“Whatever is best to be done, you will do it;—I know that.”
“Your praise goes beyond the mark, my friend. I can be both generous and discreet;—but the difficulty is to be true. I did take one thing—a black diamond that he always wore. I would show it you, but the goldsmith has it to make it fit me. When does the great affair come off at the House?”
“The bill will be read again on Monday, the first.”
“What an unfortunate day!—You remember young Mr. Maule? Is he not like his father? And yet in manners they are as unlike as possible.”
“What is the father?” Phineas asked.
“A battered old beau about London, selfish and civil, pleasant and penniless, and I should think utterly without a principle. Come again soon. I am so anxious to hear that you are getting on. And you have got to tell me all about that shooting with the pistol.” Phineas as he walked away thought that Madame Goesler was handsomer even than she used to be.
XXXI
The Duke and Duchess in Town
At the end of March the Duchess of Omnium, never more to be called Lady Glencora by the world at large, came up to London. The Duke, though he was now banished from the House of Commons, was nevertheless wanted in London; and what funereal ceremonies were left might be accomplished as well in town as at Matching Priory. No old Ministry could be turned out and no new Ministry formed without the assistance of the young Duchess. It was a question whether she should not be asked to be Mistress of the Robes, though those who asked it knew very well that she was the last woman in England to hamper herself by dependence on the Court. Up to London they came; and, though of course they went into no society, the house in Carlton Gardens was continually thronged with people who had some special reason for breaking the ordinary rules of etiquette in their desire to see how Lady Glencora carried herself as Duchess of Omnium. “Do you think she’s altered much?” said Aspasia Fitzgibbon, an elderly spinster, the daughter of Lord Claddagh, and sister of Laurence Fitzgibbon, member for one of the western Irish counties. “I don’t think she was quite so loud as she used to be.”
Mrs. Bonteen was of opinion that there was a change. “She was always uncertain, you know, and would scratch like a cat if you offended her.”
“And won’t she scratch now?” asked Miss Fitzgibbon.
“I’m afraid she’ll scratch oftener. It was always a trick of hers to pretend to think nothing of rank;—but she values her place as highly as any woman in England.”
This was Mrs. Bonteen’s opinion; but Lady Baldock, who was present, differed. This Lady Baldock was not the mother, but the sister-in-law of that Augusta Boreham who had lately become Sister Veronica John. “I don’t believe it,” said Lady Baldock. “She always seems to me to be like a great schoolgirl who has been allowed too much of her own way. I think people give way to her too much, you know.” As Lady Baldock was herself the wife of a peer, she naturally did not stand so much in awe of a duchess as did Mrs. Bonteen, or Miss Fitzgibbon.
“Have you seen the young Duke?” asked Mr. Ratler of Barrington Erle.
“Yes; I have been with him this morning.”
“How does he like it?”
“He’s bothered out of his life—as a hen would be if you were to throw her into water. He’s so shy, he hardly knows how to speak to you; and he broke down altogether when I said something about the Lords.”
“He’ll not do much more.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Erle. “He’ll get used to it, and go into harness again. He’s a great deal too good to be lost.”
“He didn’t give himself airs?”
“What!—Planty Pall! If I know anything of a man he’s not the man to do that because he’s a duke. He can hold his own against all comers, and always could. Quiet as he always seemed, he knew who he was, and who other people were. I don’t think you’ll find much difference in him when he has got over the annoyance.” Mr. Ratler, however, was of a different opinion. Mr. Ratler had known many docile members of the House of Commons who had become peers by the death of uncles and fathers, and who had lost all respect for him as soon as they were released from the crack of the whip. Mr. Ratler rather despised peers who had been members of the House of Commons, and who passed by inheritance from a scene of unparalleled use and influence to one of idle and luxurious dignity.
Soon after their arrival in London the Duchess wrote the following very characteristic letter:—
Dear Lord Chiltern,
Mr. Palliser—
Then having begun with a mistake, she scratched the word through with her pen.
The Duke has asked me to write about Trumpeton Wood, as he knows nothing about it, and I know just as little. But if you say what you want, it shall be done. Shall we get foxes and put them there? Or ought there to be a special fox-keeper? You mustn’t be angry because the poor old Duke was too feeble to take notice of the matter. Only speak, and it shall be done.
The answer was as characteristic:—
Dear Duchess of Omnium,
Thanks. What is
