Just at this moment the Duchess walked across the ground up to the shooters, accompanied by Mrs Finn and Lady Chiltern.She had not been seen in the gardens before that day, and of course a little concourse was made around her.The Major and the Captain, who had been driven away by the success of Ferdinand Lopez, returned with their sweetest smiles.Mr Boffin put down his treatise on the nature of Franchises, which he was studying in order that he might lead an opposition against the Ministry next Session, and even Sir Timothy Beeswax, who had done his work with Sir Orlando, joined the throng.
'Now I do hope,' said the Duchess, 'that you are all shooting by the new code.That is, and is to be, the Gatherum Archery Code, and I shall break my heart if anybody rebels.'
'There are only two men,' said Major Pountney very gravely, 'who won't take the trouble to understand it.'
'Mr Lopez,' said the Duchess, pointing her finger at our friend, 'are you that rebel?'
'I fear I did suggest--'began Mr Lopez.
'I will have no suggestions,--nothing but obedience.Here are Sir Timothy Beeswax and Mr Boffin, and Sir Orlando Drought is not far off; and here is Mr Rattler, than whom no authority on such a subject can be better.Ask them whether in other matters suggestions are wanted.'
'Of course not,' said Major Pountney.
'Now, Mr Lopez, will you or will you not be guided by a strict and close interpretation of the Gatherum Code.Because, if not, I'm afraid we shall feel constrained to accept your resignation.'
'I won't resign and I will obey,' said Lopez.
'A good ministerial reply,' said the Duchess.
'I don't doubt but that in time you'll ascend to high office and become a pillar of the Gatherum constitution.How does he shoot, Miss Thrift?'
'He will shoot very well indeed, Duchess, if he goes on and practises,' said Angelica, whose life for the past seven years had been devoted to archery.Major Pountney retired far away into the park, a full quarter of a mile off, and smoked a cigar under a tree.Was it for that he had absolutely given up a month to drawing out this code of rules, going backwards and forwards, two or three times to the printers in his desire to carry out the Duchess's wishes? 'Women are so d-d ungrateful!' This fellow Lopez, had absolutely been allowed to make a good score off his own intractable disobedience.
The Duchess's little joke about Ministers generally, and the advantages of submission on their part to their chief, was thought by some who heard it not to have been made in good taste.
The joke was just a joke as the Duchess would be sure to make,--meaning very little, but still not altogether pointless.It was levelled rather at her husband than at her husband's colleagues who were present, and was so understood by those who really knew her,--as did Mrs Finn and Mr Warburton, the private secretary.
But Sir Orlando and Sir Timothy and Mr Rattler, who were all within hearing, thought that the Duchess had intended to allude to the servile nature of their position; and Mr Boffin, who hear it, rejoiced within himself, comforting himself with the reflection that his withers were unwrung, and thinking with what pleasure he might carry the anecdote into the farthest corners of the clubs.Poor Duchess! It is pitiful to think that after such Herculean labours she should injure the cause by one slight unconsidered word, more, perhaps, than she had advanced in all her energy.
During this time the Duke was at the Castle; but he showed himself seldom to his guests,--so acting, as the reader will Ihope understand, from no sense of importance of his own personal presence, but influenced by a conviction that a public man should not waste his time.He breakfasted in his own room, because he could thus eat his breakfast in ten minutes.He read all the papers in solitude, because he was thus enabled to give his mind to their contents.Life had always been too serious to him to be wasted.Every afternoon he walked for the sake of exercise, and would have accepted any companion if any companion had especially offered himself.But he went off by some side-door, finding the side-door to be convenient, and therefore when seen by others was supposed to desire to remain unseen.'I had no idea there was so much pride about the Duke,' Mr Boffin said to his old colleague, Sir Orlando.'Is it pride?' asked Sir Orlando.'It may be shyness,' said the wise Boffin.'The two things are so alike you can never tell the difference.But the man who is cursed by either should hardly be a Prime Minister.'
It was on the day after this, that Sir Orlando thought that the moment had come in which it was his duty to say that salutary word to the Duke, which it was clearly necessary that some colleague should say, and which no colleague could have so good a right to say as he was who was Leader of the House of Commons.