第23章

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 not clearly be asked to join the ministry.Sir Gregory Grogram, the late Attorney-General, would of course be asked to resumed 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 where 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 faneant ruler was in direct antagonism both to his conscience and to 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 how 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 politicians 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 like shall now be given.