ She did not like to differ from her husband, but she could hardly bring herself to believe that revenge of this kind should have recommended itself to Arthur Fletcher.
Some little time after this, when she had settled in London, above a month, a letter was brought to her, and she at once recognized Arthur Fletcher’s writing. She was alone at the time, and it occurred to her at first that perhaps she ought not to open any communication from him without showing it to her husband. But then it seemed that such a hesitation would imply a doubt of the man, and almost a doubt of herself. Why should she fear what any man might write to her? So she opened the letter, and read it,–with infinite pleasure. It was as follows:
DEAR Mrs LOPEZ,
I think it best to make an explanation to you as to a certain coincidence which might possibly be misunderstood unless explained. I find that your husband and I are opponents at Silverbridge. I wish to say that I had pledged myself to the borough before I had heard his name as connected with it. I have very old associations with the neighbourhood, and was invited to stand by friends who had known me all my life as soon as it was understood that there would be an open contest. I cannot retire now without breaking faith with my party, nor do I know that there is a reason why I should do so. I should not, however, have come forward had I known that Mr Lopez was to stand. I think you had better tell him so, and tell him also, with my compliments, that I hope we may fight our political battle with mutual good-fellowship and good feeling.
Yours very sincerely,
ARTHUR FLETCHER
Emily was very much pleased by this letter, and yet she wept over it. She felt that she understood accurately all the motives that were at work within the man’s breast when he was writing it. As to its truth,–of course the letter was gospel to her. Oh,–if the man could become her husband’s friend how sweet it would be! Of course she wished, thoroughly wished, that her husband should succeed at Silverbridge. But she could understand that such a contest as this might be carried out without personal animosity. The letter was so like Arthur Fletcher,–so good, so noble, so generous, so true! The moment her husband came in she showed it to him with delight. ‘I was sure,’ she said as he was reading the letter, ‘that he had not known you were to stand.’
‘He knew it as well as I did,’ he replied, and as he spoke there came a dark scowl across his brow. ‘His writing to you is a piece of infernal impudence.’
‘Oh, Ferdinand!’
‘You don’t understand, but I do. He deserves to be horsewhipped for daring to write to you, and if I come across him he shall have it.’
‘Oh;–for heaven’s sake.’
‘A man who was your rejected lover,–who has been trying to marry you for the last two years, presuming to commence a correspondence with you without your husband’s sanction!’
‘He meant you to see it. He says I’m to tell you.’
‘Psha! That is simple cowardice. He meant you not to tell me; and then when you answered him without telling me, he would have had the whip-hand of you.’
‘Oh, Ferdinand, what evil thoughts you have!’
‘You are a child, my dear, and must allow me to dictate to you what you ought to think in such a matter as this. I tell you he knew all about my candidature, and that what he has said here to the contrary is a mere lie,–yes, a lie.’ He repeated the word because he saw that she shrank at hearing it; but he did not understand why she shrank,–that the idea of such an accusation against Arthur Fletcher was intolerable to her. ‘I have never heard of such a thing,’ he continued. ‘Do you suppose it is common for men who have been thrown over to write to the ladies who have rejected them immediately after their marriage?’
‘Do not the circumstances justify it?’
‘No;–they make it infinitely worse. He should have felt himself to be debarred from writing to you, both as being my wife and as being the wife of the man whom he intends to oppose at Silverbridge.’
This he said with so much anger that he frightened her. ‘It is not my fault,’ she said.
‘No; it is not your fault. But you should regard it as a great fault committed by him.’
‘What am I to do?’
‘Give me the letter. You, of course, can do nothing.’
‘You will not quarrel with him?’
‘Certainly I will. I have quarrelled with him already. Do you think I will allow any man to insult my wife without quarrelling with him? What I shall do I cannot as yet say, and whatever I may do, you had better not know. I never thought much of these Hertfordshire swells who believe themselves to be the very cream of the earth, and now I think less of them than ever.’
He was then silent, and slowly she took herself out of the room, and went away to dress. All this was very terrible. He had never been rough to her before, and she could not at all understand why he had been so rough to her now. Surely it was impossible that he should be jealous because her old lover had written to her such a letter as that which she had shown him! And then she was almost stunned by the opinions he had expressed about Fletcher, opinions which she knew,–was sure that she knew,–to be absolutely erroneous. A liar! Oh, heavens! And then the letter itself was so ingenuous and so honest! Anxious as she was to do all that her husband bade her, she could not be guided by him in this matter. And then she remembered his words: ‘You must allow me to dictate to you what you ought to think.’ Could it be that marriage meant as much as that,–that a husband was to claim to dictate to his wife what opinions she was to form about this and that person,–about a person she had known so well, whom he had never known? Surely she could only think in accordance with her own experience and her own intelligence! She was certain that Arthur Fletcher was no liar. Not even her own husband could make her think that.
CHAPTER 31
‘YES;–WITH A HORSEWHIP IN MY HAND.’
Emily Lopez, when she crept out of her own room and joined her husband just before dinner, was hardly able to speak to him so thoroughly was she dismayed, and troubled, and horrified, by the manner in which he had taken Arthur Fletcher’s letter. While she had been alone she had thought it all over, anxious if possible to bring herself into sympathy with her husband; but the more she thought of it the more evident did it become to her that he was altogether wrong. He was so wrong that it seemed to her that she would be a hypocrite if she pretended to agree with him. There were half-a-dozen accusations conveyed against Mr Fletcher by her husband’s view of the matter. He was a liar, giving a false account of his candidature;–and he was a coward; and an enemy to her, who had laid a plot by which he had hoped to make her act fraudulently towards her own husband, who had endeavoured to creep into a correspondence with her, and so to compromise her! All this, which her husband’s mind so easily conceived, was not only impossible to her, but so horrible that she could not refrain from disgust at her husband’s conception. The letter had been left with him, but she remembered every word of it. She was sure that it was an honest letter, meaning no more than had been said,–simply intending to explain to her that he would not willingly have stood in the way of a friend whom he had loved, by interfering with her husband’s prospects. And yet she was told that she was to think as her husband bade her think! She could not think so. She could not say that she thought so. If her husband would not credit her judgement, let the matter be referred to her father. Ferdinand would at any rate acknowledge that her father could understand such a matter even if she could not.
During dinner he said nothing on the subject, nor did she. They were attended by a page in buttons whom he had hired to wait upon her, and the meal passed off almost in silence. She looked up at him frequently and saw that his brow was still black. As soon as they were alone she spoke to him, having studied during dinner what words she would first say: ‘Are you going down to the club tonight!’ He had told her that the matter of this election had been taken up at the Progress, and that possibly he might have to meet two or three persons there on this evening. There had been a proposition that the club should bear a part of the expenditure, and he was very solicitous that such an arrangement should be made.
‘No,’ said he, ‘I shall not go out to-night. I am not sufficiently light-hearted.’
‘What makes you heavy-hearted, Ferdinand?’
‘I should have thought you would have known.’
‘I suppose I do know,–but I don’t know why it should. I don’t know why you should be displeased. At any rate, I have done nothing wrong.’
‘No;–not as to the letter. But it astonishes me that you should be so–so bound to this man that-‘
‘Bound to him, Ferdinand!’
‘No;–you are bound to me. But that you have so much regard for him as not to see that he has grossly insulted you.’
‘I have a regard for him.’
‘And you dare to tell me so?’
‘Dare! What should I be if I had any feeling which I did not dare to tell you? There is no harm in regarding a man with friendly feelings whom I have known since I was a child, and whom all my family have loved.’
‘Your family wanted you to marry him!’
‘They did. But I have married you, because I loved you. But I need not think badly of an old friend, because I did not love him. Why should you be angry with him? What can you have to be afraid of?’ Then she came and sat on his knee and caressed him.
‘It is he that shall be afraid of me,’ said Lopez. ‘Let him give the borough up if he means what he says.’
‘Who could ask him to do that?’
‘Not you,–certainly.’
‘Oh, no.’
‘I can ask him.’
‘Could you, Ferdinand?’
‘Yes;–with a horsewhip in my hand.’
‘Indeed, indeed you do not know him. Will you do this;–will you tell my father everything, and leave it to him to say whether Mr Fletcher has behaved badly to you?’
‘Certainly not. I will not have any interference from your father between you and me. If I had listened to your father, you would not have been here now. Your father is not as yet a friend of mine. When he comes to know what I can do for myself, and that I can rise higher than these Hertfordshire people, then perhaps he may become my friend. But I will consult him in nothing so peculiar to myself as my own wife. And you must understand that in coming to me all obligation from you to him become extinct. Of course he is your father; but in such a matter as this he has no more say to you than any stranger.’ After that he hardly spoke to her; but sat for an hour with a book in his hand, and then rose and said that he would go down to the club. ‘There is so much villainy about,’ he said, ‘that a man if he means to do anything must keep himself on the watch.’
When she was alone she at once burst into tears; but she soon dried her eyes, and putting down her work, settled herself to think of it all. What did it mean? Why was he thus changed to her? Could it be that he was the same Ferdinand to whom she had given herself, without a doubt as to his personal merit? Every word that he had spoken since she had shown him the letter from Arthur Fletcher had been injurious to her, and offensive. It almost seemed as though he had determined to show himself to be a tyrant to her, and had only put off playing the part till the first convenient opportunity after their honeymoon. But through all this, her ideas were loyal to him. She would obey him in all things where obedience was possible, and would love him better than all the world. Oh yes;–for was he not her husband? Were he to prove himself the worst of men she would still love him. It had been for better or for worse; and as she had repeated the words to herself, she had sworn that if the worst should come, she would still be true.
But she could not bring herself to say that Arthur Fletcher had behaved badly. She could not. She knew well that his conduct had been noble and generous. Then unconsciously and involuntarily,–or rather in opposition to her own will and inward efforts,–her mind would draw comparisons between her husband and Arthur Fletcher. There was some peculiar gift, or grace, or acquirement belonging without dispute to the one, which the other lacked. What was it? She had heard her father say when talking of gentlemen,–of that race of gentlemen with whom it had been his lot to live,–that you could not make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. The use of the proverb had offended her much, for she had known well whom he had then regarded as a silk purse and whom a sow’s ear. But now she perceived that there had been truth in all this, though she was as anxious as ever to think well of her husband, and to endow him with all possible virtues. She had once ventured to form a doctrine for herself, to preach to herself a sermon of her own, and to tell herself that this gift of gentle blood and of gentle nurture, of which her father thought so much, and to which something of divinity was attributed down in Hertfordshire, was after all but a weak, spiritless quality. It could exist without intellect, without heart, and with very moderate culture. It was compatible with many littlenesses and with many vices. As for that love of honest, courageous truth which her father was wont to attribute to it, she regarded his theory as based on legends, as in earlier years was the theory of the courage, and constancy, and loyalty, of the knights of those days. The beau ideal of a man which she then pictured to herself was graced, first with intelligence, then with affection, and lastly with ambition. She knew no reason why such a hero as her fancy created should be born of lords and ladies rather than of working mechanics, should be English rather than Spanish or French. The man could not be her hero without education, without attributes to be attained no doubt more easily by the rich than the poor; but, with that granted, with those attained, she did not see why she, or why the world, should go beyond the man’s own self. Such had been her theories as to men and their attributes, and acting on that, she had given herself and all her happiness into the keeping of Ferdinand Lopez. Now, there was gradually coming upon her a change in her convictions,–a change that was most unwelcome, that she strove to reject,–one which she would not acknowledge that she had adopted even while adopting it. But now,–ay, from the very hour of her marriage,–she had commenced to learn what it was that her father had meant when he spoke of the pleasure of living with gentlemen. Arthur Fletcher certainly was a gentleman. He would not have entertained the suspicion which her husband had expressed. He could not have failed to believe such assertions as had been made. He could never have suggested to his own wife that another man had endeavoured to entrap her into a secret correspondence. She seemed to hear the tones of Arthur Fletcher’s voice, as those of her husband still rang in her ear when he bade her remember that she was now removed from her father’s control. Every now and then the tears would come to her eyes, and she would sit pondering, listless, low in heart. Then she would suddenly rouse herself with a shake, and take up her book with a resolve that she would read steadily, would assure herself as she did so that her husband should still be her hero. The intelligence at any rate was there, and, in spite of his roughness, the affection which she craved. And the ambition, too, was there. But, alas, alas! why should such vile suspicions have fouled his mind?
He was late that night, but when he came he kissed her brow as she lay in bed, and she knew that his temper was again smooth. She feigned to be sleepy, though not asleep, as she just put her hand up to his cheek. She did not wish to speak to him again that night, but she was glad to know that in the morning he would smile on her. ‘Be early at breakfast,’ he said to her as he left her next morning, ‘for I’m going down to Silverbridge today.’
Then she started up. ‘To-day!’
‘Yes,–by the 11.20. There is plenty of time, only don’t be unusually late.’
Of course she was something more than usually early, and when she came out she found him reading his paper. ‘It’s all settled now,’ he said. ‘Grey has applied for the Hundreds, and Mr Rattler is to move for the new writ to-morrow. It has come rather sudden at last, as these things always do after long delays. But they say the suddenness is rather in my favour.’
‘When will the election take place?’
‘I suppose in about a fortnight;–perhaps a little longer.’
‘And must you be at Silverbridge all that time?’
‘Oh dear no. I shall stay there to-night, and perhaps to-morrow night. Of course I shall telegraph you directly I find how it is to be. I shall see the principal inhabitants, and probably make a speech or two.’
‘I do wish I could hear you.’
‘You’d find it awfully dull work, my girl. And I shall find it awfully dull too. I do not imagine that Mr Sprugeon and Mr Sprout will be pleasant companions. Well; I shall stay there a