“I have got her to say she’ll come,” he said to his father that evening. “If you leave her to me, I’ll bring her round.”
Soon after that—within a day or two—there came out a paragraph in one of the fashionable newspapers of the day, saying that an alliance had been arranged between the heir to the Wharton title and property and the daughter of the present baronet. I think that this had probably originated in the club gossip. I trust it did not spring directly from the activity or ambition of Everett himself.
LXXVI
Who Will It Be?
For the first day or two after the resignation of the Ministry the Duchess appeared to take no further notice of the matter. An ungrateful world had repudiated her and her husband, and he had foolishly assisted and given way to the repudiation. All her grand aspirations were at an end. All her triumphs were over. And worse than that, there was present to her a conviction that she never had really triumphed. There never had come the happy moment in which she had felt herself to be dominant over other women. She had toiled and struggled, she had battled and occasionally submitted; and yet there was present to her a feeling that she had stood higher in public estimation as Lady Glencora Palliser—whose position had been all her own and had not depended on her husband—than now she had done as Duchess of Omnium, and wife of the Prime Minister of England. She had meant to be something, she knew not what, greater than had been the wives of other Prime Ministers and other Dukes; and now she felt that in her failure she had been almost ridiculous. And the failure, she thought, had been his—or hers—rather than that of circumstances. If he had been less scrupulous and more persistent it might have been different—or if she had been more discreet. Sometimes she felt her own failing so violently as to acquit him almost entirely. At other times she was almost beside herself with anger because all her losses seemed to have arisen from want of stubbornness on his part. When he had told her that he and his followers had determined to resign because they had beaten their foes by a majority only of nine, she took it into her head that he was in fault. Why should he go while his supporters were more numerous than his opponents? It was useless to bid him think it over again. Though she was far from understanding all the circumstances of the game, she did know that he could not remain after having arranged with his colleagues that he would go. So she became cross and sullen; and while he was going to Windsor and back and setting his house in order, and preparing the way for his successor—whoever that successor might be—she was moody and silent, dreaming over some impossible condition of things in accordance with which he might have remained Prime Minister—almost forever.
On the Sunday after the fatal division—the division which the Duchess would not allow to have been fatal—she came across him somewhere in the house. She had hardly spoken to him since he had come into her room that night and told her that all was over. She had said that she was unwell and had kept out of sight; and he had been here and there, between Windsor and the Treasury Chambers, and had been glad to escape from her ill-humour. But she could not endure any longer the annoyance of having to get all her news through Mrs. Finn—second hand, or third hand, and now found herself driven to capitulate. “Well,” she said; “how is it all going to be? I suppose you do not know or you would have told me?”
“There is very little to tell.”
“Mr. Monk is to be Prime Minister?” she asked.
“I did not say so. But it is not impossible.”
“Has the Queen sent for him?”
“Not as yet. Her Majesty has seen both Mr. Gresham and Mr. Daubeny as well as myself. It does not seem a very easy thing to make a Ministry just at present.”
“Why should not you go back?”
“I do not think that is on the cards.”
“Why not? Ever so many men have done it, after going out—and why not you? I remember Mr. Mildmay doing it twice. It is always the thing when the man who has been sent for makes a mess of it, for the old minister to have another chance.”
“But what if the old minister will not take the chance?”
“Then it is the old minister’s fault. Why shouldn’t you take the chance as well as another? It isn’t many days ago since you were quite anxious to remain in. I thought you were going to break your heart because people even talked of your going.”
“I was going to break my heart, as you call it,” he said, smiling, “not because people talked of my ceasing to be minister, but because the feeling of the House of Commons justified people in so saying. I hope you see the difference.”
“No, I don’t. And there is no difference. The people we are talking about are the members—and they have supported you. You could go on if you chose. I’m sure Mr. Monk wouldn’t leave you.”
“It is just what Mr. Monk would do, and ought to do. No one is less likely than Mr. Monk to behave badly in such an emergency. The more I see of Mr. Monk, the higher I think of him.”
“He has his own game to play as well as others.”
“I think he has no game to play but that of his country. It is no use our discussing it, Cora.”
“Of course I understand nothing, because I’m a
