'We did not come in to carry large measures, my friend.Look back and see how many large measures Pitt carried;--but he took the country safely through its most dangerous crisis.'
'What have we done?'
'Carried on the Queen's Government prosperously for three years.
Is that nothing for a minister to do? I have never been a friend of great measures, knowing that when they come fast, one after another, more is broken in the rattle than is repaired by the reform.We have done what Parliament and the country expected us to do, and to my poor judgement we have done it well.'
'I do not feel such self-satisfaction, Duke.Well;--we must see it out, and if it is as you anticipate, I shall be ready.Of course I have prepared myself for it.And if, of late, my mind has been less turned to retirement than it used to be, it has been because I have become wedded to this measure, and have wished it that it should be carried under our auspices.' Then the old Duke took his leave, and the Prime Minister was left alone to consider the announcement that had been made to him.
He had said that he had prepared himself, but, in so saying, he had hardly known himself.Hitherto, though he had been troubled by many doubts, he had still hoped.The report made to him by Mr Rattler, backed as it had been by Mr Roby's assurances, had almost sufficed to give him confidence.But Mr Rattler and Mr Roby combined were as nothing to the Duke of St Bungay.The Prime Minister knew now,--that his days were numbered.The resignation of that lingering old bishop was not completed, and the person whom he believed would not have the see.He had meditated the making of a peer or two, having hitherto been cautious in that respect, but he would do nothing of the kind if called upon by the House of Commons to resign with an uncompleted measure.But his thoughts soon ran away from the present to the future.What was now to become of himself? How should he live his future life;--he who as yet had not passed his forty-seventh year? He regretted much having made that apparently pretentious speech about Caesar, though he knew his old friend well enough to be sure that it would never be used against him.Who was he that he should class himself among the big ones of the world? A man may indeed measure small things by great, but the measurer should be careful to declare his own littleness when he illustrates his position by that of the topping ones of the earth.But the thing said had been true.Let the Pompey be who he might, he, the little Caesar of the day, could never now command another legion.
He had once told Phineas Finn that he regretted that he had abstained from the ordinary amusements of English gentlemen.But he had abstained from their ordinary occupations,--except so far as politics is one of them.He cared nothing for oxen or for furrows.In regard to his own land he hardly knew whether the farms were large or small.He had been a scholar, and after a certain fitful fashion he had maintained his scholarship, but the literature to which he had been really attached had been that of blue books and newspapers.What was he to do with himself when called upon to resign? And he understood,--or thought that he understood,--his position too well to expect that after a while, with the usual interval, he might return to power.He had been Prime Minister, not as the leading politician on either side, not as the king of the party, but,--so he told himself,--as a stop-gap.There could be nothing for him now till the insipidity of life should gradually fade away into the grave.
After a while he got up and went off to his wife's apartment, the room in which she used to prepare her triumphs and where now she contemplated her disappointments.'I have had the Duke with me,'
he said.
'What;--at last?'
'I do not know that he could have done any good by coming sooner.'
'And what does his Grace say?'
'He thinks our days are numbered.'
'Psha!--is that all? I could have told him that ever so long ago.It was hardly necessary that he should disturb himself at last to come and tell us such well-ventilated news.There isn't a porter at one of the clubs who doesn't know it.'
'Then there will be the less surprise,--and to those who are concerned perhaps the less mortification.'
'Did he tell you who was to succeed you?' asked the Duchess.
'Not precisely.'
'He ought to have done that, as I am sure he knows.Everybody knows except you, Plantagenet.'
'If you know, you can tell me.'
'Of course I can.It is Mr Monk.'
'With all my heart, Glencora.Mr Monk is a very good man.'
'I wonder whether he'll do anything for us.Think how destitute we shall be! What if I were to ask him for a place! Would he not give it us?'
'Will it make you unhappy, Cora?'
'What;--your going?'
'Yes;--the change altogether.'
She looked him in the face for a moment before she answered, with a peculiar smile in her eyes to which he was well used,--a smile half ludicrous, half pathetic,--having in it also a dash of sarcasm.'I can dare to tell the truth,' she said, 'which you can't.I can be honest and straightforward.Yes, it will make me unhappy.And you?'
'Do you think that I cannot be honest too,--at any rate to you?
It does fret me.I do not like to think that I shall be without work.'
'Yes;--Othello's occupation will be gone,--for a while, for a while.' Then she came up to him and put both her hands on his breast.'But yet, Othello, I shall not be unhappy.'
'Where will be your contentment?'
'In you.It was making you ill.Rough people whom the tenderness of your nature could not well endure, trod upon you, and worried you with their teeth and wounded you everywhere.Icould have turned at them again with my teeth, and given them worry for worry;--but you could not.Now you will be saved from them, and so I shall not be discontented.' All this she said looking up into his face, still with that smile which was half pathetic and half ludicrous.
'Then I shall be contented too,' he said as he kissed her.