The Palliser Novels (481 page)

When Mr. Wharton got this letter he was very much puzzled. Could he have had his wish, he too would have left the chasm behind him as proposed by his young friend, and have never cast an eye back upon the frightful abyss. He would willingly have allowed the whole Lopez incident to be passed over as an episode in their lives, which, if it could not be forgotten, should at any rate never be mentioned. They had all been severely punished, as Fletcher had said, and if the matter could end there he would be well content to bear on his own shoulders all that remained of that punishment, and to let everything begin again. But he knew very well it could not be so with her. Even yet it was impossible to induce Emily to think of her husband without regret. It had been only too manifest during the last year of their married life that she had felt horror rather than love towards him. When there had been a question of his leaving her behind, should he go to Central America, she had always expressed herself more than willing to comply with such an arrangement. She would go with him should he order her to do so, but would infinitely sooner remain in England. And then, too, she had spoken of him while alive with disdain and disgust, and had submitted to hear her father describe him as infamous. Her life had been one long misery, under which she had seemed gradually to be perishing. Now she was relieved, and her health was re-established. A certain amount of unjoyous cheerfulness was returning to her. It was impossible to doubt that she must have known that a great burden had fallen from her back. And yet she would never allow his name to be mentioned without giving some outward sign of affection for his memory. If he was bad, so were others bad. There were many worse than he. Such were the excuses she made for her late husband. Old Mr. Wharton, who really thought that in all his experience he had never known any one worse than his son-in-law, would sometimes become testy, and at last resolved that he would altogether hold his tongue. But he could hardly hold his tongue now.

He, no doubt, had already formed his hopes in regard to Arthur Fletcher. He had trusted that the man whom he had taught himself some years since to regard as his wished-for son-in-law, might be constant and strong enough in his love to forget all that was past, and to be still willing to redeem his daughter from misery. But as days had crept on since the scene at the Tenway Junction, he had become aware that time must do much before such relief would be accepted. It was, however, still possible that the presence of the man might do something. Hitherto, since the deed had been done, no stranger had dined in Manchester Square. She herself had seen no visitor. She had hardly left the house except to go to church, and then had been enveloped in the deepest crape. Once or twice she had allowed herself to be driven out in a carriage, and, when she had done so, her father had always accompanied her. No widow, since the seclusion of widows was first ordained, had been more strict in maintaining the restraints of widowhood as enjoined. How then could he bid her receive a new lover, — or how suggest to her that a lover was possible? And yet he did not like to answer Arthur Fletcher without naming some period for the present mourning, — some time at which he might at least show himself in Manchester Square.

“I have had a letter from Arthur Fletcher,” he said to his daughter a day or two after he had received it. He was sitting after dinner, and Everett was also in the room.

“Is he in Herefordshire?” she asked.

“No; — he is up in town, attending to the House of Commons, I suppose. He had something to say to me, and as we are not in the way of meeting he wrote. He wants to come and see you.”

“Not yet, papa.”

“He talked of coming and dining here.”

“Oh yes; pray let him come.”

“You would not mind that?”

“I would dine early and be out of the way. I should be so glad if you would have somebody sometimes. I shouldn’t think then that I was such a — such a restraint to you.”

But this was not what Mr. Wharton desired. “I shouldn’t like that, my dear. Of course he would know that you were in the house.”

“Upon my word, I think you might meet an old friend like that,” said Everett.

She looked at her brother, and then at her father, and burst into tears. “Of course you shall not be pressed if it would be irksome to you,” said her father.

“It is the first plunge that hurts,” said Everett. “If you could once bring yourself to do it, you would find afterwards that you were more comfortable.”

“Papa,” she said slowly, “I know what it means. His goodness I shall always remember. You may tell him I say so. But I cannot meet him yet.” Then they pressed her no further. Of course she had understood. Her father could not even ask her to say a word which might give comfort to Arthur as to some long distant time.

He went down to the House of Commons the next day, and saw his young friend there. Then they walked up and down Westminster Hall for nearly an hour, talking over the matter with the most absolute freedom. “It cannot be for the benefit of any one,” said Arthur Fletcher, “that she should immolate herself like an Indian widow, — and for the sake of such a man as that! Of course I have no right to dictate to you, — hardly, perhaps, to give an opinion.”

“Yes, yes, yes.”

“It does seem to me, then, that you ought to force her out of that kind of thing. Why should she not go down to Herefordshire?”

“In time, Arthur, — in time.”

“But people’s lives are running away.”

“My dear fellow, if you were to see her you would know how vain it would be to try to hurry her. There must be time.”

The Duke of St. Bungay had been very much disappointed. He had contradicted with a repetition of noes the assertion of the Duchess that he had been the Warwick who had placed the Prime Minister’s crown on the head of the Duke of Omnium, but no doubt he felt in his heart that he had done so much towards it that his advice respecting the vacant Garter, when given with so much weight, should have been followed. He was an old man, and had known the secrets of Cabinet Councils when his younger friend was a little boy. He had given advice to Lord John, and had been one of the first to congratulate Sir Robert Peel when that statesman became a free-trader. He had sat in conclave with THE Duke, and had listened to the bold Liberalism of old Earl Grey, both in the Lower and the Upper House. He had been always great in council, never giving his advice unasked, nor throwing his pearls before swine, and cautious at all times to avoid excesses on this side or on that. He had never allowed himself a hobby horse of his own to ride, had never been ambitious, had never sought to be the ostensible leader of men. But he did now think that when, with all his experience, he spoke very much in earnest, some attention should be paid to what he said. When he had described a certain line of conduct as Quixotic he had been very much in earnest. He did not usually indulge in strong language, and Quixotic, when applied to the conduct of a Prime Minister, was, to his ideas, very strong. The thing described as Quixotic had now been done, and the Duke of St. Bungay was a disappointed man.

For an hour or two he thought that he must gently secede from all private councils with the Prime Minister. To resign, or to put impediments in the way of his own chief, did not belong to his character. That line of strategy had come into fashion since he had learnt his political rudiments, and was very odious to him. But in all party compacts there must be inner parties, peculiar bonds, and confidences stricter, stronger, and also sweeter than those which bind together the twenty or thirty gentlemen who form a Government. From those closer ties which had hitherto bound him to the Duke of Omnium he thought, for a while, that he must divorce himself. Surely on such a subject as the nomination of a Knight of the Garter his advice might have been taken, — if only because it had come from him! And so he kept himself apart for a day or two, and even in the House of Lords ceased to whisper kindly, cheerful words into the ears of his next neighbour.

But various remembrances crowded in upon him by degrees, compelling him to moderate and at last to abandon his purpose. Among these the first was the memory of the kiss which he had given the Duchess. The woman had told him that she loved him, that he was one of the very few whom she did love, — and the word had gone straight into his old heart. She had bade him not to desert her; and he had not only given her his promise, but he had converted that promise to a sacred pledge by a kiss. He had known well why she had exacted the promise. The turmoil in her husband’s mind, the agony which he sometimes endured when people spoke ill of him, the aversion which he had at first genuinely felt to an office for which he hardly thought himself fit, and now the gradual love of power created by the exercise of power, had all been seen by her, and had created that solicitude which had induced her to ask for the promise. The old Duke had known them both well, but had hardly as yet given the Duchess credit for so true a devotion to her husband. It now seemed to him that though she had failed to love the man, she had given her entire heart to the Prime Minister. He sympathised with her altogether, and, at any rate could not go back from his promise.

And then he remembered, too, that if this man did anything amiss in the high office which he had been made to fill, he who had induced him to fill it was responsible. What right had he, the Duke of St. Bungay, to be angry because his friend was not all-wise at all points? Let the Droughts and the Drummonds and the Beeswaxes quarrel among themselves or with their colleagues. He belonged to a different school, in the teachings of which there was less perhaps of excitement and more of long-suffering; — but surely, also, more of nobility. He was, at any rate, too old to change, and he would therefore be true to his friend through evil and through good. Having thought this all out he again whispered some cheery word to the Prime Minister, as they sat listening to the denunciations of Lord Fawn, a Liberal lord, much used to business, but who had not been received into the Coalition. The first whisper and the second whisper the Prime Minister received very coldly. He had fully appreciated the discontinuance of the whispers, and was aware of the cause. He had made a selection on his own unassisted judgment in opposition to his old friend’s advice, and this was the result. Let it be so! All his friends were turning away from him and he would have to stand alone. If so, he would stand alone till the pendulum of the House of Commons had told him that it was time for him to retire. But gradually the determined good-humour of the old man prevailed. “He has a wonderful gift of saying nothing with second-rate dignity,” whispered the repentant friend, speaking of Lord Fawn.

“A very honest man,” said the Prime Minister in return.

“A sort of bastard honesty, — by precept out of stupidity. There is no real conviction in it, begotten by thought.” This little bit of criticism, harsh as it was, had the effect, and the Prime Minister became less miserable than he had been.

But Lord Drummond forgave nothing. He still held his office, but more than once he was seen in private conference with both Sir Orlando and Mr. Boffin. He did not attempt to conceal his anger. Lord Earlybird! An old woman! One whom no other man in England would have thought of making a Knight of the Garter! It was not, he said, personal disappointment in himself. There were half-a-dozen peers whom he would willingly have seen so graced without the slightest chagrin. But this must have been done simply to show the Duke’s power, and to let the world understand that he owed nothing and would pay nothing to his supporters. It was almost a disgrace, said Lord Drummond, to belong to a Government the Head of which could so commit himself! The Session was nearly at an end, and Lord Drummond thought that no step could be conveniently taken now. But it was quite clear to him that this state of things could not be continued. It was observed that Lord Drummond and the Prime Minister never spoke to each other in the House, and that the Secretary of State for the Colonies, — that being the office which he held, — never rose in his place after Lord Earlybird’s nomination, unless to say a word or two as to his own peculiar duties. It was very soon known to all the world that there was war to the knife between Lord Drummond and the Prime Minister.

And, strange to say, there seemed to be some feeling of general discontent on this very trifling subject. When Aristides has been much too just the oyster-shells become numerous. It was said that the Duke had been guilty of pretentious love of virtue in taking Lord Earlybird out of his own path of life and forcing him to write K.G. after his name. There came out an article, of course in the “People’s Banner,” headed, “Our Prime Minister’s Good Works,” in which poor Lord Earlybird was ridiculed in a very unbecoming manner, and in which it was asserted that the thing was done as a counterpoise to the iniquity displayed in “hounding Ferdinand Lopez to his death.” Whenever Ferdinand Lopez was mentioned he had always been hounded. And then the article went on to declare that either the Prime Minister had quarrelled with all his colleagues, or else that all his colleagues had quarrelled with the Prime Minister. Mr. Slide did not care which it might be, but, whichever it might be, the poor country had to suffer when such a state of things was permitted. It was notorious that neither the Duke of St. Bungay nor Lord Drummond would now even speak to their own chief, so thoroughly were they disgusted with his conduct. Indeed it seemed that the only ally the Prime Minister had in his own Cabinet was the Irish adventurer, Mr. Phineas Finn. Lord Earlybird never read a word of all this, and was altogether undisturbed as he sat in his chair in Exeter Hall, — or just at this time of the year more frequently in the provinces. But the Duke of Omnium read it all. After what had passed he did not dare to show it to his brother Duke. He did not dare to tell his friend that it was said in the newspapers that they did not speak to each other. But every word from Mr. Slide’s pen settled on his own memory, and added to his torments. It came to be a fixed idea in the Duke’s mind that Mr. Slide was a gadfly sent to the earth for the express purpose of worrying him.