LXVIII. The Prime Minister's Political Creed…

LXVIII. The Prime Minister's Political Creed

The Duke, before he went to Matching, twice reminded Phineas Finn that he was expected there in a day or two. "The Duchess says that your wife is coming to-morrow," the Duke said on the day of his departure. But Phineas could not go then. His services to his country were required among the dockyards and ships, and he postponed his visit till the end of September. Then he started for Matching, having the double pleasure before him of meeting his wife and his noble host and hostess. He found a small party there, but not so small as the Duchess had once suggested to him. "Your wife will be there, of course, Mr. Finn. She is too good to desert me in my troubles. And there will probably be Lady Rosina De Courcy. Lady Rosina is to the Duke what your wife is to me. I don't suppose there will be anybody else,--except, perhaps, Mr. Warburton." But Lady Rosina was not there. In place of Lady Rosina there were the Duke and Duchess of St. Bungay, with their daughters, two or three Palliser offshoots, with their wives, and Barrington Erle. There were, too, the Bishop of the diocese with his wife, and three or four others, coming and going, so that the party never seemed to be too small. "We asked Mr. Rattler," said the Duchess in a whisper to Phineas, "but he declined, with a string of florid compliments. When Mr. Rattler won't come to the Prime Minister's house, you may depend that something is going to happen. It is like pigs carrying straws in their mouths. Mr. Rattler is my pig." Phineas only laughed and said that he did not believe Rattler to be a better pig than any one else.

It was soon apparent to Phineas that the Duke's manner to him was entirely altered, so much so that he was compelled to acknowledge to himself that he had not hitherto read the Duke's character aright. Hitherto he had never found the Duke pleasant in conversation. Looking back he could hardly remember that he had in truth ever conversed with the Duke. The man had seemed to shut himself up as soon as he had uttered certain words which the circumstances of the moment had demanded. Whether it was arrogance or shyness Phineas had not known. His wife had said that the Duke was shy. Had he been arrogant the effect would have been the same. He was unbending, hard, and lucid only when he spoke on some detail of business, or on some point of policy. But now he smiled, and though hesitating a little at first, very soon fell into the ways of a pleasant country host. "You shoot," said the Duke. Phineas did shoot but cared very little about it. "But you hunt." Phineas was very fond of riding to hounds. "I am beginning to think," said the Duke, "that I have made a mistake in not caring for such things. When I was very young I gave them up, because it appeared that other men devoted too much time to them. One might as well not eat because some men are gluttons."

"Only that you would die if you did not eat."

"Bread, I suppose, would keep me alive, but still one eats meat without being a glutton. I very often regret the want of amusements, and particularly of those which would throw me more among my fellow-creatures. A man is alone when reading, alone when writing, alone when thinking. Even sitting in Parliament he is very much alone, though there be a crowd around him. Now a man can hardly be thoroughly useful unless he knows his fellow-men, and how is he to know them if he shuts himself up? If I had to begin again I think I would cultivate the amusements of the time."

Not long after this the Duke asked him whether he was going to join the shooting men on that morning. Phineas declared that his hands were too full of business for any amusement before lunch. "Then," said the Duke, "will you walk with me in the afternoon? There is nothing I really like so much as a walk. There are some very pretty points where the river skirts the park. And I will show you the spot on which Sir Guy de Palliser performed the feat for which the king gave him this property. It was a grand time when a man could get half-a-dozen parishes because he tickled the king's fancy."

"But suppose he didn't tickle the king's fancy?"

"Ah, then indeed, it might go otherwise with him. But I am glad to say that Sir Guy was an accomplished courtier."

The walk was taken, and the pretty bends of the river were seen; but they were looked at without much earnestness, and Sir Guy's great deed was not again mentioned. The conversation went away to other matters. Of course it was not long before the Prime Minister was deep in discussing the probabilities of the next Session. It was soon apparent to Phineas that the Duke was no longer desirous of resigning, though he spoke very freely of the probable necessity there might be for him to do so. At the present moment he was in his best humour. His feet were on his own property. He could see the prosperity around him. The spot was the one which he loved best in all the world. He liked his present companion, who was one to whom he was entitled to speak with freedom. But there was still present to him the sense of some injury from which he could not free himself. Of course he did not know that he had been haughty to Sir Orlando, to Sir Timothy, and others. But he did know that he had intended to be true, and he thought that they had been treacherous. Twelve months ago there had been a goal before him which he might attain, a winning-post which was still within his reach. There was in store for him the tranquillity of retirement which he would enjoy as soon as a sense of duty would permit him to seize it. But now the prospect of that happiness had gradually vanished from him. That retirement was no longer a winning-post for him. The poison of place and power and dignity had got into his blood. As he looked forward he feared rather than sighed for retirement. "You think it will go against us," he said.

Phineas did think so. There was hardly a man high up in the party who did not think so. When one branch of a Coalition has gradually dropped off, the other branch will hardly flourish long. And then the tints of a political Coalition are so neutral and unalluring that men will only endure them when they feel that no more pronounced colours are within their reach. "After all," said Phineas, "the innings has not been a bad one. It has been of service to the country, and has lasted longer than most men expected."

"If it has been of service to the country, that is everything. It should at least be everything. With the statesman to whom it is not everything there must be something wrong." The Duke, as he said this, was preaching to himself. He was telling himself that, though he saw the better way, he was allowing himself to walk on in that which was worse. For it was not only Phineas who could see the change,--or the old Duke, or the Duchess. It was apparent to the man himself, though he could not prevent it. "I sometimes think," he said, "that we whom chance has led to be meddlers in the game of politics sometimes give ourselves hardly time enough to think what we are about."

"A man may have to work so hard," said Phineas, "that he has no time for thinking."

"Or more probably, may be so eager in party conflict that he will hardly keep his mind cool enough for thought. It seems to me that many men,--men whom you and I know,--embrace the profession of politics not only without political convictions, but without seeing that it is proper that they should entertain them. Chance brings a young man under the guidance of this or that elder man. He has come of a Whig family, as was my case,--or from some old Tory stock; and loyalty keeps him true to the interests which have first pushed him forward into the world. There is no conviction there."

"Convictions grow."

"Yes;--the conviction that it is the man's duty to be a staunch Liberal, but not the reason why. Or a man sees his opening on this side or on that,--as is the case with the lawyers. Or he has a body of men at his back ready to support him on this side or on that, as we see with commercial men. Or perhaps he has some vague idea that aristocracy is pleasant, and he becomes a Conservative,--or that democracy is prospering, and he becomes a Liberal. You are a Liberal, Mr. Finn."

"Certainly, Duke."

"Why?"

"Well;--after what you have said I will not boast of myself. Experience, however, seems to show me that Liberalism is demanded by the country."

"So, perhaps, at certain epochs, may the Devil and all his works; but you will hardly say that you will carry the Devil's colours because the country may like the Devil. It is not sufficient, I think, to say that Liberalism is demanded. You should first know what Liberalism means, and then assure yourself that the thing itself is good. I dare say you have done so; but I see some who never make the inquiry."

"I will not claim to be better than my neighbours,--I mean my real neighbours."

"I understand; I understand," said the Duke laughing. "You prefer some good Samaritan on the opposition benches to Sir Timothy and the Pharisees. It is hard to come wounded out of the fight, and then to see him who should be your friend not only walking by on the other side, but flinging a stone at you as he goes. But I did not mean just now to allude to the details of recent misfortunes, though there is no one to whom I could do so more openly than to you. I was trying yesterday to explain to myself why I have, all my life, sat on what is called the Liberal side of the House to which I have belonged."

"Did you succeed?"

"I began life with the misfortune of a ready-made political creed. There was a seat in the House for me when I was twenty-one. Nobody took the trouble to ask me my opinions. It was a matter of course that I should be a Liberal. My uncle, whom nothing could ever induce to move in politics himself, took it for granted that I should run straight,--as he would have said. It was a tradition of the family, and was as inseparable from it as any of the titles which he had inherited. The property might be sold or squandered,--but the political creed was fixed as adamant. I don't know that I ever had a wish to rebel, but I think that I took it at first very much as a matter of course."

"A man seldom inquires very deeply at twenty-one."

"And if he does it is ten to one but he comes to a wrong conclusion. But since then I have satisfied myself that chance put me into the right course. It has been, I dare say, the same with you as with me. We both went into office early, and the anxiety to do special duties well probably deterred us both from thinking much of the great question. When a man has to be on the alert to keep Ireland quiet, or to prevent peculation in the dockyards, or to raise the revenue while he lowers the taxes, he feels himself to be saved from the necessity of investigating principles. In this way I sometimes think that ministers, or they who have been ministers and who have to watch ministers from the opposition benches, have less opportunity of becoming real politicians than the men who sit in Parliament with empty hands and with time at their own disposal. But when a man has been placed by circumstances as I am now, he does begin to think."

"And yet you have not empty hands."

"They are not so full, perhaps, as you think. At any rate I cannot content myself with a single branch of the public service as I used to do in old days. Do not suppose that I claim to have made any grand political invention, but I think that I have at least labelled my own thoughts. I suppose what we all desire is to improve the condition of the people by whom we are employed, and to advance our country, or at any rate to save it from retrogression."

"That of course."

"So much is of course. I give credit to my opponents in Parliament for that desire quite as readily as I do to my colleagues or to myself. The idea that political virtue is all on one side is both mischievous and absurd. We allow ourselves to talk in that way because indignation, scorn, and sometimes, I fear, vituperation, are the fuel with which the necessary heat of debate is maintained."

"There are some men who are very fond of poking the fire," said Phineas.

"Well; I won't name any one at present," said the Duke, "but I have seen gentlemen of your country very handy with the pokers." Phineas laughed, knowing that he had been considered by some to have been a little violent when defending the Duke. "But we put all that aside when we really think, and can give the Conservative credit for philanthropy and patriotism as readily as the Liberal. The Conservative who has had any idea of the meaning of the name which he carries, wishes, I suppose, to maintain the differences and the distances which separate the highly placed from their lower brethren. He thinks that God has divided the world as he finds it divided, and that he may best do his duty by making the inferior man happy and contented in his position, teaching him that the place which he holds is his by God's ordinance."

"And it is so."

"Hardly in the sense that I mean. But that is the great Conservative lesson. That lesson seems to me to be hardly compatible with continual improvement in the condition of the lower man. But with the Conservative all such improvement is to be based on the idea of the maintenance of those distances. I as a Duke am to be kept as far apart from the man who drives my horses as was my ancestor from the man who drove his, or who rode after him to the wars,--and that is to go on for ever. There is much to be said for such a scheme. Let the lords be, all of them, men with loving hearts, and clear intellect, and noble instincts, and it is possible that they should use their powers so beneficently as to spread happiness over the earth. It is one of the millenniums which the mind of man can conceive, and seems to be that which the Conservative mind does conceive."

"But the other men who are not lords don't want that kind of happiness."

"If such happiness were attainable it might be well to constrain men to accept it. But the lords of this world are fallible men; and though as units they ought to be and perhaps are better than those others who have fewer advantages, they are much more likely as units to go astray in opinion than the bodies of men whom they would seek to govern. We know that power does corrupt, and that we cannot trust kings to have loving hearts, and clear intellects, and noble instincts. Men as they come to think about it and to look forward, and to look back, will not believe in such a millennium as that."

"Do they believe in any millennium?"

"I think they do after a fashion, and I think that I do myself. That is my idea of Conservatism. The doctrine of Liberalism is, of course, the reverse. The Liberal, if he have any fixed idea at all, must, I think, have conceived the idea of lessening distances,--of bringing the coachman and the duke nearer together,--nearer and nearer, till a millennium shall be reached by--"

"By equality?" asked Phineas, eagerly interrupting the Prime Minister, and showing his dissent by the tone of his voice.

"I did not use the word, which is open to many objections. In the first place the millennium, which I have perhaps rashly named, is so distant that we need not even think of it as possible. Men's intellects are at present so various that we cannot even realise the idea of equality, and here in England we have been taught to hate the word by the evil effects of those absurd attempts which have been made elsewhere to proclaim it as a fact accomplished by the scratch of a pen or by a chisel on a stone. We have been injured in that, because a good word signifying a grand idea has been driven out of the vocabulary of good men. Equality would be a heaven, if we could attain it. How can we to whom so much has been given dare to think otherwise? How can you look at the bowed back and bent legs and abject face of that poor ploughman, who winter and summer has to drag his rheumatic limbs to his work, while you go a-hunting or sit in pride of place among the foremost few of your country, and say that it all is as it ought to be? You are a Liberal because you know that it is not all as it ought to be, and because you would still march on to some nearer approach to equality; though the thing itself is so great, so glorious, so godlike,--nay, so absolutely divine,--that you have been disgusted by the very promise of it, because its perfection is unattainable. Men have asserted a mock equality till the very idea of equality stinks in men's nostrils."

The Duke in his enthusiasm had thrown off his hat, and was sitting on a wooden seat which they had reached, looking up among the clouds. His left hand was clenched, and from time to time with his right he rubbed the thin hairs on his brow. He had begun in a low voice, with a somewhat slipshod enunciation of his words, but had gradually become clear, resonant, and even eloquent. Phineas knew that there were stories told of certain bursts of words which had come from him in former days in the House of Commons. These had occasionally surprised men and induced them to declare that Planty Pall,--as he was then often called,--was a dark horse. But they had been few and far between, and Phineas had never heard them. Now he gazed at his companion in silence, wondering whether the speaker would go on with his speech. But the face changed on a sudden, and the Duke with an awkward motion snatched up his hat. "I hope you ain't cold," he said.

"Not at all," said Phineas.

"I came here because of that bend of the river. I am always very fond of that bend. We don't go over the river. That is Mr. Upjohn's property."

"The member for the county?"

"Yes; and a very good member he is too, though he doesn't support us;--an old-school Tory, but a great friend of my uncle, who after all had a good deal of the Tory about him. I wonder whether he is at home. I must remind the Duchess to ask him to dinner. You know him, of course."

"Only by just seeing him in the House."

"You'd like him very much. When in the country he always wears knee-breeches and gaiters, which I think a very comfortable dress."

"Troublesome, Duke; isn't it?"

"I never tried it, and I shouldn't dare now. Goodness, me; it's past five o'clock, and we've got two miles to get home. I haven't looked at a letter, and Warburton will think that I've thrown myself into the river because of Sir Timothy Beeswax." Then they started to go home at a fast pace.

"I shan't forget, Duke," said Phineas, "your definition of Conservatives and Liberals."

"I don't think I ventured on a definition;--only a few loose ideas which had been troubling me lately. I say, Finn!"

"Your Grace?"

"Don't you go and tell Ramsden and Drummond that I have been preaching equality, or we shall have a pretty mess. I don't know that it would serve me with my dear friend, the Duke."

"I will be discretion itself."

"Equality is a dream. But sometimes one likes to dream,--especially as there is no danger that Matching will fly from me in a dream. I doubt whether I could bear the test that has been attempted in other countries."

"That poor ploughman would hardly get his share, Duke."

"No;--that's where it is. We can only do a little and a little to bring it nearer to us;--so little that it won't touch Matching in our day. Here is her ladyship and the ponies. I don't think her ladyship would like to lose her ponies by my doctrine."

The two wives of the two men were in the pony carriage, and the little Lady Glencora, the Duchess's eldest daughter, was sitting between them. "Mr. Warburton has sent three messengers to demand your presence," said the Duchess, "and, as I live by bread, I believe that you and Mr. Finn have been amusing yourselves!"

"We have been talking politics," said the Duke.

"Of course. What other amusement was possible? But what business have you to indulge in idle talk when Mr. Warburton wants you in the library? There has come a box," she said, "big enough to contain the resignations of all the traitors of the party." This was strong language, and the Duke frowned;--but there was no one there to hear it but Phineas Finn and his wife, and they, at least, were trustworthy. The Duke suggested that he had better get back to the house as soon as possible. There might be something to be done requiring time before dinner. Mr. Warburton might, at any rate, want to smoke a tranquil cigar after his day's work. The Duchess therefore left the carriage, as did Mrs. Finn, and the Duke undertook to drive the little girl back to the house. "He'll surely go against a tree," said the Duchess. But,--as a fact,--the Duke did take himself and the child home in safety.

"And what do you think about it, Mr. Finn?" said her Grace. "I suppose you and the Duke have been settling what is to be done."

"We have certainly settled nothing."

"Then you must have disagreed."

"That we as certainly have not done. We have in truth not once been out of cloud-land."

"Ah;--then there is no hope. When once grown-up politicians get into cloud-land it is because the realities of the world have no longer any charm for them."

The big box did not contain the resignations of any of the objectionable members of the Coalition. Ministers do not often resign in September,--nor would it be expedient that they should do so. Lord Drummond and Sir Timothy were safe, at any rate, till next February, and might live without any show either of obedience or mutiny. The Duke remained in comparative quiet at Matching. There was not very much to do, except to prepare the work for the next Session. The great work of the coming year was to be the assimilation, or something very near to the assimilation, of the county suffrages with those of the boroughs. The measure was one which had now been promised by statesmen for the last two years,--promised at first with that half promise which would mean nothing, were it not that such promises always lead to more defined assurances. The Duke of St. Bungay, Lord Drummond, and other Ministers had wished to stave it off. Mr. Monk was eager for its adoption, and was of course supported by Phineas Finn. The Prime Minister had at first been inclined to be led by the old Duke. There was no doubt to him but that the measure was desirable and would come, but there might well be a question as to the time at which it should be made to come. The old Duke knew that the measure would come,--but believing it to be wholly undesirable, thought that he was doing good work in postponing it from year to year. But Mr. Monk had become urgent, and the old Duke had admitted the necessity. There must surely have been a shade of melancholy on that old man's mind as, year after year, he assisted in pulling down institutions which he in truth regarded as the safeguards of the nation;--but which he knew that, as a Liberal, he was bound to assist in destroying! It must have occurred to him, from time to time, that it would be well for him to depart and be at peace before everything was gone.

When he went from Matching Mr. Monk took his place, and Phineas Finn, who had gone up to London for a while, returned; and then the three between them, with assistance from Mr. Warburton and others, worked out the proposed scheme of the new county franchise, with the new divisions and the new constituencies. But it could hardly have been hearty work, as they all of them felt that whatever might be their first proposition they would be beat upon it in a House of Commons which thought that this Aristides had been long enough at the Treasury.

LXIX. Mrs. Parker's Fate

Lopez had now been dead more than five months, and not a word had been heard by his widow of Mrs. Parker and her children. Her own sorrows had been so great that she had hardly thought of those of the poor woman who had come to her but a few days before her husband's death, telling her of ruin caused by her husband's treachery. But late on the evening before her departure for Herefordshire,--very shortly after Everett had left the house,--there was a ring at the door, and a poorly-clad female asked to see Mrs. Lopez. The poorly-clad female was Sexty Parker's wife. The servant, who did not remember her, would not leave her alone in the hall, having an eye to the coats and umbrellas, but called up one of the maids to carry the message. The poor woman understood the insult and resented it in her heart. But Mrs. Lopez recognised the name in a moment, and went down to her in the parlour, leaving Mr. Wharton upstairs. Mrs. Parker, smarting from her present grievance, had bent her mind on complaining at once of the treatment she had received from the servant, but the sight of the widow's weeds quelled her. Emily had never been much given to fine clothes, either as a girl or as a married woman; but it had always been her husband's pleasure that she should be well dressed,--though he had never carried his trouble so far as to pay the bills; and Mrs. Parker's remembrance of her friend at Dovercourt had been that of a fine lady in bright apparel. Now a black shade,--something almost like a dark ghost,--glided into the room, and Mrs. Parker forgot her recent injury. Emily came forward and offered her hand, and was the first to speak. "I have had a great sorrow since we met," she said.

"Yes, indeed, Mrs. Lopez. I don't think there is anything left in the world now except sorrow."

"I hope Mr. Parker is well. Will you not sit down, Mrs. Parker?"

"Thank you, ma'am. Indeed, then, he is not well at all. How should he be well? Everything,--everything has been taken away from him." Poor Emily groaned as she heard this. "I wouldn't say a word against them as is gone, Mrs. Lopez, if I could help it. I know it is bad to bear when him who once loved you isn't no more. And perhaps it is all the worse when things didn't go well with him, and it was, maybe, his own fault. I wouldn't do it, Mrs. Lopez, if I could help it."

"Let me hear what you have to say," said Emily, determined to suffer everything patiently.

"Well;--it is just this. He has left us that bare that there is nothing left. And that, they say, isn't the worst of all,--though what can be worse than doing that, how is a woman to think? Parker was that soft, and he had that way with him of talking, that he has talked me and mine out of the very linen on our backs."

"What do you mean by saying that that is not the worst?"

"They've come upon Sexty for a bill for four hundred and fifty,--something to do with that stuff they call Bios,--and Sexty says it isn't his name at all. But he's been in that state he don't hardly know how to swear to anything. But he's sure he didn't sign it. The bill was brought to him by Lopez, and there was words between them, and he wouldn't have nothing to do with it. How is he to go to law? And it don't make much difference neither, for they can't take much more from him than they have taken." Emily as she heard all this sat shivering, trying to repress her groans. "Only," continued Mrs. Parker, "they hadn't sold the furniture, and I was thinking they might let me stay in the house, and try to do with letting lodgings,--and now they're seizing everything along of this bill. Sexty is like a madman, swearing this and swearing that;--but what can he do, Mrs. Lopez? It's as like his hand as two peas; but he was clever at everything was--was--you know who I mean, ma'am." Then Emily covered her face with her hands and burst into violent tears. She had not determined whether she did or did not believe this last accusation made against her husband. She had had hardly time to realise the criminality of the offence imputed. But she did believe that the woman before her had been ruined by her husband's speculations. "It's very bad, ma'am; isn't it?" said Mrs. Parker, crying for company. "It's bad all round. If you had five children as hadn't bread you'd know how it is that I feel. I've got to go back by the 10.15 to-night, and when I've paid for a third-class ticket I shan't have but twopence left in the world."

This utter depth of immediate poverty, this want of bread for the morrow and the next day, Emily could relieve out of her own pocket. And, thinking of this and remembering that her purse was not with her at the moment, she started up with the idea of getting it. But it occurred to her that that would not suffice; that her duty required more of her than that. And yet, by her own power, she could do no more. From month to month, almost from week to week, since her husband's death, her father had been called upon to satisfy claims for money which he would not resist, lest by doing so he should add to her misery. She had felt that she ought to bind herself to the strictest personal economy because of the miserable losses to which she had subjected him by her ill-starred marriage. "What would you wish me to do?" she said, resuming her seat.

"You are rich," said Mrs. Parker. Emily shook her head. "They say your papa is rich. I thought you would not like to see me in want like this."

"Indeed, indeed, it makes me very unhappy."

"Wouldn't your papa do something? It wasn't Sexty's fault nigh so much as it was his. I wouldn't say it to you if it wasn't for starving. I wouldn't say it to you if it wasn't for the children. I'd lie in the ditch and die if it was only myself, because--because I know what your feelings is. But what wouldn't you do, and what wouldn't you say, if you had five children at home as hadn't a loaf of bread among 'em?" Hereupon Emily got up and left the room, bidding her visitor wait for a few minutes. Presently the offensive butler came in, who had wronged Mrs. Parker by watching his master's coats, and brought a tray with meat and wine. Mr. Wharton, said the altered man, hoped that Mrs. Parker would take a little refreshment, and he would be down himself very soon. Mrs. Parker, knowing that strength for her journey home would be necessary to her, remembering that she would have to walk all through the city to the Bishopsgate Street station, did take some refreshment, and permitted herself to drink the glass of sherry that her late enemy had benignantly poured out for her.

Emily had been nearly half-an-hour with her father before Mr. Wharton's heavy step was heard upon the stairs. And when he reached the dining-room door he paused a moment before he ventured to turn the lock. He had not told Emily what he would do, and had hardly as yet made up his own mind. As every fresh call was made upon him, his hatred for the memory of the man who had stepped in and disturbed his whole life, and turned all the mellow satisfaction of his evening into storm and gloom, was of course increased. The scoundrel's name was so odious to him that he could hardly keep himself from shuddering visibly before his daughter even when the servants called her by it. But yet he had determined that he would devote himself to save her from further suffering. It had been her fault, no doubt. But she was expiating it in very sackcloth and ashes, and he would add nothing to the burden on her back. He would pay, and pay, and pay, merely remembering that what he paid must be deducted from her share of his property. He had never intended to make what is called an elder son of Everett, and now there was less necessity than ever that he should do so, as Everett had become an elder son in another direction. He could satisfy almost any demand that might be made without material injury to himself. But these demands, one after another, scalded him by their frequency, and by the baseness of the man who had occasioned them. His daughter had now repeated to him with sobbings and wailings the whole story as it had been told to her by the woman downstairs. "Papa," she had said, "I don't know how to tell you or how not." Then he had encouraged her, and had listened without saying a word. He had endeavoured not even to shrink as the charge of forgery was repeated to him by his own child,--the widow of the guilty man. He endeavoured not to remember at the moment that she had claimed this wretch as the chosen one of her maiden heart, in opposition to all his wishes. It hardly occurred to him to disbelieve the accusation. It was so probable! What was there to hinder the man from forgery, if he could only make it believed that his victim had signed the bill when intoxicated? He heard it all;--kissed his daughter, and then went down to the dining-room.

Mrs. Parker, when she saw him, got up, and curtsied low, and then sat down again. Old Wharton looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows before he spoke, and then sat opposite to her. "Madam," he said, "this is a very sad story that I have heard." Mrs. Parker again rose, again curtsied, and put her handkerchief to her face. "It is of no use talking any more about it here."

"No, sir," said Mrs. Parker.

"I and my daughter leave town early to-morrow morning."

"Indeed, sir. Mrs. Lopez didn't tell me."

"My clerk will be in London, at No. 12, Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, till I come back. Do you think you can find the place? I have written it there."

"Yes, sir, I can find it," said Mrs. Parker, just raising herself from her chair at every word she spoke.

"I have written his name, you see. Mr. Crumpy."

"Yes, sir."

"If you will permit me, I will give you two sovereigns now."

"Thank you, sir."

"And if you can make it convenient to call on Mr. Crumpy every Thursday morning about twelve, he will pay you two sovereigns a week till I come back to town. Then I will see about it."

"God Almighty bless you, sir!"

"And as to the furniture, I will write to my attorney, Mr. Walker. You need not trouble yourself by going to him."

"No, sir."

"If necessary, he will send to you, and he will see what can be done. Good night, Mrs. Parker." Then he walked across the room with two sovereigns which he dropped in her hand. Mrs. Parker, with many sobs, bade him farewell, and Mr. Wharton stood in the hall immovable till the front door had been closed behind her. "I have settled it," he said to Emily. "I'll tell you to-morrow, or some day. Don't worry yourself now, but go to bed." She looked wistfully,--so sadly, up into his face, and then did as he bade her.

But Mr. Wharton could not go to bed without further trouble. It was incumbent on him to write full particulars that very night both to Mr. Walker and to Mr. Crumpy. And the odious letters in the writing became very long;--odious because he had to confess in them over and over again that his daughter, the very apple of his eye, had been the wife of a scoundrel. To Mr. Walker he had to tell the whole story of the alleged forgery, and in doing so could not abstain from the use of hard words. "I don't suppose that it can be proved, but there is every reason to believe that it's true." And again--"I believe the man to have been as vile a scoundrel as ever was made by the love of money." Even to Mr. Crumpy he could not be reticent. "She is an object of pity," he said. "Her husband was ruined by the infamous speculations of Mr. Lopez." Then he betook himself to bed. Oh, how happy would he be to pay the two pounds weekly,--even to add to that the amount of the forged bill, if by doing so he might be saved from ever again hearing the name of Lopez.

The amount of the bill was ultimately lost by the bankers who had advanced money on it. As for Mrs. Sexty Parker, from week to week, and from month to month, and at last from year to year, she and her children,--and probably her husband also,--were supported by the weekly pension of two sovereigns which she always received on Thursday morning from the hands of Mr. Crumpy himself. In a little time the one excitement of her life was the weekly journey to Mr. Crumpy, whom she came to regard as a man appointed by Providence to supply her with 40s. on Thursday morning. As to poor Sexty Parker,--it is to be feared that he never again became a prosperous man.

"You will tell me what you did for that poor woman, papa," said Emily, leaning over her father in the train.

"I have settled it, my dear."

"You said you'd tell me."

"Crumpy will pay her two pounds a week till we know more about it." Emily pressed her father's hand and that was an end. No one ever did know any more about it, and Crumpy continued to pay the money.

LXX. At Wharton

When Mr. Wharton and his daughter reached Wharton Hall there were at any rate no Fletchers there as yet. Emily, as she was driven from the station to the house, had not dared to ask a question or even to prompt her father to do so. He would probably have told her that on such an occasion there was but little chance that she would find any visitors, and none at all that she would find Arthur Fletcher. But she was too confused and too ill at ease to think of probabilities, and to the last was in trepidation, specially lest she should meet her lover. She found, however, at Wharton Hall none but Whartons, and she found also to her great relief that this change in the heir relieved her of much of the attention which must otherwise have added to her troubles. At the first glance her dress and demeanour struck them so forcibly that they could not avoid showing their feeling. Of course they had expected to see her in black,--had expected to see her in widow's weeds. But, with her, her very face and limbs had so adapted themselves to her crape, that she looked like a monument of bereaved woe. Lady Wharton took the mourner up into her own room, and there made her a little speech. "We have all wept for you," she said, "and grieve for you still. But excessive grief is wicked, especially in the young. We will do our best to make you happy, and hope we shall succeed. All this about dear Everett ought to be a comfort to you." Emily promised that she would do her best, not, however, taking much immediate comfort from the prospects of dear Everett. Lady Wharton certainly had never in her life spoken of dear Everett while the wicked cousin was alive. Then Mary Wharton also made her little speech. "Dear Emily, I will do all that I can. Pray try to believe in me." But Everett was so much the hero of the hour, that there was not much room for general attention to any one else.

There was very much room for triumph in regard to Everett. It had already been ascertained that the Wharton who was now dead had had a child,--but that the child was a daughter. Oh,--what salvation or destruction there may be to an English gentleman in the sex of an infant! This poor baby was now little better than a beggar brat, unless the relatives who were utterly disregardful of its fate, should choose, in their charity, to make some small allowance for its maintenance. Had it by chance been a boy, Everett Wharton would have been nobody; and the child, rescued from the iniquities of his parents, would have been nursed in the best bedroom of Wharton Hall, and cherished with the warmest kisses, and would have been the centre of all the hopes of all the Whartons. But the Wharton lawyer by use of reckless telegrams had certified himself that the infant was a girl, and Everett was the hero of the day. He found himself to be possessed of a thousand graces, even in his father's eyesight. It seemed to be taken as a mark of his special good fortune that he had not clung to any business. To have been a banker immersed in the making of money, or even a lawyer attached to his circuit and his court, would have lessened his fitness, or at any rate his readiness, for the duties which he would have to perform. He would never be a very rich man, but he would have a command of ready money, and of course he would go into Parliament.

In his new position as,--not quite head of his family, but head expectant,--it seemed to him to be his duty to lecture his sister. It might be well that some one should lecture her with more severity than her father used. Undoubtedly she was succumbing to the wretchedness of her position in a manner that was repugnant to humanity generally. There is no power so useful to man as that capacity of recovering himself after a fall, which belongs especially to those who possess a healthy mind in a healthy body. It is not rare to see one,--generally a woman,--whom a sorrow gradually kills; and there are those among us, who hardly perhaps envy, but certainly admire, a spirit so delicate as to be snuffed out by a woe. But it is the weakness of the heart rather than the strength of the feeling which has in such cases most often produced the destruction. Some endurance of fibre has been wanting, which power of endurance is a noble attribute. Everett Wharton saw something of this, and being, now, the heir apparent of the family, took his sister to task. "Emily," he said, "you make us all unhappy when we look at you."

"Do I?" she said. "I am sorry for that;--but why should you look at me?"

"Because you are one of us. Of course we cannot shake you off. We would not if we could. We have all been very unhappy because,--because of what has happened. But don't you think you ought to make some sacrifice to us,--to our father, I mean, and to Sir Alured and Lady Wharton? When you go on weeping, other people have to weep too. I have an idea that people ought to be happy if it be only for the sake of their neighbours."

"What am I to do, Everett?"

"Talk to people a little, and smile sometimes. Move about quicker. Don't look when you come into a room as if you were consecrating it to tears. And, if I may venture to say so, drop something of the heaviness of your mourning."

"Do you mean that I am a hypocrite?"

"No;--I mean nothing of the kind. You know I don't. But you may exert yourself for the benefit of others without being untrue to your own memories. I am sure you know what I mean. Make a struggle and see if you cannot do something."

She did make a struggle, and she did do something. No one, not well versed in the mysteries of feminine dress, could say very accurately what it was that she had done; but every one felt that something of the weight was reduced. At first, as her brother's words came upon her ear, and as she felt the blows which they inflicted on her, she accused him in her heart of cruelty. They were very hard to bear. There was a moment in which she was almost tempted to turn upon him and tell him that he knew nothing of her sorrows. But she restrained herself, and when she was alone she acknowledged to herself that he had spoken the truth. No one has a right to go about the world as a Niobe, damping all joys with selfish tears. What did she not owe to her father, who had warned her so often against the evil she had contemplated, and had then, from the first moment after the fault was done, forgiven her the doing of it? She had at any rate learned from her misfortunes the infinite tenderness of his heart, which in the days of their unalloyed prosperity he had never felt the necessity of exposing to her. So she struggled and did do something. She pressed Lady Wharton's hand, and kissed her cousin Mary, and throwing herself into her father's arms when they were alone, whispered to him that she would try. "What you told me, Everett, was quite right," she said afterwards to her brother.

"I didn't mean to be savage," he answered with a smile.

"It was quite right, and I have thought of it, and I will do my best. I will keep it to myself if I can. It is not quite, perhaps, what you think it is, but I will keep it to myself." She fancied that they did not understand her, and perhaps she was right. It was not only that he had died and left her a young widow;--nor even that his end had been so harsh a tragedy and so foul a disgrace! It was not only that her love had been misbestowed,--not only that she had made so grievous an error in the one great act of her life which she had chosen to perform on her own judgment! Perhaps the most crushing memory of all was that which told her that she, who had through all her youth been regarded as a bright star in the family, had been the one person to bring a reproach upon the name of all these people who were so good to her. How shall a person conscious of disgrace, with a mind capable of feeling the crushing weight of personal disgrace, move and look and speak as though that disgrace had been washed away? But she made the struggle, and did not altogether fail.

As regarded Sir Alured, in spite of this poor widow's crape, he was very happy at this time, and his joy did in some degree communicate itself to the old barrister. Everett was taken round to every tenant and introduced as the heir. Mr. Wharton had already declared his purpose of abdicating any possible possession of the property. Should he outlive Sir Alured he must be the baronet; but when that sad event should take place, whether Mr. Wharton should then be alive or no, Everett should at once be the possessor of Wharton Hall. Sir Alured, under these circumstances, discussed his own death with extreme satisfaction, and insisted on having it discussed by the others. That he should have gone and left everything at the mercy of the spendthrift had been terrible to his old heart;--but now, the man coming to the property would have £60,000 with which to support and foster Wharton, with which to mend, as it were, the crevices, and stop up the holes of the estate. He seemed to be almost impatient for Everett's ownership, giving many hints as to what should be done when he himself was gone. He must surely have thought that he would return to Wharton as a spirit, and take a ghostly share in the prosperity of the farms. "You will find John Griffith a very good man," said the baronet. John Griffith had been a tenant on the estate for the last half-century, and was an older man than his landlord; but the baronet spoke of all this as though he himself were about to leave Wharton for ever in the course of the next week. "John Griffith has been a good man, and if not always quite ready with his rent, has never been much behind. You won't be hard on John Griffith?"

"I hope I mayn't have the opportunity, sir."

"Well;--well;--well; that's as may be. But I don't quite know what to say about young John. The farm has gone from father to son, and there's never been a word of a lease."

"Is there anything wrong about the young man?"

"He's a little given to poaching."

"Oh dear!"

"I've always got him off for his father's sake. They say he's going to marry Sally Jones. That may take it out of him. I do like the farms to go from father to son, Everett. It's the way that everything should go. Of course there's no right."

"Nothing of that kind, I suppose," said Everett, who was in his way a reformer, and had Radical notions with which he would not for worlds have disturbed the baronet at present.

"No;--nothing of that kind. God in his mercy forbid that a landlord in England should ever be robbed after that fashion." Sir Alured, when he was uttering this prayer, was thinking of what he had heard of an Irish Land Bill, the details of which, however, had been altogether incomprehensible to him. "But I have a feeling about it, Everett; and I hope you will share it. It is good that things should go from father to son. I never make a promise; but the tenants know what I think about it, and then the father works for the son. Why should he work for a stranger? Sally Jones is a very good young woman, and perhaps young John will do better." There was not a field or a fence that he did not show to his heir;--hardly a tree which he left without a word. "That bit of woodland coming in there,--they call it Barnton Spinnies,--doesn't belong to the estate at all." This he said in a melancholy tone.

"Doesn't it, really?"

"And it comes right in between Lane's farm and Puddock's. They've always let me have the shooting as a compliment. Not that there's ever anything in it. It's only seven acres. But I like the civility."

"Who does it belong to?"

"It belongs to Benet."

"What; Corpus Christi?"

"Yes, yes;--they've changed the name. It used to be Benet in my days. Walker says the College would certainly sell, but you'd have to pay for the land and the wood separately. I don't know that you'd get much out of it; but it's very unsightly,--on the survey map, I mean."

"We'll buy it, by all means," said Everett, who was already jingling his £60,000 in his pocket.

"I never had the money, but I think it should be bought." And Sir Alured rejoiced in the idea that when his ghost should look at the survey map, that hiatus of Barnton Spinnies would not trouble his spectral eyes.

In this way months ran on at Wharton. Our Whartons had come down in the latter half of August, and at the beginning of September Mr. Wharton returned to London. Everett, of course, remained, as he was still learning the lesson of which he was in truth becoming a little weary; and at last Emily had also been persuaded to stay in Herefordshire. Her father promised to return, not mentioning any precise time, but giving her to understand that he would come before the winter. He went, and probably found that his taste for the Eldon and for whist had returned to him. In the middle of November old Mrs. Fletcher arrived. Emily was not aware of what was being done; but, in truth, the Fletchers and Whartons combined were conspiring with the view of bringing her back to her former self. Mrs. Fletcher had not yielded without some difficulty,--for it was a part of this conspiracy that Arthur was to be allowed to marry the widow. But John had prevailed. "He'll do it any way, mother," he had said, "whether you and I like it or not. And why on earth shouldn't he do as he pleases?"

"Think what the man was, John!"

"It's more to the purpose to think what the woman is. Arthur has made up his mind, and, if I know him, he's not the man to be talked out of it." And so the old woman had given in, and had at last consented to go forward as the advanced guard of the Fletchers, and lay siege to the affections of the woman whom she had once so thoroughly discarded from her heart.

"My dear," she said, when they first met, "if there has been anything wrong between you and me, let it be among the things that are past. You always used to kiss me. Give me a kiss now." Of course Emily kissed her; and after that Mrs. Fletcher patted her and petted her, and gave her lozenges, which she declared in private to be "the sovereignest thing on earth" for debilitated nerves. And then it came out by degrees that John Fletcher and his wife and all the little Fletchers were coming to Wharton for the Christmas weeks. Everett had gone, but was also to be back for Christmas, and Mr. Wharton's visit was also postponed. It was absolutely necessary that Everett should be at Wharton for the Christmas festivities, and expedient that Everett's father should be there to see them. In this way Emily had no means of escape. Her father wrote telling her of his plans, saying that he would bring her back after Christmas. Everett's heirship had made these Christmas festivities,--which were, however, to be confined to the two families,--quite a necessity. In all this not a word was said about Arthur, nor did she dare to ask whether he was expected. The younger Mrs. Fletcher, John's wife, opened her arms to the widow in a manner that almost plainly said that she regarded Emily as her future sister-in-law. John Fletcher talked to her about Longbarns, and the children,--complete Fletcher talk,--as though she were already one of them, never, however, mentioning Arthur's name. The old lady got down a fresh supply of the lozenges from London because those she had by her might perhaps be a little stale. And then there was another sign which after a while became plain to Emily. No one in either family ever mentioned her name. It was not singular that none of them should call her Mrs. Lopez, as she was Emily to all of them. But they never so described her even in speaking to the servants. And the servants themselves, as far as was possible, avoided the odious word. The thing was to be buried, if not in oblivion, yet in some speechless grave. And it seemed that her father was joined in this attempt. When writing to her he usually made some excuse for writing also to Everett, or, in Everett's absence, to the baronet,--so that the letter for his daughter might be enclosed and addressed simply to "Emily".

She understood it all, and though she was moved to continual solitary tears by this ineffable tenderness, yet she rebelled against them. They should never cheat her back into happiness by such wiles as that! It was not fit that she should yield to them. As a woman utterly disgraced it could not become her again to laugh and be joyful, to give and take loving embraces, to sit and smile, perhaps a happy mother, at another man's hearth. For their love she was grateful. For his love she was more than grateful. How constant must be his heart, how grand his nature, how more than manly his strength of character, when he was thus true to her through all the evil she had done! Love him! Yes;--she would pray for him, worship him, fill the remainder of her days with thinking of him, hoping for him, and making his interests her own. Should he ever be married,--and she would pray that he might,--his wife, if possible, should be her friend, his children should be her darlings; and he should always be her hero. But they should not, with all their schemes, cheat her into disgracing him by marrying him.

At last her father came, and it was he who told her that Arthur was expected on the day before Christmas. "Why did you not tell me before, papa, so that I might have asked you to take me away?"

"Because I thought, my dear, that it was better that you should be constrained to meet him. You would not wish to live all your life in terror of seeing Arthur Fletcher?"

"Not all my life."

"Take the plunge and it will be over. They have all been very good to you."

"Too good, papa. I didn't want it."

"They are our oldest friends. There isn't a young man in England I think so highly of as John Fletcher. When I am gone, where are you to look for friends?"

"I'm not ungrateful, papa."

"You can't know them all, and yet keep yourself altogether separated from Arthur. Think what it would be to me never to be able to ask him to the house. He is the only one of the family that lives in London, and now it seems that Everett will spend most of his time down here. Of course it is better that you should meet him and have done with it." There was no answer to be made to this, but still she was fixed in her resolution that she would never meet him as her lover.

Then came the morning of the day on which he was to arrive, and his coming was for the first time spoken openly of at breakfast. "How is Arthur to be brought from the station?" asked old Mrs. Fletcher.

"I'm going to take the dog-cart," said Everett. "Giles will go for the luggage with the pony. He is bringing down a lot of things;--a new saddle, and a gun for me." It had all been arranged for her, this question and answer, and Emily blushed as she felt that it was so.

"We shall be so glad to see Arthur," said young Mrs. Fletcher to her.

"Of course you will."

"He has not been down since the Session was over, and he has got to be quite a speaking man now. I do so hope he'll become something some day."

"I'm sure he will," said Emily.

"Not a judge, however. I hate wigs. Perhaps he might be Lord Chancellor in time." Mrs. Fletcher was not more ignorant than some other ladies in being unaware of the Lord Chancellor's wig and exact position.

At last he came. The 9 A.M. express for Hereford,--express, at least, for the first two or three hours out of London,--brought passengers for Wharton to the nearest station at 3 P.M., and the distance was not above five miles. Before four o'clock Arthur was standing before the drawing-room fire, with a cup of tea in his hand, surrounded by Fletchers and Whartons, and being made much of as the young family member of Parliament. But Emily was not in the room. She had studied her Bradshaw, and learned the hours of the trains, and was now in her bedroom. He had looked around the moment he entered the room, but had not dared to ask for her suddenly. He had said one word about her to Everett in the cart, and that had been all. She was in the house, and he must, at any rate, see her before dinner.

Emily, in order that she might not seem to escape abruptly, had retired early to her solitude. But she, too, knew that the meeting could not be long postponed. She sat thinking of it all, and at last heard the wheels of the vehicle before the door. She paused, listening with all her ears, that she might recognise his voice, or possibly his footstep. She stood near the window, behind the curtain, with her hand pressed to her heart. She heard Everett's voice plainly as he gave some direction to the groom, but from Arthur she heard nothing. Yet she was sure that he was come. The very manner of the approach and her brother's word made her certain that there had been no disappointment. She stood thinking for a quarter of an hour, making up her mind how best they might meet. Then suddenly, with slow but certain step, she walked down into the drawing-room.

No one expected her then, or something perhaps might have been done to encourage her coming. It had been thought that she must meet him before dinner, and her absence till then was to be excused. But now she opened the door, and with much dignity of mien walked into the middle of the room. Arthur at that moment was discussing the Duke's chance for the next Session, and Sir Alured was asking with rapture whether the old Conservative party would not come in. Arthur Fletcher heard the step, turned round, and saw the woman he loved. He went at once to meet her, very quickly, and put out both his hands. She gave him hers, of course. There was no excuse for her refusal. He stood for an instant pressing them, looking eagerly into her sad face, and then he spoke. "God bless you, Emily!" he said, "God bless you!" He had thought of no words, and at the moment nothing else occurred to him to be said. The colour had covered all his face, and his heart beat so strongly that he was hardly his own master. She let him hold her two hands, perhaps for a minute, and then, bursting into tears, tore herself from him, and, hurrying out of the room, made her way again into her own chamber. "It will be better so," said old Mrs. Fletcher. "It will be better so. Do not let any one follow her."

On that day John Fletcher took her out to dinner, and Arthur did not sit near her. In the evening he came to her as she was working close to his mother, and seated himself on a low chair close to her knees. "We are all so glad to see you; are we not, mother?"

"Yes, indeed," said Mrs. Fletcher. Then, after a while, the old woman got up to make a rubber at whist with the two old men and her eldest son, leaving Arthur sitting at the widow's knee. She would willingly have escaped, but it was impossible that she should move.

"You need not be afraid of me," he said, not whispering, but in a voice which no one else could hear. "Do not seem to avoid me, and I will say nothing to trouble you. I think that you must wish that we should be friends."

"Oh, yes."

"Come out, then, to-morrow, when we are walking. In that way we shall get used to each other. You are troubled now, and I will go." Then he left her, and she felt herself to be bound to him by infinite gratitude.

A week went on and she had become used to his company. A week passed and he had spoken no word to her that a brother might not have spoken. They had walked together when no one else had been within hearing, and yet he had spared her. She had begun to think that he would spare her altogether, and she was certainly grateful. Might it not be that she had misunderstood him, and had misunderstood the meaning of them all? Might it not be that she had troubled herself with false anticipations? Surely it was so; for how could it be that such a man should wish to make such a woman his wife?

"Well, Arthur?" said his brother to him one day.

"I have nothing to say about it," said Arthur.

"You haven't changed your mind?"

"Never! Upon my word, to me, in that dress, she is more beautiful than ever."

"I wish you would make her take it off."

"I dare not ask her yet."

"You know what they say about widows generally, my boy."

"That is all very well when one talks about widows in general. It is easy to chaff about women when one hasn't got any woman in one's mind. But as it is now, having her here, loving her as I do,--by heaven! I cannot hurry her. I don't dare to speak to her after that fashion. I shall do it in time, I suppose;--but I must wait till the time comes."

LXXI. The Ladies at Longbarns Doubt

It came at last to be decided among them that when old Mr. Wharton returned to town,--and he had now been at Wharton longer than he had ever been known to remain there before,--Emily should still remain in Herefordshire, and that at some period not then fixed she should go for a month to Longbarns. There were various reasons which induced her to consent to this change of plans. In the first place she found herself to be infinitely more comfortable in the country than in town. She could go out and move about and bestir herself, whereas in Manchester Square she could only sit and mope at home. Her father had assured her that he thought that it would be better that she should be away from the reminiscences of the house in town. And then when the first week of February was past Arthur would be up in town, and she would be far away from him at Longbarns, whereas in London she would be close within his reach. Many little schemes were laid and struggles made both by herself and the others before at last their plans were settled. Mr. Wharton was to return to London in the middle of January. It was quite impossible that he could remain longer away either from Stone Buildings or from the Eldon, and then at the same time, or a day or two following, Mrs. Fletcher was to go back to Longbarns. John Fletcher and his wife and children were already gone,--and Arthur also had been at Longbarns. The two brothers and Everett had been backwards and forwards. Emily was anxious to remain at Wharton at any rate till Parliament should have met, so that she might not be at home with Arthur in his own house. But matters would not arrange themselves exactly as she wished. It was at last settled that she should go to Longbarns with Mary Wharton under the charge of John Fletcher in the first week in February. As arrangements were already in progress for the purchase of Barnton Spinnies, Sir Alured could not possibly leave his own house. Not to have walked through the wood on the first day that it became a part of the Wharton property would to him have been treason to the estate. His experience ought to have told him that there was no chance of a lawyer and a college dealing together with such rapidity; but in the present state of things he could not bear to absent himself. Orders had already been given for the cutting down of certain trees which could not have been touched had the reprobate lived, and it was indispensable that if a tree fell at Wharton he should see the fall. It thus came to pass that there was a week during which Emily would be forced to live under the roof of the Fletchers together with Arthur Fletcher.

The week came and she was absolutely received by Arthur at the door of Longbarns. She had not been at the house since it had first been intimated to the Fletchers that she was disposed to receive with favour the addresses of Ferdinand Lopez. As she remembered this it seemed to her to be an age ago since that man had induced her to believe that of all men she had ever met he was the nearest to a hero. She never spoke of him now, but of course her thoughts of him were never ending,--as also of herself in that she had allowed herself to be so deceived. She would recall to her mind with bitter inward sobbings all those lessons of iniquity which he had striven to teach her, and which had first opened her eyes to his true character,--how sedulously he had endeavoured to persuade her that it was her duty to rob her father on his behalf, how continually he had endeavoured to make her think that appearance in the world was everything, and that, being in truth poor adventurers, it behoved them to cheat the world into thinking them rich and respectable. Every hint that had been so given had been a wound to her, and those wounds were all now remembered. Though since his death she had never allowed a word to be spoken in her presence against him, she could not but hate his memory. How glorious was that other man in her eyes, as he stood there at the door welcoming her to Longbarns, fair-haired, open-eyed, with bronzed brow and cheek, and surely the honestest face that a loving woman ever loved to gaze on. During the various lessons she had learned in her married life, she had become gradually but surely aware that the face of that other man had been dishonest. She had learned the false meaning of every glance of his eyes, the subtlety of his mouth, the counterfeit manoeuvres of his body,--the deceit even of his dress. He had been all a lie from head to foot; and he had thrown her love aside as useless when she also would not be a liar. And here was this man,--spotless in her estimation, compounded of all good qualities, which she could now see and take at their proper value. She hated herself for the simplicity with which she had been cheated by soft words and a false demeanour into so great a sacrifice.

Life at Longbarns was very quiet during the days which she passed there before he left them. She was frequently alone with him, but he, if he still loved her, did not speak of his love. He explained it all one day to his mother. "If it is to be," said the old lady, "I don't see the use of more delay. Of course the marriage ought not to be till March twelvemonths. But if it is understood that it is to be, she might alter her dress by degrees,--and alter her manner of living. Those things should always be done by degrees. I think it had better be settled, Arthur, if it is to be settled."

"I am afraid, mother."

"Dear me! I didn't think you were the man ever to be afraid of a woman. What can she say to you?"

"Refuse me."

"Then you'd better know it at once. But I don't think she'll be fool enough for that."

"Perhaps you hardly understand her, mother."

Mrs. Fletcher shook her head with a look of considerable annoyance. "Perhaps not. But, to tell the truth, I don't like young women whom I can't understand. Young women shouldn't be mysterious. I like people of whom I can give a pretty good guess what they'll do. I'm sure I never could have guessed that she would have married that man."

"If you love me, mother, do not let that be mentioned between us again. When I said that you did not understand her, I did not mean that she was mysterious. I think that before he died, and since his death, she learned of what sort that man was. I will not say that she hates his memory, but she hates herself for what she has done."

"So she ought," said Mrs. Fletcher.

"She has not yet brought herself to think that her life should be anything but one long period of mourning, not for him, but for her own mistake. You may be quite sure that I am in earnest. It is not because I doubt of myself that I put it off. But I fear that if once she asserts to me her resolution to remain as she is, she will feel herself bound to keep her word."

"I suppose she is very much the same as other women, after all, my dear," said Mrs. Fletcher, who was almost jealous of the peculiar superiority of sentiment which her son seemed to attribute to this woman.

"Circumstances, mother, make people different," he replied.

"So you are going without having anything fixed," his elder brother said to him the day before he started.

"Yes, old fellow. It seems to be rather slack;--doesn't it?"

"I dare say you know best what you're about. But if you have set your mind on it--"

"You may take your oath on that."

"Then I don't see why one word shouldn't put it all right. There never is any place so good for that kind of thing as a country house."

"I don't think that with her it will make much difference where the house is, or what the circumstances."

"She knows what you mean as well as I do."

"I dare say she does, John. She must have a very bad idea of me if she doesn't. But she may know what I mean and not mean the same thing herself."

"How are you to know if you don't ask her?"

"You may be sure that I shall ask her as soon as I can hope that my doing so may give her more pleasure than pain. Remember, I have had all this out with her father. I have determined that I will wait till twelve months have passed since that wretched man perished."

On that afternoon before dinner he was alone with her in the library some minutes before they went up to dress for dinner. "I shall hardly see you to-morrow," he said, "as I must leave this at half-past eight. I breakfast at eight. I don't suppose any one will be down except my mother."

"I am generally as early as that. I will come down and see you start."

"I am so glad that you have been here, Emily."

"So am I. Everybody has been so good to me."

"It has been like old days,--almost."

"It will never quite be like old days again, I think. But I have been very glad to be here,--and at Wharton. I sometimes almost wish that I were never going back to London again,--only for papa."

"I like London myself."

"You! Yes, of course you like London. You have everything in life before you. You have things to do, and much to hope for. It is all beginning for you, Arthur."

"I am five years older than you are."

"What does that matter? It seems to me that age does not go by years. It is long since I have felt myself to be an old woman. But you are quite young. Everybody is proud of you, and you ought to be happy."

"I don't know," said he. "It is hard to say what makes a person happy." He almost made up his mind to speak to her then; but he had made up his mind before to put it off still for a little time, and he would not allow himself to be changed on the spur of the moment. He had thought of it much, and he had almost taught himself to think that it would be better for herself that she should not accept another man's love so soon. "I shall come and see you in town," he said.

"You must come and see papa. It seems that Everett is to be a great deal at Wharton. I had better go up to dress now, or I shall be keeping them waiting." He put out his hand to her, and wished her good-bye, excusing himself by saying that they should not be alone together again before he started.

She saw him go on the next morning,--and then she almost felt herself to be abandoned, almost deserted. It was a fine crisp winter day, dry and fresh and clear, but with the frost still on the ground. After breakfast she went out to walk by herself in the long shrubbery paths which went round the house, and here she remained for above an hour. She told herself that she was very thankful to him for not having spoken to her on a subject so unfit for her ears as love. She strengthened herself in her determination never again to listen to a man willingly on that subject. She had made herself unfit to have any dealings of that nature. It was not that she could not love. Oh, no! She knew well enough that she did love,--love with all her heart. If it were not that she were so torn to rags that she was not fit to be worn again, she could now have thrown herself into his arms with a whole heaven of joy before her. A woman, she told herself, had no right to a second chance in life, after having made such a shipwreck of herself in the first. But the danger of being seduced from her judgment by Arthur Fletcher was all over. He had been near her for the last week and had not spoken a word. He had been in the same house with her for the last ten days and had been with her as a brother might be with his sister. It was not only she who had seen the propriety of this. He also had acknowledged it, and she was--grateful to him. As she endeavoured in her solitude to express her gratitude in spoken words the tears rolled down her cheeks. She was glad, she told herself, very glad that it was so. How much trouble and pain to both of them would thus be spared! And yet her tears were bitter tears. It was better as it was;--and yet one word of love would have been very sweet. She almost thought that she would have liked to tell him that for his sake, for his dear sake, she would refuse--that which now would never be offered to her. She was quite clear as to the rectitude of her own judgment, clear as ever. And yet her heart was heavy with disappointment.

It was the end of March before she left Herefordshire for London, having spent the greater part of the time at Longbarns. The ladies at that place were moved by many doubts as to what would be the end of all this. Mrs. Fletcher the elder at last almost taught herself to believe that there would be no marriage, and having got back to that belief, was again opposed to the idea of a marriage. Anything and everything that Arthur wanted he ought to have. The old lady felt no doubt as to that. When convinced that he did want to have this widow,--this woman whose life had hitherto been so unfortunate,--she had for his sake taken the woman again by the hand, and had assisted in making her one of themselves. But how much better it would be that Arthur should think better of it! It was the maddest constancy,--this clinging to the widow of such a man as Ferdinand Lopez! If there were any doubt, then she would be prepared to do all she could to prevent the marriage. Emily had been forgiven, and the pardon bestowed must of course be continued. But she might be pardoned without being made Mrs. Arthur Fletcher. While Emily was still at Longbarns the old lady almost talked over her daughter-in-law to this way of thinking,--till John Fletcher put his foot upon it altogether. "I don't pretend to say what she may do," he said.

"Oh, John," said the mother, "to hear a man like you talk like that is absurd. She'd jump at him if he looked at her with half an eye."

"What she may do," he continued saying, without appearing to listen to his mother, "I cannot say. But that he will ask her to be his wife is as certain as that I stand here."

Chapter LXXII

"He Thinks That Our Days Are Numbered"

All the details of the new County Suffrage Bill were settled at Matching during the recess between Mr. Monk, Phineas Finn, and a very experienced gentleman from the Treasury, one Mr. Prime, who was supposed to know more about such things than any man living, and was consequently called Constitution Charlie. He was an elderly man, over sixty years of age, who remembered the first Reform Bill, and had been engaged in the doctoring of constituencies ever since. The Bill, if passed, would be mainly his Bill, and yet the world would never hear his name as connected with it. Let us hope that he was comfortable at Matching, and that he found his consolation in the smiles of the Duchess. During this time the old Duke was away, and even the Prime Minister was absent for some days. He would fain have busied himself about the Bill himself, but was hardly allowed by his colleagues to have any hand in framing it. The great points of the measure had of course been arranged in the Cabinet,--where, however, Mr. Monk's views had been adopted almost without a change. It may not perhaps be too much to assume that one or two members of the Cabinet did not quite understand the full scope of every suggested clause. The effects which clauses will produce, the dangers which may be expected from this or that change, the manner in which this or that proposition will come out in the washing, do not strike even Cabinet Ministers at a glance. A little study in a man's own cabinet, after the reading perhaps of a few leading articles, and perhaps a short conversation with an astute friend or two, will enable a statesman to be strong at a given time for, or even, if necessary, against a measure, who has listened in silence, and has perhaps given his personal assent, to the original suggestion. I doubt whether Lord Drummond, when he sat silent in the Cabinet, had realised those fears which weighed upon him so strongly afterwards, or had then foreseen that the adoption of a nearly similar franchise for the counties and boroughs must inevitably lead to the American system of numerical representation. But when time had been given him, and he and Sir Timothy had talked it all over, the mind of no man was ever clearer than that of Lord Drummond.

The Prime Minister, with the diligence which belonged to him, had mastered all the details of Mr. Monk's Bill before it was discussed in the Cabinet, and yet he found that his assistance was hardly needed in the absolute preparation. Had they allowed him he would have done it all himself. But it was assumed that he would not trouble himself with such work, and he perceived that he was not wanted. Nothing of moment was settled without a reference to him. He required that everything should be explained as it went on, down to the extension of every borough boundary; but he knew that he was not doing it himself, and that Mr. Monk and Constitution Charlie had the prize between them.

Nor did he dare to ask Mr. Monk what would be the fate of the Bill. To devote all one's time and mind and industry to a measure which one knows will fall to the ground must be sad. Work under such circumstances must be very grievous. But such is often the fate of statesmen. Whether Mr. Monk laboured under such a conviction the Prime Minister did not know, though he saw his friend and colleague almost daily. In truth no one dared to tell him exactly what he thought. Even the old Duke had become partially reticent, and taken himself off to his own woods at Long Royston. To Phineas Finn the Prime Minister would sometimes say a word, but would say even that timidly. On any abstract question, such as that which he had discussed when they had been walking together, he could talk freely enough. But on the matter of the day, those affairs which were of infinite importance to himself, and on which one would suppose he would take delight in speaking to a trusted colleague, he could not bring himself to be open. "It must be a long Bill, I suppose?" he said to Phineas one day.

"I'm afraid so, Duke. It will run, I fear, to over a hundred clauses."

"It will take you the best part of the Session to get through it?"

"If we can have the second reading early in March, we hope to send it up to you in the first week in June. That will give us ample time."

"Yes;--yes. I suppose so." But he did not dare to ask Phineas Finn whether he thought that the House of Commons would assent to the second reading. It was known at this time that the Prime Minister was painfully anxious as to the fate of the Ministry. It seemed to be but the other day that everybody connected with the Government was living in fear lest he should resign. His threats in that direction had always been made to his old friend the Duke of St. Bungay; but a great man cannot whisper his thoughts without having them carried in the air. In all the clubs it had been declared that that was the rock by which the Coalition would probably be wrecked. The newspapers had repeated the story, and the "People's Banner" had assured the world that if it were so the Duke of Omnium would thus do for his country the only good service which it was possible that he should render it. That was at the time when Sir Orlando was mutinous and when Lopez had destroyed himself. But now no such threat came from the Duke, and the "People's Banner" was already accusing him of clinging to power with pertinacious and unconstitutional tenacity. Had not Sir Orlando deserted him? Was it not well known that Lord Drummond and Sir Timothy Beeswax were only restrained from doing so by a mistaken loyalty?

Everybody came up to town, Mr. Monk having his Bill in his pocket, and the Queen's speech was read, promising the County Suffrage Bill. The address was voted with a very few words from either side. The battle was not to be fought then. Indeed, the state of things was so abnormal that there could hardly be said to be any sides in the House. A stranger in the gallery, not knowing the condition of affairs, would have thought that no minister had for many years commanded so large a majority, as the crowd of members was always on the Government side of the House; but the opposition which Mr. Monk expected would, he knew, come from those who sat around him, behind him, and even at his very elbow. About a week after Parliament met the Bill was read for the first time, and the second reading was appointed for an early day in March.

The Duke had suggested to Mr. Monk the expedience of some further delay, giving as his reason the necessity of getting through certain routine work, should the rejection of the Bill create the confusion of a resignation. No one who knew the Duke could ever suspect him of giving a false reason. But it seemed that in this the Prime Minister was allowing himself to be harassed by fears of the future. Mr. Monk thought that any delay would be injurious and open to suspicion after what had been said and done, and was urgent in his arguments. The Duke gave way, but he did so almost sullenly, signifying his acquiescence with haughty silence. "I am sorry," said Mr. Monk, "to differ from your Grace, but my opinion in the matter is so strong that I do not dare to abstain from expressing it." The Duke bowed again and smiled. He had intended that the smile should be acquiescent, but it had been as cold as steel. He knew that he was misbehaving, but was not sufficiently master of his own manner to be gracious. He told himself on the spot,--though he was quite wrong in so telling himself,--that he had now made an enemy also of Mr. Monk, and through Mr. Monk of Phineas Finn. And now he felt that he had no friend left in whom to trust,--for the old Duke had become cold and indifferent. The old Duke, he thought, was tired of his work and anxious for rest. It was the old Duke who had brought him into this hornets' nest; had fixed upon his back the unwilling load; had compelled him to assume the place which now to lose would be a disgrace,--and the old Duke was now deserting him! He was sore all over, angry with every one, ungracious even with his private Secretary and his wife,--and especially miserable because he was thoroughly aware of his own faults. And yet, through it all, there was present to him a desire to fight on to the very last. Let his colleagues do what they might, and say what they might, he would remain Prime Minister of England as long as he was supported by a majority of the House of Commons.

"I do not know any greater step than this," Phineas said to him pleasantly one day, speaking of their new measure, "towards that millennium of which we were talking at Matching, if we can only accomplish it."

"Those moral speculations, Mr. Finn," he said, "will hardly bear the wear and tear of real life." The words of the answer, combined with the manner in which they were spoken, were stern and almost uncivil. Phineas, at any rate, had done nothing to offend him. The Duke paused, trying to find some expression by which he might correct the injury he had done; but, not finding any, passed on without further speech. Phineas shrugged his shoulders and went his way, telling himself that he had received one further injunction not to put his trust in princes.

"We shall be beaten, certainly," said Mr. Monk to Phineas, not long afterwards.

"What makes you so sure?"

"I smell it in the air. I see it in men's faces."

"And yet it's a moderate Bill. They'll have to pass something stronger before long if they throw it out now."

"It's not the Bill that they'll reject, but us. We have served our turn, and we ought to go."

"The House is tired of the Duke?"

"The Duke is so good a man that I hardly like to admit even that;--but I fear it is so. He is fretful and he makes enemies."

"I sometimes think that he is ill."

"He is ill at ease and sick at heart. He cannot hide his chagrin, and then is doubly wretched because he has betrayed it. I do not know that I ever respected and, at the same time, pitied a man more thoroughly."

"He snubbed me awfully yesterday," said Phineas, laughing.

"He cannot help himself. He snubs me at every word that he speaks, and yet I believe that he is most anxious to be civil to me. His ministry has been of great service to the country. For myself, I shall never regret having joined it. But I think that to him it has been a continual sorrow."

The system on which the Duchess had commenced her career as wife of the Prime Minister had now been completely abandoned. In the first place, she had herself become so weary of it that she had been unable to continue the exertion. She had, too, become in some degree ashamed of her failures. The names of Major Pountney and Mr. Lopez were not now pleasant to her ears, nor did she look back with satisfaction on the courtesies she had lavished on Sir Orlando or the smiles she had given to Sir Timothy Beeswax. "I've known a good many vulgar people in my time," she said one day to Mrs. Finn, "but none ever so vulgar as our ministerial supporters. You don't remember Mr. Bott, my dear. He was before your time;--one of the arithmetical men, and a great friend of Plantagenet's. He was very bad, but there have come up worse since him. Sometimes, I think, I like a little vulgarity for a change; but, upon my honour, when we get rid of all this it will be a pleasure to go back to ladies and gentlemen." This the Duchess said in her extreme bitterness.

"It seems to me that you have pretty well got rid of 'all this' already."

"But I haven't got anybody else in their place. I have almost made up my mind not to ask any one into the house for the next twelve months. I used to think that nothing would ever knock me up, but now I feel that I'm almost done for. I hardly dare open my mouth to Plantagenet. The Duke of St. Bungay has cut me. Mr. Monk looks as ominous as an owl; and your husband hasn't a word to say left. Barrington Erle hides his face and passes by when he sees me. Mr. Rattler did try to comfort me the other day by saying that everything was at sixes and sevens, and I really took it almost as a compliment to be spoken to. Don't you think Plantagenet is ill?"

"He is careworn."

"A man may be worn by care till there comes to be nothing left of him. But he never speaks of giving up now. The old Bishop of St. Austell talks of resigning, and he has already made up his mind who is to have the see. He used to consult the Duke about all these things, but I don't think he ever consults any one now. He never forgave the Duke about Lord Earlybird. Certainly, if a man wants to quarrel with all his friends, and to double the hatred of all his enemies, he had better become Prime Minister."

"Are you really sorry that such was his fate, Lady Glen?"

"Ah,--I sometimes ask myself that question, but I never get at an answer. I should have thought him a poltroon if he had declined. It is to be the greatest man in the greatest country in the world. Do ever so little and the men who write history must write about you. And no man has ever tried to be nobler than he till,--till--."

"Make no exception. If he be careworn and ill and weary, his manners cannot be the same as they were, but his purity is the same as ever."

"I don't know that it would remain so. I believe in him, Marie, more than in any man,--but I believe in none thoroughly. There is a devil creeps in upon them when their hands are strengthened. I do not know what I would have wished. Whenever I do wish, I always wish wrong. Ah, me; when I think of all those people I had down at Gatherum,--of the trouble I took, and of the glorious anticipations in which I revelled, I do feel ashamed of myself. Do you remember when I was determined that that wretch should be member for Silverbridge?"

"You haven't seen her since, Duchess?"

"No; but I mean to see her. I couldn't make her first husband member, and therefore the man who is member is to be her second husband. But I'm almost sick of schemes. Oh, dear, I wish I knew something that was really pleasant to do. I have never really enjoyed anything since I was in love, and I only liked that because it was wicked."

The Duchess was wrong in saying that the Duke of St. Bungay had cut them. The old man still remembered the kiss and still remembered the pledge. But he had found it very difficult to maintain his old relations with his friend. It was his opinion that the Coalition had done all that was wanted from it, and that now had come the time when they might retire gracefully. It is, no doubt, hard for a Prime Minister to find an excuse for going. But if the Duke of Omnium would have been content to acknowledge that he was not the man to alter the County Suffrage, an excuse might have been found that would have been injurious to no one. Mr. Monk and Mr. Gresham might have joined, and the present Prime Minister might have resigned, explaining that he had done all that he had been appointed to accomplish. He had, however, yielded at once to Mr. Monk, and now it was to be feared that the House of Commons would not accept the Bill from his hands. In such a state of things,--especially after that disagreement about Lord Earlybird,--it was difficult for the old Duke to tender his advice. He was at every Cabinet Council; he always came when his presence was required; he was invariably good-humoured;--but it seemed to him that his work was done. He could hardly volunteer to tell his chief and his colleague that he would certainly be beaten in the House of Commons, and that therefore there was little more now to be done than to arrange the circumstances of their retirement. Nevertheless, as the period for the second reading of the Bill came on, he resolved that he would discuss the matter with his friend. He owed it to himself to do so, and he also owed it to the man whom he had certainly placed in his present position. On himself politics had imposed a burden very much lighter than that which they had inflicted on his more energetic and much less practical colleague. Through his long life he had either been in office, or in such a position that men were sure that he would soon return to it. He had taken it, when it had come, willingly, and had always left it without a regret. As a man cuts in and out at a whist table, and enjoys both the game and the rest from the game, so had the Duke of St. Bungay been well pleased in either position. He was patriotic, but his patriotism did not disturb his digestion. He had been ambitious,--but moderately ambitious, and his ambition had been gratified. It never occurred to him to be unhappy because he or his party were beaten on a measure. When President of the Council, he could do his duty and enjoy London life. When in opposition, he could linger in Italy till May and devote his leisure to his trees and his bullocks. He was always esteemed, always self-satisfied, and always Duke of St. Bungay. But with our Duke it was very different. Patriotism with him was a fever, and the public service an exacting mistress. As long as this had been all he had still been happy. Not trusting much in himself, he had never aspired to great power. But now, now at last, ambition had laid hold of him,--and the feeling, not perhaps uncommon with such men, that personal dishonour would be attached to political failure. What would his future life be if he had so carried himself in his great office as to have shown himself to be unfit to resume it? Hitherto any office had sufficed him in which he might be useful;--but now he must either be Prime Minister, or a silent, obscure, and humbled man!

DEAR DUKE,

I will be with you to-morrow morning at 11 A.M., if you can give me half-an-hour.

Yours affectionately,

ST. B.

The Prime Minister received this note one afternoon, a day or two before that appointed for the second reading, and meeting his friend within an hour in the House of Lords, confirmed the appointment. "Shall I not rather come to you?" he said. But the old Duke, who lived in St. James's Square, declared that Carlton Terrace would be in his way to Downing Street; and so the matter was settled. Exactly at eleven the two Ministers met. "I don't like troubling you," said the old man, "when I know that you have so much to think of."

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

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

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

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

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

"And resign, of course."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh,--certainly."

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

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

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

"You are always good and true, Duke."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, yes."

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

"And the third chance against us?"

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

"Not with three or four."

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

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

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

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

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

"What have we done?"

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

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

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

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

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

"What;--at last?"

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

"And what does his Grace say?"

"He thinks that our days are numbered."

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

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

"Did he tell you who was to succeed you?" asked the Duchess.

"Not precisely."

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

"If you know, you can tell me."

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

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

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

"Will it make you unhappy, Cora?"

"What;--your going?"

"Yes;--the change altogether."

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

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

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

"Where will be your contentment?"

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

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

LXXIII. Only the Duke of Omnium

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why so?"

"Because there would have been less doubt."

"Is there any at present?"

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

"I could not do it, Duke!"

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

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

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

"Very little, your Grace."

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

"Good night, Duke."

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

Without waiting a moment after his colleague's departure, the Prime Minister,--for he was still Prime Minister,--went into his wife's room, knowing that she was waiting up till she should hear the result of the division, and there he found Mrs. Finn with her. "Is it over?" asked the Duchess.

"Yes;--there has been a division. Mr. Monk has just been with me."

"Well!"

"We have beaten them, of course, as we always do," said the Duke, attempting to be pleasant. "You didn't suppose there was anything to fear? Your husband has always bid you keep up your courage;--has he not, Mrs. Finn?"

"My husband has lost his senses, I think," she said. "He has taken to such storming and raving about his political enemies that I hardly dare to open my mouth."

"Tell me what has been done, Plantagenet," ejaculated the Duchess.

"Don't you be as unreasonable as Mrs. Finn, Cora. The House has voted against Sir Orlando's amendment by a majority of nine."

"Only nine!"

"And I shall cease to be Prime Minister to-morrow."

"You don't mean to say that it's settled?"

"Quite settled. The play has been played, and the curtain has fallen, and the lights are being put out, and the poor weary actors may go home to bed."

"But on such an amendment surely any majority would have done."

"No, my dear. I will not name a number, but nine certainly would not do."

"And it is all over?"

"My Ministry is all over, if you mean that."

"Then everything is over for me. I shall settle down in the country and build cottages, and mix draughts. You, Marie, will still be going up the tree. If Mr. Finn manages well he may come to be Prime Minister some day."

"He has hardly such ambition, Lady Glen."

"The ambition will come fast enough;--will it not, Plantagenet? Let him once begin to dream of it as possible, and the desire will soon be strong enough. How should you feel if it were so?"

"It is quite impossible," said Mrs. Finn, gravely.

"I don't see why anything is impossible. Sir Orlando will be Prime Minister now, and Sir Timothy Beeswax Lord Chancellor. After that anybody may hope to be anything. Well,--I suppose we may go to bed. Is your carriage here, my dear?"

"I hope so."

"Ring the bell, Plantagenet, for somebody to see her down. Come to lunch to-morrow because I shall have so many groans to utter. What beasts, what brutes, what ungrateful wretches men are!--worse than women when they get together in numbers enough to be bold. Why have they deserted you? What have we not done for them? Think of all the new bedroom furniture that we sent to Gatherum merely to keep the party together. There were thousands of yards of linen, and it has all been of no use. Don't you feel like Wolsey, Plantagenet?"

"Not in the least, my dear. No one will take anything away from me that is my own."

"For me, I am almost as much divorced as Catherine, and have had my head cut off as completely as Anne Bullen and the rest of them. Go away, Marie, because I am going to have a cry by myself."

The Duke himself on that night put Mrs. Finn into her carriage; and as he walked with her downstairs he asked her whether she believed the Duchess to be in earnest in her sorrow. "She so mixes up her mirth and woe together," said the Duke, "that I myself sometimes can hardly understand her."

"I think she does regret it, Duke."

"She told me but the other day that she would be contented."

"A few weeks will make her so. As for your Grace, I hope I may congratulate you."

"Oh yes;--I think so. We none of us like to be beaten when we have taken a thing in hand. There is always a little disappointment at first. But, upon the whole, it is better as it is. I hope it will not make your husband unhappy."

"Not for his own sake. He will go again into the middle of the scramble and fight on one side or the other. For my own part I think opposition the pleasantest. Good night, Duke. I am so sorry that I should have troubled you."

Then he went alone to his own room, and sat there without moving for a couple of hours. Surely it was a great thing to have been Prime Minister of England for three years,--a prize of which nothing now could rob him. He ought not to be unhappy; and yet he knew himself to be wretched and disappointed. It had never occurred to him to be proud of being a duke, or to think of his wealth otherwise than a chance incident of his life, advantageous indeed, but by no means a source of honour. And he had been aware that he had owed his first seat in Parliament to his birth, and probably also his first introduction to official life. An heir to a dukedom, if he will only work hard, may almost with certainty find himself received into one or the other regiment in Downing Street. It had not in his early days been with him as it had with his friends Mr. Monk and Phineas Finn, who had worked their way from the very ranks. But even a duke cannot become Prime Minister by favour. Surely he had done something of which he might be proud. And so he tried to console himself.

But to have done something was nothing to him,--nothing to his personal happiness,--unless there was also something left for him to do. How should it be with him now,--how for the future? Would men ever listen to him again, or allow him again to work in their behoof, as he used to do in his happy days in the House of Commons? He feared that it was all over for him, and that for the rest of his days he must simply be the Duke of Omnium.

Chapter LXXIV

"I Am Disgraced and Shamed"

Soon after the commencement of the Session Arthur Fletcher became a constant visitor in Manchester Square, dining with the old barrister almost constantly on Sundays, and not unfrequently on other days when the House and his general engagements would permit it. Between him and Emily's father there was no secret and no misunderstanding. Mr. Wharton quite understood that the young member of Parliament was earnestly purposed to marry his daughter, and Fletcher was sure of all the assistance and support which Mr. Wharton could give him. The name of Lopez was very rarely used between them. It had been tacitly agreed that there was no need that it should be mentioned. The man had come like a destroying angel between them and their fondest hopes. Neither could ever be what he would have been had that man never appeared to destroy their happiness. But the man had gone away, not without a tragedy that was appalling;--and each thought that, as regarded him, he and the tragedy might be, if not forgotten at least put aside, if only that other person in whom they were interested could be taught to seem to forget him. "It is not love," said the father, "but a feeling of shame." Arthur Fletcher shook his head, not quite agreeing with this. It was not that he feared that she loved the memory of her late husband. Such love was, he thought, impossible. But there was, he believed, something more than the feeling which her father described as shame. There was pride also;--a determination in her own bosom not to confess the fault she had made in giving herself to him whom she must now think to have been so much the least worthy of her two suitors. "Her fortune will not be what I once promised you," said the old man plaintively.

"I do not remember that I ever asked you as to her fortune," Arthur replied.

"Certainly not. If you had I should not have told you. But as I named a sum, it is right that I should explain to you that that man succeeded in lessening it by six or seven thousand pounds."

"If that were all!"

"And I have promised Sir Alured that Everett, as his heir, should have the use of a considerable portion of his share without waiting for my death. It is odd that the one of my children from whom I certainly expected the greater trouble should have fallen so entirely on his feet; and that the other--; well, let us hope for the best. Everett seems to have taken up with Wharton as though it belonged to him already. And Emily--! Well, my dear boy, let us hope that it may come right yet. You are not drinking your wine. Yes,--pass the bottle; I'll have another glass before I go upstairs."

In this way the time went by till Emily returned to town. The Ministry had just then resigned, but I think that "this great reactionary success," as it was called by the writer in the "People's Banner," affected one member of the Lower House much less than the return to London of Mrs. Lopez. Arthur Fletcher had determined that he would renew his suit as soon as a year should have expired since the tragedy which had made his love a widow,--and that year had now passed away. He had known the day well,--as had she, when she passed the morning weeping in her own room at Wharton. Now he questioned himself whether a year would suffice,--whether both in mercy to her and with the view of realizing his own hopes he should give her some longer time for recovery. But he had told himself that it should be done at the end of a year, and as he had allowed no one to talk him out of his word, so neither would he be untrue to it himself. But it became with him a deep matter of business, a question of great difficulty, how he should arrange the necessary interview,--whether he should plead his case with her at their first meeting, or whether he had better allow her to become accustomed to his presence in the house. His mother had attempted to ridicule him, because he was, as she said, afraid of a woman. He well remembered that he had never been afraid of Emily Wharton when they had been quite young,--little more than a boy and girl together. Then he had told her of his love over and over again, and had found almost a comfortable luxury in urging her to say a word, which she had never indeed said, but which probably in those days he still hoped that she would say. And occasionally he had feigned to be angry with her, and had tempted her on to little quarrels with a boyish idea that quick reconciliation would perhaps throw her into his arms. But now it seemed to him that an age had passed since those days. His love had certainly not faded. There had never been a moment when that had been on the wing. But now the azure plumage of his love had become grey as the wings of a dove, and the gorgeousness of his dreams had sobered into hopes and fears which were a constant burden to his heart. There was time enough, still time enough for happiness if she would yield;--and time enough for the dull pressure of unsatisfied aspirations should she persist in her refusal.

At last he saw her, almost by accident, and that meeting certainly was not fit for the purpose of his suit. He called at Stone Buildings the day after her arrival, and found her at her father's chambers. She had come there keeping some appointment with him, and certainly had not expected to meet her lover. He was confused and hardly able to say a word to account for his presence, but she greeted him with almost sisterly affection, saying some word of Longbarns and his family, telling him how Everett, to Sir Alured's great delight, had been sworn in as a magistrate for the County, and how at the last hunt meeting John Fletcher had been asked to take the County hounds, because old Lord Weobly at seventy-five had declared himself to be unable any longer to ride as a master of hounds ought to ride. All these things Arthur had of course heard, such news being too important to be kept long from him; but on none of these subjects had he much to say. He stuttered and stammered, and quickly went away;--not, however, before he had promised to come and dine as usual on the next Sunday, and not without observing that the anniversary of that fatal day of release had done something to lighten the sombre load of mourning which the widow had hitherto worn.

Yes;--he would dine there on the Sunday, but how would it be with him then? Mr. Wharton never went out of the house on a Sunday evening, and could hardly be expected to leave his own drawing-room for the sake of giving a lover an opportunity. No;--he must wait till that evening should have passed, and then make the occasion for himself as best he might. The Sunday came and the dinner was eaten, and after dinner there was the single bottle of port and the single bottle of claret. "How do you think she is looking?" asked the father. "She was as pale as death before we got her down into the country."

"Upon my word, sir," said he, "I've hardly looked at her. It is not a matter of looks now, as it used to be. It has got beyond that. It is not that I am indifferent to seeing a pretty face, or that I have no longer an opinion of my own about a woman's figure. But there grows up, I think, a longing which almost kills that consideration."

"To me she is as beautiful as ever," said the father proudly.

Fletcher did manage, when in the drawing-room, to talk for a while about John and the hounds, and then went away, having resolved that he would come again on the very next day. Surely she would not give an order that he should be denied admittance. She had been too calm, too even, too confident in herself for that. Yes;--he would come and tell her plainly what he had to say. He would tell it with all the solemnity of which he was capable, with a few words, and those the strongest which he could use. Should she refuse him,--as he almost knew that she would at first,--then he would tell her of her father and of the wishes of all their joint friends. "Nothing," he would say to her, "nothing but personal dislike can justify you in refusing to heal so many wounds." As he fixed on these words he failed to remember how little probable it is that a lover should ever be able to use the phrases he arranges.

On Monday he came, and asked for Mrs. Lopez, slurring over the word as best he could. The butler said his mistress was at home. Since the death of the man he had so thoroughly despised, the old servant had never called her Mrs. Lopez. Arthur was shown upstairs, and found the lady he sought,--but he found Mrs. Roby also. It may be remembered that Mrs. Roby, after the tragedy, had been refused admittance into Mr. Wharton's house. Since that there had been some correspondence, and a feeling had prevailed that the woman was not to be quarrelled with for ever. "I did not do it, papa, because of her," Emily had said with some scorn, and that scorn had procured Mrs. Roby's pardon. She was now making a morning call, and suiting her conversation to the black dress of her niece. Arthur was horrified at seeing her. Mrs. Roby had always been to him odious, not only as a personal enemy but as a vulgar woman. He, at any rate, attributed to her a great part of the evil that had been done, feeling sure that had there been no house round the corner, Emily Wharton would never have become Mrs. Lopez. As it was he was forced to shake hands with her, and forced to listen to the funereal tone in which Mrs. Roby asked him if he did not think that Mrs. Lopez looked much improved by her sojourn in Herefordshire. He shrank at the sound, and then, in order that it might not be repeated, took occasion to show that he was allowed to call his early playmate by her Christian name. Mrs. Roby, thinking that she ought to check him, remarked that Mrs. Lopez's return was a great thing for Mr. Wharton. Thereupon Arthur Fletcher seized his hat off the ground, wished them both good-bye, and hurried out of the room. "What a very odd manner he has taken up since he became a member of Parliament," said Mrs. Roby.

Emily was silent for a moment, and then with an effort,--with intense pain,--she said a word or two which she thought had better be at once spoken. "He went because he does not like to hear that name."

"Good gracious!"

"And papa does not like it. Don't say a word about it, aunt; pray don't;--but call me Emily."

"Are you going to be ashamed of your name?"

"Never mind, aunt. If you think it wrong you must stay away;--but I will not have papa wounded."

"Oh;--if Mr. Wharton wishes it;--of course." That evening Mrs. Roby told Dick Roby, her husband, what an old fool Mr. Wharton was.

The next day, quite early, Fletcher was again at the house and was again admitted upstairs. The butler, no doubt, knew well enough why he came, and also knew that the purport of his coming had at any rate the sanction of Mr. Wharton. The room was empty when he was shown into it, but she came to him very soon. "I went away yesterday rather abruptly," he said. "I hope you did not think me rude."

"Oh no."

"Your aunt was here, and I had something I wished to say but could not say very well before her."

"I knew that she had driven you away. You and Aunt Harriet were never great friends."

"Never;--but I will forgive her everything. I will forgive all the injuries that have been done me if you now will do as I ask you."

Of course she knew what it was that he was about to ask. When he had left her at Longbarns without saying a word of his love, without giving her any hint whereby she might allow herself to think that he intended to renew his suit, then she had wept because it was so. Though her resolution had been quite firm as to the duty which was incumbent on her of remaining in her desolate condition of almost nameless widowhood, yet she had been unable to refrain from bitter tears because he also had seemed to see that such was her duty. But now again, knowing that the request was coming, feeling once more confident of the constancy of his love, she was urgent with herself as to that heavy duty. She would be unwomanly, dead to all shame, almost inhuman, were she to allow herself again to indulge in love after all the havoc she had made. She had been little more than a bride when that husband, for whom she had so often been forced to blush, had been driven by the weight of his misfortunes and disgraces to destroy himself! By the marriage she had made she had overwhelmed her whole family with dishonour. She had done it with a persistency of perverse self-will which she herself could not now look back upon without wonder and horror. She, too, should have died as well as he,--only that death had not been within the compass of her powers as of his. How then could she forget it all, and wipe it away from her mind, as she would figures from a slate with a wet towel? How could it be fit that she should again be a bride with such a spectre of a husband haunting her memory? She had known that the request was to be made when he had come so quickly, and had not doubted it for a moment when he took his sudden departure. She had known it well, when just now the servant told her that Mr. Fletcher was in the drawing-room below. But she was quite certain of the answer she must make. "I should be sorry you should ask me anything I cannot do," she said in a very low voice.

"I will ask you for nothing for which I have not your father's sanction."

"The time has gone by, Arthur, in which I might well have been guided by my father. There comes a time when personal feelings must be stronger than a father's authority. Papa cannot see me with my own eyes; he cannot understand what I feel. It is simply this,--that he would have me to be other than I am. But I am what I have made myself."

"You have not heard me as yet. You will hear me?"

"Oh, yes."

"I have loved you ever since I was a boy." He paused as though he expected that she would make some answer to this; but of course there was nothing that she could say. "I have been true to you since we were together almost as children."

"It is your nature to be true."

"In this matter, at any rate, I shall never change. I never for a moment had a doubt about my love. There never has been any one else whom I have ventured to compare with you. Then came that great trouble. Emily, you must let me speak freely this once, as so much, to me at least, depends on it."

"Say what you will, Arthur. Do not wound me more than you can help."

"God knows how willingly I would heal every wound without a word if it could be done. I don't know whether you ever thought what I suffered when he came among us and robbed me,--well, I will not say robbed me of your love, because it was not mine--but took away with him that which I had been trying to win."

"I did not think a man would feel it like that."

"Why shouldn't a man feel as well as a woman? I had set my heart on having you for my wife. Can any desire be dearer to a man than that? Then he came. Well, dearest; surely I may say that he was not worthy of you."

"We were neither of us worthy," she said.

"I need not tell you that we all grieved. It seemed to us down in Herefordshire as though a black cloud had come upon us. We could not speak of you, nor yet could we be altogether silent."

"Of course you condemned me,--as an outcast."

"Did I write to you as though you were an outcast? Did I treat you when I saw you as an outcast? When I come to you to-day, is that proof that I think you to be an outcast? I have never deceived you, Emily."

"Never."

"Then you will believe me when I say that through it all not one word of reproach or contumely has ever passed my lips in regard to you. That you should have given yourself to one whom I could not think to be worthy of you was, of course, a great sorrow. Had he been a prince of men it would, of course, have been a sorrow to me. How it went with you during your married life I will not ask."

"I was unhappy. I would tell you everything if I could. I was very unhappy."

"Then came--the end." She was now weeping, with her face buried in her handkerchief. "I would spare you if I knew how, but there are some things which must be said."

"No;--no. I will bear it all--from you."

"Well! His success had not lessened my love. Though then I could have no hope,--though you were utterly removed from me,--all that could not change me. There it was,--as though my arm or my leg had been taken from me. It was bad to live without an arm or leg, but there was no help. I went on with my life and tried not to look like a whipped cur;--though John from time to time would tell me that I failed. But now;--now that it has again all changed,--what would you have me do now? It may be that after all my limb may be restored to me, that I may be again as other men are, whole, and sound, and happy;--so happy! When it may possibly be within my reach am I not to look for my happiness?" He paused, but she wept on without speaking a word. "There are those who will say that I should wait till all these signs of woe have been laid aside. But why should I wait? There has come a great blot upon your life, and is it not well that it should be covered as quickly as possible?"

"It can never be covered."

"You mean that it can never be forgotten. No doubt there are passages in our life which we cannot forget, though we bury them in the deepest silence. All this can never be driven out of your memory,--nor from mine. But it need not therefore blacken all our lives. In such a condition we should not be ruled by what the world thinks."

"Not at all. I care nothing for what the world thinks. I am below all that. It is what I think: I myself,--of myself."

"Will you think of no one else? Are any of your thoughts for me,--or for your father?"

"Oh, yes;--for my father."

"I need hardly tell you what he wishes. You must know how you can best give him back the comfort he has lost."

"But, Arthur, even for him I cannot do everything."

"There is one question to be asked," he said, rising from her feet and standing before her;--"but one; and what you do should depend entirely on the answer which you may be able truly to make to that."

This he said so solemnly that he startled her.

"What question, Arthur?"

"Do you love me?" To this question at the moment she could make no reply. "Of course I know that you did not love me when you married him."

"Love is not all of one kind."

"You know what love I mean. You did not love me then. You could not have loved me,--though, perhaps, I thought I had deserved your love. But love will change, and memory will sometimes bring back old fancies when the world has been stern and hard. When we were very young I think you loved me. Do you remember seven years ago at Longbarns, when they parted us and sent me away, because--because we were so young? They did not tell us then, but I think you knew. I know that I knew, and went nigh to swear that I would drown myself. You loved me then, Emily."

"I was a child then."

"Now you are not a child. Do you love me now,--to-day? If so, give me your hand, and let the past be buried in silence. All this has come, and gone, and has nearly made us old. But there is life before us yet, and if you are to me as I am to you it is better that our lives should be lived together." Then he stood before her with his hand stretched out.

"I cannot do it," she said.

"And why?"

"I cannot be other than the wretched thing I have made myself."

"But do you love me?"

"I cannot analyse my heart. Love you;--yes! I have always loved you. Everything about you is dear to me. I can triumph in your triumphs, rejoice at your joy, weep at your sorrows, be ever anxious that all good things may come to you;--but, Arthur, I cannot be your wife."

"Not though it would make us happy,--Fletchers and Whartons all alike?"

"Do you think I have not thought it over? Do you think that I have forgotten your first letter? Knowing your heart, as I do know it, do you imagine that I have spent a day, an hour, for months past, without asking myself what answer I should make to you if the sweet constancy of your nature should bring you again to me? I have trembled when I have heard your voice. My heart has beat at the sound of your footstep as though it would burst! Do you think I have never told myself what I had thrown away? But it is gone, and it is not now within my reach."

"It is; it is," he said, throwing himself on his knees, and twining his arms round her.

"No;--no;--no;--never. I am disgraced and shamed. I have lain among the pots till I am foul and blackened. Take your arms away. They shall not be defiled," she said as she sprang to her feet. "You shall not have the thing that he has left."

"Emily,--it is the only thing in the world that I crave."

"Be a man and conquer your love,--as I will. Get it under your feet and press it to death. Tell yourself that it is shameful and must be abandoned. That you, Arthur Fletcher, should marry the widow of that man,--the woman that he had thrust so far into the mire that she can never again be clean;--you, the chosen one, the bright star among us all;--you, whose wife should be the fairest, the purest, the tenderest of us all, a flower that has yet been hardly breathed on! While I-- Arthur," she said, "I know my duty better than that. I will not seek an escape from my punishment in that way,--nor will I allow you to destroy yourself. You have my word as a woman that it shall not be so. Now I do not mind your knowing whether I love you or no." He stood silent before her, not able for the moment to go on with his prayer. "And now, go," she said. "God bless you, and give you some day a fair and happy wife. And, Arthur, do not come again to me. If you will let it be so, I shall have a delight in seeing you;--but not if you come as you have come now. And, Arthur, spare me with papa. Do not let him think that it is all my fault that I cannot do the thing which he wishes." Then she left the room before he could say another word to her.

But it was all her fault. No;--in that direction he could not spare her. It must be told to her father, though he doubted his own power of describing all that had been said. "Do not come again to me," she had said. At the moment he had been left speechless; but if there was one thing fixed in his mind, it was the determination to come again. He was sure now, not only of love that might have sufficed,--but of hot, passionate love. She had told him that her heart had beat at his footsteps, and that she had trembled as she listened to his voice;--and yet she expected that he would not come again! But there was a violence of decision about the woman which made him dread that he might still come in vain. She was so warped from herself by the conviction of her great mistake, so prone to take shame to herself for her own error, so keenly alive to the degradation to which she had been submitted, that it might yet be impossible to teach her that, though her husband had been vile and she mistaken, yet she had not been soiled by his baseness.

He went at once to the old barrister's chambers and told him the result of the meeting. "She is still a fool," said the father, not understanding at second-hand the depths of his daughter's feeling.

"No, sir,--not that. She feels herself degraded by his degradation. If it be possible we must save her from that."

"She did degrade herself."

"Not as she means it. She is not degraded in my eyes."

"Why should she not take the only means in her power of rescuing herself and rescuing us all from the evil that she did? She owes it to you, to me, and to her brother."

"I would hardly wish her to come to me in payment of such a debt."

"There is no room left," said Mr. Wharton angrily, "for soft sentimentality. Well;--she must take her bed as she makes it. It is very hard on me, I know. Considering what she used to be, it is marvellous to me that she should have so little idea left of doing her duty to others."

Arthur Fletcher found that the barrister was at the moment too angry to hear reason, or to be made to understand anything of the feelings of mixed love and admiration with which he himself was animated at the moment. He was obliged therefore to content himself with assuring the father that he did not intend to give up the pursuit of his daughter.

LXXV. The Great Wharton Alliance

When Mr. Wharton got home on that day he said not a word to Emily as to Arthur Fletcher. He had resolved to take various courses,--first to tell her roundly that she was neglecting her duty to herself and to her family, and that he would no longer take her part and be her good friend unless she would consent to marry the man whom she had confessed that she loved. But as he thought of this he became aware,--first that he could not carry out such a threat, and then that he would lack even the firmness to make it. There was something in her face, something even in her dress, something in her whole manner to himself, which softened him and reduced him to vassalage directly he saw her. Then he determined to throw himself on her compassion and to implore her to put an end to all this misery by making herself happy. But as he drew near home he found himself unable to do even this. How is a father to beseech his widowed daughter to give herself away in a second marriage? And therefore when he entered the house and found her waiting for him, he said nothing. At first she looked at him wistfully,--anxious to learn by his face whether her lover had been with him. But when he spoke not a word, simply kissing her in his usual quiet way, she became cheerful in manner and communicative. "Papa," she said, "I have had a letter from Mary."

"Well, my dear."

"Just a nice chatty letter,--full of Everett, of course."

"Everett is a great man now."

"I am sure that you are very glad that he is what he is. Will you see Mary's letter?" Mr. Wharton was not specially given to reading young ladies' correspondence, and did not know why this particular letter should be offered to him. "You don't suspect anything at Wharton, do you?" she asked.

"Suspect anything! No; I don't suspect anything." But now, having had his curiosity aroused, he took the letter which was offered to him and read it. The letter was as follows:--

Wharton, Thursday.

DEAREST EMILY,--

We all hope that you had a pleasant journey up to London, and that Mr. Wharton is quite well. Your brother Everett came over to Longbarns the day after you started and drove me back to Wharton in the dog-cart. It was such a pleasant journey, though, now I remember, it rained all the way. But Everett has always so much to say that I didn't mind the rain. I think it will end in John taking the hounds. He says he won't, because he does not wish to be the slave of the whole county;--but he says it in that sort of way that we all think he means to do it. Everett tells him that he ought, because he is the only hunting man on this side of the county who can afford to do it without feeling it much; and of course what Everett says will go a long way with him. Sarah [Sarah was John Fletcher's wife] is rather against it. But if he makes up his mind she'll be sure to turn round. Of course it makes us all very anxious at present to know how it is to end, for the Master of the Hounds always is the leading man in our part of the world. Papa went to the bench at Ross yesterday and took Everett with him. It was the first time that Everett had sat there. He says I am to tell his father he has not hung anybody as yet.

They have already begun to cut down, or what they call stubb up, Barnton Spinnies. Everett said that it is no good keeping it as a wood, and papa agreed. So it is to go into the home farm, and Griffiths is to pay rent for it. I don't like having it cut down as the boys always used to get nuts there, but Everett says it won't do to keep woods for little boys to get nuts.

Mary Stocking has been very ill since you went, and I'm afraid she won't last long. When they get to be so very bad with rheumatism I almost think it's wrong to pray for them, because they are in so much pain. We thought at one time that mamma's ointment had done her good, but when we came to inquire, we found she had swallowed it. Wasn't it dreadful? But it didn't seem to do her any harm. Everett says that it wouldn't make any difference which she did.

Papa is beginning to be afraid that Everett is a Radical. But I'm sure he's not. He says he is as good a Conservative as there is in all Herefordshire, only that he likes to know what is to be conserved. Papa said after dinner yesterday that everything English ought to be maintained. Everett said that according to that we should have kept the Star Chamber. "Of course I would," said papa. Then they went at it, hammer and tongs. Everett had the best of it. At any rate he talked the longest. But I do hope he is not a Radical. No country gentleman ought to be a Radical. Ought he, dear?

Mrs. Fletcher says you are to get the lozenges at Squire's in Oxford Street, and be sure to ask for the Vade mecum lozenges. She is all in a flutter about the hounds. She says she hopes John will do nothing of the kind because of the expense; but we all know that she would like him to have them. The subscription is not very good, only £1500, and it would cost him ever so much a year. But everybody says that he is very rich and that he ought to do it. If you see Arthur give him our love. Of course a member of Parliament is too busy to write letters. But I don't think Arthur ever was good at writing. Everett says that men never ought to write letters. Give my love to Mr. Wharton.

I am, dearest Emily, Your most affectionate Cousin,

MARY WHARTON.

"Everett is a fool," said Mr. Wharton as soon as he had read the letter.

"Why is he a fool, papa?"

"Because he will quarrel with Sir Alured about politics before he knows where he is. What business has a young fellow like that to have an opinion either one side or the other, before his betters?"

"But Everett always had strong opinions."

"It didn't matter as long as he only talked nonsense at a club in London, but now he'll break that old man's heart."

"But, papa, don't you see anything else?"

"I see that John Fletcher is going to make an ass of himself and spend a thousand a year in keeping up a pack of hounds for other people to ride after."

"I think I see something else besides that."

"What do you see?"

"Would it annoy you if Everett were to become engaged to Mary?"

Then Mr. Wharton whistled. "To be sure she does put his name into every line of her letter. No; it wouldn't annoy me. I don't see why he shouldn't marry his second cousin if he likes. Only if he is engaged to her, I think it odd that he shouldn't write and tell us."

"I'm sure he's not engaged to her yet. She wouldn't write at all in that way if they were engaged. Everybody would be told at once, and Sir Alured would never be able to keep it a secret. Why should there be a secret? But I'm sure she is very fond of him. Mary would never write about any man in that way unless she were beginning to be attached to him."

About ten days after this there came two letters from Wharton Hall to Manchester Square, the shortest of which shall be given first. It ran as follows:--

MY DEAR FATHER,--

I have proposed to my cousin Mary, and she has accepted me. Everybody here seems to like the idea. I hope it will not displease you. Of course you and Emily will come down. I will tell you when the day is fixed.

Your affectionate son,

EVERETT WHARTON.

This the old man read as he sat at breakfast with his daughter opposite to him, while Emily was reading a very much longer letter from the same house. "So it's going to be just as you guessed," he said.

"I was quite sure of it, papa. Is that from Everett? Is he very happy?"

"Upon my word, I can't say whether he's happy or not. If he had got a new horse he would have written at much greater length about it. It seems, however, to be quite fixed."

"Oh, yes. This is from Mary. She is happy at any rate. I suppose men never say so much about these things as women."

"May I see Mary's letter?"

"I don't think it would be quite fair, papa. It's only a girl's rhapsody about the man she loves,--very nice and womanly, but not intended for any one but me. It does not seem that they mean to wait very long."

"Why should they wait? Is any day fixed?"

"Mary says that Everett talks about the middle of May. Of course you will go down."

"We must both go."

"You will at any rate. Don't promise for me just at present. It must make Sir Alured very happy. It is almost the same as finding himself at last with a son of his own. I suppose they will live at Wharton altogether now,--unless Everett gets into Parliament."

But the reader may see the young lady's letter, though her future father-in-law was not permitted to do so, and will perceive that there was a paragraph at the close of it which perhaps was more conducive to Emily's secrecy than her feelings as to the sacred obligations of female correspondence.

Monday, Wharton.

DEAREST EMILY,--

I wonder whether you will be much surprised at the news I have to tell you. You cannot be more so than I am at having to write it. It has all been so very sudden that I almost feel ashamed of myself. Everett has proposed to me, and I have accepted him. There;--now you know it all. Though you never can know how very dearly I love him and how thoroughly I admire him. I do think that he is everything that a man ought to be, and that I am the most fortunate young woman in the world. Only isn't it odd that I should always have to live all my life in the same house, and never change my name,--just like a man, or an old maid? But I don't mind that because I do love him so dearly and because he is so good. I hope he will write to you and tell you that he likes me. He has written to Mr. Wharton, I know. I was sitting by him and his letter didn't take him a minute. But he says that long letters about such things only give trouble. I hope you won't think my letter troublesome. He is not sitting by me now but has gone over to Longbarns to help to settle about the hounds. John is going to have them after all. I wish it hadn't happened just at this time because all the gentlemen do think so much about it. Of course Everett is one of the committee.

Papa and mamma are both very, very glad of it. Of course it is nice for them as it will keep Everett and me here. If I had married anybody else,--though I am sure I never should,--she would have been very lonely. And of course papa likes to think that Everett is already one of us. I hope they never will quarrel about politics; but, as Everett says, the world does change as it goes on, and young men and old men never will think quite the same about things. Everett told papa the other day that if he could be put back a century he would be a Radical. Then there were ever so many words. But Everett always laughs, and at last papa comes round.

I can't tell you, my dear, what a fuss we are in already about it all. Everett wants to have our marriage early in May, so that we may have two months in Switzerland before London is what he calls turned loose. And papa says that there is no use in delaying, because he gets older every day. Of course that is true of everybody. So that we are all in a flutter about getting things. Mamma did talk of going up to town, but I believe they have things now quite as good at Hereford. Sarah, when she was married, had all her things from London, but they say that there has been a great change since that. I am sure that I think that you may get anything you want at Muddocks and Cramble's. But mamma says I am to have my veil from Howell and James's.

Of course you and Mr. Wharton will come. I shan't think it any marriage without. Papa and mamma talk of it as quite of course. You know how fond papa is of the bishop. I think he will marry us. I own I should like to be married by a bishop. It would make it so sweet and so solemn. Mr. Higgenbottom could of course assist;--but he is such an odd old man, with his snuff and his spectacles always tumbling off, that I shouldn't like to have no one else. I have often thought that if it were only for marrying people we ought to have a nicer rector at Wharton.

Almost all the tenants have been to wish me joy. They are very fond of Everett already, and now they feel that there will never be any very great change. I do think it is the very best thing that could be done, even if it were not that I am so thoroughly in love with him. I didn't think I should ever be able to own that I was in love with a man; but now I feel quite proud of it. I don't mind telling you because he is your brother, and I think that you will be glad of it.

He talks very often about you. Of course you know what it is that we all wish. I love Arthur Fletcher almost as much as if he were my brother. He is my sister's brother-in-law, and if he could become my husband's brother-in-law too, I should be so happy. Of course we all know that he wishes it. Write immediately to wish me joy. Perhaps you could go to Howell and James's about the veil. And promise to come to us in May. Sarah says the veil ought to cost about thirty pounds.

Dearest, dearest Emily, I shall so soon be your most affectionate sister,

MARY WHARTON.

Emily's answer was full of warm, affectionate congratulations. She had much to say in favour of Everett. She promised to use all her little skill at Howell and James's. She expressed a hope that the overtures to be made in regard to the bishop might be successful. And she made kind remarks even as to Muddocks and Cramble. But she would not promise that she herself would be at Wharton on the happy day. "Dear Mary," she said, "remember what I have suffered, and that I cannot be quite as other people are. I could not stand at your marriage in black clothes,--nor should I have the courage even if I had the will to dress myself in others." None of the Whartons had come to her wedding. There was no feeling of anger now left as to that. She was quite aware that they had done right to stay away. But the very fact that it had been right that they should stay away would make it wrong that the widow of Ferdinand Lopez should now assist at the marriage of one Wharton to another. This was all that a marriage ought to be; whereas that had been--all that a marriage ought not to be. In answer to the paragraph about Arthur Fletcher Emily Lopez had not a word to say.

Soon after this, early in April, Everett came up to town. Though his bride might be content to get her bridal clothes in Hereford, none but a London tailor could decorate him properly for such an occasion. During these last weeks Arthur Fletcher had not been seen in Manchester Square; nor had his name been mentioned there by Mr. Wharton. Of anything that may have passed between them Emily was altogether ignorant. She observed, or thought that she observed, that her father was more silent with her,--perhaps less tender than he had been since the day on which her husband had perished. His manner of life was the same. He almost always dined at home in order that she might not be alone, and made no complaint as to her conduct. But she could see that he was unhappy, and she knew the cause of his grief. "I think, papa," she said one day, "that it would be better that I should go away." This was on the day before Everett's arrival,--of which, however, he had given no notice.

"Go away! Where would you go to?"

"It does not matter. I do not make you happy."

"What do you mean? Who says that I am not happy? Why do you talk like that?"

"Do not be angry with me. Nobody says so. I can see it well enough. I know how good you are to me, but I am making your life wretched. I am a wet blanket to you, and yet I cannot help myself. If I could only go somewhere, where I could be of use."

"I don't know what you mean. This is your proper home."

"No;--it is not my home. I ought to have forfeited it. I ought to go where I could work and be of some use in the world."

"You might be of use if you chose, my dear. Your proper career is before you if you would condescend to accept it. It is not for me to persuade you, but I can see and feel the truth. Till you bring yourself to do that, your days will be blighted,--and so will mine. You have made one great mistake in life. Stop a moment. I do not speak often, but I wish you to listen to me now. Such mistakes do generally produce misery and ruin to all who are concerned. With you it chances that it may be otherwise. You can put your foot again upon the firm ground and recover everything. Of course there must be a struggle. One person has to struggle with circumstances, another with his foes, and a third with his own feelings. I can understand that there should be such a struggle with you; but it ought to be made. You ought to be brave enough and strong enough to conquer your regrets, and to begin again. In no other way can you do anything for me or for yourself. To talk of going away is childish nonsense. Whither would you go? I shall not urge you any more, but I would not have you talk to me in that way." Then he got up and left the room and the house, and went down to his club,--in order that she might think of what he had said in solitude.

And she did think of it;--but still continually with an assurance to herself that her father did not understand her feelings. The career of which he spoke was no doubt open to her, but she could not regard it as that which it was proper that she should fulfil, as he did. When she told her lover that she had lain among the pots till she was black and defiled, she expressed in the strongest language that which was her real conviction. He did not think her to have been defiled,--or at any rate thought that she might again bear the wings of a dove; but she felt it, and therefore knew herself to be unfit. She had said it all to her lover in the strongest words she could find, but she could not repeat them to her father. The next morning when he came into the parlour where she was already sitting, she looked up at him almost reproachfully. Did he think that a woman was a piece of furniture which you can mend, and revarnish, and fit out with new ornaments, and then send out for use, second-hand indeed, but for all purposes as good as new?

Then, while she was in this frame of mind, Everett came in upon her unawares, and with his almost boisterous happiness succeeded for a while in changing the current of her thoughts. He was of course now uppermost in his own thoughts. The last few months had made so much of him that he might be excused for being unable to sink himself in the presence of others. He was the heir to the baronetcy,--and to the double fortunes of the two old men. And he was going to be married in a manner as every one told him to increase the glory and stability of the family. "It's all nonsense about your not coming down," he said. She smiled and shook her head. "I can only tell you that it will give the greatest offence to every one. If you knew how much they talk about you down there I don't think you would like to hurt them."

"Of course I would not like to hurt them."

"And considering that you have no other brother--"

"Oh, Everett!"

"I think more about it, perhaps, than you do. I think you owe it me to come down. You will never probably have another chance of being present at your brother's marriage." This he said in a tone that was almost lachrymose.

"A wedding, Everett, should be merry."

"I don't know about that. It is a very serious sort of thing to my way of thinking. When Mary got your letter it nearly broke her heart. I think I have a right to expect it, and if you don't come I shall feel myself injured. I don't see what is the use of having a family if the members of it do not stick together. What would you think if I were to desert you?"

"Desert you, Everett?"

"Well, yes;--it is something of the kind. I have made my request, and you can comply with it or not as you please."

"I will go," she said very slowly. Then she left him and went to her own room to think in what description of garment she could appear at a wedding with the least violence to the conditions of her life.

"I have got her to say she'll come," he said to his father that evening. "If you leave her to me, I'll bring her round."

Soon after that,--within a day or two,--there came out a paragraph in one of the fashionable newspapers of the day, saying that an alliance had been arranged between the heir to the Wharton title and property and the daughter of the present baronet. I think that this had probably originated in the club gossip. I trust it did not spring directly from the activity or ambition of Everett himself.

LXXVI. Who Will It Be?

For the first day or two after the resignation of the Ministry the Duchess appeared to take no further notice of the matter. An ungrateful world had repudiated her and her husband, and he had foolishly assisted and given way to the repudiation. All her grand aspirations were at an end. All her triumphs were over. And worse than that, there was present to her a conviction that she never had really triumphed. There never had come the happy moment in which she had felt herself to be dominant over other women. She had toiled and struggled, she had battled and occasionally submitted; and yet there was present to her a feeling that she had stood higher in public estimation as Lady Glencora Palliser,--whose position had been all her own and had not depended on her husband,--than now she had done as Duchess of Omnium, and wife of the Prime Minister of England. She had meant to be something, she knew not what, greater than had been the wives of other Prime Ministers and other Dukes; and now she felt that in her failure she had been almost ridiculous. And the failure, she thought, had been his,--or hers,--rather than that of circumstances. If he had been less scrupulous and more persistent it might have been different,--or if she had been more discreet. Sometimes she felt her own failing so violently as to acquit him almost entirely. At other times she was almost beside herself with anger because all her losses seemed to have arisen from want of stubbornness on his part. When he had told her that he and his followers had determined to resign because they had beaten their foes by a majority only of nine, she took it into her head that he was in fault. Why should he go while his supporters were more numerous than his opponents? It was useless to bid him think it over again. Though she was far from understanding all the circumstances of the game, she did know that he could not remain after having arranged with his colleagues that he would go. So she became cross and sullen; and while he was going to Windsor and back and setting his house in order, and preparing the way for his successor,--whoever that successor might be,--she was moody and silent, dreaming over some impossible condition of things in accordance with which he might have remained Prime Minister--almost for ever.

On the Sunday after the fatal division,--the division which the Duchess would not allow to have been fatal,--she came across him somewhere in the house. She had hardly spoken to him since he had come into her room that night and told her that all was over. She had said that she was unwell and had kept out of sight; and he had been here and there, between Windsor and the Treasury Chambers, and had been glad to escape from her ill-humour. But she could not endure any longer the annoyance of having to get all her news through Mrs. Finn,--second hand, or third hand, and now found herself driven to capitulate. "Well," she said; "how is it all going to be? I suppose you do not know or you would have told me?"

"There is very little to tell."

"Mr. Monk is to be Prime Minister?" she asked.

"I did not say so. But it is not impossible."

"Has the Queen sent for him?"

"Not as yet. Her Majesty has seen both Mr. Gresham and Mr. Daubeny as well as myself. It does not seem a very easy thing to make a Ministry just at present."

"Why should not you go back?"

"I do not think that is on the cards."

"Why not? Ever so many men have done it, after going out,--and why not you? I remember Mr. Mildmay doing it twice. It is always the thing when the man who has been sent for makes a mess of it, for the old minister to have another chance."

"But what if the old minister will not take the chance?"

"Then it is the old minister's fault. Why shouldn't you take the chance as well as another? It isn't many days ago since you were quite anxious to remain in. I thought you were going to break your heart because people even talked of your going."

"I was going to break my heart, as you call it," he said, smiling, "not because people talked of my ceasing to be minister, but because the feeling of the House of Commons justified people in so saying. I hope you see the difference."

"No, I don't. And there is no difference. The people we are talking about are the members,--and they have supported you. You could go on if you chose. I'm sure Mr. Monk wouldn't leave you."

"It is just what Mr. Monk would do, and ought to do. No one is less likely than Mr. Monk to behave badly in such an emergency. The more I see of Mr. Monk, the higher I think of him."

"He has his own game to play as well as others."

"I think he has no game to play but that of his country. It is no use our discussing it, Cora."

"Of course I understand nothing, because I'm a woman."

"You understand a great deal,--but not quite all. You may at any rate understand this,--that our troubles are at an end. You were saying but the other day that the labours of being a Prime Minister's wife had been almost too many for you."

"I never said so. As long as you didn't give way no labour was too much for me. I would have done anything,--slaved morning and night,--so that we might have succeeded. I hate being beat. I'd sooner be cut in pieces."

"There is no help for it now, Cora. The Lord Mayor, you know, is only Lord Mayor for one year, and must then go back to private life."

"But men have been Prime Ministers for ten years at a time. If you have made up your mind, I suppose we may as well give up. I shall always think it your own fault." He still smiled. "I shall," she said.

"Oh, Cora!"

"I can only speak as I feel."

"I don't think you would speak as you do, if you knew how much your words hurt me. In such a matter as this I should not be justified in allowing your opinions to have weight with me. But your sympathy would be so much to me!"

"When I thought it was making you ill, I wished that you might be spared."

"My illness would be nothing, but my honour is everything. I, too, have something to bear as well as you, and if you cannot approve of what I do, at any rate be silent."

"Yes;--I can be silent." Then he slowly left her. As he went she was almost tempted to yield, and to throw herself into his arms, and to promise that she would be soft to him, and to say that she was sure that all he did was for the best. But she could not bring herself as yet to be good-humoured. If he had only been a little stronger, a little thicker-skinned, made of clay a little coarser, a little other than he was, it might all have been so different!

Early on that Sunday afternoon she had herself driven to Mrs. Finn's house in Park Lane, instead of waiting for her friend. Latterly she had but seldom done this, finding that her presence at home was much wanted. She had been filled with, perhaps, foolish ideas of the necessity of doing something,--of adding something to the strength of her husband's position,--and had certainly been diligent in her work. But now she might run about like any other woman. "This is an honour, Duchess," said Mrs. Finn.

"Don't be sarcastic, Marie. We have nothing further to do with the bestowal of honours. Why didn't he make everybody a peer or a baronet while he was about it? Lord Finn! I don't see why he shouldn't have been Lord Finn. I'm sure he deserved it for the way in which he attacked Sir Timothy Beeswax."

"I don't think he'd like it."

"They all say so, but I suppose they do like it, or they wouldn't take it. And I'd have made Locock a knight;--Sir James Locock. He'd make a more knightly knight than Sir Timothy. When a man has power he ought to use it. It makes people respect him. Mr. Daubeny made a duke, and people think more of that than anything he did. Is Mr. Finn going to join the new ministry?"

"If you can tell me, Duchess, who is to be the new minister, I can give a guess."

"Mr. Monk."

"Then he certainly will."

"Or Mr. Daubeny."

"Then he certainly won't."

"Or Mr. Gresham."

"That I could not answer."

"Or the Duke of Omnium."

"That would depend upon his Grace, If the Duke came back, Mr. Finn's services would be at his disposal, whether in or out of office."

"Very prettily said, my dear. I never look round this room without thinking of the first time I came here. Do you remember, when I found the old man sitting there?" The old man alluded to was the late Duke.

"I am not likely to forget it, Duchess."

"How I hated you when I saw you! What a fright I thought you were! I pictured you to myself as a sort of ogre, willing to eat up everybody for the gratification of your own vanity."

"I was very vain, but there was a little pride with it."

"And now it has come to pass that I can't very well live without you. How he did love you!"

"His Grace was very good to me."

"It would have done no great harm, after all, if he had made you Duchess of Omnium."

"Very great harm to me, Lady Glen. As it is I got a friend that I loved dearly, and a husband that I love dearly too. In the other case I should have had neither. Perhaps I may say, that in that other case my life would not have been brightened by the affection of the present Duchess."

"One can't tell how it would have gone, but I well remember the state I was in then." The door was opened and Phineas Finn entered the room. "What, Mr. Finn, are you at home? I thought everybody was crowding down at the clubs, to know who is to be what. We are settled. We are quiet. We have nothing to do to disturb ourselves. But you ought to be in all the flutter of renewed expectation."

"I am waiting my destiny in calm seclusion. I hope the Duke is well?"

"As well as can be expected. He doesn't walk about his room with a poniard in his hand,--ready for himself or Sir Orlando; nor is he sitting crowned like Bacchus, drinking the health of the new Ministry with Lord Drummond and Sir Timothy. He is probably sipping a cup of coffee over a blue-book in dignified retirement. You should go and see him."

"I should be unwilling to trouble him when he is so much occupied."

"That is just what has done him all the harm in the world. Everybody presumes that he has so much to think of that nobody goes near him. Then he is left to boody over everything by himself till he becomes a sort of political hermit, or ministerial Lama, whom human eyes are not to look upon. It doesn't matter now; does it?" Visitor after visitor came in, and the Duchess chatted to them all, leaving the impression on everybody that heard her that she at least was not sorry to be relieved from the troubles attending her husband's late position.

She sat there over an hour, and as she was taking her leave she had a few words to whisper to Mrs. Finn. "When this is all over," she said, "I mean to call on that Mrs. Lopez."

"I thought you did go there."

"That was soon after the poor man had killed himself,--when she was going away. Of course I only left a card. But I shall see her now if I can. We want to get her out of her melancholy if possible. I have a sort of feeling, you know, that among us we made the train run over him."

"I don't think that."

"He got so horribly abused for what he did at Silverbridge; and I really don't see why he wasn't to have his money. It was I that made him spend it."

"He was, I fancy, a thoroughly bad man."

"But a wife doesn't always want to be made a widow even if her husband be bad. I think I owe her something, and I would pay my debt if I knew how. I shall go and see her, and if she will marry this other man we'll take her by the hand. Good-bye, dear. You'd better come to me early to-morrow, as I suppose we shall know something by eleven o'clock."

In the course of that evening the Duke of St. Bungay came to Carlton Terrace and was closeted for some time with the late Prime Minister. He had been engaged during that and the last two previous days in lending his aid to various political manoeuvres and ministerial attempts, from which our Duke had kept himself altogether aloof. He did not go to Windsor, but as each successive competitor journeyed thither and returned, some one either sent for the old Duke or went to seek his counsel. He was the Nestor of the occasion, and strove heartily to compose all quarrels, and so to arrange matters that a wholesome, moderately Liberal Ministry might be again installed for the good of the country and the comfort of all true Whigs. In such moments he almost ascended to the grand heights of patriotism, being always indifferent as to himself. Now he came to his late chief with a new project. Mr. Gresham would attempt to form a Ministry if the Duke of Omnium would join him.

"It is impossible," said the younger politician, folding his hands together and throwing himself back in his chair.

"Listen to me before you answer me with such certainty. There are three or four gentlemen who, after the work of the last three years, bearing in mind the manner in which our defeat has just been accomplished, feel themselves disinclined to join Mr. Gresham unless you will do so also. I may specially name Mr. Monk and Mr. Finn. I might perhaps add myself, were it not that I had hoped that in any event I might at length regard myself as exempt from further service. The old horse should be left to graze out his last days, Ne peccet ad extremum ridendus. But you can't consider yourself absolved on that score."

"There are other reasons."

"But the Queen's service should count before everything. Gresham and Cantrip with their own friends can hardly make a Ministry as things are now unless Mr. Monk will join them. I do not think that any other Chancellor of the Exchequer is at present possible."

"I will beseech Mr. Monk not to let any feeling as to me stand in his way. Why should it?"

"It is not only what you may think and he may think,--but what others will think and say. The Coalition will have done all that ought to have been expected from it if our party in it can now join Mr. Gresham."

"By all means. But I could give them no strength. They may be sure at any rate of what little I can do for them out of office."

"Mr. Gresham has made his acceptance of office,--well, I will not say strictly conditional on your joining him. That would hardly be correct. But he has expressed himself quite willing to make the attempt with your aid, and doubtful whether he can succeed without it. He suggests that you should join him as President of the Council."

"And you?"

"If I were wanted at all I should take the Privy Seal."

"Certainly not, my friend. If there were any question of my return we would reverse the offices. But I think I may say that my mind is fixed. If you wish it I will see Mr. Monk, and do all that I can to get him to go with you. But for myself,--I feel that it would be useless."

At last, at the Duke's pressing request, he agreed to take twenty-four hours before he gave his final answer to the proposition.

LXXVII. The Duchess in Manchester Square

The Duke said not a word to his wife as to this new proposition, and when she asked him what tidings their old friend had brought as to the state of affairs, he almost told a fib in his anxiety to escape from her persecution. "He is in some doubt what he means to do himself," said the Duke. The Duchess asked many questions, but got no satisfactory reply to any of them. Nor did Mrs. Finn learn anything from her husband, whom, however, she did not interrogate very closely. She would be contented to know when the proper time might come for ladies to be informed. The Duke, however, was determined to take his twenty-four hours all alone,--or at any rate not to be driven to his decision by feminine interference.

In the meantime the Duchess went to Manchester Square intent on performing certain good offices on behalf of the poor widow. It may be doubted whether she had clearly made up her mind what it was that she could do, though she was clear that some debt was due by her to Mrs. Lopez. And she knew too in what direction assistance might be serviceable, if only it could in this case be given. She had heard that the present member for Silverbridge had been the lady's lover long before Mr. Lopez had come upon the scene, and with those feminine wiles of which she was a perfect mistress she had extracted from him a confession that his mind was unaltered. She liked Arthur Fletcher,--as indeed she had for a time liked Ferdinand Lopez,--and felt that her conscience would be easier if she could assist in this good work. She built castles in the air as to the presence of the bride and bridegroom at Matching, thinking how she might thus repair the evil she had done. But her heart misgave her a little as she drew near to the house, and remembered how very slight was her acquaintance and how extremely delicate the mission on which she had come. But she was not the woman to turn back when she had once put her foot to any work; and she was driven up to the door in Manchester Square without any expressed hesitation on her own part. "Yes,--his mistress was at home," said the butler, still shrinking at the sound of the name which he hated. The Duchess was then shown upstairs, and was left alone for some minutes in the drawing-room. It was a large handsome apartment, hung round with valuable pictures, and having signs of considerable wealth. Since she had first invited Lopez to stand for Silverbridge she had heard much about him, and had wondered how he had gained possession of such a girl as Emily Wharton. And now, as she looked about, her wonder was increased. She knew enough of such people as the Whartons and the Fletchers to be aware that as a class they are more impregnable, more closely guarded by their feelings and prejudices against strangers than any other. None keep their daughters to themselves with greater care, or are less willing to see their rules of life changed or abolished. And yet this man, half foreigner half Jew,--and as it now appeared, whole pauper,--had stepped in and carried off a prize for which such a one as Arthur Fletcher was contending! The Duchess had never seen Emily but once,--so as to observe her well,--and had then thought her to be a very handsome woman. It had been at the garden party at Richmond, and Lopez had then insisted that his wife should be well dressed. It would perhaps have been impossible in the whole of that assembly to find a more beautiful woman than Mrs. Lopez then was,--or one who carried herself with a finer air. Now when she entered the room in her deep mourning it would have been difficult to recognise her. Her face was much thinner, her eyes apparently larger, and her colour faded. And there had come a settled seriousness on her face which seemed to rob her of her youth. Arthur Fletcher had declared that as he saw her now she was more beautiful than ever. But Arthur Fletcher, in looking at her, saw more than her mere features. To his eyes there was a tenderness added by her sorrow which had its own attraction for him. And he was so well versed in every line of her countenance, that he could see there the old loveliness behind the sorrow; the loveliness which would come forth again, as bright as ever, if the sorrow could be removed. But the Duchess, though she remembered the woman's beauty as she might that of any other lady, now saw nothing but a thing of woe wrapped in customary widow's weeds. "I hope," she said, "I am not intruding in coming to you; but I have been anxious to renew our acquaintance for reasons which I am sure you will understand."

Emily at the moment hardly knew how to address her august visitor. Though her father had lived all his life in what is called good society, he had not consorted much with dukes and duchesses. She herself had indeed on one occasion been for an hour or two the guest of this grand lady, but on that occasion she had hardly been called upon to talk to her. Now she doubted how to name the Duchess, and with some show of hesitation decided at last upon not naming her at all. "It is very good of you to come," she said in a faltering voice.

"I told you that I would when I wrote, you know. That is many months ago, but I have not forgotten it. You have been in the country since that, I think?"

"Yes, in Herefordshire. Herefordshire is our county."

"I know all about it," said the Duchess, smiling. She generally did contrive to learn "all about" the people whom she chose to take by the hand. "We have a Herefordshire gentleman sitting for,--I must not say our borough of Silverbridge." She was anxious to make some allusion to Arthur Fletcher; but it was difficult to travel on that Silverbridge ground, as Lopez had been her chosen candidate when she still wished to claim the borough as an appanage of the Palliser family. Emily, however, kept her countenance and did not show by any sign that her thoughts were running in that direction. "And though we don't presume to regard Mr. Fletcher," continued the Duchess, "as in any way connected with our local interests, he has always supported the Duke, and I hope has become a friend of ours. I think he is a neighbour of yours in the country."

"Oh, yes. My cousin is married to his brother."

"I knew there was something of that kind. He told me that there was some close alliance." The Duchess as she looked at the woman to whom she wanted to be kind did not as yet dare to express a wish that there might at some not very distant time be a closer alliance. She had come there intending to do so; and had still some hope that she might do it before the interview was over. But at any rate she would not do it yet. "Have I not heard," she said, "something of another marriage?"

"My brother is going to marry his cousin, Sir Alured Wharton's daughter."

"Ah;--I thought it had been one of the Fletchers. It was our member who told me, and he spoke as though they were all his very dear friends."

"They are dear friends,--very." Poor Emily still didn't know whether to call her Duchess, my Lady, or your Grace,--and yet felt the need of calling her by some special name.

"Exactly. I supposed it was so. They tell me Mr. Fletcher will become quite a favourite in the House. At this present moment nobody knows on which side anybody is going to sit to-morrow. It may be that Mr. Fletcher will become the dire enemy of all the Duke's friends."

"I hope not."

"Of course I'm speaking of political enemies. Political enemies are often the best friends in the world; and I can assure you from my own experience that political friends are often the bitterest enemies. I never hated any people so much as some of our supporters." The Duchess made a grimace, and Emily could not refrain from smiling. "Yes, indeed. There's an old saying that misfortune makes strange bedfellows, but political friendship makes stranger alliances than misfortune. Perhaps you never met Sir Timothy Beeswax."

"Never."

"Well;--don't. But, as I was saying, there is no knowing who may support whom now. If I were asked who would be Prime Minister to-morrow, I should take half-a-dozen names and shake them in a bag."

"It is not settled then?"

"Settled! No, indeed. Nothing is settled." At that moment indeed everything was settled, though the Duchess did not know it. "And so we none of us can tell how Mr. Fletcher may stand with us when things are arranged. I suppose he calls himself a Conservative?"

"Oh, yes!"

"All the Whartons, I suppose, are Conservatives,--and all the Fletchers."

"Very nearly. Papa calls himself a Tory."

"A very much better name, to my thinking. We are all Whigs, of course. A Palliser who was not a Whig would be held to have disgraced himself for ever. Are not politics odd? A few years ago I only barely knew what the word meant, and that not correctly. Lately I have been so eager about it, that there hardly seems to be anything else left worth living for. I suppose it's wrong, but a state of pugnacity seems to me the greatest bliss which we can reach here on earth."

"I shouldn't like to be always fighting."

"That's because you haven't known Sir Timothy Beeswax and two or three other gentlemen whom I could name. The day will come, I dare say, when you will care for politics."

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

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

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

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

"I don't think, your Grace, that Mr. Roby ever divulges political secrets."

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

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

"Nothing in particular, Aunt Harriet."

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

"She wrote some time ago to say she would call."

"But why?"

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

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

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

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

"Have you done any good?"

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

"Hardly women of the best sort, Lady Glen."

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

"Was she--offended?"

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

"Was she weeping?"

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

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

LXXVIII. The New Ministry

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

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

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

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

"You of course must return to office, Mr. Monk."

"With your Grace--I certainly will do so."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Any practicable arrangement--" began Mr. Gresham, with a frown, however, on his brow.

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

"Not beaten," said Lord Cantrip.

"Certainly not," said the other Duke.

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

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

"I should prefer to do so," said Mr. Monk.

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

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

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

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

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

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

As we grow old it is a matter of interest to watch how the natural gaps are filled in the two ranks of parliamentary workmen by whom the Government is carried on, either in the one interest or the other. Of course there must be gaps. Some men become too old,--though that is rarely the case. A Peel may perish, or even a Palmerston must die. Some men, though long supported by interest, family connection, or the loyalty of colleagues, are weighed down at last by their own incapacity and sink into peerages. Now and again a man cannot bear the bondage of office, and flies into rebellion and independence which would have been more respectable had it not been the result of discontent. Then the gaps must be filled. Whether on this side or on that, the candidates are first looked for among the sons of Earls and Dukes,--and not unnaturally, as the sons of Earls and Dukes may be educated for such work almost from their infancy. A few rise by the slow process of acknowledged fitness,--men who probably at first have not thought of office but are chosen because they are wanted, and whose careers are grudged them, not by their opponents or rivals, but by the Browns and Joneses of the world who cannot bear to see a Smith or a Walker become something so different to themselves. These men have a great weight to carry, and cannot always shake off the burden of their origin and live among begotten statesmen as though they too had been born to the manner. But perhaps the most wonderful ministerial phenomenon,--though now almost too common to be longer called a phenomenon,--is he who rises high in power and place by having made himself thoroughly detested and also,--alas for parliamentary cowardice!--thoroughly feared. Given sufficient audacity, a thick skin, and power to bear for a few years the evil looks and cold shoulders of his comrades, and that is the man most sure to make his way to some high seat. But the skin must be thicker than that of any animal known, and the audacity must be complete. To the man who will once shrink at the idea of being looked at askance for treachery, or hated for his ill condition, the career is impossible. But let him be obdurate, and the bid will come. "Not because I want him, do I ask for him," says some groaning chief of a party,--to himself, and also sufficiently aloud for others' ears,--"but because he stings me and goads me, and will drive me to madness as a foe." Then the pachydermatous one enters into the other's heaven, probably with the resolution already formed of ousting that unhappy angel. And so it was in the present instance. When Mr. Gresham's completed list was published to the world, the world was astonished to find that Sir Timothy was to be Mr. Gresham's Attorney-General. Sir Gregory Grogram became Lord Chancellor, and the Liberal chief was content to borrow his senior law adviser from the Conservative side of the late Coalition. It could not be that Mr. Gresham was very fond of Sir Timothy;--but Sir Timothy in the late debates had shown himself to be a man of whom a minister might well be afraid.

Immediately on leaving the old Duke's house, the late Premier went home to his wife, and, finding that she was out, waited for her return. Now that he had put his own decision beyond his own power he was anxious to let her know how it was to be with them. "I think it is settled at last," he said.

"And you are coming back?"

"Certainly not that. I believe I may say that Mr. Gresham is Prime Minister."

"Then he oughtn't to be," said the Duchess crossly.

"I am sorry that I must differ from you, my dear, because I think he is the fittest man in England for the place."

"And you?"

"I am a private gentleman who will now be able to devote more of his time to his wife and children than has hitherto been possible with him."

"How very nice! Do you mean to say that you like it?"

"I am sure that I ought to like it. At the present moment I am thinking more of what you will like."

"If you ask me, Plantagenet, you know I shall tell the truth."

"Then tell the truth."

"After drinking brandy so long I hardly think that 12s. claret will agree with my stomach. You ask for the truth, and there it is,--very plainly."

"Plain enough!"

"You asked, you know."

"And I am glad to have been told, even though that which you tell me is not pleasant hearing. When a man has been drinking too much brandy, it may be well that he should be put on a course of 12s. claret."

"He won't like it; and then,--it's kill or cure."

"I don't think you're gone so far, Cora, that we need fear that the remedy will be fatal."

"I am thinking of you rather than myself. I can make myself generally disagreeable, and get excitement in that way. But what will you do? It's all very well to talk of me and the children, but you can't bring in a Bill for reforming us. You can't make us go by decimals. You can't increase our consumption by lowering our taxation. I wish you had gone back to some Board." This she said looking up into his face with an anxiety which was half real and half burlesque.

"I had made up my mind to go back to no Board,--for the present. I was thinking that we could spend some months in Italy, Cora."

"What; for the summer;--so as to be in Rome in July! After that we could utilise the winter by visiting Norway."

"We might take Norway first."

"And be eaten up by mosquitoes! I've got to be too old to like travelling."

"What do you like, dear?"

"Nothing;--except being the Prime Minister's wife; and upon my word there were times when I didn't like that very much. I don't know anything else that I'm fit for. I wonder whether Mr. Gresham would let me go to him as housekeeper? Only we should have to lend him Gatherum, or there would be no room for the display of my abilities. Is Mr. Monk in?"

"He keeps his old office."

"And Mr. Finn?"

"I believe so; but in what place I don't know."

"And who else?"

"Our old friend the Duke, and Lord Cantrip, and Mr. Wilson,--and Sir Gregory will be Lord Chancellor."

"Just the old stupid Liberal team. Put their names in a bag and shake them, and you can always get a ministry. Well, Plantagenet;--I'll go anywhere you like to take me. I'll have something for the malaria at Rome, and something for the mosquitoes in Norway, and will make the best of it. But I don't see why you should run away in the middle of the Session. I would stay and pitch into them, all round, like a true ex-minister and independent member of Parliament." Then as he was leaving her she fired a last shot. "I hope you made Sir Orlando and Sir Timothy peers before you gave up."

It was not till two days after this that she read in one of the daily papers that Sir Timothy Beeswax was to be Attorney-General, and then her patience almost deserted her. To tell the truth, her husband had not dared to mention the appointment when he first saw her after hearing it. Her explosion first fell on the head of Phineas Finn, whom she found at home with his wife, deploring the necessity which had fallen upon him of filling the fainéant office of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. "Mr. Finn," she said, "I congratulate you on your colleagues."

"Your Grace is very good. I was at any rate introduced to many of them under the Duke's auspices."

"And ought, I think, to have seen enough of them to be ashamed of them. Such a regiment to march through Coventry with!"

"I do not doubt that we shall be good enough men for any enemies we may meet."

"It cannot but be that you should conquer all the world with such a hero among you as Sir Timothy Beeswax. The idea of Sir Timothy coming back again! What do you feel about it?"

"Very indifferent, Duchess. He won't interfere much with me, as I have an Attorney-General of my own. You see I'm especially safe."

"I do believe men would do anything," said the Duchess, turning to Mrs. Finn. "Of course I mean in the way of politics! But I did not think it possible that the Duke of St. Bungay should again be in the same Government with Sir Timothy Beeswax."