"Impossible!"
"Don't you mention it, but he has. Warburton has told me so." Warburton was one of the Duke's private secretaries.
"What did the Duke say?"
"I don't quite know. Warburton is one of my familiars, but I didn't like to ask him for more than he chose to tell me. Warburton suggested that I should invite Sir Orlando at once; but there I was obdurate. Of course, if Plantagenet tells me I'll ask the man to come every day of the week;—but it is one of those things that I shall need to be told directly. My idea is, you know, that they had better get rid of Sir Orlando,—and that if Sir Orlando chooses to kick over the traces, he may be turned loose without any danger. One has little birds that give one all manner of information, and one little bird has told me that Sir Orlando and Mr. Roby don't speak. Mr. Roby is not very much himself, but he is a good straw to show which way the wind blows. Plantagenet certainly sent no message about Sir Orlando, and I'm afraid the gentleman must look for his dinners elsewhere."
The Duke had in truth expressed himself very plainly to Mr. Warburton; but with so much indiscreet fretfulness that the discreet private secretary had not told it even to the Duchess. "This kind of thing argues a want of cordiality that may be fatal to us," Sir Orlando had said somewhat grandiloquently to the Duke, and the Duke had made—almost no reply. "I suppose I may ask my own guests in my own house," he had said afterwards to Mr. Warburton, "though in public life I am everybody's slave." Mr. Warburton, anxious of course to maintain the unity of the party, had told the Duchess so much as would, he thought, induce her to give way; but he had not repeated the Duke's own observations, which were, Mr. Warburton thought, hostile to the interests of the party. The Duchess had only smiled and made a little grimace, with which the private secretary was already well acquainted. And Sir Orlando received no invitation.
In those days Sir Orlando was unhappy and irritable, doubtful of further success as regarded the Coalition, but quite resolved to pull the house down about the ears of the inhabitants rather than to leave it with gentle resignation. To him it seemed to be impossible that the Coalition should exist without him. He too had had moments of high-vaulting ambition, in which he had almost felt himself to be the great man required by the country, the one ruler who could gather together in his grasp the reins of government and drive the State coach single-handed safe through its difficulties for the next half-dozen years. There are men who cannot conceive of themselves that anything should be difficult for them, and again others who cannot bring themselves so to trust themselves as to think that they can ever achieve anything great. Samples of each sort from time to time rise high in political life, carried thither apparently by Epicurean concourse of atoms; and it often happens that the more confident samples are by no means the most capable. The concourse of atoms had carried Sir Orlando so high that he could not but think himself intended for something higher. But the Duke, who had really been wafted to the very top, had always doubted himself, believing himself capable of doing some one thing by dint of industry, but with no further confidence in his own powers. Sir Orlando had perceived something of his Leader's weakness, and had thought that he might profit by it. He was not only a distinguished member of the Cabinet, but even the recognised Leader of the House of Commons. He looked out the facts and found that for five-and-twenty years out of the last thirty the Leader of the House of Commons had been the Head of the Government. He felt that he would be mean not to stretch out his hand and take the prize destined for him. The Duke was a poor timid man who had very little to say for himself. Then came the little episode about the dinners. It had become very evident to all the world that the Duchess of Omnium had cut Sir Orlando Drought,—that the Prime Minister's wife, who was great in hospitality, would not admit the First Lord of the Admiralty into her house. The doings at Gatherum Castle, and in Carlton Terrace, and at the Horns were watched much too closely by the world at large to allow such omissions to be otherwise than conspicuous. Since the commencement of the Session there had been a series of articles in the "People's Banner" violently abusive of the Prime Minister, and in one or two of these the indecency of these exclusions had been exposed with great strength of language. And the Editor of the "People's Banner" had discovered that Sir Orlando Drought was the one man in Parliament fit to rule the nation. Till Parliament should discover this fact, or at least acknowledge it,—the discovery having been happily made by the "People's Banner,"—the Editor of the "People's Banner" thought that there could be no hope for the country. Sir Orlando of course saw all these articles, and in his very heart believed that a man had at length sprung up among them fit to conduct a newspaper. The Duke also unfortunately saw the "People's Banner." In his old happy days two papers a day, one in the morning and the other before dinner, sufficed to tell him all that he wanted to know. Now he felt it necessary to see almost every rag that was published. And he would skim through them all till he found the lines in which he himself was maligned, and then, with sore heart and irritated nerves, would pause over every contumelious word. He would have bitten his tongue out rather than have spoken of the tortures he endured, but he was tortured and did endure. He knew the cause of the bitter personal attacks made on him,—of the abuse with which he was loaded, and of the ridicule, infinitely more painful to him, with which his wife's social splendour was bespattered. He remembered well the attempt which Mr. Quintus Slide had made to obtain an entrance into his house, and his own scornful rejection of that gentleman's overtures. He knew,—no man knew better,—the real value of that able Editor's opinion. And yet every word of it was gall and wormwood to him. In every paragraph there was a scourge which hit him on the raw and opened wounds which he could show to no kind surgeon, for which he could find solace in no friendly treatment. Not even to his wife could he condescend to say that Mr. Quintus Slide had hurt him.
Then Sir Orlando had come himself. Sir Orlando explained himself gracefully. He of course could understand that no gentleman had a right to complain because he was not asked to another gentleman's house. But the affairs of the country were above private considerations; and he, actuated by public feelings, would condescend to do that which under other circumstances would be impossible. The public press, which was ever vigilant, had suggested that there was some official estrangement, because he, Sir Orlando, had not been included in the list of guests invited by his Grace. Did not his Grace think that there might be seeds of,—he would not quite say decay for the Coalition, in such a state of things? The Duke paused a moment, and then said that he thought there were no such seeds. Sir Orlando bowed haughtily and withdrew—swearing at the moment that the Coalition should be made to fall into a thousand shivers. This had all taken place a fortnight before the party at the Horns from which poor Mrs. Lopez had been withdrawn so hastily.
But Sir Orlando, when he commenced the proceedings consequent on this resolution, did not find all that support which he had expected. Unfortunately there had been an uncomfortable word or two between him and Mr. Roby, the political Secretary at the Admiralty. Mr. Roby had never quite seconded Sir Orlando's ardour in that matter of the four ships, and Sir Orlando in his pride of place had ventured to snub Mr. Roby. Now Mr. Roby could bear a snubbing perhaps as well as any other official subordinate,—but he was one who would study the question and assure himself that it was, or that it was not, worth his while to bear it. He, too, had discussed with his friends the condition of the Coalition, and had come to conclusions rather adverse to Sir Orlando than otherwise. When, therefore, the First Secretary sounded him as to the expediency of some step in the direction of a firmer political combination than that at present existing,—by which of course was meant the dethronement of the present Prime Minister,—Mr. Roby had snubbed him! Then there had been slight official criminations and recriminations, till a state of things had come to pass which almost justified the statement made by the Duchess to Mrs. Finn.
The Coalition had many component parts, some coalescing without difficulty, but with no special cordiality. Such was the condition of things between the very conservative Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland and his somewhat radical Chief Secretary, Mr. Finn,—between probably the larger number of those who were contented with the duties of their own offices and the pleasures and profits arising therefrom. Some by this time hardly coalesced at all, as was the case with Sir Gregory Grogram and Sir Timothy Beeswax, the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General;—and was especially the case with the Prime Minister and Sir Orlando Drought. But in one or two happy cases the Coalition was sincere and loyal,—and in no case was this more so than with regard to Mr. Rattler and Mr. Roby. Mr. Rattler and Mr. Roby had throughout their long parliamentary lives belonged to opposite parties, and had been accustomed to regard each other with mutual jealousy and almost with mutual hatred. But now they had come to see how equal, how alike, and how sympathetic were their tastes, and how well each might help the other. As long as Mr. Rattler could keep his old place at the Treasury,—and his ambition never stirred him to aught higher,—he was quite contented that his old rival should be happy at the Admiralty. And that old rival, when he looked about him and felt his present comfort, when he remembered how short-lived had been the good things which had hitherto come in his way, and how little probable it was that long-lived good things should be his when the Coalition was broken up, manfully determined that loyalty to the present Head of the Government was his duty. He had sat for too many years on the same bench with Sir Orlando to believe much in his power of governing the country. Therefore, when Sir Orlando dropped his hint Mr. Roby did not take it.
"I wonder whether it's true that Sir Orlando complained to the Duke that he was not asked to dinner?" said Mr. Roby to Mr. Rattler.