THE PRIME MINISTER

by DAVID SKILTON

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

  DEAR M.,

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

  Yours,

  G.

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

  ‘Is the Duke to be Prime Minister?’

  ‘How on earth should you have guessed that?’

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

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Certainly. Why not?’

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

  ‘And gratified?’

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

  ‘Why a bad time?’

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

  ‘That is your way of looking at politics?’

  ‘I own it to you; – and I must teach it to him.’

  ‘You never will do that, Lady Glen.’

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

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

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

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

  ‘You’re always singing his praises, Marie.’

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

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

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

  ‘You’d like him to be in office?’

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

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

  ‘It isn’t settled then?’

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

  ‘You’d better let me be at the exchequer. I’m very good at accounts.’

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

  ‘What on earth do you mean?’

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

  ‘I don’t think that I do, Lady Glen.’

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

  CHAPTER 7

  Another Old Friend

  At about nine the Duke had returned, and was eating his very simple dinner in the breakfast-room, – a beefsteak and a potato, with a glass of sherry and Apollinaris water.13 No man more easily satisfied as to what he eat and drank lived in London in those days. As regarded the eating and drinking he dined alone, but his wife sat with him and waited on him, having sent the servant out of the room. ‘I have told her Majesty that I would do the best I could,’ said the Duke.

  ‘Then you are Prime Minister.’

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

  ‘Lean on yourself only. Be enough for yourself.’

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

  ‘Leave them out,’ said the Duchess boldly.

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

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

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

  ‘Who is the one man?’

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

  ‘Lord Cantrip.’

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

  ‘You used to like Mr Mildmay.’

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

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

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

  ‘I suppose Mr Monk will join you.’

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

  ‘You must discuss them with the Duke immediately.’

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

  ‘You’ll bring Mr Finn in, Plantagenet?’

  ‘Mr Finn!’

  ‘Yes; – Phineas Finn, – the man who was tried.’

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

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

  ‘I don’t want a man to stick to me. I want a man to stick to his country.’

  ‘You were talking about sympathy.’

  ‘Well, yes; – I was. But do not name anyone else just at present. The Duke will be here soon, and I would be alone till he comes.’

  ‘There is one thing I want to say, Plantagenet’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘One favour I want to ask.’

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

  ‘It is not anything for any man.’

  ‘Nor for any woman.’

  ‘It is for a woman, – but one whom I think you would wish to oblige.’

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

  ‘Will you do it, – if it be reasonable?’

  ‘If I think it reasonable, I certainly will do it.’

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

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

  ‘Why not I? Is not my rank high enough?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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