“I should hardly have ventured to suggest such an arrangement to your Grace,” said the Prime Minister.
“Feeling that it might be so, I thought that I would venture to ask,” said the Duke. “I am sure you know that I am the last man to interfere as to place or the disposition of power.”
“Quite the last man,” said Mr. Gresham.
“But it has always been held that the Board of Trade is not incompatible with the Peerage.”
“Oh dear, yes.”
“And I can feel myself nearer to this affair of mine there than I can elsewhere.”
Mr. Gresham of course had no objection to urge. This great nobleman, who was now asking for Mr. Bonteen’s shoes, had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, and would have remained Chancellor of the Exchequer had not the mantle of his nobility fallen upon him. At the present moment he held an office in which peers are often temporarily shelved, or put away, perhaps, out of harm’s way for the time, so that they may be brought down and used when wanted, without having received crack or detriment from that independent action into which a politician is likely to fall when his party is “in” but he is still “out.” He was Lord Privy Seal—a Lordship of State which does carry with it a status and a seat in the Cabinet, but does not necessarily entail any work. But the present Lord, who cared nothing for status, and who was much more intent on his work than he was even on his seat in the Cabinet, was possessed by what many of his brother politicians regarded as a morbid dislike to pretences. He had not been happy during his few weeks of the Privy Seal, and had almost envied Mr. Bonteen the realities of the Board of Trade. “I think upon the whole it will be best to make the change,” he said to Mr. Gresham. And Mr. Gresham was delighted.
But there were one or two men of mark—one or two who were older than Mr. Gresham probably, and less perfect in their Liberal sympathies—who thought that the Duke of Omnium was derogating from his proper position in the step which he was now taking. Chief among these was his friend the Duke of St. Bungay, who alone perhaps could venture to argue the matter with him. “I almost wish that you had spoken to me first,” said the elder Duke.
“I feared that I should find you so strongly opposed to my resolution.”
“If it was a resolution.”
“I think it was,” said the younger. “It was a great misfortune to me that I should have been obliged to leave the House of Commons.”
“You should not feel it so.”
“My whole life was there,” said he who, as Plantagenet Palliser, had been so good a commoner.
“But your whole life should certainly not be there now—nor your whole heart. On you the circumstances of your birth have imposed duties quite as high, and I will say quite as useful, as any which a career in the House of Commons can put within the reach of a man.”
“Do you think so, Duke?”
“Certainly I do. I do think that the England which we know could not be the England that she is but for the maintenance of a high-minded, proud, and self-denying nobility. And though with us there is no line dividing our very broad aristocracy into two parts, a higher and a lower, or a greater and a smaller, or a richer and a poorer, nevertheless we all feel that the success of our order depends chiefly on the conduct of those whose rank is the highest and whose means are the greatest. To some few, among whom you are conspicuously one, wealth has been given so great and rank so high that much of the welfare of your country depends on the manner in which you bear yourself as the Duke of Omnium.”
“I would not wish to think so.”
“Your uncle so thought. And, though he was a man very different from you, not inured to work in his early life, with fewer attainments, probably a slower intellect, and whose general conduct was inferior to your own—I speak freely because the subject is important—he was a man who understood his position and the requirements of his order very thoroughly. A retinue almost Royal, together with an expenditure which Royalty could not rival, secured for him the respect of the nation.”
“Your life has not been as was his, and you have won a higher respect.”
“I think not. The greater part of my life was spent in the House of Commons, and my fortune was never much more than the tenth of his. But I wish to make no such comparison.”
“I must make it, if I am to judge which I would follow.”
“Pray understand me, my friend,” said the old man, energetically. “I am not advising you to abandon public life in order that you may live in repose as a great nobleman. It would not be in your nature to do so, nor could the country afford to lose your services. But you need not therefore take your place in the arena of politics
