The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope (page 14)

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

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

‘Well;–yes.’

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

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

‘I don’t wish to know it.’

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

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

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

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

‘She means to be civil, papa,’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Where shall I go,’ she said imploringly.

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

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

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

‘Do not say that, papa. Of course anyone may die.’

‘I certainly shall not go without you. You may take that as certain. Is it likely that I should leave you alone in August and September in this great gloomy house? If you stay, I shall stay.’ Now this meant a great deal than it had meant in former years. Since Lopez had died Mr Wharton had not once dined at the Eldon. He came home regularly at six o’clock, sat with his daughter an hour before dinner, and then remained with her all the evening. It seemed as though he were determined to force her out of her solitude by her natural consideration for him. She would implore him to go to his club and have his rubber, but he would never give way. No;–he didn’t care for the Eldon, and disliked whist. So he said. Till at last he spoke more plainly. ‘You are dull enough here all day, and I will not leave you in the evenings.’ There was a persistent tenderness in this which she had not expected from the antecedents of his life. When, therefore, he told her that he would not go into the country without her, she felt herself almost constrained to yield.

And she would have yielded at once but for one fear. How could she insure to herself that Arthur Fletcher should not be there? Of course he would be at Longbarns, and how could she prevent his coming over from Longbarns to Wharton? She could hardly bring herself to ask the question of her father. But she felt an insuperable objection to finding herself in Arthur’s presence. Of course she loved him. Of course in all the world he was the dearest of all to her. Of course if she could wipe out the past as with a wet towel, if she could put the crape of her mind as well as from her limbs, she would become his wife with the greatest joy. But the very feeling that she loved him was disgraceful to her in her own thoughts. She had allowed his caress while Lopez was still her husband,–the husband who had ill-used her and betrayed her, who had sought to drag her down to his own depth of baseness. But now she could not endure to think that the other man should even touch her. It was forbidden to her, she believed, by all the canons of womanhood eve to think of love again. There ought to be nothing left for her but crape and weepers. She had done it all by her own obstinacy, and she could make no compensation either to her family, or the world, or to her own feelings, but by drinking the cup of her misery down to the very dregs. Even to think of joy would in her be a treason. On that occasion she did not yield to her father, conquering him as she had conquered him before the pleading of her looks rather than her words.

But a day or two afterwards he came to her with arguments of a very different kind. He at any rate must go to Wharton immediately in reference to a letter of vital importance which he had received from Sir Alured. The reader may perhaps remember that Sir Alured’s heir–the heir to the title and property–was a nephew for whom he entertained no affection whatever. This Wharton had been discarded by all the Whartons as a profligate drunkard. Some years ago Sir Alured had endeavoured to reclaim the man, and spent perhaps more money than had been justified in doing in the endeavour, seeing that, as present occupier of the property, he was bound to provide for his own daughters, and that at his death every acre must go to this ne’er-do-well. The money had been allowed to flow like water for a twelvemonth and had done no good whatever. There had been no hope. The man was strong and likely to live,–and after a while had married a wife, some woman that he took from the very streets. This had been his last known achievement, and from that moment not even had his name been mentioned at Wharton. Now there came tidings of his death. It was said that he had perished in some attempt to cross some glaciers in Switzerland;–but by degrees it appeared that the glacier itself had been less dangerous than the brandy which he had swallowed whilst on his journey. At any rate he was dead. As to that Sir Alured’s letter was certain. And he was equally certain that he had left no son.

These tidings were quite important to Mr Wharton as to Sir Alured,–more important to Everett Wharton than to either of them, as he would inherit all after the death of those two old men. At this moment he was away yachting with a friend, and even his address was unknown. Letter for him were to be sent to Oban, and might, or might not, reach him in the course of a month. But in a man of Sir Alured’s feelings, this catastrophe produced a great change. The heir to his title and property was one whom he was bound to regard with affection and almost with reverence,– if it were only possible for him to do so. With his late heir it had been impossible. But Everett Wharton he had always liked. Everett had not been quite all that his father and uncle had wished. But his faults had been exactly those which could be cured,–or would almost be virtues,–by the possession of a title and property. Distaste for a profession and aptitude for Parliament would become a young man who was heir not only to the Wharton estates, but to half his father’s money.

Sir Alured in his letter expressed a hope that Everett might be informed instantly. He would have written himself had he known Everett’s address. But he did know that his elder cousin was in town, and he besought his elder cousin to come at once,–quite at once,–to Wharton. Emily, he said, would of course accompany her father on such an occasion. Then there were long letters from Mary Wharton, and even from Lady Wharton, to Emily. The Whartons must have been very much moved when Lady Wharton could be induced to write a long letter. The Whartons were very much moved. They were in a state of enthusiasm at these news, amounting almost to fury. It seemed as though they thought that every tenant and labourer on the estate, and every tenant a labourer’s wife, would be in an abnormal condition and unfit for the duties of life, till they should have seen Everett as heir to the property. Lady Wharton went so far as to tell Emily which bedroom was being prepared for Everett,–a bedroom very different in honour from any by the occupation of which he had yet been graced. And there were twenty points as to new wills and new deeds as to which the present baronet wanted the immediate advice of his cousin. There were a score of things which could now be done which were before impossible. Trees could be cut down, and buildings put up; and a little bit of land sold, and a little bit of land bought;–the doing of all which would give new life to Sir Alured. A life interest in an estate is a much pleasanter thing when the heir is a friend who can be walked about the property, than when he is an enemy who must be kept at arm’s length. All these delights could now be Sir Alured’s,–if the old heir would give him his counsel and the young one his assistance.

This change of affairs occasioned some flutter also in Manchester Square. It could not make much difference personally to old Mr Wharton. He was, in fact, as old as the baronet, and did not pay much regard to his own chance of succession. But the position was one which would suit him admirably, and he was now on good terms with his son. He had convinced himself that Lopez had done all that he could to separate them, and therefore found himself to be more bound to his son than ever. ‘We must go at once,’ he said to his daughter, speaking as though he had forgotten her misery for the moment.

‘I suppose you and Everett ought to be there.’

‘Heaven knows where Everett is. I ought to be there, and I suppose that on such an occasion as this you will condescend to go with me.’

‘Condescend, papa;–what does that mean?’

‘You know I cannot go alone. It is out of the question that I should leave you here.’

‘Why, papa?’

‘And at such a time the family ought to come together. Of course they will take it very much amiss if you refuse. What will Lady Wharton think if you refuse afer her writing such a letter as that? It is my duty to tell you that you ought to go. You cannot think that is right to throw over every friend that you have in the world.’

There was a great deal more said in which it almost seemed that the father’s tenderness had worn out. His words were much rougher and more imperious than any that he had yet spoken since his daughter had become a widow, but they were also more efficacious, and therefore probably more salutary. After twenty- four hours of this she found she was obliged to yield, and a telegram was sent to Wharton,–by no means the first telegram that had been sent since the news had arrived,–saying that Emily would accompany her father. They were to occupy themselves for two days further in preparations for their journey.

These preparations to Emily were so sad as almost to break her heart. She had never as yet packed up her widow’s weeds. She had never as yet contemplated the necessity of coming down to dinner in them before other eyes than those of her father and brother. She had as yet made none of those struggles with which widows seek to lessen the deformity of their costume. It was incumbent on her now to get a ribbon or two less ghastly than those weepers which had, for the last five months, hung about her face and shoulders. And then how would she look if he were to be there? It was not to be expected that the Whartons should seclude themselves because of her grief. This very change in the circumstances of the property would be sure, of itself, to bring the Fletchers to Wharton,–and then how should she look at him, how answer him, if he spoke to her tenderly? It is very hard for a woman to tell a lie to a man when she loves him. She may speak the words. She may be able to assure him that he is indifferent to her. But when a woman really loves a man, as she loved this man, there is a desire to touch him which quivers at her fingers’ ends, a longing to look at him which she cannot keep out of her eyes, an inclination to be near him which affects every motion of her body. She cannot refrain herself from excessive attention to his words. She has a god to worship, and she cannot control her admiration. Of all this Emily herself felt much,–but felt at the same time that she would never pardon herself if she betrayed her love by a gleam of her eye, by the tone of a word, or the movement of a finger. What,–should she be known to love again after such a mistake as hers, after such a catastrophe?

The evening before they started who should bustle into the house but Everett himself. It was about six o’clock, and he was going to leave London by the night mail. That he should be a little given to bustle on such an occasion may perhaps be forgiven him. He had heard the news down on the Scotch coast, and had flown up to London, telegraphing as he did so backwards and forwards to Wharton. Of course he felt that the destruction of his cousin among the glaciers,–whether by brandy or ice he did not much care,–had made him for the nonce one of the important people of the world. The young man who would not so feel might be the better philosopher, but one might doubt whether he would be the better young man. He quite agreed with his father that it was his sister’s duty to go to Wharton, and he was now in a position to speak with authority as to the duties of the members of his family. He could not wait, even for one night, in order that he might travel with them. Sir Alured was impatient. Sir Alured wanted him in Hertfordshire. Sir Alured had said that on such an occasion he, the heir, ought to be on the property with the shortest possible delay. His father smiled;–but with an approving smile. Everett therefore started by the night mail, leaving his father and sister to follow him on the morrow.

CHAPTER 68

THE PRIME MINISTER’S POLITICAL CREED.

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

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

‘Only that you would die if you did not eat.’

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

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

‘But suppose he didn’t tickle the king’s fancy?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Convictions grow.’

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

‘Certainly, Duke.’

‘Why?’

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

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

‘I will not claim to be better than my neighbours,–I mean my real neighbours.’

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

‘Did you succeed?’

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

‘A man seldom inquires very deeply at twenty-one.’

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

‘And yet you have not empty hands.’

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

‘That of course.’

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

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

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

‘And it is so.’

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

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

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

‘Do they believe in any millennium?’

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

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

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

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

‘Not at all,’ said Phineas.

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

‘The member for the county?’

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

‘Only by seeing him in the House.’

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

‘Troublesome, Duke, isn’t it?’

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

‘I shan’t forget, Duke,’ said Phineas, ‘your definition of Conservatives and Liberals.’

‘I don’t think I ventured any definition;–only a few loose ideas which have been troubling me lately. I say, Finn!’

‘Your Grace?’

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

‘I will be discretion itself.’

‘Equality is a dream. But sometimes one likes to dream,– especially as there is not danger that Matching will fly from me in a dream. I doubt whether I could bear the test that has been attempted in other countries.’

‘That poor ploughman would hardly get his share, Duke.’

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

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

‘We have been talking politics,’ said the Duke.

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

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

‘We have certainly settled nothing.’

‘Then you must have disagreed.’

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 69

MRS PARKER’S FATE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Indeed, indeed, it makes me very unhappy.’

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

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

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

‘No, sir,’ said Mrs Parker.

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

‘Indeed, sir. Mrs Lopez didn’t tell me.’

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

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

‘I have written his name, you see. Mr Crumpy.’

‘Yes, sir.’

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

‘Thank you, sir.’

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

‘God Almighty bless you, sir!’

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

‘No, sir.’

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

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

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

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

‘I have settled it, my dear.’

‘You said you’d tell me.’

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

CHAPTER 70

AT WHARTON.

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

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

In his new position as,–not quite head of the family, but head expectant,–it seemed to him to be his duty to lecture his sister. It might be well that someone should lecture her with more severity than her father used. Undoubtedly she was succumbing to the wretchedness of her position in a manner that was repugnant to humanity generally. There is not power so useful to a man as that capacity of recovering himself after a fall, which belongs especially to those who possess a healthy mind in a healthy body. It is not rare to see one,–generally a woman,–whom sorrow gradually kills; and there are those among us, who hardly perhaps envy, but certainly admire, a spirit so delicate as to be snuffed out by a woe. But it is the weakness of the heart rather than the strength of the feeling which has in such cases most often produced the destruction. Some endurance of fibre has been wanting, which power of endurance is a noble attribute. Everett Wharton saw something of this, and being, now, the heir apparent of the family, took his sister to task. ‘Emily,’ he said, ‘you make us all unhappy when we look at you.’

‘Do I?’ she said. ‘I am sorry for that;–but why should you look at me?’

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

‘What am I to do, Everett?’

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

‘Do you mean that I am a hypocrite?’

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

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

‘I didn’t mean to be savage,’ he answered with a smile.

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

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

‘I hope I mayn’t have the opportunity, sir.’

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

‘Is there anything wrong about the young man?’

‘He’s a little given to poaching.’

‘Oh dear!’

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

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

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

‘Doesn’t it really?’

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

‘Who does it belong to?’

‘It belongs to Benet.’

‘What: Corpus Christi?’

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

‘We’ll buy it by all means,’ said Everett, who was already jingling his 60,000 pounds in his pocket.

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

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

‘Think what the man was, John!’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Not all my life.’

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

‘Too good, papa. I didn’t want it.’

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

‘I’m not ungrateful, papa.’

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

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

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

‘We shall be glad to see Arthur,’ said young Mrs Fletcher to her.

‘Of course you will.’

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

‘I am sure he will,’ said Emily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Oh, yes.’

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

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

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

‘I have nothing to say about it,’ said Arthur.

‘You haven’t changed your mind?’

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

‘I wish you would make her take it off.’

‘I dare not ask her yet.’

‘You know what they say about widows generally.’

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

CHAPTER 71

THE LADIES AT LONGBARNS DOUBT.

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

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

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

‘I am afraid, mother.’

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

‘Refuse me.’

‘Then you had better know at once. But I don’t think she’ll be fool enough for that.’

‘Perhaps you hardly understand her, mother.’

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

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

‘So she ought,’ said Mrs Fletcher.

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

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

‘Circumstances, mother, make people different,’ he replied.

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

‘Yes, old fellow. It seems to be rather slack;–doesn’t it?’

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

‘You may take your oath on that.’

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

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

‘She knows what you mean as well as I do.’

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

‘How are you to know if you don’t ask her?’

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

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

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

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

‘So am I. Everybody has been so good to me.’

‘It has been like old days,–almost.’

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

‘I like London myself.’

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

‘I am five years older than you are.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER 72

‘HE THINKS THAT OUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED.’

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

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

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

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

‘It will take the best part of the Session to get through it?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What makes you so sure?’

‘I smell it in the air. I see it in men’s faces.’

‘And yet it’s a moderate bill. They’ll have to pass something stronger before long if they throw it out now.’

‘It’s not the bill that they’ll reject, but us. We have served our turn, and we ought to go.’