He had once told Phineas Finn that he regretted that he had abstained from the ordinary amusements of English gentlemen. But he had abstained also from their ordinary occupations—except so far as politics is one of them. He cared nothing for oxen or for furrows. In regard to his own land he hardly knew whether the farms were large or small. He had been a scholar, and after a certain fitful fashion he had maintained his scholarship, but the literature to which he had been really attached had been that of blue-books and newspapers. What was he to do with himself when called upon to resign? And he understood—or thought that he understood—his position too well to expect that after a while, with the usual interval, he might return to power. He had been Prime Minister, not as the leading politician on either side, not as the king of a party, but—so he told himself—as a stopgap. There could be nothing for him now till the insipidity of life should gradually fade away into the grave.
After a while he got up and went off to his wife’s apartment, the room in which she used to prepare her triumphs and where now she contemplated her disappointments. “I have had the Duke with me,” he said.
“What;—at last?”
“I do not know that he could have done any good by coming sooner.”
“And what does his Grace say?”
“He thinks that our days are numbered.”
“Psha!—is that all? I could have told him that ever so long ago. It was hardly necessary that he should disturb himself at last to come and tell us such well-ventilated news. There isn’t a porter at one of the clubs who doesn’t know it.”
“Then there will be the less surprise—and to those who are concerned perhaps the less mortification.”
“Did he tell you who was to succeed you?” asked the Duchess.
“Not precisely.”
“He ought to have done that, as I am sure he knows. Everybody knows except you, Plantagenet.”
“If you know, you can tell me.”
“Of course, I can. It will be Mr. Monk.”
“With all my heart, Glencora. Mr. Monk is a very good man.”
“I wonder whether he’ll do anything for us. Think how destitute we shall be! What if I were to ask him for a place! Would he not give it us?”
“Will it make you unhappy, Cora?”
“What;—your going?”
“Yes;—the change altogether.”
She looked him in the face for a moment before she answered, with a peculiar smile in her eyes to which he was well used—a smile half ludicrous and half pathetic—having in it also a dash of sarcasm. “I can dare to tell the truth,” she said, “which you can’t. I can be honest and straightforward. Yes, it will make me unhappy. And you?”
“Do you think that I cannot be honest too—at any rate to you? It does fret me. I do not like to think that I shall be without work.”
“Yes;—Othello’s occupation will be gone—for awhile; for awhile.” Then she came up to him and put both her hands on his breast. “But yet, Othello, I shall not be all unhappy.”
“Where will be your contentment?”
“In you. It was making you ill. Rough people, whom the tenderness of your nature could not well endure, trod upon you, and worried you with their teeth and wounded you everywhere. I could have turned at them again with my teeth, and given them worry for worry;—but you could not. Now you will be saved from them, and so I shall not be discontented.” All this she said looking up into his face, still with that smile which was half pathetic and half ludicrous.
“Then I will be contented too,” he said as he kissed her.
LXXIII
Only the Duke of Omnium
The night of the debate arrived, but before the debate was commenced Sir Timothy Beeswax got up to make a personal explanation. He thought it right to state to the House how it came to pass that he found himself bound to leave the Ministry at so important a crisis in its existence. Then an observation was made by an honourable member of the Government—presumably in a whisper, but still loud enough to catch the sharp ears of Sir Timothy, who now sat just below the gangway. It was said afterwards that the gentleman who made the observation—an Irish gentleman named Fitzgibbon, conspicuous rather for his loyalty to his party than his steadiness—had purposely taken the place in which he then sat, that Sir Timothy might hear the whisper. The whisper suggested that falling houses were often left by certain animals. It was certainly a very loud whisper—but, if gentlemen are to be allowed to whisper at all, it is almost impossible to restrain the volume of the voice. To restrain Mr. Fitzgibbon had always been found difficult. Sir Timothy, who did not lack pluck, turned at once upon his assailant, and declared that words had been used with reference to himself which the honourable member did not dare to get upon his legs and repeat. Larry Fitzgibbon, as the gentleman was called, looked him full in the face, but did not move his hat from his head or stir a limb. It was a pleasant little episode in the evening’s work, and afforded satisfaction to the House generally. Then Sir Timothy went on with his explanation. The details of this measure, as soon as they were made known to him, appeared to him, he said, to be fraught with the gravest and most pernicious consequences. He was sure that the members of her Majesty’s Government, who were hurrying on this measure with what
