Indeed with these dregs of the newspapers, these gutter-slanderers, if one would be open and say all the truth aloud what would one have to fear? After all, what is it that I did? Idisobeyed my husband because I thought that he was too scrupulous.Let me say as much, out loud to the public,--saying also that I am sorry for it, as I am,--and who would be against me? Who would have a word to say after that? I should be the most popular woman in England for a month,--and, as regards Plantagenet, Mr Slide and his articles would all sink into silence.But even though he were to continue this from day to day for a twelvemonth it would not hurt me,--but then I know how it scorches him.This mention of my name will make it more intolerable to him than ever.I doubt that you know him even yet.'
'I thought that I did.'
'Though in manner he is as dry as a stick, though all his pursuits are opposite to the very idea of romance, though he passes his days and nights thinking how he may take a halfpenny in the pound off the taxes of the people without robbing the revenue, there is a dash of chivalry about him worthy of the old poets.To him a woman, particularly his own woman, is a thing so fine and so precious that the winds of heaven should hardly be allowed to blow upon her.He cannot bear to think that people should even talk of his wife.And yet, heaven knows, poor fellow, I have given people occasion enough to talk of me.And he has a much higher chivalry than that of the old poets.They, or their heroes, watched their women because they did not want to have trouble about them,--shut them up in castles, kept them in ignorance, and held them as far as they could out of harm's way.'
'I hardly think they succeeded,' said Mrs Finn.
'But in pure selfishness they tried all they could.But he is too proud to watch.If you and I were hatching treason against him in the dark, and chance brought him there, he would stop his ears with his fingers.He is all trust, even when he knows that he is being deceived.He is honour complete from head to foot.
Ah, it was before you knew me when I tried him the hardest.Inever could quite tell you the story, and I won't try it now; but he behaved like a god.I could never tell him what I felt,--but I felt it.'
'You ought to love him.'
'I do;--but what's the use of it? He is a god, but I am not a goddess;--and then, though he is a god, he is a dry, silent, uncongenial and uncomfortable god.It would have suited me much better to have married a sinner.But then the sinner that Iwould have married was so irredeemable a scapegrace.'
'I do not believe in a woman marrying a bad man in the hope of making him good.'
'Especially not when the woman is naturally inclined to evil herself.It will half kill him when he reads all this about me.
He has read it already, and it has already half killed him.For myself I do not mind it in the least, but for his sake I mind it much.It will rob him of his only possible answer to the accusation.The very thing which this wretch in the newspaper says he will say, and that he will be disgraced by saying it, is the very thing that he ought to say.And there would be no disgrace in it,--beyond what I might well bear for my little fault, and which I could bear so easily.'
'Shall you speak to him about it?'
'No; I dare not.In this matter it has gone beyond speaking.Isuppose he does talk it over with the old Duke; but he will say nothing to me about it,--unless he were to tell me that he had resigned, and that we were to start off and live at Matching for the next ten years.I was so proud when they made him Prime Minister, but I think that I am beginning to regret it now.'
Then there was a pause, and the Duchess went on, with her newspapers; but she soon resumed her discourse.Her heart was full, and out of a full heart the mouth speaks.'They should have made me Prime Minister, and have let him be Chancellor of the Exchequer.I begin to see the ways of Government now.Icould have done all the dirty work.I could have given away garters and ribbons, and made my bargains while giving them.Icould select sleek, easy bishops who wouldn't be troublesome.Icould give pensions or withhold them, and make the stupid men into peers.I could have the big noblemen at my feet, praying to be Lieutenants of Counties.I could dole out secretaryships and lordships, and never a one without getting something in return.
