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The Prime Minister

by Anthony Trollope · English · Gutenberg #2158 · 1,534,365 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Prime Minister

Author: Anthony Trollope


        
Release date: April 1, 2000 [eBook #2158]
                Most recently updated: April 29, 2019

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2158

Credits: E-text prepared by Kenneth David Cooper and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIME MINISTER ***


E-text prepared by Kenneth David Cooper
and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.



THE PRIME MINISTER

by

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

First published in monthly installments in 1875 and 1876 and in book
form in 1876







CONTENTS

   VOLUME I

         I. Ferdinand Lopez
        II. Everett Wharton
       III. Mr. Abel Wharton, Q.C.
        IV. Mrs. Roby
         V. "No One Knows Anything About Him"
        VI. An Old Friend Goes to Windsor
       VII. Another Old Friend
      VIII. The Beginning of a New Career
        IX. Mrs. Dick's Dinner Party.--No. I
         X. Mrs. Dick's Dinner Party.--No. II
        XI. Carlton Terrace
       XII. The Gathering of Clouds
      XIII. Mr. Wharton Complains
       XIV. A Lover's Perseverance
        XV. Arthur Fletcher
       XVI. Never Run Away!
      XVII. Good-Bye
     XVIII. The Duke of Omnium Thinks of Himself
       XIX. Vulgarity
        XX. Sir Orlando's Policy
       XXI. The Duchess's New Swan
      XXII. St. James's Park
     XXIII. Surrender
      XXIV. The Marriage
       XXV. The Beginning of the Honeymoon
      XXVI. The End of the Honeymoon
     XXVII. The Duke's Misery
    XXVIII. The Duchess Is Much Troubled
      XXIX. The Two Candidates for Silverbridge
       XXX. "Yes;--a Lie!"
      XXXI. "Yes;--with a Horsewhip in My Hand"
     XXXII. "What Business Is It of Yours?"
    XXXIII. Showing That a Man Should Not Howl
     XXXIV. The Silverbridge Election
      XXXV. Lopez Back in London
     XXXVI. The Jolly Blackbird
    XXXVII. The Horns
   XXXVIII. Sir Orlando Retires
     XXXIX. "Get Round Him"
        XL. "Come and Try It"

   VOLUME II

       XLI. The Value of a Thick Skin
      XLII. Retribution
     XLIII. Kauri Gum
      XLIV. Mr. Wharton Intends to Make a New Will
       XLV. Mrs. Sexty Parker
      XLVI. "He Wants to Get Rich Too Quick"
     XLVII. As for Love!
    XLVIII. "Has He Ill-treated You?"
      XLIX. "Where Is Guatemala?"
         L. Mr. Slide's Revenge
        LI. Coddling the Prime Minister
       LII. "I Can Sleep Here To-night, I Suppose?"
      LIII. Mr. Hartlepod
       LIV. Lizzie
        LV. Mrs. Parker's Sorrows
       LVI. What the Duchess Thought of Her Husband
      LVII. The Explanation
     LVIII. "Quite Settled"
       LIX. "The First and the Last"
        LX. The Tenway Junction
       LXI. The Widow and Her Friends
      LXII. Phineas Finn Has a Book to Read
     LXIII. The Duchess and Her Friend
      LXIV. The New K.G.
       LXV. "There Must Be Time"
      LXVI. The End of the Session
     LXVII. Mrs. Lopez Prepares to Move
    LXVIII. The Prime Minister's Political Creed
      LXIX. Mrs. Parker's Fate
       LXX. At Wharton
      LXXI. The Ladies at Longbarns Doubt
     LXXII. "He Thinks That Our Days Are Numbered"
    LXXIII. Only the Duke of Omnium
     LXXIV. "I Am Disgraced and Shamed"
      LXXV. The Great Wharton Alliance
     LXXVI. Who Will It Be?
    LXXVII. The Duchess in Manchester Square
   LXXVIII. The New Ministry
     LXXIX. The Wharton Wedding
      LXXX. The Last Meeting at Matching




VOLUME I

CHAPTER I

Ferdinand Lopez


It is certainly of service to a man to know who were his grandfathers
and who were his grandmothers if he entertain an ambition to move in
the upper circles of society, and also of service to be able to speak
of them as of persons who were themselves somebodies in their time.
No doubt we all entertain great respect for those who by their own
energies have raised themselves in the world; and when we hear that
the son of a washerwoman has become Lord Chancellor or Archbishop
of Canterbury we do, theoretically and abstractedly, feel a higher
reverence for such self-made magnate than for one who has been as it
were born into forensic or ecclesiastical purple. But not the less
must the offspring of the washerwoman have had very much trouble on
the subject of his birth, unless he has been, when young as well as
when old, a very great man indeed. After the goal has been absolutely
reached, and the honour and the titles and the wealth actually
won, a man may talk with some humour, even with some affection, of
the maternal tub;--but while the struggle is going on, with the
conviction strong upon the struggler that he cannot be altogether
successful unless he be esteemed a gentleman, not to be ashamed,
not to conceal the old family circumstances, not at any rate to be
silent, is difficult. And the difficulty is certainly not less if
fortunate circumstances rather than hard work and intrinsic merit
have raised above his natural place an aspirant to high social
position. Can it be expected that such a one when dining with a
duchess shall speak of his father's small shop, or bring into the
light of day his grandfather's cobbler's awl? And yet it is difficult
to be altogether silent! It may not be necessary for any of us to be
always talking of our own parentage. We may be generally reticent as
to our uncles and aunts, and may drop even our brothers and sisters
in our ordinary conversation. But if a man never mentions his
belongings among those with whom he lives, he becomes mysterious,
and almost open to suspicion. It begins to be known that nobody
knows anything of such a man, and even friends become afraid. It is
certainly convenient to be able to allude, if it be but once in a
year, to some blood relation.

Ferdinand Lopez, who in other respects had much in his circumstances
on which to congratulate himself, suffered trouble in his mind
respecting his ancestors such as I have endeavoured to describe. He
did not know very much himself, but what little he did know he kept
altogether to himself. He had no father or mother, no uncle, aunt,
brother or sister, no cousin even whom he could mention in a cursory
way to his dearest friend. He suffered, no doubt;--but with Spartan
consistency he so hid his trouble from the world that no one knew
that he suffered. Those with whom he lived, and who speculated often
and wondered much as to who he was, never dreamed that the silent
man's reticence was a burden to himself. At no special conjuncture of
his life, at no period which could be marked with the finger of the
observer, did he glaringly abstain from any statement which at the
moment might be natural. He never hesitated, blushed, or palpably
laboured at concealment; but the fact remained that though a great
many men and not a few women knew Ferdinand Lopez very well, none of
them knew whence he had come, or what was his family.

He was a man, however, naturally reticent, who never alluded to his
own affairs unless in pursuit of some object the way to which was
clear before his eyes. Silence therefore on a matter which is common
in the mouths of most men was less difficult to him than to another,
and the result less embarrassing. Dear old Jones, who tells his
friends at the club of every pound that he loses or wins at the
races, who boasts of Mary's favours and mourns over Lucy's coldness
almost in public, who issues bulletins on the state of his purse, his
stomach, his stable, and his debts, could not with any amount of care
keep from us the fact that his father was an attorney's clerk, and
made his first money by discounting small bills. Everybody knows
it, and Jones, who likes popularity, grieves at the unfortunate
publicity. But Jones is relieved from a burden which would have
broken his poor shoulders, and which even Ferdinand Lopez, who is a
strong man, often finds it hard to bear without wincing.

It was admitted on all sides that Ferdinand Lopez was a "gentleman."
Johnson says that any other derivation of this difficult word than
that which causes it to signify "a man of ancestry" is whimsical.
There are many, who in defining the term for their own use, still
adhere to Johnson's dictum;--but they adhere to it with certain
unexpressed allowances for possible exceptions. The chances are very
much in favour of the well-born man, but exceptions may exist. It
was not generally believed that Ferdinand Lopez was well born;--but
he was a gentleman. And this most precious rank was acceded to
him although he was employed,--or at least had been employed,--on
business which does not of itself give such a warrant of position as
is supposed to be afforded by the bar and the church, by the military
services and by physic. He had been on the Stock Exchange, and still
in some manner, not clearly understood by his friends, did business
in the City.

At the time with which we are now concerned Ferdinand Lopez was
thirty-three years old, and as he had begun life early he had been
long before the world. It was known of him that he had been at a good
English private school, and it was reported, on the solitary evidence
of one who had there been his schoolfellow, that a rumour was current
in the school that his school bills were paid by an old gentleman
who was not related to him. Thence at the age of seventeen he had
been sent to a German University, and at the age of twenty-one
had appeared in London, in a stockbroker's office, where he was
soon known as an accomplished linguist, and as a very clever
fellow,--precocious, not given to many pleasures, apt for work, but
hardly trustworthy by employers, not as being dishonest, but as
having a taste for being a master rather than a servant. Indeed his
period of servitude was very short. It was not in his nature to be
active on behalf of others. He was soon active for himself, and at
one time it was supposed that he was making a fortune. Then it was
known that he had left his regular business, and it was supposed that
he had lost all that he had ever made or had ever possessed. But
nobody, not even his own bankers or his own lawyer,--not even the old
woman who looked after his linen,--ever really knew the state of his
affairs.

He was certainly a handsome man,--his beauty being of a sort which
men are apt to deny and women to admit lavishly. He was nearly six
feet tall, very dark, and very thin, with regular, well-cut features
indicating little to the physiognomist unless it be the great gift of
self-possession. His hair was cut short, and he wore no beard beyond
an absolutely black moustache. His teeth were perfect in form and
whiteness,--a characteristic which, though it may be a valued item
in a general catalogue of personal attraction, does not generally
recommend a man to the unconscious judgment of his acquaintance.
But about the mouth and chin of this man there was a something of
softness, perhaps in the play of the lips, perhaps in the dimple,
which in some degree lessened the feeling of hardness which was
produced by the square brow and bold, unflinching, combative eyes.
They who knew him and liked him were reconciled by the lower face.
The greater number who knew him and did not like him felt and
resented,--even though in nine cases out of ten they might express no
resentment even to themselves,--the pugnacity of his steady glance.

For he was essentially one of those men who are always, in the inner
workings of their minds, defending themselves and attacking others.
He could not give a penny to a woman at a crossing without a look
which argued at full length her injustice in making her demand, and
his freedom from all liability let him walk the crossing as often as
he might. He could not seat himself in a railway carriage without a
lesson to his opposite neighbour that in all the mutual affairs of
travelling, arrangement of feet, disposition of bags, and opening
of windows, it would be that neighbour's duty to submit and his to
exact. It was, however, for the spirit rather than for the thing
itself that he combatted. The woman with the broom got her penny. The
opposite gentleman when once by a glance he had expressed submission
was allowed his own way with his legs and with the window. I would
not say that Ferdinand Lopez was prone to do ill-natured things; but
he was imperious, and he had learned to carry his empire in his eye.

The reader must submit to be told one or two further and still
smaller details respecting the man, and then the man shall be allowed
to make his own way. No one of those around him knew how much care he
took to dress himself well, or how careful he was that no one should
know it. His very tailor regarded him as being simply extravagant in
the number of his coats and trousers, and his friends looked upon him
as one of those fortunate beings to whose nature belongs a facility
of being well dressed, or almost an impossibility of being ill
dressed. We all know the man,--a little man generally who moves
seldom and softly,--who looks always as though he had just been sent
home in a bandbox. Ferdinand Lopez was not a little man, and moved
freely enough; but never, at any moment,--going into the city or
coming out of it, on horseback or on foot, at home over his book or
after the mazes of the dance,--was he dressed otherwise than with
perfect care. Money and time did it, but folk thought that it grew
with him, as did his hair and his nails. And he always rode a horse
which charmed good judges of what a park nag should be;--not a
prancing, restless, giggling, sideway-going, useless garran, but an
animal well made, well bitted, with perfect paces, on whom a rider if
it pleased him could be as quiet as a statue on a monument. It often
did please Ferdinand Lopez to be quiet on horseback; and yet he did
not look like a statue, for it was acknowledged through all London
that he was a good horseman. He lived luxuriously too,--though
whether at his ease or not nobody knew,--for he kept a brougham of
his own, and during the hunting season he had two horses down at
Leighton. There had once been a belief abroad that he was ruined, but
they who interest themselves in such matters had found out,--or at
any rate believed that they had found out,--that he paid his tailor
regularly: and now there prevailed an opinion that Ferdinand Lopez
was a monied man.

It was known to some few that he occupied rooms in a flat at
Westminster,--but to very few exactly where the rooms were situate.
Among all his friends no one was known to have entered them. In a
moderate way he was given to hospitality,--that is to infrequent but,
when the occasion came, to graceful hospitality. Some club, however,
or tavern, or perhaps, in the summer, some river bank would be chosen
as the scene of these festivities. To a few,--if, as suggested,
amidst summer flowers on the water's edge to men and women mixed,--he
would be a courtly and efficient host; for he had the rare gift of
doing such things well.

Hunting was over, and the east wind was still blowing, and a great
portion of the London world was out of town taking its Easter
holiday, when, on an unpleasant morning, Ferdinand Lopez travelled
into the city by the Metropolitan railway from Westminster Bridge. It
was his custom to go thither when he did go,--not daily like a man of
business, but as chance might require, like a capitalist or a man of
pleasure,--in his own brougham. But on this occasion he walked down
to the river side, and then walked from the Mansion House into a
dingy little court called Little Tankard Yard, near the Bank of
England, and going through a narrow dark long passage got into a
little office at the back of a building, in which there sat at a desk
a greasy gentleman with a new hat on one side of his head, who might
perhaps be about forty years old. The place was very dark, and the
man was turning over the leaves of a ledger. A stranger to city
ways might probably have said that he was idle, but he was no doubt
filling his mind with that erudition which would enable him to earn
his bread. On the other side of the desk there was a little boy
copying letters. These were Mr. Sextus Parker,--commonly called Sexty
Parker,--and his clerk. Mr. Parker was a gentleman very well known
and at the present moment favourably esteemed on the Stock Exchange.
"What, Lopez!" said he. "Uncommon glad to see you. What can I do for
you?"

"Just come inside,--will you?" said Lopez. Now within Mr. Parker's
very small office there was a smaller office in which there were
a safe, a small rickety Pembroke table, two chairs, and an old
washing-stand with a tumbled towel. Lopez led the way into this
sanctum as though he knew the place well, and Sexty Parker followed
him.

"Beastly day, isn't it?" said Sexty.

"Yes,--a nasty east wind."

"Cutting one in two, with a hot sun at the same time. One ought to
hybernate at this time of the year."

"Then why don't you hybernate?" said Lopez.

"Business is too good. That's about it. A man has to stick to it when
it does come. Everybody can't do like you;--give up regular work,
and make a better thing of an hour now and an hour then, just as it
pleases you. I shouldn't dare go in for that kind of thing."

"I don't suppose you or any one else know what I go in for," said
Lopez, with a look that indicated offence.

"Nor don't care," said Sexty;--"only hope it's something good for
your sake." Sexty Parker had known Mr. Lopez well, now for some
years, and being an overbearing man himself,--somewhat even of a
bully if the truth be spoken,--and by no means apt to give way unless
hard pressed, had often tried his "hand" on his friend, as he himself
would have said. But I doubt whether he could remember any instance
in which he could congratulate himself on success. He was trying his
hand again now, but did it with a faltering voice, having caught a
glance of his friend's eye.

"I dare say not," said Lopez. Then he continued without changing his
voice or the nature of the glance of his eye, "I'll tell you what I
want you to do now. I want your name to this bill for three months."

Sexty Parker opened his mouth and his eyes, and took the bit of paper
that was tendered to him. It was a promissory note for £750, which,
if signed by him, would at the end of the specified period make him
liable for that sum were it not otherwise paid. His friend Mr. Lopez
was indeed applying to him for the assistance of his name in raising
a loan to the amount of the sum named. This was a kind of favour
which a man should ask almost on his knees,--and which, if so asked,
Mr. Sextus Parker would certainly refuse. And here was Ferdinand
Lopez asking it,--whom Sextus Parker had latterly regarded as an
opulent man,--and asking it not at all on his knees, but, as one
might say, at the muzzle of a pistol. "Accommodation bill!" said
Sexty. "Why, you ain't hard up; are you?"

"I'm not going just at present to tell you much about my affairs, and
yet I expect you to do what I ask you. I don't suppose you doubt my
ability to raise £750."

"Oh, dear, no," said Sexty, who had been looked at and who had not
borne the inspection well.

"And I don't suppose you would refuse me even if I were hard up, as
you call it." There had been affairs before between the two men in
which Lopez had probably been the stronger, and the memory of them,
added to the inspection which was still going on, was heavy upon poor
Sexty.

"Oh, dear, no;--I wasn't thinking of refusing. I suppose a fellow may
be a little surprised at such a thing."

"I don't know why you need be surprised, as such things are very
common. I happen to have taken a share in a loan a little beyond my
immediate means, and therefore want a few hundreds. There is no one I
can ask with a better grace than you. If you ain't--afraid about it,
just sign it."

"Oh, I ain't afraid," said Sexty, taking his pen and writing his name
across the bill. But even before the signature was finished, when
his eye was taken away from the face of his companion and fixed upon
the disagreeable piece of paper beneath his hand, he repented of
what he was doing. He almost arrested his signature half-way. He did
hesitate, but had not pluck enough to stop his hand. "It does seem to
be a d----d odd transaction all the same," he said as he leaned back
in his chair.

"It's the commonest thing in the world," said Lopez picking up
the bill in a leisurely way, folding it and putting it into his
pocket-book. "Have our names never been together on a bit of paper
before?"

"When we both had something to make by it."

"You've nothing to make and nothing to lose by this. Good day and
many thanks;--though I don't think so much of the affair as you seem
to do." Then Ferdinand Lopez took his departure and Sexty Parker was
left alone in his bewilderment.

"By George,--that's queer," he said to himself. "Who'd have thought
of Lopez being hard up for a few hundred pounds? But it must be all
right. He wouldn't have come in that fashion, if it hadn't been all
right. I oughtn't to have done it though! A man ought never to do
that kind of thing;--never,--never!" And Mr. Sextus Parker was much
discontented with himself, so that when he got home that evening to
the wife of his bosom and his little family at Ponders End, he by
no means made himself agreeable to them. For that sum of £750 sat
upon his bosom as he ate his supper, and lay upon his chest as he
slept,--like a nightmare.




CHAPTER II

Everett Wharton


On that same day Lopez dined with his friend Everett Wharton at a
new club called the Progress, of which they were both members. The
Progress was certainly a new club, having as yet been open hardly
more than three years; but still it was old enough to have seen many
of the hopes of its early youth become dim with age and inaction.
For the Progress had intended to do great things for the Liberal
party,--or rather for political liberality in general,--and had in
truth done little or nothing. It had been got up with considerable
enthusiasm, and for a while certain fiery politicians had believed
that through the instrumentality of this institution men of genius,
and spirit, and natural power, but without wealth,--meaning always
themselves,--would be supplied with sure seats in Parliament and
a probable share in the Government. But no such results had been
achieved. There had been a want of something,--some deficiency felt
but not yet defined,--which had hitherto been fatal. The young men
said it was because no old stager who knew the way of pulling the
wires would come forward and put the club in the proper groove. The
old men said it was because the young men were pretentious puppies.
It was, however, not to be doubted that the party of Progress had
become slack, and that the Liberal politicians of the country,
although a special new club had been opened for the furtherance
of their views, were not at present making much way. "What we
want is organization," said one of the leading young men. But the
organization was not as yet forthcoming.

The club, nevertheless, went on its way, like other clubs, and men
dined and smoked and played billiards and pretended to read. Some few
energetic members still hoped that a good day would come in which
their grand ideas might be realised,--but as regarded the members
generally, they were content to eat and drink and play billiards. It
was a fairly good club,--with a sprinkling of Liberal lordlings, a
couple of dozen of members of Parliament who had been made to believe
that they would neglect their party duties unless they paid their
money, and the usual assortment of barristers, attorneys, city
merchants and idle men. It was good enough at any rate for Ferdinand
Lopez, who was particular about his dinner, and had an opinion of his
own about wines. He had been heard to assert that, for real quiet
comfort, there was not a club in London equal to it; but his hearers
were not aware that in past days he had been blackballed at the
T---- and the G----. These were accidents which Lopez had a gift of
keeping in the background. His present companion, Everett Wharton,
had, as well as himself, been an original member;--and Wharton had
been one of those who had hoped to find in the club a stepping-stone
to high political life, and who now talked often with idle energy of
the need of organization.

"For myself," said Lopez, "I can conceive no vainer object of
ambition than a seat in the British Parliament. What does any man
gain by it? The few who are successful work very hard for little
pay and no thanks,--or nearly equally hard for no pay and as little
thanks. The many who fail sit idly for hours, undergoing the weary
task of listening to platitudes, and enjoy in return the now
absolutely valueless privilege of having M.P. written on their
letters."

"Somebody must make laws for the country."

"I don't see the necessity. I think the country would do uncommonly
well if it were to know that no old law would be altered or new law
made for the next twenty years."

"You wouldn't have repealed the corn laws?"

"There are no corn laws to repeal now."

"Nor modify the income tax?"

"I would modify nothing. But at any rate, whether laws are to be
altered or to be left, it is a comfort to me that I need not put my
finger into that pie. There is one benefit indeed in being in the
House."

"You can't be arrested."

"Well;--that, as far as it goes; and one other. It assists a man in
getting a seat as the director of certain Companies. People are still
such asses that they trust a Board of Directors made up of members
of Parliament, and therefore of course members are made welcome. But
if you want to get into the House why don't you arrange it with your
father, instead of waiting for what the club may do for you?"

"My father wouldn't pay a shilling for such a purpose. He was never
in the House himself."

"And therefore despises it."

"A little of that, perhaps. No man ever worked harder than he did,
or, in his way, more successfully; and having seen one after another
of his juniors become members of Parliament, while he stuck to the
attorneys, there is perhaps a little jealousy about it."

"From what I see of the way you live at home, I should think your
father would do anything for you,--with proper management. There is
no doubt, I suppose, that he could afford it?"

"My father never in his life said anything to me about his own money
affairs, though he says a great deal about mine. No man ever was
closer than my father. But I believe that he could afford almost
anything."

"I wish I had such a father," said Ferdinand Lopez. "I think that I
should succeed in ascertaining the extent of his capabilities, and in
making some use of them too."

Wharton nearly asked his friend,--almost summoned courage to ask
him,--whether his father had done much for him. They were very
intimate; and on one subject, in which Lopez was much interested,
their confidence had been very close. But the younger and the weaker
man of the two could not quite bring himself to the point of making
an inquiry which he thought would be disagreeable. Lopez had never
before, in all their intercourse, hinted at the possibility of his
having or having had filial aspirations. He had been as though he
had been created self-sufficient, independent of mother's milk
or father's money. Now the question might have been asked almost
naturally. But it was not asked.

Everett Wharton was a trouble to his father,--but not an agonizing
trouble, as are some sons. His faults were not of a nature to rob his
father's cup of all its sweetness and to bring his grey hairs with
sorrow to the grave. Old Wharton had never had to ask himself whether
he should now, at length, let his son fall into the lowest abysses,
or whether he should yet again struggle to put him on his legs,
again forgive him, again pay his debts, again endeavour to forget
dishonour, and place it all to the score of thoughtless youth. Had it
been so, I think that, if not on the first or second fall, certainly
on the third, the young man would have gone into the abyss; for Mr.
Wharton was a stern man, and capable of coming to a clear conclusion
on things that were nearest and even dearest to himself. But Everett
Wharton had simply shown himself to be inefficient to earn his own
bread. He had never declined even to do this,--but had simply been
inefficient. He had not declared either by words or actions that
as his father was a rich man, and as he was an only son, he would
therefore do nothing. But he had tried his hand thrice, and in
each case, after but short trial, had assured his father and his
friends that the thing had not suited him. Leaving Oxford without a
degree,--for the reading of the schools did not suit him,--he had
gone into a banking-house, by no means as a mere clerk, but with
an expressed proposition from his father, backed by the assent of
a partner, that he should work his way up to wealth and a great
commercial position. But six months taught him that banking was "an
abomination," and he at once went into a course of reading with a
barrister. He remained at this till he was called,--for a man may be
called with very little continuous work. But after he was called the
solitude of his chambers was too much for him, and at twenty-five
he found that the Stock Exchange was the mart in the world for such
talents and energies as he possessed. What was the nature of his
failure during the year that he went into the city, was known only to
himself and his father,--unless Ferdinand Lopez knew something of it
also. But at six-and-twenty the Stock Exchange was also abandoned;
and now, at eight-and-twenty, Everett Wharton had discovered that a
parliamentary career was that for which nature and his special genius
had intended him. He had probably suggested this to his father, and
had met with some cold rebuff.

Everett Wharton was a good-looking, manly fellow, six feet high, with
broad shoulders, with light hair, wearing a large silky bushy beard,
which made him look older than his years, who neither by his speech
nor by his appearance would ever be taken for a fool, but who showed
by the very actions of his body as well as by the play of his face,
that he lacked firmness of purpose. He certainly was no fool. He had
read much, and, though he generally forgot what he read, there were
left with him from his readings certain nebulous lights, begotten by
other men's thinking, which enabled him to talk on most subjects. It
cannot be said of him that he did much thinking for himself;--but
he thought that he thought. He believed of himself that he had gone
rather deep into politics, and that he was entitled to call many
statesmen asses because they did not see the things which he saw.
He had the great question of labour, and all that refers to unions,
strikes, and lock-outs, quite at his fingers' ends. He knew how the
Church of England should be disestablished and recomposed. He was
quite clear on questions of finance, and saw to a "t" how progress
should be made towards communism, so that no violence should disturb
that progress, and that in the due course of centuries all desire
for personal property should be conquered and annihilated by a
philanthropy so general as hardly to be accounted a virtue. In the
meantime he could never contrive to pay his tailor's bill regularly
out of the allowance of £400 a year which his father made him, and
was always dreaming of the comforts of a handsome income.

He was a popular man certainly,--very popular with women, to whom
he was always courteous, and generally liked by men, to whom he was
genial and good-natured. Though he was not himself aware of the fact,
he was very dear to his father, who in his own silent way almost
admired and certainly liked the openness and guileless freedom of
a character which was very opposite to his own. The father, though
he had never said a word to flatter the son, did in truth give his
offspring credit for greater talent than he possessed, and, even when
appearing to scorn them, would listen to the young man's diatribes
almost with satisfaction. And Everett was very dear also to a sister,
who was the only other living member of this branch of the Wharton
family. Much will be said of her in these pages, and it is hoped that
the reader may take an interest in her fate. But here, in speaking of
the brother, it may suffice to say, that the sister, who was endowed
with infinitely finer gifts than his, did give credit to the somewhat
pretentious claims of her less noble brother.

Indeed it had been perhaps a misfortune with Everett Wharton that
some people had believed in him,--and a further misfortune that some
others had thought it worth their while to pretend to believe in him.
Among the latter might probably be reckoned the friend with whom he
was now dining at the Progress. A man may flatter another, as Lopez
occasionally did flatter Wharton, without preconcerted falsehood. It
suits one man to be well with another, and the one learns gradually
and perhaps unconsciously the way to take advantage of the foibles
of the other. Now it was most material to Lopez that he should stand
well with all the members of the Wharton family, as he aspired to
the hand of the daughter of the house. Of her regard he had already
thought himself nearly sure. Of the father's sanction to such a
marriage he had reason to be almost more than doubtful. But the
brother was his friend,--and in such circumstances a man is almost
justified in flattering a brother.

"I'll tell you what it is, Lopez," said Wharton, as they strolled out
of the club together, a little after ten o'clock, "the men of the
present day won't give themselves the trouble to occupy their minds
with matters which have, or should have, real interest. Pope knew all
about it when he said that 'The proper study of mankind is man.' But
people don't read Pope now, or if they do they don't take the trouble
to understand him."

"Men are too busy making money, my dear fellow."

"That's just it. Money's a very nice thing."

"Very nice," said Lopez.

"But the search after it is debasing. If a man could make money for
four, or six, or even eight hours a day, and then wash his mind of
the pursuit, as a clerk in an office washes the copies and ledgers
out of his mind, then--"

"He would never make money in that way,--and keep it."

"And therefore the whole thing is debasing. A man ceases to care
for the great interests of the world, or even to be aware of their
existence, when his whole soul is in Spanish bonds. They wanted to
make a banker of me, but I found that it would kill me."

"It would kill me, I think, if I had to confine myself to Spanish
bonds."

"You know what I mean. You at any rate can understand me, though I
fear you are too far gone to abandon the idea of making a fortune."

"I would abandon it to-morrow if I could come into a fortune ready
made. A man must at any rate eat."

"Yes;--he must eat. But I am not quite sure," said Wharton
thoughtfully, "that he need think about what he eats."

"Unless the beef is sent up without horse radish!" It had happened
that when the two men sat down to their dinner the insufficient
quantity of that vegetable supplied by the steward of the club had
been all consumed, and Wharton had complained of the grievance.

"A man has a right to that for which he has paid," said Wharton, with
mock solemnity, "and if he passes over laches of that nature without
observation he does an injury to humanity at large. I'm not going to
be caught in a trap, you know, because I like horse radish with my
beef. Well, I can't go farther out of my way, as I have a deal of
reading to do before I court my Morpheus. If you'll take my advice
you'll go straight to the governor. Whatever Emily may feel I don't
think she'll say much to encourage you unless you go about it after
that fashion. She has prim notions of her own, which perhaps are not
after all so much amiss when a man wants to marry a girl."

"God forbid that I should think that anything about your sister was
amiss!"

"I don't think there is much myself. Women are generally
superficial,--but some are honestly superficial and some dishonestly.
Emily at any rate is honest."

"Stop half a moment." Then they sauntered arm in arm down the broad
pavement leading from Pall Mall to the Duke of York's column. "I wish
I could make out your father more clearly. He is always civil to me,
but he has a cold way of looking at me which makes me think I am not
in his good books."

"He is like that to everybody."

"I never seem to get beyond the skin with him. You must have heard
him speak of me in my absence?"

"He never says very much about anybody."

"But a word would let me know how the land lies. You know me well
enough to be aware that I am the last man to be curious as to what
others think of me. Indeed I do not care about it as much as a man
should do. I am utterly indifferent to the opinion of the world at
large, and would never object to the company of a pleasant person
because the pleasant person abused me behind my back. What I value
is the pleasantness of the man and not his liking or disliking for
myself. But here the dearest aim of my life is concerned, and I might
be guided either this way or that, to my great advantage, by knowing
whether I stand well or ill with him."

"You have dined three times within the last three months in
Manchester Square, and I don't know any other man,--certainly no
other young man,--who has had such strong proof of intimacy from my
father."

"Yes, and I know my advantages. But I have been there as your friend,
not as his."

"He doesn't care twopence about my friends. I wanted to give Charlie
Skate a dinner, but my father wouldn't have him at any price."

"Charlie Skate is out at elbows, and bets at billiards. I am
respectable,--or at any rate your father thinks so. Your father is
more anxious about you than you are aware of, and wishes to make his
house pleasant to you as long as he can do so to your advantage. As
far as you are concerned he rather approves of me, fancying that
my turn for making money is stronger than my turn for spending it.
Nevertheless, he looks upon me as a friend of yours rather than his
own. Though he has given me three dinners in three months,--and I own
the greatness of his hospitality,--I don't suppose he ever said a
word in my favour. I wish I knew what he does say."

"He says he knows nothing about you."

"Oh;--that's it, is it? Then he can know no harm. When next he says
so ask him of how many of the men who dine at his house he can say as
much. Good night;--I won't keep you any longer. But I can tell you
this;--if between us we can manage to handle him rightly, you may get
your seat in Parliament and I may get my wife;--that is, of course,
if she will have me."

Then they parted, but Lopez remained in the pathway, walking up
and down by the side of the old military club, thinking of things.
He certainly knew his friend, the younger Wharton, intimately,
appreciating the man's good qualities, and being fully aware of
the man's weakness. By his questions he had extracted quite enough
to assure himself that Emily's father would be adverse to his
proposition. He had not felt much doubt before, but now he was
certain. "He doesn't know much about me," he said, musing to himself.
"Well, no; he doesn't;--and there isn't very much that I can tell
him. Of course he's wise,--as wisdom goes. But then, wise men do do
foolish things at intervals. The discreetest of city bankers are
talked out of their money; the most scrupulous of matrons are talked
out of their virtue; the most experienced of statesmen are talked out
of their principles. And who can really calculate chances? Men who
lead forlorn hopes generally push through without being wounded;--and
the fifth or sixth heir comes to a title." So much he said, palpably,
though to himself, with his inner voice. Then,--impalpably, with no
even inner voice,--he asked himself what chance he might have of
prevailing with the girl herself; and he almost ventured to tell
himself that in that direction he need not despair.

In very truth he loved the girl and reverenced her, believing her to
be better and higher and nobler than other human beings,--as a man
does when he is in love; and so believing, he had those doubts as to
his own success which such reverence produces.




CHAPTER III

Mr. Abel Wharton, Q.C.


Lopez was not a man to let grass grow under his feet when he had
anything to do. When he was tired of walking backwards and forwards
over the same bit of pavement, subject all the while to a cold east
wind, he went home and thought of the same matter while he lay in
bed. Even were he to get the girl's assurances of love, without the
father's consent he might find himself farther from his object than
ever. Mr. Wharton was a man of old fashions, who would think himself
ill-used and his daughter ill-used, and who would think also that
a general offence would have been committed against good social
manners, if his daughter were to be asked for her hand without his
previous consent. Should he absolutely refuse,--why then the battle,
though it would be a desperate battle, might perhaps be fought with
other strategy; but, giving to the matter his best consideration,
Lopez thought it expedient to go at once to the father. In doing this
he would have no silly tremors. Whatever he might feel in speaking
to the girl, he had sufficient self-confidence to be able to ask the
father, if not with assurance, at any rate without trepidation. It
was, he thought, probable that the father, at the first attack, would
neither altogether accede, or altogether refuse. The disposition of
the man was averse to the probability of an absolute reply at the
first moment. The lover imagined that it might be possible for him to
take advantage of the period of doubt which would thus be created.

Mr. Wharton was and had for a great many years been a barrister
practising in the Equity Courts,--or rather in one Equity Court, for
throughout a life's work now extending to nearly fifty years, he had
hardly ever gone out of the single Vice-Chancellor's Court which was
much better known by Mr. Wharton's name than by that of the less
eminent judge who now sat there. His had been a very peculiar, a very
toilsome, but yet probably a very satisfactory life. He had begun his
practice early, and had worked in a stuff gown till he was nearly
sixty. At that time he had amassed a large fortune, mainly from his
profession, but partly also by the careful use of his own small
patrimony and by his wife's money. Men knew that he was rich, but
no one knew the extent of his wealth. When he submitted to take a
silk gown, he declared among his friends that he did so as a step
preparatory to his retirement. The altered method of work would not
suit him at his age, nor,--as he said,--would it be profitable. He
would take his silk as an honour for his declining years, so that he
might become a bencher at his Inn. But he had now been working for
the last twelve or fourteen years with his silk gown,--almost as hard
as in younger days, and with pecuniary results almost as serviceable;
and though from month to month he declared his intention of taking
no fresh briefs, and though he did now occasionally refuse work,
still he was there with his mind as clear as ever, and with his body
apparently as little affected by fatigue.

Mr. Wharton had not married till he was forty, and his wife had now
been two years dead. He had had six children,--of whom but two were
now left to make a household for his old age. He had been nearly
fifty when his youngest daughter was born, and was therefore now an
old father of a young child. But he was one of those men who, as
in youth they are never very young, so in age are they never very
old. He could still ride his cob in the park jauntily; and did so
carefully every morning in his life, after an early cup of tea and
before his breakfast. And he could walk home from his chambers every
day, and on Sundays could do the round of the parks on foot. Twice a
week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, he dined at that old law club, the
Eldon, and played whist after dinner till twelve o'clock. This was
the great dissipation and, I think, the chief charm of his life. In
the middle of August he and his daughter usually went for a month
to Wharton Hall in Herefordshire, the seat of his cousin Sir Alured
Wharton;--and this was the one duty of his life which was a burthen
to him. But he had been made to believe that it was essential to his
health, and to his wife's, and then to his girl's health, that he
should every summer leave town for a time,--and where else was he to
go? Sir Alured was a relation and a gentleman. Emily liked Wharton
Hall. It was the proper thing. He hated Wharton Hall, but then he did
not know any place out of London that he would not hate worse. He
had once been induced to go up the Rhine, but had never repeated the
experiment of foreign travel. Emily sometimes went abroad with her
cousins, during which periods it was supposed that the old lawyer
spent a good deal of his time at the Eldon. He was a spare, thin,
strongly made man, with spare light brown hair, hardly yet grizzled,
with small grey whiskers, clear eyes, bushy eyebrows, with a long
ugly nose, on which young barristers had been heard to declare that
you might hang a small kettle, and with considerable vehemence of
talk when he was opposed in argument. For, with all his well-known
coolness of temper, Mr. Wharton could become very hot in an argument,
when the nature of the case in hand required heat. On one subject
all who knew him were agreed. He was a thorough lawyer. Many doubted
his eloquence, and some declared that he had known well the extent
of his own powers in abstaining from seeking the higher honours of
his profession; but no one doubted his law. He had once written a
book,--on the mortgage of stocks in trade; but that had been in early
life, and he had never since dabbled in literature.

He was certainly a man of whom men were generally afraid. At the
whist-table no one would venture to scold him. In the court no one
ever contradicted him. In his own house, though he was very quiet,
the servants dreaded to offend him, and were attentive to his
slightest behests. When he condescended to ride with any acquaintance
in the park, it was always acknowledged that old Wharton was to
regulate the pace. His name was Abel, and all his life he had been
known as able Abe;--a silent, far-seeing, close-fisted, just old man,
who was not, however, by any means deficient in sympathy either with
the sufferings or with the joys of humanity.

It was Easter time and the courts were not sitting, but Mr. Wharton
was in his chamber as a matter of course at ten o'clock. He knew no
real homely comforts elsewhere,--unless at the whist-table at the
Eldon. He ate and drank and slept in his own house in Manchester
Square, but he could hardly be said to live there. It was not
there that his mind was awake, and that the powers of the man were
exercised. When he came up from the dining-room to join his daughter
after dinner he would get her to sing him a song, and would then seat
himself with a book. But he never read in his own house, invariably
falling into a sweet and placid slumber, from which he was never
disturbed till his daughter kissed him as she went to bed. Then
he would walk about the room, and look at his watch, and shuffle
uneasily through half-an-hour till his conscience allowed him to take
himself to his chamber. He was a man of no pursuits in his own house.
But from ten in the morning till five, or often till six, in the
evening, his mind was active in some work. It was not now all law,
as it used to be. In the drawer of the old piece of furniture which
stood just at the right hand of his own arm-chair there were various
books hidden away, which he was sometimes ashamed to have seen by
his clients,--poetry and novels and even fairy tales. For there was
nothing Mr. Wharton could not read in his chambers, though there was
nothing that he could read in his own house. He had a large pleasant
room in which to sit, looking out from the ground floor of Stone
Buildings on to the gardens belonging to the Inn,--and here, in the
centre of the metropolis, but in perfect quiet as far as the outside
world was concerned, he had lived and still lived his life.

At about noon on the day following that on which Lopez had made his
sudden swoop on Mr. Parker and had then dined with Everett Wharton,
he called at Stone Buildings and was shown into the lawyer's room.
His quick eye at once discovered the book which Mr. Wharton half
hid away, and saw upon it Mr. Mudie's suspicious ticket. Barristers
certainly never get their law books from Mudie, and Lopez at once
knew that his hoped-for father-in-law had been reading a novel. He
had not suspected such weakness, but argued well from it for the
business he had in hand. There must be a soft spot to be found about
the heart of an old lawyer who spent his mornings in such occupation.
"How do you do, sir?" said Mr. Wharton rising from his seat. "I hope
I see you well, sir." Though he had been reading a novel his tone
and manner were very cold. Lopez had never been in Stone Buildings
before, and was not quite sure that he might not have committed some
offence in coming there. "Take a seat, Mr. Lopez. Is there anything I
can do for you in my way?"

There was a great deal that could be done "in his way" as
father;--but how was it to be introduced and the case made clear?
Lopez did not know whether the old man had as yet ever suspected
such a feeling as that which he now intended to declare. He had
been intimate at the house in Manchester Square, and had certainly
ingratiated himself very closely with a certain Mrs. Roby, who had
been Mrs. Wharton's sister and constant companion, who lived in
Berkeley Street, close round the corner from Manchester Square, and
spent very much of her time with Emily Wharton. They were together
daily, as though Mrs. Roby had assumed the part of a second mother,
and Lopez was well aware that Mrs. Roby knew of his love. If there
was real confidence between Mrs. Roby and the old lawyer, the old
lawyer must know it also;--but as to that Lopez felt that he was in
the dark.

The task of speaking to an old father is not unpleasant when the
lover knows that he has been smiled upon, and, in fact, approved for
the last six months. He is going to be patted on the back, and made
much of, and received into the family. He is to be told that his
Mary or his Augusta has been the best daughter in the world and will
therefore certainly be the best wife, and he himself will probably on
that special occasion be spoken of with unqualified praise,--and all
will be pleasant. But the subject is one very difficult to broach
when no previous light has been thrown on it. Ferdinand Lopez,
however, was not the man to stand shivering on the brink when a
plunge was necessary,--and therefore he made his plunge. "Mr.
Wharton, I have taken the liberty to call upon you here, because I
want to speak to you about your daughter."

"About my daughter!" The old man's surprise was quite genuine. Of
course when he had given himself a moment to think, he knew what must
be the nature of his visitor's communication. But up to that moment
he had never mixed his daughter and Ferdinand Lopez in his thoughts
together. And now, the idea having come upon him, he looked at the
aspirant with severe and unpleasant eyes. It was manifest to the
aspirant that the first flash of the thing was painful to the father.

"Yes, sir. I know how great is my presumption. But, yet, having
ventured, I will hardly say to entertain a hope, but to have come to
such a state that I can only be happy by hoping, I have thought it
best to come to you at once."

"Does she know anything of this?"

"Of my visit to you? Nothing."

"Of your intentions;--of your suit generally? Am I to understand that
this has any sanction from her?"

"None at all."

"Have you told her anything of it?"

"Not a word. I come to ask you for your permission to address her."

"You mean that she has no knowledge whatever of your--your preference
for her."

"I cannot say that. It is hardly possible that I should have learned
to love her as I do without some consciousness on her part that it is
so."

"What I mean is, without any beating about the bush,--have you been
making love to her?"

"Who is to say in what making love consists, Mr. Wharton?"

"D---- it, sir, a gentleman knows. A gentleman knows whether he has
been playing on a girl's feelings, and a gentleman, when he is asked
as I have asked you, will at any rate tell the truth. I don't want
any definitions. Have you been making love to her?"

"I think, Mr. Wharton, that I have behaved like a gentleman; and that
you will acknowledge at least so much when you come to know exactly
what I have done and what I have not done. I have endeavoured to
commend myself to your daughter, but I have never spoken a word of
love to her."

"Does Everett know of all this?"

"Yes."

"And has he encouraged it?"

"He knows of it, because he is my most intimate friend. Whoever the
lady might have been, I should have told him. He is attached to me,
and would not, I think, on his own account, object to call me his
brother. I spoke to him yesterday on the matter very plainly, and he
told me that I ought certainly to see you first. I quite agreed with
him, and therefore I am here. There has certainly been nothing in his
conduct to make you angry, and I do not think that there has been
anything in mine."

There was a dignity of demeanour and a quiet assured courage which
had its effect upon the old lawyer. He felt that he could not storm
and talk in ambiguous language of what a "gentleman" would or
would not do. He might disapprove of this man altogether as a
son-in-law,--and at the present moment he thought that he did,--but
still the man was entitled to a civil answer. How were lovers to
approach the ladies of their love in any manner more respectful than
this? "Mr. Lopez," he said, "you must forgive me if I say that you
are comparatively a stranger to us."

"That is an accident which would be easily cured if your will in that
direction were as good as mine."

"But, perhaps, it isn't. One has to be explicit in these matters.
A daughter's happiness is a very serious consideration,--and some
people, among whom I confess that I am one, consider that like should
marry like. I should wish to see my daughter marry,--not only in my
own sphere, neither higher nor lower,--but with some one of my own
class."

"I hardly know, Mr. Wharton, whether that is intended to exclude me."

"Well,--to tell you the truth I know nothing about you. I don't know
who your father was,--whether he was an Englishman, whether he was
a Christian, whether he was a Protestant,--not even whether he was
a gentleman. These are questions which I should not dream of asking
under any other circumstances;--would be matters with which I should
have no possible concern, if you were simply an acquaintance. But
when you talk to a man about his daughter--!"

"I acknowledge freely your right of inquiry."

"And I know nothing of your means;--nothing whatever. I understand
that you live as a man of fortune, but I presume that you earn your
bread. I know nothing of the way in which you earn it, nothing of the
certainty or amount of your means."

"Those things are of course matters for inquiry; but may I presume
that you have no objection which satisfactory answers to such
questions may not remove?"

"I shall never willingly give my daughter to any one who is not the
son of an English gentleman. It may be a prejudice, but that is my
feeling."

"My father was certainly not an English gentleman. He was a
Portuguese." In admitting this, and in thus subjecting himself at
once to one clearly-stated ground of objection,--the objection being
one which, though admitted, carried with itself neither fault nor
disgrace,--Lopez felt that he had got a certain advantage. He could
not get over the fact that he was the son of a Portuguese parent, but
by admitting that openly he thought he might avoid present discussion
on matters which might, perhaps, be more disagreeable, but to which
he need not allude if the accident of his birth were to be taken by
the father as settling the question. "My mother was an English lady,"
he added, "but my father certainly was not an Englishman. I never
had the common happiness of knowing either of them. I was an orphan
before I understood what it was to have a parent."

This was said with a pathos which for the moment stopped the
expression of any further harsh criticism from the lawyer. Mr.
Wharton could not instantly repeat his objection to a parentage
which was matter for such melancholy reflections; but he felt at the
same time that as he had luckily landed himself on a positive and
undeniable ground of objection to a match which was distasteful to
him, it would be unwise for him to go to other matters in which he
might be less successful. By doing so, he would seem to abandon the
ground which he had already made good. He thought it probable that
the man might have an adequate income, and yet he did not wish
to welcome him as a son-in-law. He thought it possible that the
Portuguese father might be a Portuguese nobleman, and therefore
one whom he would be driven to admit to have been in some sort a
gentleman;--but yet this man who was now in his presence and whom
he continued to scan with the closest observation, was not what he
called a gentleman. The foreign blood was proved, and that would
suffice. As he looked at Lopez he thought that he detected Jewish
signs, but he was afraid to make any allusion to religion, lest Lopez
should declare that his ancestors had been noted as Christians since
St. James first preached in the Peninsula.

"I was educated altogether in England," continued Lopez, "till I was
sent to a German university in the idea that the languages of the
continent are not generally well learned in this country. I can never
be sufficiently thankful to my guardian for doing so."

"I dare say;--I dare say. French and German are very useful. I have a
prejudice of my own in favour of Greek and Latin."

"But I rather fancy I picked up more Greek and Latin at Bohn than I
should have got here, had I stuck to nothing else."

"I dare say;--I dare say. You may be an Admirable Crichton for what I
know."

"I have not intended to make any boast, sir, but simply to vindicate
those who had the care of my education. If you have no objection
except that founded on my birth, which is an accident--"

"When one man is a peer and another a ploughman, that is an accident.
One doesn't find fault with the ploughman, but one doesn't ask him to
dinner."

"But my accident," said Lopez smiling, "is one which you would hardly
discover unless you were told. Had I called myself Talbot you would
not know but that I was as good an Englishman as yourself."

"A man of course may be taken in by falsehoods," said the lawyer.

"If you have no other objection than that raised, I hope you will
allow me to visit in Manchester Square."

"There may be ten thousand other objections, Mr. Lopez, but I
really think that the one is enough. Of course I know nothing of
my daughter's feelings. I should imagine that the matter is as
strange to her as it is to me. But I cannot give you anything like
encouragement. If I am ever to have a son-in-law I should wish to
have an English son-in-law. I do not even know what your profession
is."

"I am engaged in foreign loans."

"Very precarious I should think. A sort of gambling; isn't it?"

"It is the business by which many of the greatest mercantile houses
in the city have been made."

"I dare say;--I dare say;--and by which they come to ruin. I have the
greatest respect in the world for mercantile enterprise, and have
had as much to do as most men with mercantile questions. But I ain't
sure that I wish to marry my daughter in the City. Of course it's all
prejudice. I won't deny that on general subjects I can give as much
latitude as any man; but when one's own hearth is attacked--"

"Surely such a proposition as mine, Mr. Wharton, is no attack!"

"In my sense it is. When a man proposes to assault and invade the
very kernel of another man's heart, to share with him, and indeed to
take from him, the very dearest of his possessions, to become part
and parcel with him either for infinite good or infinite evil, then a
man has a right to guard even his prejudices as precious bulwarks."
Mr. Wharton as he said this was walking about the room with his hands
in his trowsers pockets. "I have always been for absolute toleration
in matters of religion,--have always advocated admission of Roman
Catholics and Jews into Parliament, and even to the Bench. In
ordinary life I never question a man's religion. It is nothing to me
whether he believes in Mahomet, or has no belief at all. But when a
man comes to me for my daughter--"

"I have always belonged to the Church of England," said Ferdinand
Lopez.

"Lopez is at any rate a bad name to go to a Protestant church with,
and I don't want my daughter to bear it. I am very frank with you,
as in such a matter men ought to understand each other. Personally
I have liked you well enough and have been glad to see you at my
house. Everett and you have seemed to be friends, and I have had no
objection to make. But marrying into a family is a very serious thing
indeed."

"No man feels that more strongly than I do, Mr. Wharton."

"There had better be an end of it."

"Even though I should be happy enough to obtain her favour?"

"I can't think that she cares about you. I don't think it for a
moment. You say you haven't spoken to her, and I am sure she's not
a girl to throw herself at a man's head. I don't approve it, and I
think it had better fall to the ground. It must fall to the ground."

"I wish you would give me a reason."

"Because you are not English."

"But I am English. My father was a foreigner."

"It doesn't suit my ideas. I suppose I may have my own ideas about my
own family, Mr. Lopez? I feel perfectly certain that my child will do
nothing to displease me, and this would displease me. If we were to
talk for an hour I could say nothing further."

"I hope that I may be able to present things to you in an aspect so
altered," said Lopez as he prepared to take his leave, "as to make
you change your mind."

"Possibly;--possibly," said Wharton, "but I do not think it probable.
Good morning to you, sir. If I have said anything that has seemed
to be unkind, put it down to my anxiety as a father and not to my
conduct as a man." Then the door was closed behind his visitor, and
Mr. Wharton was left walking up and down his room alone. He was by
no means satisfied with himself. He felt that he had been rude and
at the same time not decisive. He had not explained to the man as
he would wish to have done, that it was monstrous and out of the
question that a daughter of the Whartons, one of the oldest families
in England, should be given to a friendless Portuguese,--a probable
Jew,--about whom nobody knew anything. Then he remembered that sooner
or later his girl would have at least £60,000, a fact of which no
human being but himself was aware. Would it not be well that somebody
should be made aware of it, so that his girl might have the chance
of suitors preferable to this swarthy son of Judah? He began to be
afraid, as he thought of it, that he was not managing his matters
well. How would it be with him if he should find that the girl was
really in love with this swarthy son of Judah? He had never inquired
about his girl's heart, though there was one to whom he hoped that
his girl's heart might some day be given. He almost made up his mind
to go home at once, so anxious was he. But the prospect of having to
spend an entire afternoon in Manchester Square was too much for him,
and he remained in his chamber till the usual hour.

Lopez, as he returned from Lincoln's Inn, westward to his club,
was, on the whole, contented with the interview. He had expected
opposition. He had not thought that the cherry would fall easily into
his mouth. But the conversation generally had not taken those turns
which he had thought would be most detrimental to him.




CHAPTER IV

Mrs. Roby


Mr. Wharton, as he walked home, remembered that Mrs. Roby was to dine
at his house on that evening. During the remainder of the day, after
the departure of Lopez, he had been unable to take his mind from the
consideration of the proposition made to him. He had tried the novel,
and he had tried Huggins _v._ the Trustees of the Charity of St.
Ambox, a case of undeniable importance in which he was engaged on the
part of Huggins, but neither was sufficiently powerful to divert his
thoughts. Throughout the morning he was imagining what he would say
to Emily about this lover of hers,--in what way he would commence
the conversation, and how he would express his own opinion should
he find that she was in any degree favourable to the man. Should
she altogether ignore the man's pretensions, there would be no
difficulty. But if she hesitated,--if, as was certainly possible, she
should show any partiality for the man, then there would be a knot
which would require untying. Hitherto the intercourse between the
father and daughter had been simple and pleasant. He had given her
everything she asked for, and she had obeyed him in all the very
few matters as to which he had demanded obedience. Questions of
discipline, as far as there had been any discipline, had generally
been left to Mrs. Roby. Mrs. Roby was to dine in Manchester Square
to-day, and perhaps it would be well that he should have a few words
with Mrs. Roby before he spoke to his daughter.

Mrs. Roby had a husband, but Mr. Roby had not been asked to dine
in the Square on this occasion. Mrs. Roby dined in the Square very
often, but Mr. Roby very seldom,--not probably above once a year, on
some special occasion. He and Mr. Wharton had married sisters, but
they were quite unlike in character and had never become friends.
Mrs. Wharton had been nearly twenty years younger than her husband;
Mrs. Roby had been six or seven years younger than her sister;
and Mr. Roby was a year or two younger than his wife. The two men
therefore belonged to different periods of life, Mr. Roby at the
present time being a florid youth of forty. He had a moderate
fortune, inherited from his mother, of which he was sufficiently
careful; but he loved races, and read sporting papers; he was
addicted to hunting and billiards; he shot pigeons, and,--so Mr.
Wharton had declared calumniously more than once to an intimate
friend,--had not an H in his vocabulary. The poor man did drop an
aspirate now and again; but he knew his defect and strove hard, and
with fair average success, to overcome it. But Mr. Wharton did not
love him, and they were not friends. Perhaps neither did Mrs. Roby
love him very ardently. She was at any rate almost always willing to
leave her own house to come to the Square, and on such occasions Mr.
Roby was always willing to dine at the Nimrod, the club which it
delighted him to frequent.

Mr. Wharton, on entering his own house, met his son on the staircase.
"Do you dine at home to-day, Everett?"

"Well, sir; no, sir. I don't think I do. I think I half promised to
dine with a fellow at the club."

"Don't you think you'd make things meet more easily about the end of
the year if you dined oftener here, where you have nothing to pay,
and less frequently at the club, where you pay for everything?"

"But what I should save you would lose, sir. That's the way I look at
it."

"Then I advise you to look at it the other way, and leave me to
take care of myself. Come in here, I want to speak to you." Everett
followed his father into a dingy back parlour, which was fitted up
with book shelves and was generally called the study, but which was
gloomy and comfortless because it was seldom used. "I have had your
friend Lopez with me at my chambers to-day. I don't like your friend
Lopez."

"I am sorry for that, sir."

"He is a man as to whom I should wish to have a good deal of evidence
before I would trust him to be what he seems to be. I dare say he's
clever."

"I think he's more than clever."

"I dare say;--and well instructed in some respects."

"I believe him to be a thorough linguist, sir."

"I dare say. I remember a waiter at an hotel in Holborn who could
speak seven languages. It's an accomplishment very necessary for a
Courier or a Queen's Messenger."

"You don't mean to say, sir, that you disregard foreign languages?"

"I have said nothing of the kind. But in my estimation they don't
stand in the place of principles, or a profession, or birth, or
country. I fancy there has been some conversation between you about
your sister."

"Certainly there has."

"A young man should be very chary how he speaks to another man, to a
stranger, about his sister. A sister's name should be too sacred for
club talk."

"Club talk! Good heavens, sir; you don't think that I have spoken of
Emily in that way? There isn't a man in London has a higher respect
for his sister than I have for mine. This man, by no means in a light
way but with all seriousness, has told me that he was attached to
Emily; and I, believing him to be a gentleman and well to do in the
world, have referred him to you. Can that have been wrong?"

"I don't know how he's 'to do', as you call it. I haven't asked, and
I don't mean to ask. But I doubt his being a gentleman. He is not an
English gentleman. What was his father?"

"I haven't the least idea."

"Or his mother?"

"He has never mentioned her to me."

"Nor his family; nor anything of their antecedents? He is a man
fallen out of the moon. All that is nothing to us as passing
acquaintances. Between men such ignorance should I think bar absolute
intimacy;--but that may be a matter of taste. But it should be held
to be utterly antagonistic to any such alliance as that of marriage.
He seems to be a friend of yours. You had better make him understand
that it is quite out of the question. I have told him so, and you had
better repeat it." So saying, Mr. Wharton went upstairs to dress, and
Everett, having received his father's instructions, went away to the
club.

When Mr. Wharton reached the drawing-room, he found Mrs. Roby alone,
and he at once resolved to discuss the matter with her before he
spoke to his daughter. "Harriet," he said abruptly, "do you know
anything of one Mr. Lopez?"

"Mr. Lopez! Oh yes, I know him."

"Do you mean that he is an intimate friend?"

"As friends go in London, he is. He comes to our house, and I think
that he hunts with Dick." Dick was Mr. Roby.

"That's a recommendation."

"Well, Mr. Wharton, I hardly know what you mean by that," said Mrs.
Roby, smiling. "I don't think, my husband will do Mr. Lopez any harm;
and I am sure Mr. Lopez won't do my husband any."

"I dare say not. But that's not the question. Roby can take care of
himself."

"Quite so."

"And so I dare say can Mr. Lopez." At this moment Emily entered the
room. "My dear," said her father, "I am speaking to your aunt. Would
you mind going downstairs and waiting for us? Tell them we shall be
ready for dinner in ten minutes." Then Emily passed out of the room,
and Mrs. Roby assumed a grave demeanour. "The man we are speaking
of has been to me and has made an offer for Emily." As he said this
he looked anxiously into his sister-in-law's face, in order that
he might tell from that how far she favoured the idea of such a
marriage,--and he thought that he perceived at once that she was
not averse to it. "You know it is quite out of the question," he
continued.

"I don't know why it should be out of the question. But of course
your opinion would have great weight with Emily."

"Great weight! Well;--I should hope so. If not, I do not know
whose opinion is to have weight. In the first place the man is a
foreigner."

"Oh, no;--he is English. But if he were a foreigner: many English
girls marry foreigners."

"My daughter shall not;--not with my permission. You have not
encouraged him, I hope."

"I have not interfered at all," said Mrs. Roby. But this was a lie.
Mrs. Roby had interfered. Mrs. Roby, in discussing the merits and
character of the lover with the young lady, had always lent herself
to the lover's aid,--and had condescended to accept from the lover
various presents which she could hardly have taken had she been
hostile to him.

"And now tell me about herself. Has she seen him often?"

"Why, Mr. Wharton, he has dined here, in the house, over and over
again. I thought that you were encouraging him."

"Heavens and earth!"

"Of course she has seen him. When a man dines at a house he is bound
to call. Of course he has called,--I don't know how often. And she
has met him round the corner."--"Round the corner," in Manchester
Square, meant Mrs. Roby's house in Berkeley Street.--"Last Sunday
they were at the Zoo together. Dick got them tickets. I thought you
knew all about it."

"Do you mean that my daughter went to the Zoological Gardens alone
with this man?" the father asked in dismay.

"Dick was with them. I should have gone, only I had a headache. Did
you not know she went?"

"Yes;--I heard about the Gardens. But I heard nothing of the man."

"I thought, Mr. Wharton, you were all in his favour."

"I am not at all in his favour. I dislike him particularly. For
anything I know he may have sold pencils about the streets like any
other Jew-boy."

"He goes to church just as you do,--that is, if he goes anywhere;
which I dare say he does about as often as yourself, Mr. Wharton."
Now Mr. Wharton, though he was a thorough and perhaps a bigoted
member of the Church of England, was not fond of going to church.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, pressing his hands together, and
looking very seriously into his sister-in-law's face; "do you mean to
tell me that she--likes him?"

"Yes;--I think she does like him."

"You don't mean to say--she's in love with him?"

"She has never told me that she is. Young ladies are shy of making
such assertions as to their own feelings before the due time for
doing so has come. I think she prefers him to anybody else; and that
were he to propose to herself, she would give him her consent to go
to you."

"He shall never enter this house again," said Mr. Wharton
passionately.

"You must arrange that with her. If you have so strong an objection
to him, I wonder that you should have had him here at all."

"How was I to know? God bless my soul!--just because a man was
allowed to dine here once or twice! Upon my word, it's too bad!"

"Papa, won't you and aunt come down to dinner?" said Emily, opening
the door gently. Then they went down to dinner, and during the meal
nothing was said about Mr. Lopez. But they were not very merry
together, and poor Emily felt sure that her own affairs had been
discussed in a troublesome manner.




CHAPTER V

"No One Knows Anything About Him"


Neither at dinner, on that evening at Manchester Square, nor after
dinner, as long as Mrs. Roby remained in the house, was a word said
about Lopez by Mr. Wharton. He remained longer than usual with his
bottle of port wine in the dining-room; and when he went upstairs,
he sat himself down and fell asleep, almost without a sign. He did
not ask for a song, nor did Emily offer to sing. But as soon as Mrs.
Roby was gone,--and Mrs. Roby went home, round the corner, somewhat
earlier than usual,--then Mr. Wharton woke up instantly and made
inquiry of his daughter.

There had, however, been a few words spoken on the subject between
Mrs. Roby and her niece which had served to prepare Emily for what
was coming. "Lopez has been to your father," said Mrs. Roby, in a
voice not specially encouraging for such an occasion. Then she paused
a moment; but her niece said nothing, and she continued, "Yes,--and
your father has been blaming me,--as if I had done anything! If he
did not mean you to choose for yourself, why didn't he keep a closer
look-out?"

"I haven't chosen any one, Aunt Harriet."

"Well;--to speak fairly, I thought you had; and I have nothing to say
against your choice. As young men go, I think Mr. Lopez is as good
as the best of them. I don't know why you shouldn't have him. Of
course you'll have money, but then I suppose he makes a large income
himself. As to Mr. Fletcher, you don't care a bit about him."

"Not in that way, certainly."

"No doubt your papa will have it out with you just now; so you had
better make up your mind what you will say to him. If you really like
the man, I don't see why you shouldn't say so, and stick to it. He
has made a regular offer, and girls in these days are not expected
to be their father's slaves." Emily said nothing further to her aunt
on that occasion, but finding that she must in truth "have it out"
with her father presently, gave herself up to reflection. It might
probably be the case that the whole condition of her future life
would depend on the way in which she might now "have it out" with her
father.

I would not wish the reader to be prejudiced against Miss Wharton by
the not unnatural feeling which may perhaps be felt in regard to the
aunt. Mrs. Roby was pleased with little intrigues, was addicted to
the amusement of fostering love affairs, was fond of being thought
to be useful in such matters, and was not averse to having presents
given to her. She had married a vulgar man; and, though she had not
become like the man, she had become vulgar. She was not an eligible
companion for Mr. Wharton's daughter,--a matter as to which the
father had not given himself proper opportunities of learning the
facts. An aunt in his close neighbourhood was so great a comfort
to him,--so ready and so natural an assistance to him in his
difficulties! But Emily Wharton was not in the least like her aunt,
nor had Mrs. Wharton been at all like Mrs. Roby. No doubt the contact
was dangerous. Injury had perhaps already been done. It may be that
some slightest soil had already marred the pure white of the girl's
natural character. But if so, the stain was as yet too impalpable to
be visible to ordinary eyes.

Emily Wharton was a tall, fair girl, with grey eyes, rather exceeding
the average proportions as well as height of women. Her features
were regular and handsome, and her form was perfect; but it was by
her manner and her voice that she conquered, rather than by her
beauty,--by those gifts and by a clearness of intellect joined with
that feminine sweetness which has its most frequent foundation in
self-denial. Those who knew her well, and had become attached to her,
were apt to endow her with all virtues, and to give her credit for
a loveliness which strangers did not find on her face. But as we do
not light up our houses with our brightest lamps for all comers,
so neither did she emit from her eyes their brightest sparks till
special occasion for such shining had arisen. To those who were
allowed to love her no woman was more lovable. There was innate in
her an appreciation of her own position as a woman, and with it a
principle of self-denial as a human being, which it was beyond the
power of any Mrs. Roby to destroy or even to defile by small stains.

Like other girls she had been taught to presume that it was her
destiny to be married, and like other girls she had thought much
about her destiny. A young man generally regards it as his destiny
either to succeed or to fail in the world, and he thinks about that.
To him marriage, when it comes, is an accident to which he has hardly
as yet given a thought. But to the girl the matrimony which is or
is not to be her destiny contains within itself the only success
or failure which she anticipates. The young man may become Lord
Chancellor, or at any rate earn his bread comfortably as a county
court judge. But the girl can look forward to little else than the
chance of having a good man for her husband;--a good man, or if her
tastes lie in that direction, a rich man. Emily Wharton had doubtless
thought about these things, and she sincerely believed that she had
found the good man in Ferdinand Lopez.

The man, certainly, was one strangely endowed with the power of
creating a belief. When going to Mr. Wharton at his chambers he had
not intended to cheat the lawyer into any erroneous idea about his
family, but he had resolved that he would so discuss the questions of
his own condition, which would probably be raised, as to leave upon
the old man's mind an unfounded conviction that in regard to money
and income he had no reason to fear question. Not a word had been
said about his money or his income. And Mr. Wharton had felt himself
bound to abstain from allusion to such matters from an assured
feeling that he could not in that direction plant an enduring
objection. In this way Lopez had carried his point with Mr. Wharton.
He had convinced Mrs. Roby that among all the girl's attractions the
greatest attraction for him was the fact that she was Mrs. Roby's
niece. He had made Emily herself believe that the one strong passion
of his life was his love for her, and this he had done without ever
having asked for her love. And he had even taken the trouble to
allure Dick, and had listened to and had talked whole pages out of
_Bell's Life_. On his own behalf it must be acknowledged that he
did love the girl, as well perhaps as he was capable of loving any
one;--but he had found out many particulars as to Mr. Wharton's money
before he had allowed himself to love her.

As soon as Mrs. Roby had gathered up her knitting, and declared, as
she always did on such occasions, that she could go round the corner
without having any one to look after her, Mr. Wharton began. "Emily,
my dear, come here." Then she came and sat on a footstool at his
feet, and looked up into his face. "Do you know what I am going to
speak to you about, my darling?"

"Yes, papa; I think I do. It is about--Mr. Lopez."

"Your aunt has told you, I suppose. Yes; it is about Mr. Lopez. I
have been very much astonished to-day by Mr. Lopez,--a man of whom I
have seen very little and know less. He came to me to-day and asked
for my permission--to address you." She sat perfectly quiet, still
looking at him, but she did not say a word. "Of course I did not give
him permission."

"Why of course, papa?"

"Because he is a stranger and a foreigner. Would you have wished me
to tell him that he might come?"

"Yes, papa." He was sitting on a sofa and shrank back a little from
her as she made this free avowal. "In that case I could have judged
for myself. I suppose every girl would like to do that."

"But should you have accepted him?"

"I think I should have consulted you before I did that. But I should
have wished to accept him. Papa, I do love him. I have never said so
before to any one. I would not say so to you now, if he had
not--spoken to you as he has done."

"Emily, it must not be."

"Why not, papa? If you say it shall not be so, it shall not. I
will do as you bid me." Then he put out his hand and caressed her,
stroking down her hair. "But I think you ought to tell me why it must
not be,--as I do love him."

"He is a foreigner."

"But is he? And why should not a foreigner be as good as an
Englishman? His name is foreign, but he talks English and lives as an
Englishman."

"He has no relatives, no family, no belongings. He is what we call an
adventurer. Marriage, my dear, is a most serious thing."

"Yes, papa, I know that."

"One is bound to be very careful. How can I give you to a man I know
nothing about,--an adventurer? What would they say in Herefordshire?"

"I don't know why they should say anything, but if they did I
shouldn't much care."

"I should, my dear. I should care very much. One is bound to think
of one's family. Suppose it should turn out afterwards that he
was--disreputable!"

"You may say that of any man, papa."

"But when a man has connexions, a father and mother, or uncles
and aunts, people that everybody knows about, then there is some
guarantee of security. Did you ever hear this man speak of his
father?"

"I don't know that I ever did."

"Or his mother,--or his family? Don't you think that is suspicious?"

"I will ask him, papa, if you wish."

"No, I would have you ask him nothing. I would not wish that there
should be opportunity for such asking. If there has been intimacy
between you, such information should have come naturally,--as a thing
of course. You have made him no promise?"

"Oh no, papa."

"Nor spoken to him--of your regard for him?"

"Never;--not a word. Nor he to me,--except in such words as one
understands even though they say nothing."

"I wish he had never seen you."

"Is he a bad man, papa?"

"Who knows? I cannot tell. He may be ever so bad. How is one to know
whether a man be bad or good when one knows nothing about him?" At
this point the father got up and walked about the room. "The long and
the short of it is that you must not see him any more."

"Did you tell him so?"

"Yes;--well; I don't know whether I said exactly that, but I told him
that the whole thing must come to an end. And it must. Luckily it
seems that nothing has been said on either side."

"But, papa--; is there to be no reason?"

"Haven't I given reasons? I will not have my daughter encourage an
adventurer,--a man of whom nobody knows anything. That is reason
sufficient."

"He has a business, and he lives with gentlemen. He is Everett's
friend. He is well educated;--oh, so much better than most men that
one meets. And he is clever. Papa, I wish you knew him better than
you do."

"I do not want to know him better."

"Is not that prejudice, papa?"

"My dear Emily," said Mr. Wharton, striving to wax into anger that he
might be firm against her, "I don't think that it becomes you to ask
your father such a question as that. You ought to believe that it is
the chief object of my life to do the best I can for my children."

"I am sure it is."

"And you ought to feel that, as I have had a long experience in the
world, my judgment about a young man might be trusted."

That was a statement which Miss Wharton was not prepared to admit.
She had already professed herself willing to submit to her father's
judgment, and did not now by any means contemplate rebellion against
parental authority. But she did feel that on a matter so vital to her
she had a right to plead her cause before judgment should be given,
and she was not slow to assure herself, even as this interview went
on, that her love for the man was strong enough to entitle her to
assure her father that her happiness depended on his reversal of the
sentence already pronounced. "You know, papa, that I trust you," she
said. "And I have promised you that I will not disobey you. If you
tell me that I am never to see Mr. Lopez again, I will not see him."

"You are a good girl. You were always a good girl."

"But I think that you ought to hear me." Then he stood still with his
hands in his trowsers pockets looking at her. He did not want to hear
a word, but he felt that he would be a tyrant if he refused. "If you
tell me that I am not to see him, I shall not see him. But I shall be
very unhappy. I do love him, and I shall never love any one else in
the same way."

"That is nonsense, Emily. There is Arthur Fletcher."

"I am sure you will never ask me to marry a man I do not love, and
I shall never love Arthur Fletcher. If this is to be as you say, it
will make me very, very wretched. It is right that you should know
the truth. If it is only because Mr. Lopez has a foreign name--"

"It isn't only that; no one knows anything about him, or where to
inquire even."

"I think you should inquire, papa, and be quite certain before you
pronounce such a sentence against me. It will be a crushing blow."
He looked at her, and saw that there was a fixed purpose in her
countenance of which he had never before seen similar signs. "You
claim a right to my obedience, and I acknowledge it. I am sure you
believe me when I promise not to see him without your permission."

"I do believe you. Of course I believe you."

"But if I do that for you, papa, I think that you ought to be very
sure, on my account, that I haven't to bear such unhappiness for
nothing. You'll think about it, papa,--will you not, before you quite
decide?" She leaned against him as she spoke, and he kissed her.
"Good night, now, papa. You will think about it?"

"I will. I will. Of course I will."

And he began the process of thinking about it immediately,--before
the door was closed behind her. But what was there to think about?
Nothing that she had said altered in the least his idea about the
man. He was as convinced as ever that unless there was much to
conceal there would not be so much concealment. But a feeling began
to grow upon him already that his daughter had a mode of pleading
with him which he would not ultimately be able to resist. He had the
power, he knew, of putting an end to the thing altogether. He had
only to say resolutely and unchangeably that the thing shouldn't
be, and it wouldn't be. If he could steel his heart against his
daughter's sorrow for, say, a twelvemonth, the victory would be won.
But he already began to fear that he lacked the power to steel his
heart against his daughter.




CHAPTER VI

An Old Friend Goes to Windsor


"And what are they going to make you now?"

This question was asked of her husband by a lady with whom perhaps
the readers of this volume may have already formed some acquaintance.
Chronicles of her early life have been written, at any rate
copiously. The lady was the Duchess of Omnium, and her husband was of
course the Duke. In order that the nature of the question asked by
the duchess may be explained, it must be stated that just at this
time the political affairs of the nation had got themselves tied up
into one of those truly desperate knots from which even the wisdom
and experience of septuagenarian statesmen can see no unravelment.
The heads of parties were at a standstill. In the House of Commons
there was, so to say, no majority on either side. The minds of
members were so astray that, according to the best calculation that
could be made, there would be a majority of about ten against any
possible Cabinet. There would certainly be a majority against either
of those well-tried but, at this moment, little-trusted Prime
Ministers, Mr. Gresham and Mr. Daubeny. There were certain men,
nominally belonging to this or to the other party, who would
certainly within a week of the nomination of a Cabinet in the House,
oppose the Cabinet which they ought to support. Mr. Daubeny had
been in power,--nay, was in power, though he had twice resigned. Mr.
Gresham had been twice sent for to Windsor, and had on one occasion
undertaken and on another had refused to undertake to form a
Ministry. Mr. Daubeny had tried two or three combinations, and had
been at his wits' end. He was no doubt still in power,--could appoint
bishops, and make peers, and give away ribbons. But he couldn't pass
a law, and certainly continued to hold his present uncomfortable
position by no will of his own. But a Prime Minister cannot escape
till he has succeeded in finding a successor; and though the
successor be found and consents to make an attempt, the old
unfortunate cannot be allowed to go free when that attempt is shown
to be a failure. He has not absolutely given up the keys of his
boxes, and no one will take them from him. Even a sovereign can
abdicate; but the Prime Minister of a constitutional government
is in bonds. The reader may therefore understand that the Duchess
was asking her husband what place among the political rulers of
the country had been offered to him by the last aspirant to the
leadership of the Government.

But the reader should understand more than this, and may perhaps do
so, if he has ever seen those former chronicles to which allusion
has been made. The Duke, before he became a duke, had held very
high office, having been Chancellor of the Exchequer. When he was
transferred, perforce, to the House of Lords, he had,--as is not
uncommon in such cases,--accepted a lower political station. This had
displeased the Duchess, who was ambitious both on her own behalf and
that of her lord,--and who thought that a Duke of Omnium should be
nothing in the Government if not at any rate near the top. But after
that, with the simple and single object of doing some special piece
of work for the nation,--something which he fancied that nobody else
would do if he didn't do it,--his Grace, of his own motion, at his
own solicitation, had encountered further official degradation, very
much to the disgust of the Duchess. And it was not the way with her
Grace to hide such sorrows in the depth of her bosom. When affronted
she would speak out, whether to her husband, or to another,--using
irony rather than argument to support her cause and to vindicate her
ways. The shafts of ridicule hurled by her against her husband in
regard to his voluntary abasement had been many and sharp. They stung
him, but never for a moment influenced him. And though they stung
him, they did not even anger him. It was her nature to say such
things,--and he knew that they came rather from her uncontrolled
spirit than from any malice. She was his wife too, and he had an
idea that of little injuries of that sort there should be no end of
bearing on the part of a husband. Sometimes he would endeavour to
explain to her the motives which actuated him; but he had come to
fear that they were and must ever be unintelligible to her. But he
credited her with less than her real intelligence. She did understand
the nature of his work and his reasons for doing it; and, after
her own fashion, did what she conceived to be her own work in
endeavouring to create within his bosom a desire for higher things.
"Surely," she said to herself, "if a man of his rank is to be a
minister he should be a great minister;--at any rate as great as his
circumstances will make him. A man never can save his country by
degrading himself." In this he would probably have agreed; but his
idea of degradation and hers hardly tallied.

When therefore she asked him what they were going to make him, it
was as though some sarcastic housekeeper in a great establishment
should ask the butler,--some butler too prone to yield in such
matters,--whether the master had appointed him lately to the cleaning
of shoes or the carrying of coals. Since these knots had become so
very tight, and since the journeys to Windsor had become so very
frequent, her Grace had asked many such questions, and had received
but very indifferent replies. The Duke had sometimes declared that
the matter was not ripe enough to allow him to make any answer. "Of
course," said the Duchess, "you should keep the secret. The editors
of the evening papers haven't known it for above an hour." At
another time he told her that he had undertaken to give Mr. Gresham
his assistance in any way in which it might be asked. "Joint
Under-Secretary with Lord Fawn, I should say," answered the Duchess.
Then he told her that he believed an attempt would be made at a mixed
ministry, but that he did not in the least know to whom the work of
doing so would be confided. "You will be about the last man who will
be told," replied the Duchess. Now, at this moment, he had, as she
knew, come direct from the house of Mr. Gresham, and she asked her
question in her usual spirit. "And what are they going to make you
now?"

But he did not answer the question in his usual manner. He would
customarily smile gently at her badinage, and perhaps say a word
intended to show that he was not in the least moved by her raillery.
But in this instance he was very grave, and stood before her a moment
making no answer at all, looking at her in a sad and almost solemn
manner. "They have told you that they can do without you," she said,
breaking out almost into a passion. "I knew how it would be. Men are
always valued by others as they value themselves."

"I wish it were so," he replied. "I should sleep easier to-night."

"What is it, Plantagenet?" she exclaimed, jumping up from her chair.

"I never cared for your ridicule hitherto, Cora; but now I feel that
I want your sympathy."

"If you are going to do anything,--to do really anything, you shall
have it. Oh, how you shall have it!"

"I have received her Majesty's orders to go down to Windsor at once.
I must start within half-an-hour."

"You are going to be Prime Minister!" she exclaimed. As she spoke
she threw her arms up, and then rushed into his embrace. Never since
their first union had she been so demonstrative either of love or
admiration. "Oh, Plantagenet," she said, "if I can only do anything
I will slave for you." As he put his arm round her waist he already
felt the pleasantness of her altered way to him. She had never
worshipped him yet, and therefore her worship when it did come had
all the delight to him which it ordinarily has to the newly married
hero.

"Stop a moment, Cora. I do not know how it may be yet. But this I
know, that if without cowardice I could avoid this task, I would
certainly avoid it."

"Oh no! And there would be cowardice; of course there would," said
the Duchess, not much caring what might be the bonds which bound him
to the task so long as he should certainly feel himself to be bound.

"He has told me that he thinks it my duty to make the attempt."

"Who is he?"

"Mr. Gresham. I do not know that I should have felt myself bound by
him, but the Duke said so also." This duke was our duke's old friend,
the Duke of St. Bungay.

"Was he there? And who else?"

"No one else. It is no case for exultation, Cora, for the chances are
that I shall fail. The Duke has promised to help me, on condition
that one or two he has named are included, and that one or two whom
he has also named are not. In each case I should myself have done
exactly as he proposes."

"And Mr. Gresham?"

"He will retire. That is a matter of course. He will intend to
support us; but all that is veiled in the obscurity which is always,
I think, darker as to the future of politics than any other future.
Clouds arise, one knows not why or whence, and create darkness when
one expected light. But as yet, you must understand, nothing is
settled. I cannot even say what answer I may make to her Majesty,
till I know what commands her Majesty may lay upon me."

"You must keep a hold of it now, Plantagenet," said the Duchess,
clenching her own fist.

"I will not even close a finger on it with any personal ambition,"
said the Duke. "If I could be relieved from the burden this moment
it would be an ease to my heart. I remember once," he said,--and as
he spoke he again put his arm around her waist, "when I was debarred
from taking office by a domestic circumstance."

"I remember that too," she said, speaking very gently and looking up
at him.

"It was a grief to me at the time, though it turned out so
well,--because the office then suggested to me was one which I
thought I could fill with credit to the country. I believed in myself
then as far as that work went. But for this attempt I have no belief
in myself. I doubt whether I have any gift for governing men."

"It will come."

"It may be that I must try;--and it may be that I must break my heart
because I fail. But I shall make the attempt if I am directed to do
so in any manner that shall seem feasible. I must be off now. The
Duke is to be here this evening. They had better have dinner ready
for me whenever I may be able to eat it." Then he took his departure
before she could say another word.

When the Duchess was alone she took to thinking of the whole thing in
a manner which they who best knew her would have thought to be very
unusual with her. She already possessed all that rank and wealth
could give her, and together with those good things a peculiar
position of her own, of which she was proud, and which she had made
her own not by her wealth or rank, but by a certain fearless energy
and power of raillery which never deserted her. Many feared her
and she was afraid of none, and many also loved her,--whom she also
loved, for her nature was affectionate. She was happy with her
children, happy with her friends, in the enjoyment of perfect health,
and capable of taking an exaggerated interest in anything that might
come uppermost for the moment. One would have been inclined to say
that politics were altogether unnecessary to her, and that as Duchess
of Omnium, lately known as Lady Glencora Palliser, she had a wider
and a pleasanter influence than could belong to any woman as wife
of a Prime Minister. And she was essentially one of those women who
are not contented to be known simply as the wives of their husbands.
She had a celebrity of her own, quite independent of his position,
and which could not be enhanced by any glory or any power added to
him. Nevertheless, when he left her to go down to the Queen with
the prospect of being called upon to act as chief of the incoming
ministry, her heart throbbed with excitement. It had come at last,
and he would be, to her thinking, the leading man in the greatest
kingdom in the world.

But she felt in regard to him somewhat as did Lady Macbeth towards
her lord.


      "What thou would'st highly,
   That would'st thou holily."


She knew him to be full of scruples, unable to bend when aught was to
be got by bending, unwilling to domineer when men might be brought to
subjection only by domination. The first duty never could be taught
to him. To win support by smiles when his heart was bitter within him
would never be within the power of her husband. He could never be
brought to buy an enemy by political gifts,--would never be prone to
silence his keenest opponent by making him his right hand supporter.
But the other lesson was easier and might she thought be learned.
Power is so pleasant that men quickly learn to be greedy in the
enjoyment of it, and to flatter themselves that patriotism requires
them to be imperious. She would be constant with him day and night to
make him understand that his duty to his country required him to be
in very truth its chief ruler. And then with some knowledge of things
as they are,--and also with much ignorance,--she reflected that he
had at his command a means of obtaining popularity and securing
power, which had not belonged to his immediate predecessors, and had
perhaps never to the same extent been at the command of any minister
in England. His wealth as Duke of Omnium had been great; but hers,
as available for immediate purposes, had been greater even than his.
After some fashion, of which she was profoundly ignorant, her own
property was separated from his and reserved to herself and her
children. Since her marriage she had never said a word to him about
her money,--unless it were to ask that something out of the common
course might be spent on some, generally absurd, object. But now had
come the time for squandering money. She was not only rich but she
had a popularity that was exclusively her own. The new Prime Minister
and the new Prime Minister's wife should entertain after a fashion
that had never yet been known even among the nobility of England.
Both in town and country those great mansions should be kept open
which were now rarely much used because she had found them dull,
cold, and comfortless. In London there should not be a Member
of Parliament whom she would not herself know and influence by
her flattery and grace,--or if there were men whom she could not
influence, they should live as men tabooed and unfortunate. Money
mattered nothing. Their income was enormous, and for a series of
years,--for half-a-dozen years if the game could be kept up so
long,--they could spend treble what they called their income without
real injury to their children. Visions passed through her brain of
wondrous things which might be done,--if only her husband would be
true to his own greatness.

The Duke had left her about two. She did not stir out of the house
that day, but in the course of the afternoon she wrote a line to a
friend who lived not very far from her. The Duchess dwelt in Carlton
Terrace, and her friend in Park Lane. The note was as follows:--


   DEAR M.,

   Come to me at once. I am too excited to go to you.

   Yours,

   G.


This was addressed to one Mrs. Finn, a lady as to whom chronicles
also have been written, and who has been known to the readers of such
chronicles as a friend dearly loved by the Duchess. As quickly as she
could put on her carriage garments and get herself taken to Carlton
Terrace, Mrs. Finn was there. "Well, my dear, how do you think it's
all settled at last?" said the Duchess. It will probably be felt that
the new Prime Minister's wife was indiscreet, and hardly worthy of
the confidence placed in her by her husband. But surely we all have
some one friend to whom we tell everything, and with the Duchess Mrs.
Finn was that one friend.

"Is the Duke to be Prime Minister?"

"How on earth should you have guessed that?"

"What else could make you so excited? Besides, it is by no means
strange. I understand that they have gone on trying the two old
stagers till it is useless to try them any longer; and if there is to
be a fresh man, no one would be more likely than the Duke."

"Do you think so?"

"Certainly. Why not?"

"He has frittered away his political position by such meaningless
concessions. And then he had never done anything to put himself
forward,--at any rate since he left the House of Commons. Perhaps
I haven't read things right,--but I was surprised, very much
surprised."

"And gratified?"

"Oh yes. I can tell you everything, because you will neither
misunderstand me nor tell tales of me. Yes,--I shall like him to be
Prime Minister, though I know that I shall have a bad time of it
myself."

"Why a bad time?"

"He is so hard to manage. Of course I don't mean about politics. Of
course it must be a mixed kind of thing at first, and I don't care
a straw whether it run to Radicalism or Toryism. The country goes
on its own way, either for better or for worse, whichever of them
are in. I don't think it makes any difference as to what sort of
laws are passed. But among ourselves, in our set, it makes a deal
of difference who gets the garters, and the counties, who are
made barons and then earls, and whose name stands at the head of
everything."

"That is your way of looking at politics?"

"I own it to you;--and I must teach it to him."

"You never will do that, Lady Glen."

"Never is a long word. I mean to try. For look back and tell me of
any Prime Minister who has become sick of his power. They become sick
of the want of power when it's falling away from them,--and then they
affect to disdain and put aside the thing they can no longer enjoy.
Love of power is a kind of feeling which comes to a man as he grows
older."

"Politics with the Duke have been simple patriotism," said Mrs. Finn.

"The patriotism may remain, my dear, but not the simplicity. I don't
want him to sell his country to Germany, or to turn it into an
American republic in order that he may be president. But when he gets
the reins in his hands, I want him to keep them there. If he's so
much honester than other people, of course he's the best man for
the place. We must make him believe that the very existence of the
country depends on his firmness."

"To tell you the truth, Lady Glen, I don't think you'll ever make the
Duke believe anything. What he believes, he believes either from very
old habit, or from the working of his own mind."

"You're always singing his praises, Marie."

"I don't know that there is any special praise in what I say; but as
far as I can see, it is the man's character."

"Mr. Finn will come in, of course," said the Duchess.

"Mr. Finn will be like the Duke in one thing. He'll take his own way
as to being in or out quite independently of his wife."

"You'd like him to be in office?"

"No, indeed! Why should I? He would be more often at the House,
and keep later hours, and be always away all the morning into the
bargain. But I shall like him to do as he likes himself."

"Fancy thinking of all that. I'd sit up all night every night of
my life.--I'd listen to every debate in the House myself,--to have
Plantagenet Prime Minister. I like to be busy. Well now, if it does
come off--"

"It isn't settled, then?"

"How can one hope that a single journey will settle it, when those
other men have been going backwards and forwards between Windsor and
London, like buckets in a well, for the last three weeks? But if it
is settled, I mean to have a cabinet of my own, and I mean that you
shall do the foreign affairs."

"You'd better let me be at the exchequer. I'm very good at accounts."

"I'll do that myself. The accounts that I intend to set a-going
would frighten any one less audacious. And I mean to be my own home
secretary, and to keep my own conscience,--and to be my own master of
the ceremonies certainly. I think a small cabinet gets on best. Do
you know,--I should like to put the Queen down."

"What on earth do you mean?"

"No treason; nothing of that kind. But I should like to make
Buckingham Palace second-rate; and I'm not quite sure but I can. I
dare say you don't quite understand me."

"I don't think that I do, Lady Glen."

"You will some of these days. Come in to-morrow before lunch. I
suppose I shall know all about it then, and shall have found that my
basket of crockery has been kicked over and every thing smashed."




CHAPTER VII

Another Old Friend


At about nine the Duke had returned, and was eating his very simple
dinner in the breakfast-room,--a beefsteak and a potato, with a glass
of sherry and Apollinaris water. No man more easily satisfied as to
what he eat and drank lived in London in those days. As regarded the
eating and drinking he dined alone, but his wife sat with him and
waited on him, having sent the servant out of the room. "I have told
her Majesty that I would do the best I could," said the Duke.

"Then you are Prime Minister."

"Not at all. Mr. Daubeny is Prime Minister. I have undertaken to form
a ministry, if I find it practicable, with the assistance of such
friends as I possess. I never felt before that I had to lean so
entirely on others as I do now."

"Lean on yourself only. Be enough for yourself."

"Those are empty words, Cora;--words that are quite empty. In one
sense a man should always be enough for himself. He should have
enough of principle and enough of conscience to restrain him from
doing what he knows to be wrong. But can a ship-builder build
his ship single-handed, or the watchmaker make his watch without
assistance? On former occasions such as this, I could say, with
little or no help from without, whether I would or would not
undertake the work that was proposed to me, because I had only a
bit of the ship to build, or a wheel of the watch to make. My own
efficacy for my present task depends entirely on the co-operation of
others, and unfortunately upon that of some others with whom I have
no sympathy, nor have they with me."

"Leave them out," said the Duchess boldly.

"But they are men who will not be left out, and whose services the
country has a right to expect."

"Then bring them in, and think no more about it. It is no good crying
for pain that cannot be cured."

"Co-operation is difficult without community of feeling. I find
myself to be too stubborn-hearted for the place. It was nothing to me
to sit in the same Cabinet with a man I disliked when I had not put
him there myself. But now--. As I have travelled up I have almost
felt that I could not do it! I did not know before how much I might
dislike a man."

"Who is the one man?"

"Nay;--whoever he be, he will have to be a friend now, and therefore
I will not name him, even to you. But it is not one only. If it were
one, absolutely marked and recognised, I might avoid him. But my
friends, real friends, are so few! Who is there besides the Duke on
whom I can lean with both confidence and love?"

"Lord Cantrip."

"Hardly so, Cora. But Lord Cantrip goes out with Mr. Gresham. They
will always cling together."

"You used to like Mr. Mildmay."

"Mr. Mildmay,--yes! If there could be a Mr. Mildmay in the Cabinet,
this trouble would not come upon my shoulders."

"Then I'm very glad that there can't be a Mr. Mildmay. Why shouldn't
there be as good fish in the sea as ever were caught out of it?"

"When you've got a good fish you like to make as much of it as you
can."

"I suppose Mr. Monk will join you."

"I think we shall ask him. But I am not prepared to discuss men's
names as yet."

"You must discuss them with the Duke immediately."

"Probably;--but I had better discuss them with him before I fix my
own mind by naming them even to you."

"You'll bring Mr. Finn in, Plantagenet?"

"Mr. Finn!"

"Yes;--Phineas Finn,--the man who was tried."

"My dear Cora, we haven't come down to that yet. We need not at any
rate trouble ourselves about the small fishes till we are sure that
we can get big fishes to join us."

"I don't know why he should be a small fish. No man has done better
than he has; and if you want a man to stick to you--"

"I don't want a man to stick to me. I want a man to stick to his
country."

"You were talking about sympathy."

"Well, yes;--I was. But do not name any one else just at present. The
Duke will be here soon, and I would be alone till he comes."

"There is one thing I want to say, Plantagenet."

"What is it?"

"One favour I want to ask."

"Pray do not ask anything for any man just at present."

"It is not anything for any man."

"Nor for any woman."

"It is for a woman,--but one whom I think you would wish to oblige."

"Who is it?" Then she curtseyed, smiling at him drolly, and put her
hand upon her breast. "Something for you! What on earth can you want
that I can do for you?"

"Will you do it,--if it be reasonable?"

"If I think it reasonable, I certainly will do it."

Then her manner changed altogether, and she became serious and almost
solemn. "If, as I suppose, all the great places about her Majesty be
changed, I should like to be Mistress of the Robes."

"You!" said he, almost startled out of his usual quiet demeanour.

"Why not I? Is not my rank high enough?"

"You burden yourself with the intricacies and subserviences, with the
tedium and pomposities of Court life! Cora, you do not know what you
are talking about, or what you are proposing for yourself."

"If I am willing to try to undertake a duty, why should I be debarred
from it any more than you?"

"Because I have put myself into a groove, and ground myself into a
mould, and clipped and pared and pinched myself all round,--very
ineffectually, as I fear,--to fit myself for this thing. You have
lived as free as air. You have disdained,--and though I may have
grumbled I have still been proud to see you disdain,--to wrap
yourself in the swaddling bandages of Court life. You have ridiculed
all those who have been near her Majesty as Court ladies."

"The individuals, Plantagenet, perhaps; but not the office. I am
getting older now, and I do not see why I should not begin a new
life." She had been somewhat quelled by his unexpected energy, and
was at the moment hardly able to answer him with her usual spirit.

"Do not think of it, my dear. You asked whether your rank was high
enough. It must be so, as there is, as it happens, none higher. But
your position, should it come to pass that your husband is the head
of the Government, will be too high. I may say that in no condition
should I wish my wife to be subject to other restraint than that
which is common to all married women. I should not choose that she
should have any duties unconnected with our joint family and home.
But as First Minister of the Crown I would altogether object to her
holding an office believed to be at my disposal." She looked at him
with her large eyes wide open, and then left him without a word. She
had no other way of showing her displeasure, for she knew that when
he spoke as he had spoken now all argument was unavailing.

The Duke remained an hour alone before he was joined by the other
Duke, during which he did not for a moment apply his mind to
the subject which might be thought to be most prominent in his
thoughts,--the filling up, namely, of a list of his new government.
All that he could do in that direction without further assistance
had been already done very easily. There were four or five certain
names,--names that is of certain political friends, and three or four
almost equally certain of men who had been political enemies, but who
would now clearly be asked to join the ministry. Sir Gregory Grogram,
the late Attorney-General, would of course be asked to resume
his place; but Sir Timothy Beeswax, who was up to this moment
Solicitor-General for the Conservatives, would also be invited to
retain that which he held. Many details were known, not only to the
two dukes who were about to patch up the ministry between them, but
to the political world at large,--and were facts upon which the
newspapers were able to display their wonderful foresight and general
omniscience with their usual confidence. And as to the points which
were in doubt,--whether or not, for instance, that consistent
old Tory Sir Orlando Drought should be asked to put up with the
Post-office or should be allowed to remain at the Colonies,--the
younger Duke did not care to trouble himself till the elder
should have come to his assistance. But his own position and his
questionable capacity for filling it,--that occupied all his mind. If
nominally first he would be really first. Of so much it seemed to him
that his honour required him to assure himself. To be a _fainéant_
ruler was in direct antagonism both to his conscience and his
predilections. To call himself by a great name before the world, and
then to be something infinitely less than that name, would be to him
a degradation. But though he felt fixed as to that, he was by no
means assured as to that other point, which to most men firm in their
resolves as he was, and backed up as he had been by the confidence of
others, would be cause of small hesitation. He did doubt his ability
to fill that place which it would now be his duty to occupy. He more
than doubted. He told himself again and again that there was wanting
to him a certain noble capacity for commanding support and homage
from other men. With things and facts he could deal, but human beings
had not opened themselves to him. But now it was too late! and
yet,--as he said to his wife,--to fail would break his heart! No
ambition had prompted him. He was sure of himself there. One only
consideration had forced him into this great danger, and that had
been the assurance of others that it was his manifest duty to
encounter it. And now there was clearly no escape,--no escape
compatible with that clean-handed truth from which it was not
possible for him to swerve. He might create difficulties in order
that through them a way might still be opened to him of restoring to
the Queen the commission which had been entrusted to him. He might
insist on this or that impossible concession. But the memory of
escape such as that would break his heart as surely as the failure.

When the Duke was announced he rose to greet his old friend almost
with fervour. "It is a shame," he said, "to bring you out so late. I
ought to have gone to you."

"Not at all. It is always the rule in these cases that the man who
has most to do should fix himself as well as he can where others may
be able to find him." The Duke of St. Bungay was an old man, between
seventy and eighty, with hair nearly white, and who on entering
the room had to unfold himself out of various coats and comforters.
But he was in full possession not only of his intellects but of
his bodily power, showing, as many politicians do show, that the
cares of the nation may sit upon a man's shoulders for many years
without breaking or even bending them. For the Duke had belonged to
ministries for nearly the last half century. As the chronicles have
also dealt with him, no further records of his past life shall now be
given.

He had said something about the Queen, expressing gracious wishes for
the comfort of her Majesty in all these matters, something of the
inconvenience of these political journeys to and fro, something also
of the delicacy and difficulty of the operations on hand which were
enhanced by the necessity of bringing men together as cordial allies
who had hitherto acted with bitter animosity one to another, before
the younger Duke said a word. "We may as well," said the elder, "make
out some small provisional list, and you can ask those you name to be
with you early to-morrow. But perhaps you have already made a list."

"No indeed. I have not even had a pencil in my hand."

"We may as well begin then," said the elder, facing the table when he
saw that his less-experienced companion made no attempt at beginning.

"There is something horrible to me in the idea of writing down men's
names for such a work as this, just as boys at school used to draw
out the elevens for a cricket match." The old stager turned round and
stared at the younger politician. "The thing itself is so momentous
that one ought to have aid from heaven."

Plantagenet Palliser was the last man from whom the Duke of St.
Bungay would have expected romance at any time, and, least of all,
at such a time as this. "Aid from heaven you may have," he said, "by
saying your prayers; and I don't doubt you ask it for this and all
other things generally. But an angel won't come to tell you who ought
to be Chancellor of the Exchequer."

"No angel will, and therefore I wish that I could wash my hands of
it." His old friend still stared at him. "It is like sacrilege to me,
attempting this without feeling one's own fitness for the work. It
unmans me,--this necessity of doing that which I know I cannot do
with fitting judgment."

"Your mind has been a little too hard at work to-day."

"It hasn't been at work at all. I've had nothing to do, and have been
unable really to think of work. But I feel that chance circumstances
have put me into a position for which I am unfit, and which yet I
have been unable to avoid. How much better would it be that you
should do this alone,--you yourself."

"Utterly out of the question. I do know and think that I always
have known my own powers. Neither has my aptitude in debate nor my
capacity for work justified me in looking to the premiership. But
that, forgive me, is now not worthy of consideration. It is because
you do work and can work, and because you have fitted yourself for
that continued course of lucid explanation which we now call debate,
that men on both sides have called upon you as the best man to come
forward in this difficulty. Excuse me, my friend, again, if I say
that I expect to find your manliness equal to your capacity."

"If I could only escape from it!"

"Psha;--nonsense!" said the old Duke, getting up. "There is such a
thing as a conscience with so fine an edge that it will allow a man
to do nothing. You've got to serve your country. On such assistance
as I can give you you know that you may depend with absolute
assurance. Now let us get to work. I suppose you would wish that I
should take the chair at the Council."

"Certainly;--of course," said the Duke of Omnium, turning to the
table. The one practical suggestion had fixed him, and from that
moment he gave himself to the work in hand with all his energies. It
was not very difficult, nor did it take them a very long time. If the
future Prime Minister had not his names at his fingers' ends, the
future President of the Council had them. Eight men were soon named
whom it was thought well that the Duke of Omnium should consult early
in the morning as to their willingness to fill certain places.

"Each one of them may have some other one or some two whom he may
insist on bringing with him," said the elder Duke; "and though of
course you cannot yield to the pressure in every such case, it will
be wise to allow yourself scope for some amount of concession. You'll
find they'll shake down after the usual amount of resistance and
compliance. No;--don't you leave your house to-morrow to see anybody
unless it be Mr. Daubeny or her Majesty. I'll come to you at two, and
if her Grace will give me luncheon, I'll lunch with her. Good night,
and don't think too much of the bigness of the thing. I remember dear
old Lord Brock telling me how much more difficult it was to find a
good coachman than a good Secretary of State." The Duke of Omnium, as
he sat thinking of things for the next hour in his chair, succeeded
only in proving to himself that Lord Brock never ought to have been
Prime Minister of England after having ventured to make so poor a
joke on so solemn a subject.




CHAPTER VIII

The Beginning of a New Career


By the time that the Easter holidays were over,--holidays which had
been used so conveniently for the making of a new government,--the
work of getting a team together had been accomplished by the united
energy of the two dukes and other friends. The filling up of the
great places had been by no means so difficult or so tedious,--nor
indeed the cause of half so many heartburns,--as the completion of
the list of the subordinates. _Noblesse oblige._ The Secretaries of
State, and the Chancellors, and the First Lords, selected from this
or the other party, felt that the eyes of mankind were upon them, and
that it behoved them to assume a virtue if they had it not. They were
habitually indifferent to self-exaltation, and allowed themselves
to be thrust into this or that unfitting role, professing that the
Queen's Government and the good of the country were their only
considerations. Lord Thrift made way for Sir Orlando Drought at the
Admiralty, because it was felt on all sides that Sir Orlando could
not join the new composite party without high place. And the same
grace was shown in regard to Lord Drummond, who remained at the
Colonies, keeping the office to which he had been lately transferred
under Mr. Daubeny. And Sir Gregory Grogram said not a word, whatever
he may have thought, when he was told that Mr. Daubeny's Lord
Chancellor, Lord Ramsden, was to keep the seals. Sir Gregory did,
no doubt, think very much about it; for legal offices have a
signification differing much from that which attaches itself to
places simply political. A Lord Chancellor becomes a peer, and on
going out of office enjoys a large pension. When the woolsack has
been reached there comes an end of doubt, and a beginning of ease.
Sir Gregory was not a young man, and this was a terrible blow. But he
bore it manfully, saying not a word when the Duke spoke to him; but
he became convinced from that moment that no more inefficient lawyer
ever sat upon the English bench, or a more presumptuous politician in
the British Parliament, than Lord Ramsden.

The real struggle, however, lay in the appropriate distribution of
the Rattlers and the Robys, the Fitzgibbons and the Macphersons among
the subordinate offices of State. Mr. Macpherson and Mr. Roby, with
a host of others who had belonged to Mr. Daubeny, were prepared, as
they declared from the first, to lend their assistance to the Duke.
They had consulted Mr. Daubeny on the subject, and Mr. Daubeny told
them that their duty lay in that direction. At the first blush of
the matter the arrangement took the form of a gracious tender from
themselves to a statesman called upon to act in very difficult
circumstances,--and they were thanked accordingly by the Duke, with
something of real cordial gratitude. But when the actual adjustment
of things was in hand, the Duke, having but little power of assuming
a soft countenance and using soft words while his heart was bitter,
felt on more than one occasion inclined to withdraw his thanks. He
was astounded not so much by the pretensions as by the unblushing
assertion of these pretensions in reference to places which he had
been innocent enough to think were always bestowed at any rate
without direct application. He had measured himself rightly when he
told the older duke in one of those anxious conversations which had
been held before the attempt was made, that long as he had been in
office himself he did not know what was the way of bestowing office.
"Two gentlemen have been here this morning," he said one day to the
Duke of St. Bungay, "one on the heels of the other, each assuring me
not only that the whole stability of the enterprise depends on my
giving a certain office to him,--but actually telling me to my face
that I had promised it to him!" The old statesman laughed. "To be
told within the same half-hour by two men that I had made promises to
each of them inconsistent with each other!"

"Who were the two men?"

"Mr. Rattler and Mr. Roby."

"I am assured that they are inseparable since the work was begun.
They always had a leaning to each other, and now I hear they pass
their time between the steps of the Carlton and Reform Clubs."

"But what am I to do? One must be Patronage Secretary, no doubt."

"They're both good men in their way, you know."

"But why do they come to me with their mouths open, like dogs craving
a bone? It used not to be so. Of course men were always anxious for
office as they are now."

"Well; yes. We've heard of that before to-day, I think."

"But I don't think any man ever ventured to ask Mr. Mildmay."

"Time had done much for him in consolidating his authority, and
perhaps the present world is less reticent in its eagerness than
it was in his younger days. I doubt, however, whether it is more
dishonest, and whether struggles were not made quite as disgraceful
to the strugglers as anything that is done now. You can't alter the
men, and you must use them." The younger Duke sat down and sighed
over the degenerate patriotism of the age.

But at last even the Rattlers and Robys were fixed, if not satisfied,
and a complete list of the ministry appeared in all the newspapers.
Though the thing had been long a-doing, still it had come
suddenly,--so that at the first proposition to form a coalition
ministry, the newspapers had hardly known whether to assist or to
oppose the scheme. There was no doubt, in the minds of all these
editors and contributors, the teaching of a tradition that coalitions
of this kind have been generally feeble, sometimes disastrous, and
on occasions even disgraceful. When a man, perhaps through a long
political life, has bound himself to a certain code of opinions, how
can he change that code at a moment? And when at the same moment,
together with the change, he secures power, patronage, and pay, how
shall the public voice absolve him? But then again men, who have
by the work of their lives grown into a certain position in the
country, and have unconsciously but not therefore less actually made
themselves indispensable either to this side in politics or to that,
cannot free themselves altogether from the responsibility of managing
them when a period comes such as that now reached. This also the
newspapers perceived; and having, since the commencement of the
Session, been very loud in exposing the disgraceful collapse of
government affairs, could hardly refuse their support to any attempt
at a feasible arrangement. When it was first known that the Duke of
Omnium had consented to make the attempt, they had both on one side
and the other been loud in his praise, going so far as to say that he
was the only man in England who could do the work. It was probably
this encouragement which had enabled the new Premier to go on with an
undertaking which was personally distasteful to him, and for which
from day to day he believed himself to be less and less fit. But when
the newspapers told him that he was the only man for the occasion,
how could he be justified in crediting himself in preference to them?

The work in Parliament began under the new auspices with great
tranquillity. That there would soon come causes of hot blood,--the
English Church, the county suffrage, the income tax, and further
education questions,--all men knew who knew anything. But for the
moment, for the month even, perhaps for the Session, there was to
be peace, with full latitude for the performance of routine duties.
There was so to say no opposition, and at first it seemed that one
special bench in the House of Commons would remain unoccupied. But
after a day or two,--on one of which Mr. Daubeny had been seen
sitting just below the gangway,--that gentleman returned to the place
usually held by the Prime Minister's rival, saying with a smile that
it might be for the convenience of the House that the seat should be
utilised. Mr. Gresham at this time had, with declared purpose, asked
and obtained the Speaker's leave of absence and was abroad. Who
should lead the House? That had been a great question, caused by the
fact that the Prime Minister was in the House of Lords;--and what
office should the Leader hold? Mr. Monk had consented to take the
Exchequer, but the right to sit opposite to the Treasury Box and to
consider himself for the time the principal spirit in that chamber
was at last assigned to Sir Orlando Drought. "It will never do,"
said Mr. Rattler to Mr. Roby. "I don't mean to say anything against
Drought, who has always been a very useful man to your party;--but he
lacks something of the position."

"The fact is," said Roby, "that we've trusted to two men so long that
we don't know how to suppose any one else big enough to fill their
places. Monk wouldn't have done. The House doesn't care about Monk."

"I always thought it should be Wilson, and so I told the Duke. He had
an idea that it should be one of your men."

"I think he's right there," said Roby. "There ought to be something
like a fair division. Individuals might be content, but the party
would be dissatisfied. For myself, I'd have sooner stayed out as an
independent member, but Daubeny said that he thought I was bound to
make myself useful."

"I told the Duke from the beginning," said Rattler, "that I didn't
think that I could be of any service to him. Of course, I would
support him, but I had been too thoroughly a party man for a new
movement of this kind. But he said just the same!--that he considered
I was bound to join him. I asked Gresham, and when Gresham said so
too, of course I had no help for it."

Neither of these excellent public servants had told a lie in this.
Some such conversations as those reported had passed;--but a man
doesn't lie when he exaggerates an emphasis, or even when he gives
by a tone a meaning to a man's words exactly opposite to that which
another tone would convey. Or, if he does lie in doing so, he does
not know that he lies. Mr. Rattler had gone back to his old office at
the Treasury and Mr. Roby had been forced to content himself with the
Secretaryship at the Admiralty. But, as the old Duke had said, they
were close friends, and prepared to fight together any battle which
might keep them in their present position.

Many of the cares of office the Prime Minister did succeed in
shuffling off altogether on to the shoulders of his elder friend.
He would not concern himself with the appointment of ladies, about
whom he said he knew nothing, and as to whose fitness and claims he
professed himself to be as ignorant as the office messenger. The
offers were of course made in the usual form, as though coming direct
from the Queen, through the Prime Minister;--but the selections were
in truth effected by the old Duke in council with--an illustrious
personage. The matter affected our Duke,--only in so far that he
could not get out of his mind that strange application from his own
wife. "That she should have even dreamed of it!" he would say to
himself, not yet having acquired sufficient experience of his fellow
creatures to be aware how wonderfully temptations will affect even
those who appear to be least subject to them. The town horse, used to
gaudy trappings, no doubt despises the work of his country brother;
but yet, now and again, there comes upon him a sudden desire to
plough. The desire for ploughing had come upon the Duchess, but the
Duke could not understand it.

He perceived, however, in spite of the multiplicity of his official
work, that his refusal sat heavily on his wife's breast, and that,
though she spoke no further word, she brooded over her injury. And
his heart was sad within him when he thought that he had vexed
her,--loving her as he did with all his heart, but with a heart
that was never demonstrative. When she was unhappy he was miserable,
though he would hardly know the cause of his misery. Her ridicule and
raillery he could bear, though they stung him; but her sorrow, if
ever she were sorrowful, or her sullenness, if ever she were sullen,
upset him altogether. He was in truth so soft of heart that he could
not bear the discomfort of the one person in the world who seemed to
him to be near to him. He had expressly asked her for her sympathy
in the business he had on hand,--thereby going much beyond his usual
coldness of manner. She, with an eagerness which might have been
expected from her, had promised that she would slave for him, if
slavery were necessary. Then she had made her request, had been
refused, and was now moody. "The Duchess of ---- is to be Mistress
of the Robes," he said to her one day. He had gone to her, up to her
own room, before he dressed for dinner, having devoted much more time
than as Prime Minister he ought to have done to a resolution that he
would make things straight with her, and to the best way of doing it.

"So I am told. She ought to know her way about the place, as I
remember she was at the same work when I was a girl of eleven."

"That's not so very long ago, Cora."

"Silverbridge is older now than I was then, and I think that makes it
a very long time ago." Lord Silverbridge was the Duke's eldest son.

"But what does it matter? If she began her career in the time of
George the Fourth, what is it to you?"

"Nothing on earth,--only that she did in truth begin her career
in the time of George the Third. I'm sure she's nearer sixty than
fifty."

"I'm glad to see you remember your dates so well."

"It's a pity she should not remember hers in the way she dresses,"
said the Duchess.

This was marvellous to him,--that his wife, who as Lady Glencora
Palliser had been so conspicuous for a wild disregard of social rules
as to be looked upon by many as an enemy of her own class, should be
so depressed by not being allowed to be the Queen's head servant as
to descend to personal invective! "I'm afraid," said he, attempting
to smile, "that it won't come within the compass of my office to
effect or even to propose any radical change in her Grace's apparel.
But don't you think that you and I can afford to ignore all that?"

"I can certainly. She may be an antiquated Eve for me."

"I hope, Cora, you are not still disappointed because I did not agree
with you when you spoke about the place for yourself."

"Not because you did not agree with me,--but because you did not
think me fit to be trusted with any judgment of my own. I don't know
why I'm always to be looked upon as different from other women,--as
though I were half a savage."

"You are what you have made yourself, and I have always rejoiced that
you are as you are, fresh, untrammelled, without many prejudices
which afflict other ladies, and free from bonds by which they are
cramped and confined. Of course such a turn of character is subject
to certain dangers of its own."

"There is no doubt about the dangers. The chances are that when I see
her Grace I shall tell her what I think about her."

"You will I am sure say nothing unkind to a lady who is supposed to
be in the place she now fills by my authority. But do not let us
quarrel about an old woman."

"I won't quarrel with you even about a young one."

"I cannot be at ease within myself while I think you are resenting my
refusal. You do not know how constantly I carry you about with me."

"You carry a very unnecessary burden then," she said. But he could
tell at once from the altered tone of her voice, and from the light
of her eye as he glanced into her face, that her anger about "The
Robes" was appeased.

"I have done as you asked about a friend of yours," he said. This
occurred just before the final and perfected list of the new men had
appeared in all the newspapers.

"What friend?"

"Mr. Finn is to go to Ireland."

"Go to Ireland!--How do you mean?"

"It is looked upon as being very great promotion. Indeed I am told
that he is considered to be the luckiest man in all the scramble."

"You don't mean as Chief Secretary?"

"Yes, I do. He certainly couldn't go as Lord Lieutenant."

"But they said that Barrington Erle was going to Ireland."

"Well; yes. I don't know that you'd be interested by all the ins and
outs of it. But Mr. Erle declined. It seems that Mr. Erle is after
all the one man in Parliament modest enough not to consider himself
to be fit for any place that can be offered to him."

"Poor Barrington! He does not like the idea of crossing the Channel
so often. I quite sympathise with him. And so Phineas is to be
Secretary for Ireland! Not in the Cabinet?"

"No;--not in the Cabinet. It is not by any means usual that he should
be."

"That is promotion, and I am glad! Poor Phineas! I hope they won't
murder him, or anything of that kind. They do murder people, you
know, sometimes."

"He's an Irishman himself."

"That's just the reason why they should. He must put up with that of
course. I wonder whether she'll like going. They'll be able to spend
money, which they always like, over there. He comes backwards and
forwards every week,--doesn't he?"

"Not quite that, I believe."

"I shall miss her, if she has to stay away long. I know you don't
like her."

"I do like her. She has always behaved well, both to me and to my
uncle."

"She was an angel to him,--and to you too, if you only knew it. I
dare say you're sending him to Ireland so as to get her away from
me." This she said with a smile, as though not meaning it altogether,
but yet half meaning it.

"I have asked him to undertake the office," said the Duke solemnly,
"because I am told that he is fit for it. But I did have some
pleasure in proposing it to him because I thought that it would
please you."

"It does please me, and I won't be cross any more, and the Duchess
of ---- may wear her clothes just as she pleases, or go without them.
And as for Mrs. Finn, I don't see why she should be with him always
when he goes. You can quite understand how necessary she is to me.
But she is in truth the only woman in London to whom I can say what I
think. And it is a comfort, you know, to have some one."

In this way the domestic peace of the Prime Minister was readjusted,
and that sympathy and co-operation for which he had first asked
was accorded to him. It may be a question whether on the whole the
Duchess did not work harder than he did. She did not at first dare to
expound to him those grand ideas which she had conceived in regard to
magnificence and hospitality. She said nothing of any extraordinary
expenditure of money. But she set herself to work after her own
fashion, making to him suggestions as to dinners and evening
receptions, to which he objected only on the score of time. "You must
eat your dinner somewhere," she said, "and you need only come in just
before we sit down, and go into your own room if you please without
coming upstairs at all. I can at any rate do that part of it for
you." And she did do that part of it with marvellous energy all
through the month of May,--so that by the end of the month, within
six weeks of the time at which she first heard of the Coalition
Ministry, all the world had begun to talk of the Prime Minister's
dinners, and of the receptions given by the Prime Minister's wife.




CHAPTER IX

Mrs. Dick's Dinner Party.--No. I


Our readers must not forget the troubles of poor Emily Wharton
amidst the gorgeous festivities of the new Prime Minister. Throughout
April and May she did not see Ferdinand Lopez. It may be remembered
that on the night when the matter was discussed between her and
her father, she promised him that she would not do so without his
permission,--saying, however, at the same time very openly that her
happiness depended on such permission being given to her. For two or
three weeks not a word further was said between her and her father on
the subject, and he had endeavoured to banish the subject from his
mind,--feeling no doubt that if nothing further were ever said it
would be so much the better. But then his daughter referred to the
matter,--very plainly, with a simple question, and without disguise
of her own feeling, but still in a manner which he could not bring
himself to rebuke. "Aunt Harriet has asked me once or twice to go
there of an evening, when you have been out. I have declined because
I thought Mr. Lopez would be there. Must I tell her that I am not to
meet Mr. Lopez, papa?"

"If she has him there on purpose to throw him in your way, I shall
think very badly of her."

"But he has been in the habit of being there, papa. Of course if you
are decided about this, it is better that I should not see him."

"Did I not tell you that I was decided?"

"You said you would make some further inquiry and speak to me again."
Now Mr. Wharton had made inquiry, but had learned nothing to reassure
himself;--neither had he been able to learn any fact, putting his
finger on which he could point out to his daughter clearly that
the marriage would be unsuitable for her. Of the man's ability and
position, as certainly also of his manners, the world at large seemed
to speak well. He had been blackballed at two clubs, but apparently
without any defined reason. He lived as though he possessed a
handsome income, and yet was in no degree fast or flashy. He was
supposed to be an intimate friend of Mr. Mills Happerton, one of
the partners in the world-famous commercial house of Hunky and Sons,
which dealt in millions. Indeed there had been at one time a rumour
that he was going to be taken into the house of Hunky and Sons as a
junior partner. It was evident that many people had been favourably
impressed by his outward demeanour, by his mode of talk, and by his
way of living. But no one knew anything about him. With regard to his
material position Mr. Wharton could of course ask direct questions if
he pleased, and require evidence as to alleged property. But he felt
that by doing so he would abandon his right to object to the man as
being a Portuguese stranger, and he did not wish to have Ferdinand
Lopez as a son-in-law, even though he should be a partner in Hunky
and Sons, and able to maintain a gorgeous palace at South Kensington.

"I have made inquiry."

"Well, papa?"

"I don't know anything about him. Nobody knows anything about him."

"Could you not ask himself anything you want to know? If I might see
him I would ask him."

"That would not do at all."

"It comes to this, papa, that I am to sever myself from a man to whom
I am attached, and whom you must admit that I have been allowed to
meet from day to day with no caution that his intimacy was unpleasant
to you, because he is called--Lopez."

"It isn't that at all. There are English people of that name; but he
isn't an Englishman."

"Of course, if you say so, papa, it must be so. I have told Aunt
Harriet that I consider myself to be prohibited from meeting
Mr. Lopez by what you have said; but I think, papa, you are a
little--cruel to me."

"Cruel to you!" said Mr. Wharton, almost bursting into tears.

"I am as ready to obey as a child;--but, not being a child, I think
I ought to have a reason." To this Mr. Wharton made no further
immediate answer, but pulled his hair, and shuffled his feet about,
and then escaped out of the room.

A few days afterwards his sister-in-law attacked him. "Are we to
understand, Mr. Wharton, that Emily is not to meet Mr. Lopez again?
It makes it very unpleasant, because he has been intimate at our
house."

"I never said a word about her not meeting him. Of course I do not
wish that any meeting should be contrived between them."

"As it stands now it is prejudicial to her. Of course it cannot but
be observed, and it is so odd that a young lady should be forbidden
to meet a certain man. It looks so unpleasant for her,--as though she
had misbehaved herself."

"I have never thought so for a moment."

"Of course you have not. How could you have thought so, Mr. Wharton?"

"I say that I never did."

"What must he think when he knows,--as of course he does know,--that
she has been forbidden to meet him? It must make him fancy that he is
made very much of. All that is so very bad for a girl! Indeed it is,
Mr. Wharton." Of course there was absolute dishonesty in all this on
the part of Mrs. Roby. She was true enough to Emily's lover,--too
true to him; but she was false to Emily's father. If Emily would
have yielded to her she would have arranged meetings at her own
house between the lovers altogether in opposition to the father.
Nevertheless there was a show of reason about what she said which
Mr. Wharton was unable to overcome. And at the same time there was
a reality about his girl's sorrow which overcame him. He had never
hitherto consulted any one about anything in his family, having
always found his own information and intellect sufficient for his own
affairs. But now he felt grievously in want of some pillar,--some
female pillar,--on which he could lean. He did not know all Mrs.
Roby's iniquities; but still he felt that she was not the pillar
of which he was in need. There was no such pillar for his use, and
he was driven to acknowledge to himself that in this distressing
position he must be guided by his own strength, and his own lights.
He thought it all out as well as he could in his own chamber,
allowing his book or his brief to lie idle beside him for many a
half-hour. But he was much puzzled both as to the extent of his own
authority and the manner in which it should be used. He certainly had
not desired his daughter not to meet the man. He could understand
that unless some affront had been offered such an edict enforced as
to the conduct of a young lady would induce all her acquaintance to
suppose that she was either very much in love or else very prone to
misbehave herself. He feared, indeed, that she was very much in love,
but it would not be prudent to tell her secret to all the world.
Perhaps it would be better that she should meet him,--always with
the understanding that she was not to accept from him any peculiar
attention. If she would be obedient in one particular, she would
probably be so in the other;--and, indeed, he did not at all doubt
her obedience. She would obey, but would take care to show him that
she was made miserable by obeying. He began to foresee that he had a
bad time before him.

And then as he still sat idle, thinking of it all, his mind wandered
off to another view of the subject. Could he be happy, or even
comfortable, if she were unhappy? Of course he endeavoured to
convince himself that if he were bold, determined, and dictatorial
with her, it would only be in order that her future happiness might
be secured. A parent is often bound to disregard the immediate
comfort of a child. But then was he sure that he was right? He of
course had his own way of looking at life, but was it reasonable that
he should force his girl to look at things with his eyes? The man was
distasteful to him as being unlike his idea of an English gentleman,
and as being without those far-reaching fibres and roots by which he
thought that the solidity and stability of a human tree should be
assured. But the world was changing around him every day. Royalty was
marrying out of its degree. Peers' sons were looking only for money.
And, more than that, peers' daughters were bestowing themselves on
Jews and shopkeepers. Had he not better make the usual inquiry about
the man's means, and, if satisfied on that head, let the girl do as
she would? Added to all this there was growing on him a feeling that
ultimately youth would as usual triumph over age, and that he would
be beaten. If that were so, why worry himself, or why worry her?

On the day after Mrs. Roby's attack upon him he again saw that lady,
having on this occasion sent round to ask her to come to him. "I want
you to understand that I put no embargo on Emily as to meeting Mr.
Lopez. I can trust her fully. I do not wish her to encourage his
attentions, but I by no means wish her to avoid him."

"Am I to tell Emily what you say?"

"I will tell her myself. I think it better to say as much to you, as
you seemed to be embarrassed by the fear that they might happen to
see each other in your drawing-room."

"It was rather awkward;--wasn't it?"

"I have spoken now because you seemed to think so." His manner to her
was not very pleasant, but Mrs. Roby had known him for many years,
and did not care very much for his manner. She had an object to gain,
and could put up with a good deal for the sake of her object.

"Very well. Then I shall know how to act. But, Mr. Wharton, I must
say this, you know Emily has a will of her own, and you must not hold
me responsible for anything that may occur." As soon as he heard this
he almost resolved to withdraw the concession he had made;--but he
did not do so.

Very soon after this there came a special invitation from Mr. and
Mrs. Roby, asking the Whartons, father and daughter, to dine with
them round the corner. It was quite a special invitation, because
it came in the form of a card,--which was unusual between the
two families. But the dinner was too, in some degree, a special
dinner,--as Emily was enabled to explain to her father, the whole
speciality having been fully detailed to herself by her aunt. Mr.
Roby, whose belongings were not generally aristocratic, had one great
connexion with whom, after many years of quarrelling, he had lately
come into amity. This was his half-brother, considerably older than
himself, and was no other than that Mr. Roby who was now Secretary to
the Admiralty, and who in the last Conservative Government had been
one of the Secretaries to the Treasury. The oldest Mr. Roby of all,
now long since gathered to his fathers, had had two wives and two
sons. The elder son had not been left as well off as friends, or
perhaps as he himself, could have wished. But he had risen in the
world by his wits, had made his way into Parliament, and had become,
as all readers of these chronicles know, a staff of great strength to
his party. But he had always been a poor man. His periods of office
had been much shorter than those of his friend Rattler, and his other
sources of income had not been certain. His younger half-brother,
who, as far as the great world was concerned, had none of his elder
brother's advantages, had been endowed with some fortune from his
mother, and,--in an evil hour for both of them,--had lent the
politician money. As one consequence of this transaction, they had
not spoken to each other for years. On this quarrel Mrs. Roby was
always harping with her own husband,--not taking his part. Her Roby,
her Dick, had indeed the means of supporting her with a fair comfort,
but had, of his own, no power of introducing her to that sort of
society for which her soul craved. But Mr. Thomas Roby was a great
man,--though unfortunately poor,--and moved in high circles. Because
they had lent their money,--which no doubt was lost for ever,--why
should they also lose the advantages of such a connexion? Would it
not be wiser rather to take the debt as a basis whereon to found
a claim for special fraternal observation and kindred social
intercourse? Dick, who was fond of his money, would not for a long
time look at the matter in this light, but harassed his brother from
time to time by applications which were quite useless, and which by
the acerbity of their language altogether shut Mrs. Roby out from the
good things which might have accrued to her from so distinguished
a brother-in-law. But when it came to pass that Thomas Roby was
confirmed in office by the coalition which has been mentioned, Mrs.
Dick became very energetic. She went herself to the official hero
and told him how desirous she was of peace. Nothing more should be
said about the money,--at any rate for the present. Let brothers be
brothers. And so it came to pass that the Secretary to the Admiralty
with his wife were to dine in Berkeley Street, and that Mr. Wharton
was asked to meet them.

"I don't particularly want to meet Mr. Thomas Roby," the old
barrister said.

"They want you to come," said Emily, "because there has been some
family reconciliation. You usually do go once or twice a year."

"I suppose it may as well be done," said Mr. Wharton.

"I think, papa, that they mean to ask Mr. Lopez," said Emily
demurely.

"I told you before that I don't want to have you banished from your
aunt's home by any man," said the father. So the matter was settled,
and the invitation was accepted. This was just at the end of May,
at which time people were beginning to say that the coalition was
a success, and some wise men to predict that at last fortuitous
parliamentary atoms had so come together by accidental connexion,
that a ministry had been formed which might endure for a dozen years.
Indeed there was no reason why there should be any end to a ministry
built on such a foundation. Of course this was very comfortable to
such men as Mr. Roby, so that the Admiralty Secretary when he entered
his sister-in-law's drawing-room was suffused with that rosy hue of
human bliss which a feeling of triumph bestows. "Yes," said he, in
answer to some would-be facetious remark from his brother, "I think
we have weathered that storm pretty well. It does seem rather odd, my
sitting cheek by jowl with Mr. Monk and gentlemen of that kidney; but
they don't bite. I've got one of our own set at the head of our own
office, and he leads the House. I think upon the whole we've got a
little the best of it." This was listened to by Mr. Wharton with
great disgust,--for Mr. Wharton was a Tory of the old school, who
hated compromises, and abhorred in his heart the class of politicians
to whom politics were a profession rather than a creed.

Mr. Roby senior, having escaped from the House, was of course
the last, and had indeed kept all the other guests waiting
half-an-hour,--as becomes a parliamentary magnate in the heat of the
Session. Mr. Wharton, who had been early, saw all the other guests
arrive, and among them Mr. Ferdinand Lopez. There was also Mr. Mills
Happerton,--partner in Hunky and Sons,--with his wife, respecting
whom Mr. Wharton at once concluded that he was there as being the
friend of Ferdinand Lopez. If so, how much influence must Ferdinand
Lopez have in that house! Nevertheless, Mr. Mills Happerton was in
his way a great man, and a credit to Mrs. Roby. And there were Sir
Damask and Lady Monogram, who were people moving quite in the first
circles. Sir Damask shot pigeons, and so did also Dick Roby,--whence
had perhaps arisen an intimacy. But Lady Monogram was not at all a
person to dine with Mrs. Dick Roby without other cause than this. But
a great official among one's acquaintance can do so much for one! It
was probable that Lady Monogram's presence was among the first fruits
of the happy family reconciliation that had taken place. Then there
was Mrs. Leslie, a pretty widow, rather poor, who was glad to receive
civilities from Mrs. Roby, and was Emily Wharton's pet aversion. Mrs.
Leslie had said impertinent things to her about Ferdinand Lopez, and
she had snubbed Mrs. Leslie. But Mrs. Leslie was serviceable to Mrs.
Roby, and had now been asked to her great dinner party.

But the two most illustrious guests have not yet been mentioned. Mrs.
Roby had secured a lord,--an absolute peer of Parliament! This was
no less a man than Lord Mongrober, whose father had been a great
judge in the early part of the century, and had been made a peer.
The Mongrober estates were not supposed to be large, nor was the
Mongrober influence at this time extensive. But this nobleman was
seen about a good deal in society when the dinners given were
supposed to be worth eating. He was a fat, silent, red-faced, elderly
gentleman, who said very little, and who when he did speak seemed
always to be in an ill-humour. He would now and then make ill-natured
remarks about his friends' wines, as suggesting '68 when a man would
boast of his '48 claret; and when costly dainties were supplied for
his use, would remark that such and such a dish was very well at some
other time of the year. So that ladies attentive to their tables and
hosts proud of their cellars would almost shake in their shoes before
Lord Mongrober. And it may also be said that Lord Mongrober never
gave any chance of retaliation by return dinners. There lived not the
man or woman who had dined with Lord Mongrober. But yet the Robys of
London were glad to entertain him; and the Mrs. Robys, when he was
coming, would urge their cooks to superhuman energies by the mention
of his name.

And there was Lady Eustace! Of Lady Eustace it was impossible to say
whether her beauty, her wit, her wealth, or the remarkable history of
her past life, most recommended her to such hosts and hostesses as
Mr. and Mrs. Roby. As her history may be already known to some, no
details of it shall be repeated here. At this moment she was free
from all marital persecution, and was very much run after by a
certain set in society. There were others again who declared that no
decent man or woman ought to meet her. On the score of lovers there
was really little or nothing to be said against her; but she had
implicated herself in an unfortunate second marriage, and then there
was that old story about the jewels! But there was no doubt about her
money and her good looks, and some considered her to be clever. These
completed the list of Mrs. Roby's great dinner party.

Mr. Wharton, who had arrived early, could not but take notice that
Lopez, who soon followed him into the room, had at once fallen
into conversation with Emily, as though there had never been any
difficulty in the matter. The father, standing on the rug and
pretending to answer the remarks made to him by Dick Roby, could see
that Emily said but little. The man, however, was so much at his ease
that there was no necessity for her to exert herself. Mr. Wharton
hated him for being at his ease. Had he appeared to have been
rebuffed by the circumstances of his position the prejudices of
the old man would have been lessened. By degrees the guests came.
Lord Mongrober stood also on the rug, dumb, with a look of intense
impatience for his food, hardly ever condescending to answer the
little attempts at conversation made by Mrs. Dick. Lady Eustace
gushed into the room, kissing Mrs. Dick and afterwards kissing her
great friend of the moment, Mrs. Leslie, who followed. She then
looked as though she meant to kiss Lord Mongrober, whom she playfully
and almost familiarly addressed. But Lord Mongrober only grunted.
Then came Sir Damask and Lady Monogram, and Dick at once began about
his pigeons. Sir Damask, who was the most good-natured man in the
world, interested himself at once and became energetic; but Lady
Monogram looked round the room carefully, and seeing Lady Eustace,
turned up her nose, nor did she care much for meeting Lord Mongrober.
If she had been taken in as to the Admiralty Robys, then would she
let the junior Robys know what she thought about it. Mills Happerton,
with his wife, caused the frown on Lady Monogram's brow to loosen
itself a little, for, so great was the wealth and power of the house
of Hunky and Sons, that Mr. Mills Happerton was no doubt a feature at
any dinner party. Then came the Admiralty Secretary with his wife,
and the order for dinner was given.




CHAPTER X

Mrs. Dick's Dinner Party.--No. II


Dick walked downstairs with Lady Monogram. There had been some doubt
whether of right he should not have taken Lady Eustace, but it was
held by Mrs. Dick that her ladyship had somewhat impaired her rights
by the eccentricities of her career, and also that she would amiably
pardon any little wrong against her of that kind,--whereas Lady
Monogram was a person to be much considered. Then followed Sir Damask
with Lady Eustace. They seemed to be paired so well together that
there could be no doubt about them. The ministerial Roby, who was
really the hero of the night, took Mrs. Happerton, and our friend Mr.
Wharton took the Secretary's wife. All that had been easy,--so easy
that fate had good-naturedly arranged things which are sometimes
difficult of management. But then there came an embarrassment. Of
course it would in a usual way be right that a married man as was Mr.
Happerton should be assigned to the widow Mrs. Leslie, and that the
only two "young" people,--in the usual sense of the word,--should
go down to dinner together. But Mrs. Roby was at first afraid of Mr.
Wharton, and planned it otherwise. When, however, the last moment
came she plucked up courage, gave Mrs. Leslie to the great commercial
man, and with a brave smile asked Lopez to give his arm to the lady
he loved. It is sometimes so hard to manage these "little things,"
said she to Lord Mongrober as she put her hand upon his arm. His
lordship had been kept standing in that odious drawing-room for
more than half-an-hour waiting for a man whom he regarded as a poor
Treasury hack, and was by no means in a good humour. Dick Roby's wine
was no doubt good, but he was not prepared to purchase it at such a
price as this. "Things always get confused when you have waited an
hour for any one," he said. "What can one do, you know, when the
House is sitting?" said the lady apologetically. "Of course you
lords can get away, but then you have nothing to do." Lord Mongrober
grunted, meaning to imply by his grunt that any one would be very
much mistaken who supposed that he had any work to do because he was
a peer of Parliament.

Lopez and Emily were seated next to each other, and immediately
opposite to them was Mr. Wharton. Certainly nothing fraudulent had
been intended on this occasion,--or it would have been arranged that
the father should sit on the same side of the table with the lover,
so that he should see nothing of what was going on. But it seemed
to Mr. Wharton as though he had been positively swindled by his
sister-in-law. There they sat opposite to him, talking to each other
apparently with thoroughly mutual confidence, the very two persons
whom he most especially desired to keep apart. He had not a word to
say to either of the ladies near him. He endeavoured to keep his eyes
away from his daughter as much as possible, and to divert his ears
from their conversation;--but he could not but look and he could
not but listen. Not that he really heard a sentence. Emily's voice
hardly reached him, and Lopez understood the game he was playing much
too well to allow his voice to travel. And he looked as though his
position were the most commonplace in the world, and as though he had
nothing of more than ordinary interest to say to his neighbour. Mr.
Wharton, as he sat there, almost made up his mind that he would leave
his practice, give up his chambers, abandon even his club, and take
his daughter at once to--to;--it did not matter where, so that the
place should be very distant from Manchester Square. There could be
no other remedy for this evil.

Lopez, though he talked throughout the whole of dinner,--turning
sometimes indeed to Mrs. Leslie who sat at his left hand,--said very
little that all the world might not have heard. But he did say one
such word. "It has been so dreary to me, the last month!" Emily of
course had no answer to make to this. She could not tell him that
her desolation had been infinitely worse than his, and that she
had sometimes felt as though her very heart would break. "I wonder
whether it must always be like this with me," he said,--and then he
went back to the theatres, and other ordinary conversation.

"I suppose you've got to the bottom of that champagne you used
to have," said Lord Mongrober, roaring across the table to his
host, holding his glass in his hand, and with strong marks of
disapprobation on his face.

"The very same wine as we were drinking when your lordship last did
me the honour of dining here," said Dick. Lord Mongrober raised his
eyebrows, shook his head and put down the glass.

"Shall we try another bottle?" asked Mrs. Dick with solicitude.

"Oh, no;--it'd be all the same, I know. I'll just take a little dry
sherry if you have it." The man came with the decanter. "No, dry
sherry;--dry sherry," said his lordship. The man was confounded,
Mrs. Dick was at her wits' ends, and everything was in confusion.
Lord Mongrober was not the man to be kept waiting by a government
subordinate without exacting some penalty for such ill-treatment.

"'Is lordship is a little out of sorts," whispered Dick to Lady
Monogram.

"Very much out of sorts, it seems."

"And the worst of it is, there isn't a better glass of wine in
London, and 'is lordship knows it."

"I suppose that's what he comes for," said Lady Monogram, being quite
as uncivil in her way as the nobleman.

"'E's like a good many others. He knows where he can get a good
dinner. After all, there's no attraction like that. Of course, a
'ansome woman won't admit that, Lady Monogram."

"I will not admit it, at any rate, Mr. Roby."

"But I don't doubt Monogram is as careful as any one else to get the
best cook he can, and takes a good deal of trouble about his wine
too. Mongrober is very unfair about that champagne. It came out
of Madame Cliquot's cellars before the war, and I gave Sprott and
Burlinghammer 110s. for it."

"Indeed!"

"I don't think there are a dozen men in London can give you such a
glass of wine as that. What do you say about that champagne,
Monogram?"

"Very tidy wine," said Sir Damask.

"I should think it is. I gave 110s. for it before the war. 'Is
lordship's got a fit of the gout coming, I suppose."

But Sir Damask was engaged with his neighbour, Lady Eustace. "Of all
things I should so like to see a pigeon match," said Lady Eustace.
"I have heard about them all my life. Only I suppose it isn't quite
proper for a lady."

"Oh, dear, yes."

"The darling little pigeons! They do sometimes escape, don't they?
I hope they escape sometimes. I'll go any day you'll make up a
party,--if Lady Monogram will join us." Sir Damask said that he would
arrange it, making up his mind, however, at the same time, that this
last stipulation, if insisted on, would make the thing impracticable.

Roby the ministerialist, sitting at the end of the table between his
sister-in-law and Mrs. Happerton, was very confidential respecting
the Government and parliamentary affairs in general. "Yes,
indeed;--of course it's a coalition, but I don't see why we shouldn't
go on very well. As to the Duke, I've always had the greatest
possible respect for him. The truth is, there's nothing special to be
done at the present moment, and there's no reason why we shouldn't
agree and divide the good things between us. The Duke has got some
craze of his own about decimal coinage. He'll amuse himself with
that; but it won't come to anything, and it won't hurt us."

"Isn't the Duchess giving a great many parties?" asked Mrs.
Happerton.

"Well;--yes. That kind of thing used to be done in old Lady Brock's
time, and the Duchess is repeating it. There's no end to their money,
you know. But it's rather a bore for the persons who have to go."
The ministerial Roby knew well how he would make his sister-in-law's
mouth water by such an allusion as this to the great privilege of
entering the Prime Minister's mansion in Carlton Terrace.

"I suppose you in the Government are always asked."

"We are expected to go too, and are watched pretty close. Lady Glen,
as we used to call her, has the eyes of Argus. And of course we
who used to be on the other side are especially bound to pay her
observance."

"Don't you like the Duchess?" asked Mrs. Happerton.

"Oh, yes;--I like her very well. She's mad, you know,--mad as a
hatter,--and no one can ever guess what freak may come next. One
always feels that she'll do something sooner or later that will
startle all the world."

"There was a queer story once,--wasn't there?" asked Mrs. Dick.

"I never quite believed that," said Roby. "It was something
about some lover she had before she was married. She went off to
Switzerland. But the Duke,--he was Mr. Palliser then,--followed her
very soon and it all came right."

"When ladies are going to be duchesses, things do come right; don't
they?" said Mrs. Happerton.

On the other side of Mrs. Happerton was Mr. Wharton, quite unable to
talk to his right-hand neighbour, the Secretary's wife. The elder
Mrs. Roby had not, indeed, much to say for herself, and he during
the whole dinner was in misery. He had resolved that there should
be no intimacy of any kind between his daughter and Ferdinand
Lopez,--nothing more than the merest acquaintance; and there they
were, talking together before his very eyes, with more evident signs
of understanding each other than were exhibited by any other two
persons at the table. And yet he had no just ground of complaint
against either of them. If people dine together at the same house,
it may of course happen that they shall sit next to each other. And
if people sit next to each other at dinner, it is expected that they
shall talk. Nobody could accuse Emily of flirting; but then she was
a girl who under no circumstances would condescend to flirt. But she
had declared boldly to her father that she loved this man, and there
she was in close conversation with him! Would it not be better for
him to give up any further trouble, and let her marry the man? She
would certainly do so sooner or later.

When the ladies went upstairs that misery was over for a time, but
Mr. Wharton was still not happy. Dick came round and took his wife's
chair, so that he sat between the lord and his brother. Lopez and
Happerton fell into city conversation, and Sir Damask tried to amuse
himself with Mr. Wharton. But the task was hopeless,--as it always
is when the elements of a party have been ill-mixed. Mr. Wharton had
not even heard of the new Aldershot coach which Sir Damask had just
started with Colonel Buskin and Sir Alfonso Blackbird. And when Sir
Damask declared that he drove the coach up and down twice a week
himself, Mr. Wharton at any rate affected to believe that such a
thing was impossible. Then when Sir Damask gave his opinion as to the
cause of the failure of a certain horse at Northampton, Mr. Wharton
gave him no encouragement whatever. "I never was at a racecourse in
my life," said the barrister. After that Sir Damask drank his wine in
silence.

"You remember that claret, my lord?" said Dick, thinking that some
little compensation was due to him for what had been said about the
champagne.

But Lord Mongrober's dinner had not yet had the effect of mollifying
the man sufficiently for Dick's purposes. "Oh, yes, I remember the
wine. You call it '57, don't you?"

"And it is '57;--'57, Leoville."

"Very likely,--very likely. If it hadn't been heated before the
fire--"

"It hasn't been near the fire," said Dick.

"Or put into a hot decanter--"

"Nothing of the kind."

"Or treated after some other damnable fashion, it would be very good
wine, I dare say."

"You are hard to please, my lord, to-day," said Dick, who was put
beyond his bearing.

"What is a man to say? If you will talk about your wine, I can only
tell you what I think. Any man may get good wine,--that is if he can
afford to pay the price,--but it isn't one out of ten who knows how
to put it on the table." Dick felt this to be very hard. When a man
pays 110s. a dozen for his champagne, and then gives it to guests
like Lord Mongrober who are not even expected to return the favour,
then that man ought to be allowed to talk about his wine without
fear of rebuke. One doesn't have an agreement to that effect written
down on parchment and sealed; but it is as well understood and ought
to be as faithfully kept as any legal contract. Dick, who could on
occasions be awakened to a touch of manliness, gave the bottle a
shove and threw himself back in his chair. "If you ask me, I can only
tell you," repeated Lord Mongrober.

"I don't believe you ever had a bottle of wine put before you in
better order in all your life," said Dick. His lordship's face became
very square and very red as he looked round at his host. "And as
for talking about my wine, of course I talk to a man about what he
understands. I talk to Monogram about pigeons, to Tom there about
politics, to Apperton and Lopez about the price of consols, and to
you about wine. If I asked you what you thought of the last new book,
your lordship would be a little surprised." Lord Mongrober grunted
and looked redder and squarer than ever; but he made no attempt at
reply, and the victory was evidently left with Dick,--very much to
the general exaltation of his character. And he was proud of himself.
"We had a little tiff, me and Mongrober," he said to his wife that
night. "'E's a very good fellow, and of course he's a lord and all
that. But he has to be put down occasionally, and, by George, I did
it to-night. You ask Lopez."

There were two drawing-rooms up-stairs, opening into each other, but
still distinct. Emily had escaped into the back room, avoiding the
gushing sentiments and equivocal morals of Lady Eustace and Mrs.
Leslie,--and here she was followed by Ferdinand Lopez. Mr. Wharton
was in the front room, and though on entering it he did look round
furtively for his daughter, he was ashamed to wander about in
order that he might watch her. And there were others in the back
room,--Dick and Monogram standing on the rug, and the elder Mrs.
Roby seated in a corner;--so that there was nothing peculiar in the
position of the two lovers.

"Must I understand," said he, "that I am banished from Manchester
Square?"

"Has papa banished you?"

"That's what I want you to tell me."

"I know you had an interview with him, Mr. Lopez."

"Yes. I had."

"And you must know best what he told you."

"He would explain himself better to you than he did to me."

"I doubt that very much. Papa, when he has anything to say, generally
says it plainly. However, I do think that he did intend to banish
you. I do not know why I should not tell you the truth."

"I do not know either."

"I think he did--intend to banish you."

"And you?"

"I shall be guided by him in all things,--as far as I can."

"Then I am banished by you also?"

"I did not say so. But if papa says that you are not to come there,
of course I cannot ask you to do so."

"But I may see you here?"

"Mr. Lopez, I will not be asked some questions. I will not indeed."

"You know why I ask them. You know that to me you are more than all
the world." She stood still for a moment after hearing this, and then
without any reply walked away into the other room. She felt half
ashamed of herself in that she had not rebuked him for speaking to
her in that fashion after his interview with her father, and yet his
words had filled her heart with delight. He had never before plainly
declared his love to her,--though she had been driven by her father's
questions to declare her own love to herself. She was quite sure of
herself,--that the man was and would always be to her the one being
whom she would prefer to all others. Her fate was in her father's
hands. If he chose to make her wretched he must do so. But on one
point she had quite made up her mind. She would make no concealment.
To the world at large she had nothing to say on the matter. But with
her father there should be no attempt on her part to keep back the
truth. Were he to question her on the subject she would tell him, as
far as her memory would serve her, the very words which Lopez had
spoken to her this evening. She would ask nothing from him. He had
already told her that the man was to be rejected, and had refused to
give any other reason than his dislike to the absence of any English
connexion. She would not again ask even for a reason. But she would
make her father understand that though she obeyed him she regarded
the exercise of his authority as tyrannical and irrational.

They left the house before any of the other guests and walked round
the corner together into the Square. "What a very vulgar set of
people!" said Mr. Wharton as soon as they were down the steps.

"Some of them were," said Emily, making a mental reservation of her
own.

"Upon my word I don't know where to make the exception. Why on earth
any one should want to know such a person as Lord Mongrober I can't
understand. What does he bring into society?"

"A title."

"But what does that do of itself? He is an insolent, bloated brute."

"Papa, you are using strong language to-night."

"And that Lady Eustace! Heaven and earth! Am I to be told that that
creature is a lady?"

They had now come to their own door, and while that was being opened
and as they went up into their own drawing-room, nothing was said,
but then Emily began again. "I wonder why you go to Aunt Harriet's at
all. You don't like the people?"

"I didn't like any of them to-day."

"Why do you go there? You don't like Aunt Harriet herself. You don't
like Uncle Dick. You don't like Mr. Lopez."

"Certainly I do not."

"I don't know who it is you do like."

"I like Mr. Fletcher."

"It's no use saying that to me, papa."

"You ask me a question, and I choose to answer it. I like Arthur
Fletcher, because he is a gentleman,--because he is a gentleman of
the class to which I belong myself; because he works; because I know
all about him, so that I can be sure of him; because he had a decent
father and mother; because I am safe with him, being quite sure that
he will say to me neither awkward things nor impertinent things. He
will not talk to me about driving a mail coach like that foolish
baronet, nor tell me the price of all his wines like your uncle." Nor
would Ferdinand Lopez do so, thought Emily to herself. "But in all
such matters, my dear, the great thing is like to like. I have spoken
of a young person, merely because I wish you to understand that I
can sympathise with others besides those of my own age. But to-night
there was no one there at all like myself,--or, as I hope, like you.
That man Roby is a chattering ass. How such a man can be useful to
any government I can't conceive. Happerton was the best, but what had
he to say for himself? I've always thought that there was very little
wit wanted to make a fortune in the City." In this frame of mind
Mr. Wharton went off to bed, but not a word more was spoken about
Ferdinand Lopez.




CHAPTER XI

Carlton Terrace


Certainly the thing was done very well by Lady Glen,--as many in the
political world persisted in calling her even in these days. She had
not as yet quite carried out her plan,--the doing of which would have
required her to reconcile her husband to some excessive abnormal
expenditure, and to have obtained from him a deliberate sanction for
appropriation and probable sale of property. She never could find the
proper moment for doing this, having, with all her courage,--low down
in some corner of her heart,--a wholesome fear of a certain quiet
power which her husband possessed. She could not bring herself to
make her proposition;--but she almost acted as though it had been
made and approved. Her house was always gorgeous with flowers. Of
course there would be the bill;--and he, when he saw the exotics, and
the whole place turned into a bower of ever fresh blooming floral
glories, must know that there would be the bill. And when he found
that there was an archducal dinner-party every week, and an almost
imperial reception twice a week; that at these receptions a banquet
was always provided; when he was asked whether she might buy a
magnificent pair of bay carriage-horses, as to which she assured him
that nothing so lovely had ever as yet been seen stepping in the
streets of London,--of course he must know that the bills would come.
It was better, perhaps, to do it in this way, than to make any direct
proposition. And then, early in June, she spoke to him as to the
guests to be invited to Gatherum Castle in August. "Do you want to
go to Gatherum in August?" he asked in surprise. For she hated the
place, and had hardly been content to spend ten days there every year
at Christmas.

"I think it should be done," she said solemnly. "One cannot quite
consider just now what one likes oneself."

"Why not?"

"You would hardly go to a small place like Matching in your present
position. There are so many people whom you should entertain! You
would probably have two or three of the foreign ministers down for a
time."

"We always used to find plenty of room at Matching."

"But you did not always use to be Prime Minister. It is only for such
a time as this that such a house as Gatherum is serviceable."

He was silent for a moment, thinking about it, and then gave way
without another word. She was probably right. There was the huge pile
of magnificent buildings; and somebody, at any rate, had thought that
it behoved a Duke of Omnium to live in such a palace. If it ought to
be done at any time, it ought to be done now. In that his wife had
been right. "Very well. Then let us go there."

"I'll manage it all," said the Duchess,--"I and Locock." Locock was
the house-steward.

"I remember once," said the Duke, and he smiled as he spoke with a
peculiarly sweet expression, which would at times come across his
generally inexpressive face,--"I remember once that some First
Minister of the Crown gave evidence as to the amount of his salary,
saying that his place entailed upon him expenses higher than his
stipend would defray. I begin to think that my experience will be the
same."

"Does that fret you?"

"No, Cora;--it certainly does not fret me, or I should not allow it.
But I think there should be a limit. No man is ever rich enough to
squander."

Though they were to squander her fortune,--the money which she
had brought,--for the next ten years at a much greater rate than
she contemplated, they might do so without touching the Palliser
property. Of that she was quite sure. And the squandering was to be
all for his glory,--so that he might retain his position as a popular
Prime Minister. For an instant it occurred to her that she would tell
him all this. But she checked herself, and the idea of what she had
been about to say brought the blood into her face. Never yet had
she in talking to him alluded to her own wealth. "Of course we are
spending money," she said. "If you give me a hint to hold my hand, I
will hold it."

He had looked at her, and read it all in her face. "God knows," he
said, "you've a right to do it if it pleases you."

"For your sake!" Then he stooped down and kissed her twice, and
left her to arrange her parties as she pleased. After that she
congratulated herself that she had not made the direct proposition,
knowing that she might now do pretty much what she pleased.

Then there were solemn cabinets held, at which she presided, and
Mrs. Finn and Locock assisted. At other cabinets it is supposed that,
let a leader be ever so autocratic by disposition and superior by
intelligence, still he must not unfrequently yield to the opinion of
his colleagues. But in this cabinet the Duchess always had her own
way, though she was very persistent in asking for counsel. Locock was
frightened about the money. Hitherto money had come without a word,
out of the common, spoken to the Duke. The Duke had always signed
certain cheques, but they had been normal cheques; and the money in
its natural course had flown in to meet them;--but now he must be
asked to sign abnormal cheques. That, indeed, had already been done;
but still the money had been there. A large balance, such as had
always stood to his credit, would stand a bigger racket than had yet
been made. But Locock was quite sure that the balance ought not to
be much further reduced,--and that steps must be taken. Something
must be sold! The idea of selling anything was dreadful to the
mind of Locock! Or else money must be borrowed! Now the management
of the Palliser property had always been conducted on principles
antagonistic to borrowing. "But his Grace has never spent his
income," said the Duchess. That was true. But the money, as it showed
a tendency to heap itself up, had been used for the purchase of other
bits of property, or for the amelioration of the estates generally.
"You don't mean to say that we can't get money if we want it!" Locock
was profuse in his assurances that any amount of money could be
obtained,--only that something must be done. "Then let something
be done," said the Duchess, going on with her general plans. "Many
people are rich," said the Duchess afterwards to her friend, "and
some people are very rich indeed; but nobody seems to be rich enough
to have ready money to do just what he wishes. It all goes into a
grand sum total, which is never to be touched without a feeling of
sacrifice. I suppose you have always enough for everything." It was
well known that the present Mrs. Finn, as Madame Goesler, had been a
wealthy woman.

"Indeed, no;--very far from that. I haven't a shilling."

"What has happened?" asked the Duchess, pretending to be frightened.

"You forget that I've got a husband of my own, and that he has to be
consulted."

"That must be nonsense. But don't you think women are fools to marry
when they've got anything of their own, and could be their own
mistresses? I couldn't have been. I was made to marry before I was
old enough to assert myself."

"And how well they did for you!"

"Pas si mal.--He's Prime Minister, which is a great thing, and I
begin to find myself filled to the full with political ambition.
I feel myself to be a Lady Macbeth, prepared for the murder of
any Duncan or any Daubeny who may stand in my lord's way. In
the meantime, like Lady Macbeth herself, we must attend to the
banqueting. Her lord appeared and misbehaved himself; my lord won't
show himself at all,--which I think is worse."

Our old friend Phineas Finn, who had now reached a higher place in
politics than even his political dreams had assigned to him, though
he was a Member of Parliament, was much away from London in these
days. New brooms sweep clean; and official new brooms, I think, sweep
cleaner than any other. Who has not watched at the commencement of
a Ministry some Secretary, some Lord, or some Commissioner, who
intends by fresh Herculean labours to cleanse the Augean stables just
committed to his care? Who does not know the gentleman at the Home
Office, who means to reform the police and put an end to malefactors;
or the new Minister at the Board of Works, who is to make London
beautiful as by a magician's stroke,--or, above all, the new First
Lord, who is resolved that he will really build us a fleet, purge
the dock-yards, and save us half a million a year at the same
time? Phineas Finn was bent on unriddling the Irish sphinx. Surely
something might be done to prove to his susceptible countrymen that
at the present moment no curse could be laid upon them so heavy as
that of having to rule themselves apart from England; and he thought
that this might be the easier, as he became from day to day more
thoroughly convinced that those Home Rulers who were all around
him in the House were altogether of the same opinion. Had some
inscrutable decree of fate ordained and made it certain,--with a
certainty not to be disturbed,--that no candidate could be returned
to Parliament who would not assert the earth to be triangular, there
would rise immediately a clamorous assertion of triangularity among
political aspirants. The test would be innocent. Candidates have
swallowed, and daily do swallow, many a worse one. As might be this
doctrine of a great triangle, so is the doctrine of Home Rule. Why is
a gentleman of property to be kept out in the cold by some O'Mullins
because he will not mutter an unmeaning shibboleth? "Triangular?
Yes,--or lozenge-shaped, if you please; but, gentlemen, I am the man
for Tipperary." Phineas Finn, having seen, or thought that he had
seen, all this, began, from the very first moment of his appointment,
to consider painfully within himself whether the genuine services of
an honest and patriotic man might not compass some remedy for the
present ill-boding ferment of the country. What was it that the Irish
really did want;--what that they wanted, and had not got, and which
might with propriety be conceded to them? What was it that the
English really would refuse to sanction, even though it might not be
wanted? He found himself beating about among rocks as to Catholic
education and Papal interference, the passage among which might be
made clearer to him in Irish atmosphere than in that of Westminster.
Therefore he was away a good deal in these days, travelling backwards
and forwards as he might be wanted for any debate. But as his wife
did not accompany him on these fitful journeys, she was able to give
her time very much to the Duchess.

The Duchess was on the whole very successful with her parties. There
were people who complained that she had everybody; that there was no
selection whatever as to politics, principles, rank, morals,--or even
manners. But in such a work as the Duchess had now taken in hand, it
was impossible that she should escape censure. They who really knew
what was being done were aware that nobody was asked to that house
without an idea that his or her presence might be desirable,--in
however remote a degree. Paragraphs in newspapers go for much,
and therefore the writers and editors of such paragraphs were
there,--sometimes with their wives. Mr. Broune, of the "Breakfast
Table," was to be seen there constantly, with his wife Lady Carbury,
and poor old Booker of the "Literary Chronicle." City men can make a
budget popular or the reverse, and therefore the Mills Happertons of
the day were welcome. Rising barristers might be wanted to become
Solicitors-General. The pet Orpheus of the hour, the young tragic
actor who was thought to have a real Hamlet within him, the old
painter who was growing rich on his reputation, and the young painter
who was still strong with hope, even the little trilling poet, though
he trilled never so faintly, and the somewhat wooden novelist, all
had tongues of their own, and certain modes of expression, which
might assist or injure the Palliser Coalition,--as the Duke's
Ministry was now called.

"Who is that man? I've seen him here before. The Duchess was talking
to him ever so long just now." The question was asked by Mr. Rattler
of Mr. Roby. About half-an-hour before this time Mr. Rattler had
essayed to get a few words with the Duchess, beginning with the
communication of some small political secret. But the Duchess did not
care much for the Rattlers attached to her husband's Government. They
were men whose services could be had for a certain payment,--and when
paid for were, the Duchess thought, at the Premier's command without
further trouble. Of course they came to the receptions, and were
entitled to a smile apiece as they entered. But they were entitled
to nothing more, and on this occasion Rattler had felt himself to be
snubbed. It did not occur to him to abuse the Duchess. The Duchess
was too necessary for abuse,--just at present. But any friend of the
Duchess,--any favourite for the moment,--was, of course, open to
remark.

"He is a man named Lopez," said Roby, "a friend of Happerton;--a very
clever fellow, they say."

"Did you ever see him anywhere else?"

"Well, yes;--I have met him at dinner."

"He was never in the House. What does he do?" Rattler was distressed
to think that any drone should have made its way into the hive of
working bees.

"Oh;--money, I fancy."

"He's not a partner in Hunky's, is he?"

"I fancy not. I think I should have known if he was."

"She ought to remember that people make a use of coming here," said
Rattler. She was, of course, the Duchess. "It's not like a private
house. And whatever influence outsiders get by coming, so much she
loses. Somebody ought to explain that to her."

"I don't think you or I could do that," replied Mr. Roby.

"I'll tell the Duke in a minute," said Rattler. Perhaps he thought
he could tell the Duke, but we may be allowed to doubt whether his
prowess would not have fallen below the necessary pitch when he met
the Duke's eye.

Lopez was there for the third time, about the middle of June, and had
certainly contrived to make himself personally known to the Duchess.
There had been a deputation from the City to the Prime Minister
asking for a subsidised mail, via San Francisco, to Japan, and Lopez,
though he had no interest in Japan, had contrived to be one of the
number. He had contrived also, as the deputation was departing, to
say a word on his own account to the Minister, and had ingratiated
himself. The Duke had remembered him, and had suggested that he
should have a card. And now he was among the flowers and the
greatness, the beauty, the politics, and the fashion of the Duchess's
gatherings for the third time. "It is very well done,--very well,
indeed," said Mr. Boffin to him. Lopez had been dining with Mr. and
Mrs. Boffin, and had now again encountered his late host and hostess.
Mr. Boffin was a gentleman who had belonged to the late Ministry, but
had somewhat out-Heroded Herod in his Conservatism, so as to have
been considered to be unfit for the Coalition. Of course, he was
proud of his own staunchness, and a little inclined to criticise the
lax principles of men who, for the sake of carrying on her Majesty's
Government, could be Conservatives one day and Liberals the next. He
was a laborious, honest man,--but hardly of calibre sufficient not
to regret his own honesty in such an emergency as the present. It is
easy for most of us to keep our hands from picking and stealing when
picking and stealing plainly lead to prison diet and prison garments.
But when silks and satins come of it, and with the silks and satins
general respect, the net result of honesty does not seem to be
so secure. Whence will come the reward, and when? On whom the
punishment, and where? A man will not, surely, be damned for
belonging to a Coalition Ministry! Boffin was a little puzzled as he
thought on all this, but in the meantime was very proud of his own
consistency.

"I think it is so lovely!" said Mrs. Boffin. "You look down through
an Elysium of rhododendrons into a Paradise of mirrors. I don't think
there was ever anything like it in London before."

"I don't know that we ever had anybody at the same time rich enough
to do this kind of thing as it is done now," said Boffin, "and
powerful enough to get such people together. If the country can be
ruled by flowers and looking-glasses, of course it is very well."

"Flowers and looking-glasses won't prevent the country being ruled
well," said Lopez.

"I'm not so sure of that," continued Boffin. "We all know what bread
and the games came to in Rome."

"What did they come to?" asked Mrs. Boffin.

"To a man

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