“It is clear that in so doing you would become the most popular man in the country,—clear that you would be summoned back to power on the shoulders of the people. No new Cabinet could be formed without you, and your station in it would perhaps be higher, for life, than that which you may now retain but for a few weeks longer. Has not this ever occurred to you?”
“Never,” said Audley, with dry composure.
Amazed at such obtuseness, Randal exclaimed, “Is it possible! And yet, forgive me if I say I think you are ambitious, and love power.”
“No man more ambitious; and if by power you mean office, it has grown the habit of my life, and I shall not know what to do without it.”
“And how, then, has what seems to me so obvious never occurred to you?”
“Because you are young, and therefore I forgive you; but not the gossips who could wonder why Audley Egerton refused to betray the friends of his whole career, and to profit by the treason.”
“But one should love one’s country before a party.”
“No doubt of that; and the first interest of a country is the honour of its public men.”
“But men may leave their party without dishonour!”
“Who doubts that? Do you suppose that if I were an ordinary independent member of parliament, loaded with no obligations, charged with no trust, I could hesitate for a moment what course to pursue? Oh, that I were but the member for —————! Oh, that I had the full right to be a free agent! But if a member of a Cabinet, a chief in whom thousands confide, because he is outvoted in a council of his colleagues, suddenly retires, and by so doing breaks up the whole party whose confidence he has enjoyed, whose rewards he has reaped, to whom he owes the very position which he employs to their ruin,—own that though his choice may be honest, it is one which requires all the consolations of conscience.”