THE PRIME MINISTER (52 page)

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

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

‘Papa must tell him.’

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

‘Why not, Ferdinand?’

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

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

‘No!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Nothing on earth could divide me from you.’

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

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

‘Then I must tell papa.’

‘No; – you
shall tell him nothing.’

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

‘You will wilfully disobey me?’

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

‘Well; yes; rather.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘The Duke heard of it?’

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

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

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

‘Impossible!’

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

‘What did the Duke say?’

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

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

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

In those days Sir Orlando was unhappy and irritable, doubtful of further success as regarded the Coalition, but quite resolved to pull the
house down about the ears of the inhabitants rather than to leave it with gentle resignation. To him it seemed to be impossible that the Coalition should exist without him. He too had had moments of high-vaulting ambition, in which he had almost felt himself to be the
great man required by the country, the one ruler who could gather together in his grasp the reins of government and drive the State
coach single-handed safe through its difficulties for the next half-dozen years. There are men who cannot conceive of themselves that anything should be difficult for them, and again others who cannot bring themselves so to trust themselves as to think that they can ever achieve anything great Samples of each sort from time to time rise high in political life, carried thither apparently by Epicurean
concourse of atoms;
²²
and it often happens that the more confident samples are by no means the most capable. The concourse of atoms had carried Sir Orlando so high that he could not but think himself intended for something higher. But the Duke, who had really been wafted to the very top, had always doubted himself, believing himself capable of doing some one thing by dint of industry, but with
no further confidence in his own powers. Sir Orlando had perceived something of his leader’s weakness, and had thought that he might profit by it. He was not only a distinguished member of the Cabinet, but even the recognized Leader of the House of Commons. He looked out the facts and found that for five-and-twenty years out of the last thirty the Leader of the House of Commons had been the Head
of the Government. He felt that he would be mean not to stretch out his hand and take the prize destined for him. The Duke was a poor timid man who had very little to say for himself. Then came the little episode about the dinners. It had become very evident to all the world that the Duchess of Omnium had cut Sir Orlando Drought, – that the Prime Minister’s wife, who was great in hospitality, would
not admit the First Lord of the Admiralty into her house. The doings at Gatherum Castle, and in Carlton Terrace, and at The Horns were watched much too closely by the world at large to allow such omissions to be otherwise than conspicuous. Since the commencement of the session there had been a series of articles in the
People’s Banner
violently abusive of the Prime Minister, and in one or two
of these the indecency of these exclusions had been exposed with great strength of language. And the Editor of the
People’s Banner
had discovered that Sir Orlando Drought was the one man in Parliament fit to rule the nation. Till Parliament should discover this fact, or at least acknowledge it, – the discovery having been happily made by the
People’s Banner
, – the Editor of the
People’s Banner
thought that there could be no hope for the country. Sir Orlando of course saw all these articles, and in his very heart believed that a man had at length sprung up among them fit to conduct a newspaper. The Duke also unfortunately saw the
Peoples Banner
. In his old happy days two papers a day, one in the morning and the other before dinner, sufficed to tell him all that he wanted to know. Now
he felt it necessary to see almost every rag that was published. And he would skim through them all till he found the lines in which he himself was maligned, and then, with sore heart and irritated nerves, would pause over every contumelious word. He would have bitten his tongue out rather than have spoken of the tortures he endured, but he was tortured and did endure. He knew the cause of the bitter
personal attacks made on him, – of the abuse with which he was loaded, and of the ridicule, infinitely more painful to him, with which his wife’s social splendour was bespattered. He remembered well the attempt which Mr Quintus Slide had made to obtain an entrance into his house, and his own scornful rejection of that gentleman’s overtures. He knew, – no man knew better, – the real value of that
able Editor’s opinion. And yet every word of it was gall and wormwood to him. In every paragraph there was a scourge which hit him on the raw and opened wounds which he could show to no kind surgeon, for which he could find solace in no friendly treatment. Not even to his wife could he condescend to say that Mr Quintus Slide had hurt him.

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

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