'Yes;--there has been a division.Mr Monk has just been with me.'
'Well!'
'We have beaten them, of course, as we always do,' said the Duke, attempting to be pleasant.'You didn't suppose there was anything to fear? Your husband has always bid you keep up your courage;--has he not, Mrs Finn?'
'My husband has lost his senses, I think,' she said.'He has taken to such storming and raving about his political enemies that I hardly dare to open my mouth.'
'Tell what has been done, Plantagenet,' ejaculated the Duchess.
'Don't you be so unreasonable as Mrs Finn, Cora.The House has voted against Sir Orlando's amendment by a majority of nine.'
'Only nine!'
'And I shall cease to be Prime Minister to-morrow.'
'You don't mean to say that it's settled?'
'Quite settled.The play has been played, and the curtain has fallen, and the lights are being put out, and the poor weary actors may go home to bed.'
'But on such an amendment surely any majority would have done.'
'No, my dear.I will not name a number, but nine certainly would not do.'
'And it is all over?'
'My Ministry is over, if you mean that.'
'Then everything is over for me.I shall settle down in the country and build cottages, and mix draughts.You, Marie, will still be going up the tree.If Mr Finn manages well he may come to be Prime Minister some day.
'He has hardly such ambition, Lady Glen,'
'The ambition will come fast enough;--will it not, Plantagenet?
Let him once begin to dream of it as possible, and the desire will soon be strong enough.How should you feel if it were so?'
'It is quite impossible,' said Mrs Finn, gravely.
'I don't see why anything is impossible.Sir Orlando will be Prime Minister now, and Sir Timothy Beeswax Lord Chancellor.
After that anybody may hope to be anything.Well;--I suppose we may go to bed.Is your carriage here, my dear?'
'I hope so.'
'Ring the bell, Plantagenet, for somebody to see her down.Come to lunch to-morrow because I shall have so many groans to utter.
What beast, what brutes, what ungrateful wretches men are!--worse than women when they get together in numbers enough to be bold.Why have they deserted you? What have we not done for them.Think of all the new bedroom furniture we sent to Gatherum merely to keep the party together.There were thousands of yards of linen, and it has all been of no use.Don't you feel like Wolsey, Plantagenet?'
'Not in the least, my dear.No one will take anything away from me that I own.'
'For me, I'm almost as much divorced as Catherine, and have had my head cut off as completely as Anne Bullen and the rest of them.Go away, Marie, because I am going to have a cry by myself.'
The Duke himself on that night put Mrs Finn into her carriage;and as he walked with her downstairs he asked her whether she believed the Duchess was in earnest in her sorrow.'She so mixes up her mirth and woe together,' said the Duke, 'that I myself sometimes can hardly understand her.'
'I think she does regret it, Duke.'
'She told me the other day that she would be contented.'
'A few weeks will make her so.As for your Grace, I hope I may congratulate you.'
'Oh yes;--I think so.We none of us like to be beaten when we have taken a thing in hand.There is always a little disappointment at first.But, upon the whole, it is better as it is.I hope it will not make your husband unhappy.'
'Not for his own sake.He will go again into the middle of the scramble and fight on one side or the other.For my own part Ithink opposition is the pleasantest.Good-night, Duke.I am so sorry that I should have troubled you.'
Then he went alone to his own room, and sat there without moving for a couple of hours.Surely it was a great thing to have been Prime Minister of England for three years,--a prize of which nothing could now rob him.He ought not to be unhappy; and yet he knew himself to be wretched and disappointed.It had never occurred to him to be proud of being a duke, or to think of his wealth otherwise than a chance incident of his life, advantageous indeed, but by no means a source of honour.And he had been aware that he had owned his first seat in Parliament to his birth, and probably also his first introduction to official life.
An heir to a dukedom, if he will only work, may almost with certainty find himself received into one or other regiment in Downing Street.It had not in his early days been with him as it had with his friends Mr Monk and Phineas Finn, who had worked their way from the very ranks.But even a duke cannot become Prime Minister by favour.Surely he had done something of which he might be proud.And so he tried to console himself.
But to have done something was nothing to him,--nothing to his personal happiness,--unless there was also something left for him to do.How should it be with him now,--now for the future?
Would men ever listen to him again, or allow him again to work in their behoof, as he used to do in his happy days in the House of Commons? He feared that it was all over for him, and that for the rest of his days he must simply be the Duke of Omnium.