第25章

THE BEGINNING OF A NEW CAREER.

By the time that the Easter holidays were over,--holidays which had been used so conveniently for the making of a new government, --the work of getting a team together had been accomplished by the united energy of the two dukes and other friends.The filling up of the great places had been by no means so difficult or so tedious,--nor indeed the cause of half so many heartburns, --as the completion of the list of subordinates.Noblesse oblige.The Secretaries of State, and the Chancellors, and the First Lords, selected from this or the other party felt that the eyes of mankind were upon them, and that it behoved them to assume a virtue if they had it not.They were habitually indifferent to self-exaltation, and allowed themselves to be thrust into this or that unfitting role, professing that the Queen's Government and the good of the country were their only considerations.Lord Thrift made way for Sir Orlando Drought at the Admiralty, because it was felt on all sides that Sir Orlando could not join the new composite party without a high place.And the same grace was shown in regard to Lord Drummond, who remained at the Colonies, keeping the office to which he had lately been transferred under Mr Daubney.And Sir Gregory Grogram said not a word, whatever he may have thought, when he was told that Mr Daubney's Lord Chancellor, Lord Ramsden, was to keep the seals.

Sir Gregory did, no doubt, think very much about it, for legal offices have a signification differing much from that which attaches itself to places simply political.A Lord Chancellor becomes a peer, and on going out of office enjoys a large pension.When the woolsack has been reached there comes an end of doubt, and a beginning of ease.Sir Gregory was not a young man, and this was a terrible blow.But he bore it manfully, saying not a word when the Duke spoke to him; but he became convinced from that moment that no more inefficient lawyer ever sat upon the English bench, or a more presumptuous politician in the British Parliament, than Lord Ramsden.

The real struggle, however, lay in the appropriate distribution of the Rattlers, the Robys, the Fitzgibbons, and the Macphersons among the subordinate offices of State.Mr Macpherson and Mr Roby, with a host of others who had belonged to Mr Daubney, were prepared, as they declared from the first, to lend their assistance to the Duke.They had consulted Mr Daubney on the subject, and Mr Daubney told them that their duty lay in that direction.At the first blush of the matter the arrangement took the form of a gracious tender from themselves to a statesman called upon to act in very difficult circumstances,--and they were thanked accordingly by the Duke, with something of real cordial gratitude.But when the actual adjustment of things was in hand, the Duke, having but little power of assuming a soft countenance and using soft words while his heart was bitter, felt on more than one occasion inclined to withdraw his thanks.He was astounded not so much by the pretensions as by the unblushing assertion of these pretensions in reference to places which he had been innocent enough to think were always bestowed at any rate without direct application.He had measured himself rightly when he told the older Duke in one of those anxious conversations which had been held before the attempt was made, that long as he had been in office himself he did not know what was the way of bestowing office.'Two gentlemen have been here this morning,'

he said one day to the Duke of St Bungay, 'one on the heels of the other, each assuring me not only that the whole stability of the enterprise depends on my giving a certain office to him,--but actually telling me to my face that I had promised it to him!' The old statesman laughed.'To be told within the same half-hour by two men that I had made promises to each of them inconsistent with each other.'

'Who were the two men?'

'Mr Rattler and Mr Roby.'

'I am assured that they are inseparable since the work has begun.

They always had a leaning to each other, and now I hear they pass their time between the steps of the Carlton and Reform Clubs.'

'But what am I to do? One must be Patronage Secretary, no doubt.'

'They're both good men in their way, you know.'

'But why do they come to me with their mouths open, like dogs craving a bone? It used not to be so.Of course men were always anxious for office as they are now.'

'Well; yes.We've heard of that before to-day, I think.'

'But I don't think any man ever ventured to ask Mr Mildmay.'

'Time has done much for him in consolidating his authority, and perhaps the present world is less reticent in its eagerness than it was in his younger days.I doubt, however, whether it is more dishonest, and whether struggles were not made quite as disgraceful to the strugglers as anything that is done now.You can't alter the men, and you must use them.' The younger Duke sat down and sighed over the degenerate patriotism of the age.

But at last even the Rattlers and Robys were fixed, if not satisfied, and a complete list of the ministry appeared in all the newspapers.Though the thing had been long a-doing, still it had come suddenly,--so that the first proposition to form a coalition ministry, the newspapers had hardly known whether to assist or to oppose the scheme.There was no doubt, in the minds of all these editors and contributors, the teaching of a tradition that coalitions of this kind have been generally feeble, sometimes disastrous, and on occasions, even disgraceful.