THE PRIME MINISTER

by DAVID SKILTON

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

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

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

  ‘You may say that of any man, papa.’

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

  ‘I don’t know that I ever did.’

  ‘Or his mother, – or his family? Don’t you think that is suspicious?’

  ‘I will ask him, papa, if you wish.’

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

  ‘Oh no, papa.’

  ‘Nor spoken to him – of your regard for him?’

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

  ‘I wish he had never seen you.’

  ‘Is he a bad man, papa?’

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

  ‘Did you tell him so?’

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

  ‘But papa –; is there to be no reason?’

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

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

  ‘I do not want to know him better.’

  ‘Is not that prejudice, papa?’

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

  ‘I am sure it is.’

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

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

  ‘You are a good girl. You were always a good girl.’

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

  ‘That is nonsense, Emily. There is Arthur Fletcher.’

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

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

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

  ‘I do believe you. Of course I believe you.’

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

  ‘I will. I will. Of course I will.’

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

  CHAPTER 6

  An Old Friend Goes to Windsor

  ‘And what are they going to make you now?’

  This question was asked of her husband by a lady with whom perhaps the readers of this volume may have already formed some acquaintance. Chronicles of her early life10 have been written, at any rate copiously. The lady was the Duchess of Omnium, and her husband was of course the Duke. In order that the nature of the question asked by the Duchess may be explained, it must be stated that just at this time the political affairs of the nation had got themselves tied up into one of those truly desperate knots from which even the wisdom and experience of septuagenarian statesmen can see no unravelment. The heads of parties were at a standstill. In the House of Commons there was, so to say, no majority on either side. The minds of members were so astray that, according to the best calculation that could be made, there would be a majority of about ten against any possible Cabinet. There would certainly be a majority against either of those well-tried but, at this moment, little trusted Prime Ministers, Mr Gresham and Mr Daubeny. There were certain men, nominally belonging to this or to the other party, who would certainly within a week of the nomination of a Cabinet in the House, oppose the Cabinet which they ought to support. Mr Daubeny had been in power, – nay, was in power though he had twice resigned. Mr Gresham had been twice sent for to Windsor, and had on one occasion undertaken and on another had refused to undertake to form a Ministry. Mr Daubeny had tried two or three combinations, and had been at his wits’ end. He was no doubt still in power, – could appoint bishops, and make peers, and give away ribbons. But he couldn’t pass a law, and certainly continued to hold his present uncomfortable position by no will of his own. But a Prime Minister cannot escape till he has succeeded in finding a successor, and though the successor be found and consents to make an attempt, the old unfortunate cannot be allowed to go free when that attempt is shown to be a failure. He has not absolutely given up the keys of his boxes, and no one will take them from him. Even a sovereign can abdicate; but the Prime Minister of a constitutional
government is in bonds. The reader may therefore understand that the Duchess was asking her husband what place among the political rulers of the country had been offered to him by the last aspirant to the leadership of the Government.

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

  When therefore she asked him what they were going to make him, it was as though some sarcastic housekeeper in a great establishment should ask the butler, – some butler too prone to yield in such matters, – whether the master had appointed him lately to the cleaning of shoes or the carrying of coals. Since these knots had become so very tight, and since the journeys to Windsor had become so very frequent, her Grace had asked many such questions, and had received but very indifferent replies. The Duke had sometimes declared that the matter was not ripe enough to allow him to make any answer. ‘Of course,’ said the Duchess, ‘you should keep the secret. The editors of the evening papers haven’t known it for above an hour.’ At another time he told her that he had undertaken to give Mr Gresham his assistance in any way in which it might be asked.

  Joint Under-Secretary with Lord Fawn, I should say,’ answered the Duchess. Then he told her that he believed an attempt would be made at a mixed ministry, but that he did not in the least know to whom the work of doing so would be confided. ‘You will be about the last man who will be told,’ replied the Duchess. Now, at this moment, he had, as she knew, come direct from the house of Mr Gresham, and she asked her question in her usual spirit.

  ‘And what are they going to make you now?’

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

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

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

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

  ‘If you are going to do anything, – to do really anything, you shall have it. Oh, how you shall have it!’

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Who is he?’

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

  ‘Was he there? And who else?’

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

  ‘And Mr Gresham?’

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

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

  ‘I will not even close a finger on it with any personal ambition,’ said the Duke. ‘If I could be relieved from the burden this moment, it would be an ease to my heart. I remember once,’ he said, – and as he spoke he again put his arm around her waist, ‘when I was debarred from taking office by a domestic circumstance.’11

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

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

  ‘It will come.’

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

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

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

  What thou would’st highly,

  That would’st thou holily.12

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