'And what are they going to make you now?'
But he did not answer the question in his usual manner.He would customarily smile gently at her badinage, and perhaps say a word intended to show that he was not in the least moved by her raillery.But in this instance he was very grave, and stood before her a moment making no answer at all, looking at her in a sad and almost solemn manner.'They have told you that they can do without you,' she said, breaking out almost into a passion.
'I knew it would be.Men are always valued by others as they value themselves.'
'I wish it were so,' he replied.'I should sleep easier to-night.'
'What is it, Plantagenet?' she exclaimed, jumping up from her chair.
'I never cared for your ridicule hitherto, Cora, but now I feel that I want your sympathy.'
'If you are going to do anything,--to do really anything, you shall have it.Oh, how you shall have it!'
'I have received her Majesty's orders to go down to Windsor at once.I must start within half an hour.'
'You are going to be Prime Minister!' she exclaimed.As she spoke she threw her arms up, and then rushed into his embrace.
Never since their first union had she been so demonstrative either of love or admiration.'Oh, Plantagenet,' she said, 'if Ican do anything I will slave for you.' As he put his arm round her waist he already felt the pleasantness of her altered way to him.She had never worshipped him yet, and therefore her worship when it did come had all the delight to him which it ordinarily has to the newly married hero.
'Stop a moment, Cora.I do not know how it may be yet.But this I know, that if without cowardice I could avoid this task, Iwould certainly avoid it.'
'Oh no! And there would be cowardice; of course there would,'
said the Duchess, not much caring what might be the bonds which bound him to the task so long as he should certainly feel himself to be bound.
'He has told me that he thinks it my duty to make the attempt.'
'Who is he?'
'Mr Gresham.I do not know that I should have felt myself bound by him, but the Duke said also.' This duke was our duke's old friend, the Duke of St Bungay.
'Was he there? And who else?'
'No one else.It is no case for exultation, Cora, for the chances are that I shall fail.The Duke has promised to help me, on condition that one or two he has named are included, and that one or two whom he has also named are not.In each case, Ishould myself have done exactly as he proposes.'
'And Mr Gresham?'
'He will retire.That is a matter of course.He will intend to support me, but all that is veiled in the obscurity which is always, I think, darker as to the future of politics than any other future.Clouds arise, one knows not why or whence, and create darkness when one expected light.But as yet, you must understand, nothing is settled.I cannot even say what answer Imay make to her Majesty, till I know what commands her Majesty may lay upon me.'
'You must keep a hold of it now, Plantagenet,' said the Duchess, clenching her own fist.
'I will not even close a finger on it with any personal ambition,' said the Duke.'If I could be relieved from the burden of this moment, it would be an ease to my heart.Iremember once,' he said,--and as he spoke he again put his arm around her waist, 'when I was debarred from taking office, by a domestic circumstance.'
'I remember that too,' she said, speaking very gently and looking up at him.
'It was a grief to me at the time, though it turned out so well, --because the office then suggested to me was one which I thought I could fill with credit to the country.I believed in myself then, as far as that work went.But for this attempt I have no belief in myself.I doubt whether I have any gift for governing men.'
'It will come.'
'It may be that I must try;--and it may be that I must break my heart because I fail.But I shall make the attempt if I am directed to do so in any manner that shall seem feasible.I must be off now.The Duke is to be here this evening.They had better have dinner ready for me whenever I may be able to eat it.' Then he took his departure before she could say another word.
When the Duchess was alone she took to thinking of the whole thing in a manner which they who best knew her would have thought to be very unusual with her.She already possessed all that rank and wealth could give her, and together with those good things a peculiar position of her own, of which she was proud, and which she had made her own not by her wealth and rank, but by a certain fearless energy and power of raillery which never deserted her.
Many feared her, and she was afraid of none, and many also loved her,--whom she also loved, for her nature was affectionate.She was happy with her children, happy with her friends, in the enjoyment of perfect health, and capable of taking an exaggerated interest in anything that might come uppermost for the moment.
One would have been inclined to say that politics were altogether unnecessary to her, and that as Duchess of Omnium, lately known as Lady Glencora Palliser, she had a wider and pleasanter influence than could belong to any woman as wife of a Prime Minister.And she was essentially one of those women who are not contented to be known simply as the wives of their husbands.She had a celebrity of her own, quite independent of his position, and which could not be enhanced by any glory or any power added to him.Nevertheless, when he left her to go down to the Queen with the prospect of being called upon to act as chief of the incoming ministry, her heart throbbed with excitement.It had come at last, and he would be, to her thinking, the leading man in the greatest kingdom in the world.
But she felt in regard to him somewhat as did Lady Macbeth towards her lord.
What thou would'st highly, That would'st thou holily.
