THE PRIME MINISTER (88 page)

‘Have you seen Lord Earlybird with his ribbon?’ his wife said to him.

‘I do not know Lord Earlybird by sight,’ he replied angrily.

‘Nor anyone else either. But he would have come and shown himself to you, if he had had a spark of gratitude in his composition. As far as I can learn you have sacrificed the Ministry for his sake.’

‘I did my duty as best I knew how to do it,’ said the Duke, almost with ferocity, ‘and it little becomes you to taunt me with any deficiency.’

‘Plantagenet!’

‘I am driven,’ he said, ‘almost beyond myself, and it kills me when you take part against me.’

‘Take part against you! Surely there was very little in what I said.’ And yet, as she spoke, she repented bitterly that she had at the moment allowed herself to relapse into the sort of badinage which had been usual with her before she had understood the extent of his sufferings. ‘If
I trouble you by what I say, I will certainly hold my tongue.’

‘Don’t repeat to me what that man says in the newspaper.’

‘You shouldn’t regard the man, Plantagenet You shouldn’t allow the paper to come into your hands.’

‘Am I to be afraid of seeing what men say of me? Never! But you need not repeat it, at any rate if it be false.’ She had not seen the article in question or she certainly would
not have repeated the accusation which it contained. ‘I have quarrelled with no colleague. If such a one as Lord Drummond chooses to think himself injured, am I to stoop to him? Nothing strikes me so much in all this as the ill-nature of the world at large. When they used to bait a bear tied to a stake, everyone around would cheer the dogs and help to torment the helpless animal. It is much the
same now, only they have a man instead of a bear for their pleasure.’

‘I will never help the dogs again,’ she said, coming up to him and clinging within the embrace of his arm.

He knew that he had been Quixotic, and he would sit in his chair repeating the word to himself aloud, till he himself began to fear that he would do it in company. But the thing had been done and could not be undone.
He had had the bestowal of one Garter, and he had given it to Lord Earlybird! It was, – he told himself, but not correctly, – the only thing that he had done on his own undivided responsibility since he had been Prime Minister.

The last days of July had passed, and it had been at last decided that the Session should close on the nth of August. Now the 11th of August was thought to be a great
deal too near the 12th to allow of such an arrangement being considered satisfactory. A great many members were very angry at the arrangement. It had been said all through June and into July that it was to be an early Session, and yet things had been so mismanaged that when the end came everything
could not be finished without keeping members of Parliament in town up to the nth of August! In the
memory of present legislators there had never been anything so awkward. The fault, if there was a fault, was attributable to Mr Monk. In all probability the delay was unavoidable. A minister cannot control long-winded gentlemen, and when gentlemen are very long-winded there must be delay. No doubt a strong minister can exercise some control, and it is certain that long-winded gentlemen find an
unusual scope for their breath when the reigning dynasty is weak. In that way Mr Monk and the Duke may have been responsible, but they were blamed as though they, for their own special amusement, detained gentlemen in town. Indeed the gentlemen were not detained. They grumbled and growled and then fled, – but their grumblings and growlings were heard even after their departure.

‘Well; – what
do you think of it all?’ the Duke said one day to Mr Monk, at the Treasury, affecting an air of cheery good-humour.

‘I think,’ said Mr Monk, ‘that the country is very prosperous. I don’t know that I ever remember trade to have been more evenly satisfactory.’

‘Ah, yes. That’s very well for the country, and ought, I suppose, to satisfy us.’

‘It satisfies me,’ said Mr Monk.

‘And me, in a way.
But if you were walking about in a very tight pair of boots, in an agony with your feet, would you be able just then to relish the news that agricultural wages in that parish had gone up sixpence a week?’

‘I’d take my boots off, and then try,’ said Mr Monk.

‘That’s just what I’m thinking of doing. If I had my boots off all that prosperity would be so pleasant to me! But, you see, you can’t take
your boots off in company. And it may be that you have a walk before you, and that no boots will be worse for your feet even than tight ones.’

‘We’ll have our boots off soon, Duke,’ said Mr Monk, speaking of the recess.

‘And when shall we be quit of them altogether? Joking apart, they have to be worn if the country requires it.’

‘Certainly, Duke.’

‘And it may be that you and I think that upon
the whole they may be worn with advantage. What does the country say to that?’

‘The country has never said the reverse. We have not had a majority against us this Session on any Government question.’

‘But we have had narrowing majorities. What will the House do as to the Lords’ amendments on the Bankruptcy Bill?’ There was a bill that had gone down from the House of Commons, but had not originated
with the Government. It had, however, been fostered by ministers in the House of Lords, and had been sent back with certain amendments for which the Lord Chancellor had made himself responsible. It was therefore now almost a Government measure. The manipulation of this measure had been one of the causes of the prolonged sitting of the Houses.

‘Grogram says they will take the amendments.’

‘And
if they don’t?’

‘Why then,’ said Mr Monk, ‘the Lords must take our rejection.’

‘And we shall have been beaten,’ said the Duke.

‘Undoubtedly.’

‘And beaten simply because the House desires to beat us. I am told that Sir Timothy Beeswax intends to speak and vote against the amendments.’

‘What, – Sir Timothy on one side, and Sir Gregory on the other?’

‘So Lord Ramsden tells me,’ said the Duke.
‘If it be so, what are we to do?’

‘Certainly not go out in August,’ said Mr Monk.

When the time came for the consideration of the Lords’ amendments in the House of Commons, – and it did not come till the 8th of August, – the matter was exactly as the Duke had said. Sir Gregory Grogram, with a great deal of earnestness, supported the Lords’ amendments, – as he was in honour bound to do. The amendment
had come from his chief, the Lord Chancellor, and had indeed been discussed with Sir Gregory before it had been proposed. He was very much in earnest; – but it was evident from Sir Gregory’s earnestness that he expected a violent opposition. Immediately after him rose Sir Timothy. Now Sir Timothy was a pretentious man, who assumed to be not only an advocate but a lawyer. And he assumed also
to be a political magnate. He went into the matter at great length. He began by saying that it was not a party question. The bill, which he had had the honour of supporting before it went from their own House, had been a private bill. As such it had
received a general support from the Government. It had been materially altered in the other House under the auspices of his noble friend on the woolsack,
but from those alterations he was obliged to dissent. Then he said some very heavy things against the Lord Chancellor, and increased in acerbity as he described what he called the altered mind of his honourable and learned friend the Attorney-General. He then made some very uncomplimentary allusions to the Prime Minister, whom he accused of being more than ordinarily reserved with his subordinates.
The speech was manifestly arranged and delivered with the express view of damaging the Coalition, of which at the time he himself made a part. Men observed that things were very much altered when such a course as that was taken in the House of Commons. But that was the course taken on this occasion by Sir Timothy Beeswax, and was so far taken with success that the Lords’ amendments were
rejected and the Government was beaten in a thin House, by a large majority – composed partly of its own men. ‘What am I to do?’ asked the Prime Minister of the old Duke.

The old Duke’s answer was exactly the same as that given by Mr Monk. ‘We cannot resign in August.’ And then he went on. ‘We must wait and see how things go at the beginning of next Session. The chief question is whether Sir
Timothy should not be asked to resign.’

Then the Session was at an end, and they who had been staunch to the last got out of town as quick as the trains could carry them.

The Duchess of Omnium was not the most discreet woman in the world. That was admitted by her best friends, and was the great sin alleged against her by her worst enemies. In her desire to say sharp things, she would say the sharp thing in the wrong place, and in her wish to be good-natured she was apt to run into offences. Just as she was about to leave town,
which did not take place for some days after Parliament had risen, she made an indiscreet proposition to her
husband. ‘Should you mind my asking Mrs Lopez down to Matching? We shall only be a very small party.’

Now the very name of Lopez was terrible to the Duke’s ears. Anything which recalled the wretch and that wretched tragedy to the Duke’s mind gave him a stab. The Duchess ought to have felt
that any communication between her husband and even the man’s widow was to be avoided rather than sought. ‘Quite out of the question!’ said the Duke, drawing himself up.

‘Why out of the question?’

‘There are a thousand reasons. I could not have it.’

‘Then I will say nothing more about it. But there is a romance there, – something quite touching.’

‘You don’t mean that she has – a lover?’

‘Well; – yes.’

‘And she lost her husband only the other day, – lost him in so terrible a manner? If that is so certainly I do not wish to see her again.’

‘Ah, that is because you don’t know the story.’

‘I don’t wish to know it.’

‘The man who now wants to marry her knew her long before she had seen Lopez, and had offered to her ever so many times. He is a fine fellow, and you know him.’

‘I
had rather not hear any more about it,’ said the Duke, walking away.

There was an end to the Duchess’s scheme of getting Emily down to Matching, – a scheme which could hardly have been successful even had the Duke not objected to it But yet the Duchess would not abandon her project of befriending the widow. She had injured Lopez. She had liked what she had seen of Mrs Lopez. And she was now endeavouring
to take Arthur Fletcher by the hand. She called therefore at Manchester Square on the day before she started for Matching, and left a card and a note. This was on the 15th of August, when London was as empty as it ever is. The streets at the West End were deserted. The houses were shut up. The very sweepers of the crossings seemed to have gone out of town. The public offices were manned
by one or two unfortunates each, who consoled themselves by reading novels at their desks. Half the cab-drivers had gone apparently to the seaside, – or to bed. The shops were still
open, but all the respectable shopkeepers were either in Switzerland or at their marine villas. The travelling world had divided itself into Cookites and Hookites:
¹⁸
– those who escaped trouble under the auspices of
Mr Cook, and those who boldly combated the extortions of foreign innkeepers and the Anti-Anglican tendencies of foreign railway officials ‘on their own hooks’. The Duchess of Omnium was nevertheless in town, and the Duke might still be seen going in at the back entrance of the Treasury Chambers every day at eleven o’clock. Mr Warburton thought it very hard, for he, too, could shoot grouse; but he
would have perished rather than have spoken a word.

The Duchess did not ask to see Mrs Lopez, but left her card and a note. She had not liked, she said, to leave town without calling, though she would not seek to be admitted. She hoped that Mrs Lopez was recovering her health, and trusted that on her return to town she might be allowed to renew her acquaintance. The note was very simple, and
could not be taken as other than friendly. If she had been simply Mrs Palliser, and her husband had been a junior clerk in the Treasury, such a visit would have been a courtesy; and it was not less so because it was made by the Duchess of Omnium and by the wife of the Prime Minister. But yet among all the poor widow’s acquaintances she was the only one who had ventured to call since Lopez had destroyed
himself. Mrs Roby had been told not to come. Lady Eustace had been sternly rejected. Even old Mrs Fletcher when she had been up in town had, after a very solemn meeting with Mr Wharton, contented herself with sending her love. It had come to pass that the idea of being immured was growing to be natural to Emily herself. The longer that it was continued the more did it seem to be impossible to
her that she should break from her seclusion. But yet she was gratified by the note from the Duchess.

‘She means to be civil, papa.’

‘Oh yes; – but there are people whose civility I don’t want.’

‘Certainly. I did not want the civility of that horrid Lady Eustace. But I can understand this. She thinks that she did Ferdinand an injury.’

‘When you begin, my dear, – and I hope it will be soon,
– to get back to the world, you will find it more comfortable, I think, to find yourself among your own people.’

‘I don’t want to go back,’ she said, sobbing bitterly.

‘But I want you to go back. All who know you want you to go back. Only don’t begin at that end.’

‘You don’t suppose, papa, that I wish to go to the Duchess?’

‘I wish you to go somewhere. It can’t be good for you to remain here.
Indeed I shall think it wicked, or at any rate weak, if you continue to seclude yourself.’

‘Where shall I go?’ she said imploringly.

‘To Wharton. I certainly think you ought to go there first.’

‘If you would go, papa, and leave me here, – just this once. Next year I will go, – if they ask me.’

‘When I may be dead, for aught that any of us know.’