The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (page 8)

‘I’m ever so much obliged. I think it’s very kind of you.’

‘I can’t go in for a new life as you can. I can’t take up politics and Parliament. It’s too late for me.’

‘I’m going to. There’s a bill coming on this very night that I’m interested about. You mustn’t be angry if I rush off a little before ten. We are going to lend money to the parishes on the security of the rates for draining bits of common land. Then we shall sell the land and endow the unions, so as to lessen the poor rates, and increase the cereal products of the country. We think we can bring 300,000 acres under the plough in three years, which now produce almost nothing, and in five years would pay all the expenses. Putting the value of the land at 25 pounds an acre, which is low, we shall have created property to the value of seven million and a half. That’s something, you know.’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Mr Wharton, who felt himself quite unable to follow with any interest the aspirations of the young legislator.

‘Of course it’s complicated,’ continued Arthur, ‘but when you come to look into it it comes out clear enough. It is one of the instances of the omnipotence of capital. Parliament can do such a thing, not because it has any creative power of its own, but because it has the command of unlimited capital.’ Mr Wharton looked at him, sighing inwardly as he reflected that unrequited love should have brought a clear-headed young barrister into mists so thick and labyrinths so mazy as these. ‘A very good beef-steak indeed,’ said Arthur; ‘I don’t know when I ate a better one. Thank you, no;–I’ll stick to the claret.’ Mr Wharton had offered him Madeira. ‘Claret and brown meat always go well together. Pancake? I don’t object to a pancake. A pancake’s a very good thing. Now would you believe it, sir; they can’t make a pancake at the House.’

‘And yet they sometimes fall very flat too,’ said the lawyer, making a real lawyer’s joke.

But Mr Wharton still had something to say, though he hardly knew how to say it. ‘You must come and see us at the Square after a bit.’

‘Oh;–of course.’

‘I wouldn’t ask you to dine here to-day, because I thought we should be less melancholy here;–but you mustn’t cut us altogether. You haven’t seen Everett since you’ve been in town?’

‘No, sir. I believe he lives a good deal,–a good deal with– Mr Lopez. There was a little row down at Silverbridge. Of course it will wear off, but just at present his lines and my lines don’t converge.’

‘I’m very unhappy about him, Arthur.’

‘There’s nothing the matter?’

‘My girl has married that man. I’ve nothing to say against him; –but of course it wasn’t to my taste, and I feel it as a separation. And now Everett has quarrelled with me.’

‘Quarrelled with you!’

Then the father told the story as well as he knew how. His son had lost some money, and he had called him a gambler,–and consequently his son would not come near him. ‘It is bad to lose them both, Arthur.’

‘That is so unlike Everett.’

‘It seems to me that everybody has changed,–except myself. Who would have dreamed that she would have married that man? Not that I have anything to say against him except that he was not of our sort. He has been very good about Everett, and is very good about him. But Everett will not come to me unless–I withdraw the word;–say that I was wrong to call him a gambler. That is a proposition no man should make to a father.’

‘It is very unlike Everett,’ repeated the other. ‘Has he written to you to that effect?’

‘He has not written a word.’

‘Why don’t you go to see him yourself, and have it out with him?’

‘Am I to go to that club after him?’ said the father.

‘Write to him and bid him come to you. I’ll give up my seat if he don’t come to you. Everett was always a quaint fellow, a little idle, you know,–mooning about after ideas–‘

‘He’s no fool, you know,’ said the father.

‘Not at all;–only vague. But he’s the last man in the world to have nasty vulgar ideas of his own importance as distinguished from yours.’

‘Lopez says–‘

‘I wouldn’t quite trust Lopez.’

‘He isn’t a bad fellow in his way, Arthur. Of course he is not what I would have liked for a son-in-law. I needn’t tell you that. But he is kind and gentle-mannered, and has always been attached to Everett. You know he saved Everett’s life at the risk of his own.’ Arthur could not but smile as he perceived how the old man was being won round by the son-in-law, whom he had treated so violently before the man had become his son-in-law. ‘By-the-way, what was all that about a letter you wrote to him?’

‘Emily,–I mean Mrs Lopez,–will tell you if you ask her.’

‘I don’t want to ask her. I don’t want to appear to set the wife against the husband. I am sure, my boy, you would write nothing that could affront her.’

‘I think not, Mr Wharton. If I know myself well at all, or my own nature, it is not probable that I should affront your daughter.’

‘No; no; no. I know that, my dear boy. I was always sure of that. Take some more wine.’

‘No more, thank you. I must be off because I’m so anxious about this bill.’

‘I couldn’t ask Emily about this letter. Now that they are married I have to make the best of it,–for her sake. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything to her which might seem to accuse him.’

‘I thought it right, sir, to explain to her that were I not in the hands of other people, I would not do anything to interfere with her happiness by opposing her husband. My language was more guarded.’

‘He destroyed the letter.’

‘I have a copy of it if it comes to that,’ said Arthur.

‘It will be best, perhaps to say nothing further about it. Well; –good night, my boy, if you must go.’ Then Fletcher went off to the House, wondering as he went at the change which had apparently come over the character of his old friend. Mr Wharton had always been a strong man, and now he seemed as weak as water. As to Everett, Fletcher was sure that there was something wrong, but he could not see his way to interfere himself. For the present he was divided from the family. Nevertheless he told himself again and again that the division should not be permanent. Of all the world she must always be to him the dearest.

CHAPTER 37

THE HORNS.

The first months of the session went on very much as the last session had gone. The ministry did nothing brilliant. As far as the outer world could see, they seemed to be firm enough. There was no opposing party in the House strong enough to get a vote against them on any subject. Outsiders, who only studied politics in the columns of their newspapers, imagined the Coalition to be very strong. But they who were inside, members themselves, and the club quidnuncs who were always rubbing their shoulders against members, knew better. The opposition to the Coalition was within the Coalition itself. Sir Orlando Drought had not been allowed to build his four ships, and was consequently eager in his fears that the country would be invaded by the combined forces of Germany and France, that India would be sold by those powers to Russia, that Canada would be annexed to the States, that a great independent Roman Catholic hierarchy would be established in Ireland, and that Malta and Gibraltar would be taken away from us;–all of which evils would be averted by the building of four big ships. A wet blanket of so terrible a size was in itself pernicious to the Cabinet, and heartrending to the poor Duke. But Sir Orlando could do worse even than this. As he was not to build his four ships, neither should Mr Monk be allowed to readjust the country suffrage. When the skeleton of Mr Monk’s scheme was discussed in the Cabinet, Sir Orlando would not agree to it. The gentlemen, he said, who had joined the present Government with him, would never consent to a measure which would be so utterly destructive of the county’s interest. If Mr Monk insisted on his measure in its proposed form, he must, with very great regret, place his resignation in the Duke’s hands, and he believed that his friends would find themselves compelled to follow the same course. Then our Duke consulted the old Duke. The old Duke’s advice was the same as ever. The Queen’s Government was the main object. The present ministry enjoyed the support of the country, and he considered it the duty of the First Lord of the Treasury to remain at his post. The country was in no hurry, and the question of suffrages in the counties might still be delayed. Then he added a little counsel which might be called quite private, as it was certainly intended for no other ears than those of his younger friend. ‘Give Sir Orlando rope enough and he’ll hang himself. His own party are becoming tired of him. If you quarrel with him this session, Drummond, and Ramsden, and Beeswax, would go out with him, and the Government would be broken up; but next session you may get rid of him safely.’

‘I wish it were broken up,’ said the Prime Minister.

‘You have your duty to do by the country and the Queen, and you mustn’t regard your own wishes. Next session, let Monk be ready with his bill again,–the same measure exactly. Let Sir Orlando resign then if he will. Should he do so I doubt whether anyone would go with him. Drummond does not like him much better than do you and I do.’ The poor Prime Minister was forced to obey. The old Duke was his only trusted counsellor, and he found himself constrained by his conscience to do as that counsellor counselled him. When, however, Sir Orlando, in his place as Leader of the House, in answer to some question from a hot and disappointed Radical, averred that the whole of Her Majesty’s Government had been quite in unison on this question of the country’s suffrage, he was hardly able to restrain himself. ‘If there be a difference of opinion they must be kept in the background,’ said the Duke of St Bungay. ‘Nothing can justify a direct falsehood,’ said the Duke of Omnium. Thus it came to pass that the only real measure which the Government had in hand was one by which Phineas Finn hoped so to increase the power of Irish municipalities as to make the Home Rulers believe that a certain amount of Home Rule was being conceded to them. It was not a great measure, and poor Phineas Finn hardly believed in it. And thus the Duke’s ministry came to be called the Faineants.

But the Duchess, though she had been much snubbed, still persevered. Now and again she would declare herself to be broken- hearted, and would say that things might go their own way, that she would send in her resignation, that she would retire into private life, and milk cows, that she would shake hands with no more parliamentary cads and “cadesses”,–a word which her Grace condescended to coin for her own use, that she would spend the next three years in travelling about the world; and lastly, that, let there come whatever of it whatever might, Sir Orlando Drought should never again be invited into any house of which she was the mistress. This last threat, which was perhaps the most indiscreet of them all, she absolutely made good–thereby adding very greatly to her husband’s difficulties.

But by the middle of June the parties at the house in Carlton Terrace were as frequent and as large as ever. Indeed it was all party with her. The Duchess possessed a pretty little villa down at Richmond, on the river, called The Horns, and gave parties there when there were none in London. She had picnics, and flower parties, and tea parties, and afternoons, and evenings, on the lawn,–till half London was always on its way to Richmond or back again. How she worked! And yet from day to day she swore that the world was ungrateful. Everybody went. She was so far successful that nobody thought of despising her parties. It was quite the thing to go to the Duchess’s, whether at Richmond or in London. But people abused her and laughed at her. They said that she intrigued to get political support for her husband,– and worse than that, they said that she failed. She did not fail altogether. The world was not taken captive as she had intended. Young members of Parliament did not become hotly enthusiastic in support of her and her husband as she had hoped that they would do. She had not become an institution of granite, as her dreams had fondly told her might be possible,–for there had been moments in which she had almost thought that she could rule England by giving dinner and supper parties, by ices and champagne. But in a dull, phlegmatic way, they who ate the ices and drank the champagne were true to her. There was a feeling abroad that ‘Glencora’ was a ‘good sort of fellow’ and ought to be supported. And when the ridicule became too strong, or the abuse too sharp, men would take up the cudgels for her, and fight her battles;–a little too openly, perhaps, as they would do it under her eyes, and in her hearing, and would tell her what they had done, mistaking on such occasions her good humour for sympathy. There was just enough success to prevent that abandonment of her project which she so often threatened, but not enough to make her triumphant. She was too clever not to see that she was ridiculed. She knew that men called her Glencora among themselves. She was herself quite alive to the fact that she herself was wanting in dignity, and that with all the means at her disposal, with all her courage and all her talents, she did not quite play the part of the really great lady. But she did not fail to tell herself that labour continued would at last be successful, and she was strong to bear the buffets of the ill- natured. She did not think that she brought first-class materials to her work, but she believed,–a belief so erroneous as, alas, it is common,–that first-rate results might be achieved by second-rate means.

‘We had such a battle about your Grace last night,’ Captain Gunner said to her.

‘And were you my knight?’

‘Indeed I was. I never heard such nonsense.’

‘What were they saying?’

‘Oh, the old story;–that you were like Martha, busying yourself about many things.’

‘Why shouldn’t I busy myself about many things? It is a pity, Captain Gunner, that some of you men have not something to busy yourselves about.’ All this was unpleasant. She could on such an occasion make up her mind to drop any Captain Gunner who had ventured to take too much upon himself: but she felt that in the efforts she had made after popularity, she had submitted herself to unpleasant familiarities;–and though persistent in her course, she was still angry about herself.

When she had begun her campaign as the Prime Minister’s wife, one of her difficulties had been with regard to money. An abnormal expenditure became necessary, for which her husband’s express sanction must be obtained, and steps taken in which his personal assistance would be necessary;–but this had been done, and there was now no further impediment in that direction. It seemed to be understood that she was to spend what money she pleased. There had been various contests between them, but in every contest she had gained something. He had been majestically indignant with her in reference to the candidature at Silverbridge,–but, as is usual with many of us, had been unable to maintain his anger about two things at the same time. Or, rather, in the majesty of his anger about her interference, he had disdained to descend to the smaller faults of her extravagance. He had seemed to concede everything else to her, on condition that he should be allowed to be imperious in reference to the borough. In that matter she had given way, never having opened her mouth about it after that one unfortunate word to Mr Sprugeon. But, having done so, she was entitled to squander her thousands without remorse,–and she squandered them. ‘It is your five-and-twenty thousand pounds, my dear,’ she once said to Mrs Finn, who often took upon herself to question the prudence of all this expenditure. This referred to a certain sum of money which had been left by the old Duke to Madame Goesler, as she was then called,–a legacy which that lady had repudiated. The money had, in truth, been given away to a relation of the Duke’s by the joint consent of the lady and the Duke himself, but the Duchess was pleased to refer to it occasionally as a still existing property.

‘My five-and-twenty thousand pounds, as you call it, would not go very far.’

‘What’s the use of money if you don’t spend it? The Duke would go on collecting it and buying more property,–which always means more trouble,–not because he is avaricious, but because for the time that comes easier than spending. Supposing he had married a woman without a shilling, he would still have been a rich man. As it is, my property was more even than his own. If we can do any good by spending the money, why shouldn’t it be spent?’

‘If you can do any good!’

‘It all comes round to that. It isn’t because I like always to live in a windmill! I have come to hate it. At this moment I would give worlds to be down at Matching with no one but the children, and to go about in a straw hat and muslin gown. I have a fancy that I could sit under a tree and read a sermon, and think it the sweetest recreation. But I’ve made the attempt to do all this, and it so mean to fail!’

‘But where is to be the end of it?’

‘There shall be no end as long as he is Prime Minister. He is the first man in England. Some people would say the first in Europe–or in the world. A Prince should entertain like a Prince.’

‘He need not be always entertaining.’

‘Hospitality should run from a man with his wealth, and his position, like water from a fountain. As his hand is known to be full, so it should be known to be open. When the delight of his friends is in question, he should know nothing of cost. Pearls should drop from him as from a fairy. But I don’t think you understand me.’

‘Not when the pearls are to be picked up by Captain Gunners, Lady Glen.’

‘I can’t make the men any better,–nor yet the women. They are poor mean creatures. The world is made up of such. I don’t know that Captain Gunner is worse than Sir Orlando Drought or Sir Timothy Beeswax. People seen by the mind are exactly different to things seen by the eye. They grow smaller and smaller as you come nearer down to them, whereas things become bigger. I remember when I used to think that members of the Cabinet were almost gods, and now they seem to be no bigger than shoe-blacks,- only less picturesque. He told me the other day of the time when he gave up going into power for the sake of taking me abroad. Ah! me; how much was happening then,–and how much has happened since that! We didn’t know you then.’

‘He has been a good husband to you.’

‘And I have been a good wife to him! I have never had him for an hour out of my heart since that, or ever for a moment forgotten his interest. I can’t live with him because he shuts himself up reading blue-books, and is always at his office or in the House; –but I would if I could. Am I not doing it all for him? You don’t think that the Captain Gunnners are particularly pleasant to me! Think of your life and of mine. You have had lovers.’

‘One in my life,–when I was entitled to have one.’

‘Well; I am the Duchess of Omnium, and I am the wife of the Prime Minister, and I had a larger property of my own than any other young woman that ever was born; and I am myself too,–Glencora M’Cluskie that was, and I’ve made for myself a character that I’m not ashamed of. But I’d be the curate’s wife tomorrow, and make puddings, if I could only have my own husband and my own children with me. What’s the use of it all? I like you better than anybody else, but you do nothing but scold me.’ Still the parties went on, and the Duchess laboured hard among her guests, and wore her jewels, and stood on her feet all the night, night after night, being civil to one person, bright to a second, confidential to a third, and sarcastic to an unfortunate fourth; –and in the morning she would work hard with her lists, seeing who had come to her and who had stayed away, and arranging who should be asked and who should be omitted.

In the meantime the Duke altogether avoided those things. At first he had been content to show himself, and escape as soon as possible;–but now he was never seen at all in his own house, except at certain heavy dinners. To Richmond he never went at all, and in his own house in town very rarely ever passed through the door that led into the reception rooms. He had not time for ordinary society. So said the Duchess. And many, perhaps the majority of those who frequented the house, really believed that his official duties were too onerous to leave him time for conversation. But in truth the hours wore heavily with him as he sat alone in his study, sighing for some sweet parliamentary task, and regretting the days in which he was privileged to sit in the House of Commons till two o’clock in the morning, in the hope that he might get a clause or two passed in his bill for decimal coinage.

It was at The Horns at an afternoon party, given there in the gardens by the Duchess, early in July, that Arthur Fletcher first saw Emily after her marriage, and Lopez after the occurrence at Silverbridge. As it happened he came out upon the lawn after them, and found them speaking to the Duchess as they passed on. She had put herself out of her way to be civil to Mr and Mrs Lopez, feeling that she had in some degree injured him in reference to the election, and had therefore invited both him and his wife on more than one occasion. Arthur Fletcher was there as a young man well known in the world and a supporter of the Duke’s government. The Duchess had taken up Arthur Fletcher,–as she was wont to take up new men, and had personally become tired of Lopez. Of course she had heard of the election, and had been told that Lopez had behaved badly. Of Mr Lopez she did not know enough to care anything, one way or the other;–but she still encouraged him because she had caused him disappointment. She had now detained them a minute on the terrace before the windows while she said a word, and Arthur Fletcher became one of the little party before he knew whom he was meeting. ‘I am delighted,’ she said, ‘that you two Silverbridge heroes should meet together here as friends.’ It was almost incumbent on her to say something, though it would have been better for her not to have alluded to their heroism. Mrs Lopez put out her hand, and Arthur Fletcher of course took it. Then the two men bowed slightly to each other, raising their hats. Arthur paused a moment with them, as they passed on from the Duchess, thinking that he would say something in a friendly tone. But he was silenced by the frown on the husband’s face, and was almost constrained to go away without a word. It was very difficult for him even to be silent, as her greeting had been kind. But yet it was impossible for him to ignore the displeasure displayed in the man’s countenance. So he touched his hat, and asking her to remember him affectionately to her father, turned off the path and went away.

‘Why did you shake hands with that man?’ said Lopez. It was the first time since their marriage that his voice had been that of an angry man and an offended husband.

‘Why not, Ferdinand? He and I are very old friends, and we have not quarrelled.’

‘You must take up your husband’s friendships and your husband’s quarrels. Did I not tell you that he had insulted you?’

‘He never insulted me.’

‘Emily, you must allow me to be the judge of that. He insulted you, and then he behaved like a poltroon down at Silverbridge, and I will not have you know him anymore. When I say so I suppose that will be enough.’ He waited for a reply, but she said nothing. ‘I ask you to tell me that you will obey me in this.’

‘Of course he will not come to my house, nor should I think of going to his, if you disapproved.’

‘Going to his house! He’s unmarried.’

‘Supposing he had a wife! Ferdinand, perhaps it will be better that you and I should not talk about him.’

‘By G-,’ said Lopez, ‘there shall be no subject on which I will afraid to talk to my own wife. I insist upon your assuring me that you will never speak to him again.’

He had taken her along one of the upper walks because it was desolate, and he could there speak to her, as he thought, without being heard. She had, almost unconsciously, made a faint attempt to lead him down the lawn, no doubt feeling averse to private conversations at the moment; but he had persevered, and had resented the little effort. The idea in his mind that she was unwilling to renounce the man, anxious to escape his order for such renunciation, added fuel to his jealousy. It was not enough for him that she had rejected this man and had accepted him. The man had been her lover, and she should be made to denounce the man. It might be necessary for him to control his feelings before old Wharton;–but he knew enough of his wife to be sure that would not speak evil of him or betray him to her father. Her loyalty to him, which he could understand though not appreciate, enabled him to be a tyrant to her. So now he repeated his order to her, pausing in the path, with a voice unintentionally loud, and frowning down upon her as he spoke. ‘You must tell me, Emily, that you will never speak to him again.’

She was silent, looking up into his face, not with tremulous eyes, but with infinite woe written in them, had he been able to read the writing. She knew that he was disgracing himself, and yet he was the man whom she loved! ‘If you bid me not to speak to him, I will not,–but he must know the reason why.’

‘He shall know nothing from you. You do not mean to say that you would write to him.’

‘Papa must tell him.’

‘I will not have it so. In this matter, Emily, I will be the master,–as it is fit that I should be. I will not have you talk to your father about Mr Fletcher.’

‘Why not, Ferdinand?’

‘Because I have so decided. He is an old family friend. I can understand that, and do not therefore wish to interfere between him and your father. But he has taken upon himself to write an insolent letter to you as my wife, and to interfere in my affairs. As to what should be done between you and him, I must be the judge and not your father.’

‘And I must not speak to papa about it?’

‘No!’

‘Ferdinand, you make too little, I think, of the associations and affections of a whole life.’

‘I will hear nothing about affection,’ he said angrily.

‘You cannot mean that,–that–you doubt me?’

‘Certainly not. I think too much of myself and too little of him.’ It did not occur to him to tell her that he thought too well of her for that. ‘But the man who has offended me must be held to have offended you also.’

‘You might say the same if it were my father.’

He paused at this, but only for a moment. ‘Certainly I might. It is not probable, but no doubt I might do so. If your father were to quarrel with me, you would not, I suppose, hesitate between us?’

‘Nothing on earth could divide me from you.’

‘Nor me from you. In this very matter I am only taking your part, if you did but know it.’ They had now passed on, and had met other persons, having made their way through a little shrubbery on to a further lawn; and she had hoped, as they were surrounded by people, that he would allow the matter to drop. She had been unable as yet to make up her mind as to what she should say if he pressed her hard. But, if it could be passed by,–if nothing more were demanded from her,–she would endeavour to forget it all, saying to herself that it had come from sudden passion. But he was too resolute for such a termination as that, and too keenly alive to the expediency of making her thoroughly subject to him. So he turned her round and took her back through the shrubbery, and in the middle of it stopped her again and renewed his demand.

‘Promise me that you will not speak again to Mr Fletcher.’

‘Then I must tell papa.’

‘No;–you shall tell him nothing.’

‘Ferdinand, if you exact a promise from me that I will not speak to Mr Fletcher, or bow to him should circumstances bring us together as they did just now, I must explain to my father why I have done so.’

‘You will wilfully disobey me?’

‘In that I must.’ He glared at her, almost as though he were going to strike her, but she bore his look without flinching. ‘I have left all my old friends, Ferdinand, and have given my heart and soul to you. No woman did so with a truer love or more devoted intention of doing her duty to her husband. Your affairs shall be my affairs.’

‘Well; yes; rather.’

She was endeavouring to assure him of her truth, but could understand the sneer which was conveyed in his acknowledgment. ‘But you cannot, nor can I for your sake, abolish the things which have been.’

‘I wish you to abolish nothing that has been. I speak of the future.’

‘Between our family and that of Mr Fletcher there has been old friendship which is still very dear to my father,–the memory of which is still very dear to me. At your request I am willing to put all that aside from me. There is no reason why I should ever see any of the Fletchers again. Our lives will be apart. Should we meet our greeting would be very slight. The separation can be effected without words. But if you demand an absolute promise,– I must tell my father.’

‘We will go home at once,’ he said instantly, and aloud. And home they went, back to London, without exchanging a word on the journey. He was absolutely black with rage, and she was content to remain silent. The promise was not given, nor indeed, was it exacted under the conditions which the wife had imposed upon it. He was most desirous to make her subject to his will in all things, and quite prepared to exercise tyranny over her to any extent,–so that her father should know nothing of it. He could not afford to quarrel with Mr Wharton. ‘You had better go to bed,’ he said, when he got her back to town;–and she went, if not to bed, at any rate into her own room.

CHAPTER 38

SIR ORLANDO RETIRES.

‘He is a horrid man. He came here and quarrelled with the other man in my house, or rather down at Richmond, and made a fool of himself, and then quarrelled with his wife and took her away. What fools, what asses, what horrors men are! How impossible it is to be civil and gracious without getting into a mess. I am tempted to say that I will never know anybody any more.’ Such was the complaint made by the Duchess to Mrs Finn a few days after the Richmond party, and from this it was evident that the latter affair had not passed without notice.

‘Did he make a noise about it?’ asked Mrs Finn.

‘There was not a row, but there was enough of a quarrel to be visible and audible. He walked about and talked loud to the poor woman. Of course it was my own fault. But the man was clever and I liked him, and people told me that he was of the right sort.’

‘The Duke heard of it?’

‘No;–and I hope he won’t. It would be such a triumph for him, after all the fuss at Silverbridge. But he never heard of anything. If two men fought a duel in his own dining-room he would be the last man in London to know about it.’

‘Then say nothing about it, and don’t ask the men anymore.’

‘You may be sure I won’t ask the man with the wife any more. The other man is in Parliament and can’t be thrown over so easily– and it wasn’t his fault. But I’m getting so sick of it all! I’m told that Sir Orlando has complained to Plantagenet that he isn’t asked to the dinners.’

‘Impossible!’

‘Don’t you mention it, but he has. Warburton has told me so.’ Warburton was one of the Duke’s private secretaries.

‘What did the Duke say?’

‘I don’t quite know. Warburton is one of my familiars, but I didn’t like to ask him for more than he chose to tell me. Warburton suggested that I should invite Sir Orlando at once; but there I was obdurate. Of course, if Plantagenet tells me I’ll ask the man to come every day of the week;–but it is one of those things that I shall need to be told directly. My idea is, you know, that they had better get rid of Sir Orlando,–and that if Sir Orlando chooses to kick over the traces, he may be turned loose without any danger. One has little birds that give one all manner of information, and one little bird has told me that Sir Orlando and Mr Roby don’t speak. Mr Roby is not very much himself, but he is a good straw to show which way the wind blows. Plantagenet certainly sent no message about Sir Orlando, and I’m afraid the gentleman must look for his dinners elsewhere.’

The Duke had in truth expressed himself very plainly to Mr Warburton; but with so much indiscreet fretfulness that the discreet private secretary had not told it even to the Duchess.

‘This kind of thing argues a want of cordiality that may be fatal to us,’ Sir Orlando had said somewhat grandiloquently to the Duke, and the Duke had made–almost no reply. ‘I suppose I may ask my own guests into my own house,’ he had said afterwards to Mr Warburton, ‘though in public life I am everybody’s slave.’ Mr Warburton, anxious of course to maintain the unity of the party, had told the Duchess so much as would, he thought, induce her to give way, but he had not repeated the Duke’s own observations, which were, Mr Warburton thought, hostile to the interests of the party. The Duchess only smiled and made a little grimace, with which the private secretary was already well acquainted. And Sir Orlando received no invitation.

In those days Sir Orlando was unhappy and irritable, doubtful of further success as regarded the Coalition, but quite resolved to put the house down about the ears of the inhabitants rather than to leave it with gentle resignation. To him it seemed to be impossible that the Coalition should exist without him. He too had moments of high-vaulting ambition, in which he had almost felt himself to be the great man required by the country, the one ruler who could gather together in his grasp the reins of government and drive the State coach single-handed safe through its difficulties for the next half-dozen years. There are men who cannot conceive of themselves that anything should be difficult for them, and again others who cannot bring themselves so to trust themselves as to think that they can ever achieve anything great. Samples of each sort from time to time rise high in political life, carried thither apparently by Epicurean concourse of atoms; and it often happens that the more confident samples are by no means the most capable. The concourse of atoms had carried Sir Orlando so high that he could not but think himself intended for something higher. But the Duke, who had really been wafted to the very top, had always doubted himself, believing himself capable of doing some one thing by dint of industry, but with no further confidence in his own powers. Sir Orlando had perceived something of his leader’s weakness, and had thought that he might profit by it. He was not only a distinguished member of the Cabinet, but even the recognised Leader of the House of Commons. He looked out the facts and found that for five-and-twenty years out of the last thirty the Leader of the House of Commons had been the Head of Government. He felt that he would be mean not to stretch out his hand and take the prize destined for him. The Duke was a poor timid man who had very little to say for himself. Then came the little episode about the dinners. It had become very evident to the world that the Duchess of Omnium had cut Sir Orlando Drought,– that the Prime Minister’s wife, who was great in hospitality, would not admit the First Lord of the Admiralty into her house. The doings of Gatherum Castle, and in Carlton Terrace, and at The Horns were watched much too closely by the world at large to allow such omissions to be otherwise than conspicuous. Since the commencement of the session there had been a series of articles in the “People’s Banner” violently abusive of the Prime Minister, and in one or two of these the indecency of these exclusions had been exposed with great strength of language. And the Editor of the “People’s Banner” had discovered that Sir Orlando Drought was the one man in Parliament fit to rule the nation. Till Parliament should discover this fact, or at least acknowledge it, –the discovery having been happily made by the “People’s Banner”,–the Editor of the “People’s Banner” thought there could be no hope for the country. Sir Orlando of course saw all these articles, and his very heart believed that a man at length sprung up among them fit to conduct a newspaper. The Duke also unfortunately saw the “People’s Banner”. In his old happy days two papers a day, one in the morning and the other before dinner, sufficed to tell him all that he wanted to know. Now he felt it necessary to see almost every rag that was published. And he would skim through them all till he found lines in which he himself was maligned, and then, with sore heart and irritated nerves, would pause over every contumelious word. He would have bitten his tongue out rather that have spoken of the tortures he endured, but he was tortured and did endure. He knew the cause of the bitter personal attacks upon him,–of the abuse with which he was loaded, and of the ridicule, infinitely more painful to him, with which his wife’s social splendour was bespattered. He remembered well the attempt with which Mr Quintus Slide had made to obtain an entrance into his house, and his own scornful rejection of that gentleman’s overtures. He knew,–no man knew better,–the real value of that able Editor’s opinion. And yet every word of it was gall and wormwood to him. In every paragraph there was a scourge which hit him on the raw and opened the wounds which he could show to no kind surgeon, for which he could find solace in no friendly treatment. Not even to his wife could he condescend to say that Mr Quintus Slide had hurt him.

Then Sir Orlando had come himself. Sir Orlando explained himself gracefully. He of course could understand that no gentleman had a right to complain because he was not asked to another gentleman’s house. But the affairs of the country were above private considerations; and he, actuated by public feelings, would condescend to do that which under other circumstances would be impossible. The public press, which was every vigilant, had suggested that there was some official estrangement, because Sir Orlando had not been included in the list of guests invited by His Grace. Did not his Grace think that there might be seeds of, –he would not quite say decay for the Coalition, in such a state of things? The Duke paused for a moment, and then said that he thought there were no such seeds. Sir Orlando bowed haughtily and withdrew,–swearing at that moment that the Coalition should be made to fall into a thousand shivers. This had all taken place a fortnight before the party at The Horns from which poor Mrs Lopez had been withdrawn so hastily.

But Sir Orlando, when he commenced the proceeding consequent on this resolution, did not find all that support which he had expected. Unfortunately there had been an uncomfortable word or two between him and Mr Roby, the political Secretary at the Admiralty. Mr Roby had never quite seconded Sir Orlando’s ardour in the matter of the four ships, and Sir Orlando in his pride of place had ventured to snub Mr Roby. Now Mr Roby could perhaps bear a snubbing perhaps as well as any other official subordinate,–but he was one who would study the question and assure himself that it was, or that it was not, worth his while to bear it. He, too, had discussed with his friends the condition of the Coalition, and had come to some conclusions rather adverse to Sir Orlando than otherwise. When, therefore, the First Secretary sounded him as to the expediency of some step in the direction of a firmer political combination than at present existing,–by which of course was meant the dethronement of the present Prime Minister,–Mr Roby had snubbed him! Then there had been slight official criminations and recriminations, till a state of things had come to pass which almost justified the statement by the Duchess to Mrs Finn.

The Coalition had many component parts, some coalescing without difficulty, but with no special cordiality. Such was the condition of things between the very conservative Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and his somewhat radical Chief Secretary, Mr Finn,– between probably the larger number of those who were contented with the duties of their own offices and the pleasures and profits arising therefrom. Some by this time hardly coalesced at all, as was the case with Sir Gregory Grogram and Sir Timothy Beeswax, the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General;–and was especially the case with the Prime Minister and Sir Orlando Drought. But in one or two happy cases the Coalition was sincere and loyal,–and in no case was this more so than with regard to Mr Rattler and Mr Roby. Mr Rattler and Mr Roby had throughout their long parliamentary lives belonged to opposite parties, and had been accustomed to regard each other with mutual jealousy and almost with mutual hatred. But now they had come to see how equal, how alike, and how sympathetic were their tastes, and how well each might help the other. As long as Mr Rattler could keep his place at the Treasury,–and his ambition never stirred him to aught higher,–he was quite contented that his old rival should be happy at the Admiralty. And that old rival, when he looked about him and felt his present comfort, when he remembered how short-lived had been the good things which had hitherto come in his way, and how little probable it was that long-lived good things should be his when the Coalition was broken up, manfully determined that loyalty to the present Head of Government was his duty. He had sat for too many years on the same bench with Sir Orlando to believe much in his power of governing the country. Therefore, when Sir Orlando dropped his hint Mr Roby did not take it.

‘I wonder whether it’s true that Sir Orlando complained to the Duke that he was not asked to dinner?’ said Mr Roby to Mr Rattler.

‘I should hardly think so. I can’t fancy that he would have the pluck,’ said Mr Rattler. ‘The Duke isn’t the easiest man in the world to speak about such a thing as that.’

‘It would be a monstrous thing for a man to do! But Drought’s head is quite turned. You can see that.’

‘We never thought much about him, you know, on our side.’

‘It was what your side thought about him,’ rejoined Roby, ‘that put him where he is now.’

‘It was the fate of accidents, Roby, which puts many of us in our places, and arranges our work for us, and makes us little men or big men. There are other men besides Drought who have been tossed up in a blanket till they don’t know whether their heads or their heels are highest.’

‘I quite believe the Duke,’ said Mr Roby, almost alarmed by the suggestion which his new friend had seemed to make.

‘So do I, Roby. He has not the obduracy of Lord Brock, nor the ineffable manner of Mr Mildmay, nor the brilliant intellect of Mr Gresham.’

‘Nor the picturesque imagination of Mr Daubney,’ said Mr Roby, feeling himself bound to support the character of his late chief.

‘Nor the audacity,’ said Mr Rattler. ‘But he has the peculiar gift of his own, and gifts fitted for the peculiar combination of circumstances, if he will only be content to use them. He is a just, unambitious, intelligent man, in whom after a while the country would come to have implicit confidence. But he is thin- skinned and ungenial.’

‘I have got into his boat,’ said Roby, enthusiastically, ‘and he will find that I shall be true to him.’

‘There is not better boat to be in at present,’ said the slightly sarcastic Rattler. ‘As to the Drought pinnace, it will be more difficult to get it afloat than the four ships themselves. To tell the truth honestly, Roby, we have to rid ourselves of Sir Orlando. I have a great regard for the man.’

‘I can’t say I ever liked him.’

‘I don’t talk about liking,–but he has achieved success, and is to be regarded. Now he has lost his head, and he is bound to get a fall. The question is,–who shall fall with him?’

‘I do not feel myself at all bound to sacrifice myself.’

‘I don’t know who does. Sir Timothy Beeswax, I suppose, will resent the injury done him. But I can hardly think that a strong government can be formed by Sir Orlando Drought and Sir Timothy Beeswax. Any secession is a weakness,–of course; but I think we may survive it.’ And so Mr Rattler and Mr Roby made up their minds that the first Lord of the Admiralty might be thrown overboard without much danger to the Queen’s ship.

Sir Orlando, however, was quite in earnest. The man had spirit enough to feel that no alternative was left to him after he had condescended to suggest that he should be asked to dinner and had been refused. He tried Mr Roby, and found that Mr Roby was a mean fellow, wedded, as he told himself, to his salary. Then he sounded Lord Drummond, urging various reasons. The country was not safe without more ships. Mr Monk was altogether wrong about revenue. Mr Finn’s ideas about Ireland were revolutionary. But Lord Drummond thought that, upon the whole, the present Ministry served the country well, and considered himself bound to adhere to it. ‘He cannot beat the idea of being out of power,’ said Sir Orlando to himself. He next said a word to Sir Timothy; but Sir Timothy was not the man to be led by the nose by Sir Orlando. Sir Timothy had his grievance and meant to have his revenge, but he knew how to choose his own time. ‘The Duke’s not a bad fellow,’ said Sir Timothy,–‘perhaps a little weak, but well- meaning. I think we ought to stand by him a little longer. As for Finn’s Irish bill, I haven’t troubled myself about it.’ Then Sir Orlando declared himself that Sir Timothy was a coward, and resolved that he would act alone.

About the middle of July he went to the Duke at the Treasury, was closeted with him, and in a very long narration of his own differences, difficulties, opinions, and grievances, explained to the Duke that his conscience called upon him to resign. The Duke listened and bowed his head, and with one or two very gently- uttered word expressed his regret. Then Sir Orlando, in another long speech, laid bare his bosom to the Chief whom he was leaving, declaring the inexpressible sorrow with which he had found himself called upon to take a step which he feared might be prejudicial to the political status of a man whom he honoured so much as he did the Duke of Omnium. Then the Duke bowed again, but said nothing. The man had been guilty of the impropriety of questioning the way in which the Duke’s private hospitality was exercised, and the Duke could not bring himself to be genially civil to such an offender. Sir Orlando went on to say that he would of course explain his views in the Cabinet, but that he had thought it right to make them known to the Duke as soon as they were formed. ‘The best friends must part, Duke,’ he said as he took his leave. ‘I hope not, Sir Orlando. I hope not,’ said the Duke. But Sir Orlando had been too full of himself and of the words he had to speak, and of the thing he was about to do, to understand either the Duke’s words or his silence.

And so Sir Orlando resigned, and thus supplied the only morsel of political interest which the Session produced. ‘Take no more notice of him than if your footman was going,’ had been the advice of the old Duke. Of course there was a Cabinet meeting on the occasion, but even there the commotion was very slight, as every member knew before entering the room what it was that Sir Orlando intended to do. Lord Drummond said that the step was one to be much lamented. ‘Very much indeed,’ said the Duke of St Bungay. His word themselves were false and hypocritical, but the tone of his voice took away all the deceit. ‘I am afraid,’ said the Prime Minister, ‘from what Sir Orlando has said to me privately, that we cannot hope that he will change his mind.’ ‘That I certainly cannot do,’ said Sir Orlando, with all the dignified courage of a modern martyr.

On the next morning the papers were full of the political fact, and were blessed with a subject on which they could exercise their prophetical sagacity. The remarks made were generally favourable to the Government. Three or four of the morning papers were of opinion that though Sir Orlando had been a strong man, and a good public servant, the Ministry might exist without him. But the “People’s Banner” was able to expound to the people at large, that the only grain of salt by which the Ministry had been kept from putrefaction had been cast out, and that mortification, death and corruption, must ensue. It was one of Mr Quintus Slide’s greatest efforts.

CHAPTER 39

‘GET ROUND HIM.’

Ferdinand Lopez maintained his anger against his wife for more than a week, after the scene at Richmond, feeding it with reflections on what he called her disobedience. Nor was it a make-believe anger. She had declared her intention to act in opposition to his expressed orders. He felt that his present condition was prejudicial to his interests, and that he must take his wife back into favour, in order the he might make progress with her father, but could hardly bring himself to swallow his wrath. He thought it was her duty to obey him in everything,– and that disobedience on a matter touching her old lover was an abominable offence, to be visited with severest marital displeasure, and with a succession of scowls that should make her miserable for a month at least. Nor on her behalf would he have hesitated, though the misery might have continued three months. But then the old man was the main hope in his life, and must be made its mainstay. Brilliant prospects were before him. He used to think that Mr Wharton was a hale man, with some terribly vexatious term of his life before him. But now, now that he was seen more closely, he appeared to be very old. He would sit half bent in the arm-chair in Stone Buildings, and look as though he were near a hundred. And from day to day he seemed to lean more upon his son-in-law, whose visits to him were continued, and always well taken. The constant subject of discourse between them was Everett Wharton, who had not yet seen his father since the misfortune of their quarrel. Everett had declared to Lopez a dozen times that he would go to his father if his father wished it, and Lopez as often reported the father that Everett would not go to him unless he expressed such a wish. And so they had been kept apart. Lopez did not suppose that the old man would disinherit his son altogether,–did not, perhaps, wish it. But he thought that the condition of the old man’s mind would affect the partition of his property, and that the old man would surely make some new will in the present state of his affairs. The old man always asked after his daughter, begging that she would come to see him, and at last it was necessary that an evening should be fixed. ‘We shall be delighted to come to-day or to-morrow,’ Lopez said.

‘We had better say to-morrow. There would be nothing to eat to- day. The house isn’t now what it used to be.’ It was therefore expedient that Lopez should drop his anger when he got home, and prepare his wife to dine in Manchester Square in a proper frame of mind.

Her misery had been extreme;–very much more bitter than he had imagined. It was not only that his displeasure made her life for the time wearisome, and robbed the only society she had of all its charms. It was not only that her heart was wounded by his anger. Those evils might have been short-lived. But she had seen,–she could not fail to see,–that his conduct was unworthy of her and of her deep love. Though she struggled hard against the feeling, she could not but despise the meanness of his jealousy. She knew thoroughly well that there had been no grain of offence in that letter from Arthur Fletcher,–and she knew that no man, to true man, would have taken offence at it. She tried to quench her judgement, and to silence the verdict which her intellect gave against him, but her intellect was too strong even for her heart. She was beginning to learn that the god of idolatry was but a little human creature, and that she should not have worshipped at so poor a shrine. But nevertheless the love should be continued, and, if possible, the worship, though the idol had been already found to have feet of clay. He was her husband, and she would be true to him. As morning after morning he left her still with that harsh, unmanly frown upon his face, she would look up at him with entreating eyes, and when he returned would receive him with her fondest smile. At length he, too, smiled. He came to after that interview with Mr Wharton and told her, speaking with the soft yet incisive voice which she used to love so well, that they were to dine in the Square on the following day. ‘Let there be an end of all of this,’ he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her. Of course she did not tell him that ‘all this’ had sprung from his ill-humour and not from hers. ‘I own I have been angry,’ he continued. ‘I will say nothing more about it now; but that man did vex me.’

‘I have been so sorry that you should have been vexed.’

‘Well;–let it pass away. I don’t think your father is looking very well.’

‘He is not ill?’

‘Oh no. He feels the loss of your society. He is so much alone. You must be more with him.’

‘Has he not seen Everett yet?’

‘No. Everett is not behaving altogether well.’ Emily was made unhappy by this, and showed it. ‘He is the best fellow in the world. I may safely say there is no other man whom I regard so warmly as I do your brother. But he takes wrong ideas into his head, and nothing will knock them out. I wonder what your father has done about his will.’

‘I have not an idea. Nothing you may be sure will make him unjust to Everett.’

‘Ah!–You don’t happen to know whether he ever made a will?’

‘Not at all. He would be sure to say nothing to me about it,– or to anybody.’

‘That is the kind of secrecy which I think is wrong. It leads to so much uncertainty. You wouldn’t like to ask him?’

‘No;–certainly.’

‘It is astonishing to me how afraid you are of your father. He hasn’t any land, has he?’

‘Land!’

‘Real estate. You know what I mean. He couldn’t well have landed property without your knowing it.’ She shook her head. ‘It might make an immense difference to us, you know.’

‘Why so?’

‘If he were to die without a will, any land,–houses and that kind of property,–would go to Everett. I never knew a man who told his children so little. I want you to understand these things. You and I will be badly off if he doesn’t do something for us.’

‘You don’t think he is really ill?’

‘No;–not ill. Men above seventy are apt to die, you know.’

‘Oh, Ferdinand,–what a way to talk of it!’

‘Well, my love, the thing is so seriously matter-of-fact, that it is better to look at it in a matter-of-fact way. I don’t want your father to die.’

‘I hope not. I hope not.’

‘But I should be very glad to learn what he means to do while he lives. I want to get you into sympathy with me on this matter;– but it is so difficult.’

‘Indeed I sympathise with you.’

‘The truth is that he has taken an aversion to Everett.’

‘God forbid!’

‘I am doing all I can to prevent it. But if he does throw Everett over we ought to have advantage of it. There is no harm in saying as much as that. Think what it should be if he should take it into his head to leave his money to hospitals. My G-; fancy what my condition would be if I were to hear of such a will as that! If he destroyed the old will. Partly because he didn’t like our marriage, and partly in anger against Everett, and then die without making another, the property would be divided,– unless he bought land. You see how many dangers there are. Oh dear! I can look forward and see myself mad,–or else myself so proudly triumphant!’ All this horrified her, but he did not see her horror. He knew that she disliked it, but thought that disliked the trouble, and that she dreaded her father. ‘Now I do think that you could help me a little,’ he continued.

‘What can I do?’

‘Get round him when he’s a little down in the mouth. That is the way in which old men are conquered.’ How utterly ignorant he was of the very nature of her mind and disposition! To be told by her husband that she was to ‘get round’ her father! ‘You should see him every day. He would be delighted if you would go to him at his chambers. Or you could take care to be in the Square when he comes home. I don’t know whether we had not better leave this and go an live near him. Would you mind that?’

‘I would do anything you suggest as to living anywhere.’

‘But you won’t do anything I suggest as to your father.’

‘As to my being with him, if I thought he wished it,–though I had to walk my feet off, I would go to him.’

‘There’s no need of hurting your feet. There’s the brougham.’

‘I do so wish, Ferdinand, you would discontinue the brougham. I don’t at all want it. I don’t at all dislike cabs. And I was only joking about walking. I walk very well.’

‘Certainly not. You fail altogether to understand my ideas about things. If things were going bad with us, I would infinitely prefer getting a pair of horses for you to putting down the one you have.’ She certainly did not understand his ideas. ‘Whatever we do we must hold our heads up. I think he is coming round to cotton to me. He is very close, but I can see that he likes my going to him. Of course, as he gets older from day to day, he’ll constantly want someone to lean on more than heretofore.’

‘I would go and stay with him if he wanted me.’

‘I have thought of that too. Now that would be a saving,– without any fall. And if we were both there we could hardly fail to know what he was doing. You could offer that, couldn’t you? You could say as much as that?’

‘I could ask him if he wished it.’

‘Just so. Say that it occurs to you that he is lonely by himself, and that we will both go to the Square at a moment’s notice if he thinks it will make him comfortable. I feel sure that that will be the best step to take. I have already had an offer for these rooms, and could get rid of the things we have bought to advantage.’

This, too, was terrible to her, and at the same time altogether unintelligible. She had been invited to buy little treasures to make their home more comfortable, and had already learned to take that delight in her belongings which is one of the greatest pleasures of a young married woman’s life. A girl in her old home, before she is given up to a husband, has many sources of interest, and probably from day to day sees many people. And the man just married goes to his work, and occupies his time, and has his thickly-peopled world around him. But the bride, when the bridal honours of the honeymoon are over, when the sweet care of the first cradle has not yet come to her, is apt to be lonely and to be driven to the contemplation of the pretty things with which her husband and her friends have surrounded her. It had certainly been so with this young bride, whose husband left her in the morning and only returned for their late dinner. And now she was told that her household gods had had a price put on them, and that they were to be sold. She had intended to suggest that she would pay her father a visit, and her husband immediately proposed that they should quarter themselves permanently on the old man! She was ready to give up her brougham, though she liked the comfort of it well enough, but to that he would not consent because the possession of it gave him an air of wealth; but without a moment’s hesitation he could catch up the idea of throwing upon her father the burden of maintaining both her and himself! She understood the meaning of this. She could read his mind so far. She endeavoured not to read the book too closely,– but there it was, opened to her wider day by day, and she knew that the lessons which it taught were vulgar and damnable.

And yet she had to hide from him her own perception of himself! She had to sympathise with his desires and yet abstain from doing that which his desires demanded from her. Alas, poor girl! She soon knew that the marriage had been a mistake. There was probably no one moment in which she made the confession to herself. But the conviction was there, in her mind, as though the confession had been made. Then there would come upon her unbidden, unwelcome reminiscences of Arthur Fletcher,–thoughts that she would struggle to banish, accusing herself of some heinous crime because the thoughts would come back to her. She remembered his light wavy hair, which she had loved as one who loves the beauty of a dog, which had seemed to her young imagination, to her in the ignorance of her early years to lack something of a dreamed-of manliness. She remembered his eager, boyish, honest entreaties to herself, which to her had been without that dignity of a superior being which a husband should possess. She became aware that she had thought the less of him because he had thought more of her. She had worshipped this other man because he had assumed superiority and had told her that he was big enough to be her master. But now,–now that it was all too late,–the veil had fallen from her eyes. She could not see the difference between manliness and ‘deportment’. Ah,– that she should ever have been so blind, she who had given herself credit for seeing so much clearer than they who were their elders! And now, though at last she did see clearly, she could not have the consolation of telling anyone what she had seen. She must bear it all in silence, and live with it, and still love this god of clay that she had chosen. And, above all, she must never allow herself even to think of that other man with the wavy light hair,–that man who was rising in the world, of whom all people said good things, and who was showing himself to be a man by the work he did, and whose true tenderness she could never doubt.

Her father was left to her. She could still love her father. It might be that it would be best for him that she should go back to her old home, and take care of his old age. If he should wish it, she would make no difficulty in parting with the things around her. Of what concern were the prettinesses of life to one whose inner soul was hampered with such ugliness! It might be better that they should live in Manchester Square,–if her father wished it. It was clear to her now that her husband was in urgent need of money, though of his affairs, even of his way of making money, she knew nothing. As that was the case, of course she would consent to any practicable retrenchment which he would propose. And then she thought of other coming joys and coming troubles,–of how in future years she might have to teach a girl falsely to believe that her father was a good man, and to train a boy to honest purposes whatever parental lessons might come from the other side.

But the mistake she had made was acknowledged. The man who could enjoin her to ‘get round’ her father could never have been worthy of the love she had given him.

CHAPTER 40

‘COME AND TRY IT.’

The husband was almost jovial when he came home just in time to take his young wife to dine with their father. ‘I’ve had such a day in the city,’ he said, laughing. ‘I wish I could introduce you to my friend, Mr Sextus Parker.’

‘Cannot you do so?’

‘Well, no; not exactly. Of course you’d like him, because he is such a wonderful character, but he’d hardly do for your drawing- room. He’s the vulgarest little creature you ever put your eyes on; and yet in a certain way he is my partner.’

‘Then I suppose you trust him?’

‘Indeed I don’t;–but I make him useful. Poor little Sexty! I do trust him to a degree, because he believes in me and thinks he can do best by sticking to me. The old saying of “honour among thieves” isn’t without a dash of truth in it. When two men are in a boat together, they must be true to each other, else neither will get to the shore.’

‘You don’t attribute high motives to your friend.’

‘I’m afraid there are not very many high motives in the world, my girl, especially in the city;–nor yet at Westminster. It can hardly be from high motives when a lot of men, thinking differently on every possible subject, come together for the sake of pay and power. I don’t know whether, after all, Sextus Parker mayn’t have as high motives as the Duke of Omnium. I don’t suppose anyone ever had lower motives than the Duchess when she chiselled me about Silverbridge. Never mind,–it’ll all be one a hundred years hence. Get ready, for I want you to be with your father a little before dinner.’

Then, when they were in the brougham together, he began a course of very plain instructions. ‘Look here, dear, you had better get him to talk to you before dinner. I dare say Mrs Roby will be there, and I will get her on one side. At any rate you can manage it, because we shall be early, and I’ll take up a book while you are talking to him.’

‘What do you wish me to say to him, Ferdinand?’

‘I have been thinking of your own proposal, and I am quite sure that we had better join him in the Square. The thing is, I am in a little mess about the rooms, and can’t stay on without paying very dearly for them.’

‘I thought you had paid for them.’

‘Well;–yes; in one sense I had, but you don’t understand about business. You had better not interrupt me now, as I have got a good deal to say before we get to the Square. It will suit me to give up the rooms. I don’t like them, and they are very dear. As you yourself said, it will be a capital thing for us to go and live with your father.’

‘I meant only for a visit.’

‘It will be for a visit;–and we’ll make it a long visit.’ It was odd that the man should have been so devoid of right feeling himself as not to have known that the ideas which he expressed were revolting! ‘You can sound him. Begin by saying that you are afraid he is desolate. He told me himself that he was desolate, and you can refer to that. Then tell him that we are both of us prepared to do anything that we can to relieve him. Put your arm over him, and kiss him, and all that sort of thing.’ She shrunk from him into the corner of the brougham, and yet he did not perceive it. ‘Then say that you think he would be happier if we were to join him here for a time. You can make him understand that there would be no difficulty about the apartments. But don’t say it all in a set speech, as though it were prepared,–though of course you can let him know that you have suggested it to me, and that I am willing. Be sure to let him understand that the idea began with you.’

‘But it did not.’

‘You proposed to go and stay with him. Tell him just that. And you should explain to him that he can dine at the club just as much as he likes. When you were alone with him here, of course, he had to come home, but he needn’t do that now unless he chooses. Of course the brougham would be my affair. And if he should say anything about sharing the house expenses, you can tell him that I would do anything he might propose.’ Her father to share the household expenses in his own house, and with his own children! ‘You say as much as you can of all this before dinner, so that when we are sitting below he may suggest it if he pleases. It would suit me to get in there next week if possible.’

And so one lesson had been given. She had said little or nothing in reply, and he had only finished as they entered the Square. She had hardly a minute allowed her to think how far she might follow, and in what she must ignore, her husband’s instructions. If she might use her own judgement, she would tell her father at once that a residence for a time beneath his roof would be of service to them pecuniarily. But this she might not do. She understood that her duty to her husband did forbid her to proclaim his poverty in opposition to his wishes. She would tell nothing that he did not wish her to tell,–but make the suggestion about their change of residence, and would make it with proper affection;–but as regarded themselves she would simply say that it would suit their views to give up their rooms if it suited them.

Mr Wharton was all alone when they entered the drawing-room,– but as Mr Lopez had surmised, had asked his sister-in-law round the corner to come to dinner. ‘Roby always likes an excuse to get to his club,’ said the old man, ‘and Harriet likes an excuse to go anywhere.’ It was not long before Lopez began to play his part by seating himself close to the open window and looking out into the Square; and Emily when she found herself close to her father, with her hand in his, could hardly divest herself of a feeling that she also was playing her part. ‘I see so very little of you,’ said the old man plaintively.

‘I’d come oftener if I thought you’d like it.’

‘It isn’t liking, my dear. Of course you have to live with your husband. Isn’t it sad about Everett?’

‘Very sad. But Everett hasn’t lived here for ever so long.’

‘I don’t know why he shouldn’t. He was a fool to go away when he did. Does he go to you?’

‘Yes;–sometimes.’

‘And what does he say?’

‘I’m sure he would be with you at once if you would ask him.’

‘I have asked him. I’ve sent word by Lopez over and over again. If he means that I am to write to him and say that I’m sorry for offending him, I won’t. Don’t talk of him any more. It makes me so angry that I sometimes feel inclined to do things which I know I should repent when dying.’

‘Not anything to injure Everett, papa?’

‘I wonder whether he ever thinks that I am an old man and all alone, and that his brother-in-law is daily with me. But he’s a fool, and thinks of nothing. I know it is very sad being here night after night by myself.’ Mr Wharton forgot, no doubt, at the moment, that he passed the majority of his evenings at the Eldon,–though had he been reminded of it, he might have declared with perfect truth that the delights of his club were not satisfactory.

‘Papa,’ said Emily, ‘would you like us to come and live here?’

‘What,–you and Lopez;–here in the Square?’

‘Yes,–for a time. He is thinking of giving up the place in Belgrave Mansions.’

‘I thought he had them for,–for ever so many months.’

‘He does not like them, and they are expensive, and he can give them up. If you would wish it, we would come here,–for a time.’ He turned round and looked at her almost suspiciously; and she,– she blushed as she remembered how accurately she was obeying her husband’s orders. ‘It would be such a joy to me to be near you again.’

There was something in her voice which instantly reassured him. ‘Well–;’ he said, ‘come and try it if it will suit him. The house is big enough. It will ease his pocket and be a comfort to me. Come and try it.’

It astonished her that the thing should be done so easily. Here was all that her husband had proposed to arrange by deep diplomacy settled in three words. And yet she felt ashamed of herself,–as though she had taken her father in. That terrible behest to ‘get round him’ still grated on her ears. Had she got round him? Had she cheated him into this?

‘Papa,’ she said, ‘do not do this unless you feel sure that you will like it.’

‘How is anybody to feel sure of anything, my dear?’

‘But if you doubt, do not do it.’

‘I feel sure of one thing, that is that it will be a great saving to your husband, and I am nearly sure that ought not to be a matter of indifference to him. There is plenty of room here, and it will at any rate be a comfort to me to see you sometimes.’ Just at this moment Mrs Roby came in, and the old man began to tell his news aloud. ‘Emily has not gone away for long. She’s coming back like a bad shilling.’

‘Not to live in the Square?’ said Mrs Roby, looking round at Lopez.

‘Why not? There’s room here for them, and it will be just as well to save expense. When will you come, my dear?’

‘Whenever the house may be ready, papa.’

‘It’s ready now. You ought to know that I am not going to refurnish the rooms for you, or anything of that kind. Lopez can come in an hang up his hat whenever it pleases him.’

During this time Lopez had hardly known how to speak or what to say. He had been very anxious that his wife should pave the way as he would have called it. He had been urgent with her to break the ice to her father. But it had not occurred to him that the matter would be settled without any reference to himself. Of course he had heard every word that had been spoken, and was aware that his own poverty had been suggested as the cause for such a proceeding. It was a great thing for him in every way. He would live for nothing, and would also have almost unlimited power of being with Mr Wharton as old age grew on him. This ready compliance with his wishes was a benefit far too precious to be lost. But yet he felt that his own dignity required some reference to himself. It was distasteful to him that his father- in-law should regard him,–or, at any rate, that he should speak of him,–as a pauper, unable to provide a home for his own wife. ‘Emily’s notion in suggesting it, sir,’ he said, ‘has been her care for her comfort.’ The barrister turned round and looked at him, and Lopez did not quite like the look. ‘It was she thought of it first, and she certainly had no other idea than that. When she mentioned it to me, I was delighted to agree.’

Emily heard it all and blushed. It was not absolutely untrue in words,–this assertion of her husband’s,–but altogether false in spirit. And yet she could not contradict him. ‘I don’t see why it should not do very well indeed,’ said Mrs Roby.

‘I hope it may,’ said the barrister. ‘Come, Emily, I must take you down to dinner to-day. You are not at home yet, you know. As you are to come, the sooner the better.’

During dinner not a word was said on the subject. Lopez exerted himself to be pleasant, and told all that he had heard as to the difficulties of the Cabinet. Sir Orlando had resigned, and the general opinion was that the Coalition was going to pieces. Had Mr Wharton seen the last article in the “People’s Banner” about the Duke? Lopez was strongly of the opinion that Mr Wharton ought to see that article. ‘I never had the “People’s Banner” within my fingers in my life,’ said the barrister angrily, ‘and I certainly never will.’

‘Ah, sir; this is an exception. You shall see this. When Slide really means to cut a fellow up, he can do it. There’s no one like him. And the Duke has deserved it. He’s a poor, vacillating creature, led by the Duchess; and she,–according to all that one hears,–she isn’t much better than she should be.’

‘I thought the Duchess was a great friend of yours.’

‘I don’t care much for such friendship. She threw me over most shamefully.’

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

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

‘A day or two will be enough for us.’

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

‘Of course, sir.’

‘I dine out a good deal.’

‘At the club,’ suggested Lopez.

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

‘Certainly not.’

‘Everett has an allowance, and this will be tantamount to an allowance to Emily. You have also had 3,500 pounds. I hope it has been well expended;–except the 500 pounds at that election, which has, of course, been thrown away.’

‘The other was brought into the business.’

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

‘Oh, quite so;–part of it, you mean.’

‘I mean just what I say.’

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

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

‘What wine I have is indifferent to me.’

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

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

DEAREST E.
I am so overjoyed that you are coming back to me. A.W.

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

VOLUME III

CHAPTER 41

THE VALUE OF A THICK SKIN.

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

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

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

‘But it may be all important that the work should be done,’ said the Baronet, apologizing for his past misconduct.

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

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

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

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

‘I suppose it is his health,’ said Lord Cantrip.

‘He’s well enough as far as I can see;–though he will be ill unless he can relieve himself from the strain of his nerves.’

‘Do you mean by resigning?’

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

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

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

‘Is he going to Gatherum Castle?’

‘No;–to Matching. There is some discomfort about that.’

‘I suppose,’ said Lord Cantrip,–speaking almost in a whisper, although they were closeted together,–‘I suppose the Duchess is a little troublesome.’

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

‘I fancy she overdoes it.’

‘No doubt.’

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

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

‘A man’s skin may be thickened, I suppose.’

‘No doubt;–as a blacksmith’s arm.’

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

‘What;–because such a man as Sir Orlando Drought throws up his office?’

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

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

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

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

‘Then you should make something to be done,’ said the Duchess, mimicking him.

CHAPTER 42

RETRIBUTION.

The Duchess had been at work with her husband for the last two months in the hope of renewing her autumnal festivities, but had been lamentably unsuccessful. The Duke had declared that there should be no more rural crowds, no repetition of what he called London turned loose on his own grounds. He could not forget the necessity which had been imposed upon him of turning Major Pountney out of his house, or the change that had been made in his gardens, or his wife’s attempt to conquer him at Silverbridge. ‘Do you mean,’ she said, ‘that we are to have nobody?’ He replied that he thought it would be best to go to Matching. ‘And live a Darby and Joan life?’ said the Duchess.

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

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

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

‘I suppose you mean Lady Rosina?’ said the Duchess. ‘I shall be happy to have her at Matching, if you wish it.’

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

‘And is there to be nobody else? I’m afraid I should find it rather dull while you two were opening your hearts to each other.’ Here he looked at her angrily. ‘Can you think of anybody besides Lady Rosina?’

‘I suppose you will wish to have Mrs Finn.’

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

‘That is an odious word,’ said the Prime Minister.

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

I do not know whether at times her sufferings were not as acute as his own. He, at any rate, was Prime Minister, and it seemed to her that she was to be reduced to nothing. At the beginning of it all he had, with unwonted tenderness asked her for her sympathy in his undertaking, and, according to her power, she had given it to him with her whole heart. She had thought that she had seen a way by which she might assist him in his great employment, and she had worked at it like a slave. Every day she told herself that she did not, herself, love the Captain Gunners and Major Pountneys, nor the Sir Orlandos, nor, indeed the Lady Rosinas. She had not followed the bent of her own inclination when she had descended to sheets and towels, and busied herself to establish an archery-ground. She had not shot an arrow during the whole season, nor had she cared who had won and who had lost. It had not been for her own personal delight that she had kept open house for forty persons throughout four months of the year, in doing which he had never taken an ounce of labour off her shoulders by any single word or deed! It had all been done for his sake,–that his reign might be long and triumphant, that the world might say that his hospitality was noble and full, that his name might be in men’s mouths, and that he might prosper as a British Minister. Such, at least, were the assertions which she made to herself, when she thought of her own grievances and her own troubles. And how she was angry with her husband. It was