“If you will permit me,” said Winton, “it is your Grace only whose favour I desire to gain.”
Here the Duke began to laugh in a somewhat imbecile way, shaking his head with an air of complacency which would have been too ludicrous for mortal powers of gravity, had not Winton’s mind been so much otherwise occupied. “Ah,” he said, “I see! you are thinking of that old story about the Foreign Office. You must know that was mere talk. I do not expect that anything could come of it. But if,” his Grace added with another little run of laughter, “when we return to power—be assured, Mr Winton, that nothing could give me greater pleasure——”
What was he to say? Winton knew very well that he himself was as likely, if not more so—for he was a young man, with the world before him—to be Foreign Minister than the Duke: and what with the confusion of the mistake and the ludicrous character of the patronage offered, he was more embarrassed than tongue could tell. “You are very kind,” he faltered, scarcely knowing what he said; then, taking his courage with both hands, “Duke,” he said, boldly, “it was on a much more presumptuous errand I ventured to intrude upon you. What you will say to me I dare not venture to think. I come not to ask for patronage or place, but for something a great deal more precious. I come——” Here he paused, so bewildered by the dignified unconsciousness and serene superiority of the potentate in whose presence he stood that words failed him, and he stood and gazed at that immovable countenance with a sort of appalled wonder to think that anything should be so great yet so small, so capable of making himself ridiculous, and yet with power to spoil two lives at his pleasure. The Duke shifted his position a little, put his right hand within his waistcoat in an attitude in which he had once stood for his portrait, and regarded his suppliant with benignity. “Go on,” he said, waving his other hand, “go on.”
Ah, how right the Duchess was! Oh, what a miserable mistake the lover had made! But there was no drawing back now. “I am not worthy, no one is worthy of her,” he said with agitation. “I am only a commoner, which I know is a disadvantage in your eyes. The only thing, and that is nothing, is, that at least I could make ample provision and secure every comfort for my wife.”
“Your wife!” said the Duke, with a surprise which was ineffable. If any gleam of suspicion came over him he quenched it in the sublime patronage of a superior. “This is very interesting,” he said, “and shows a great faith in my friendship to take me into your confidence on such a delicate subject. I am happy to hear you are in such favourable circumstances; but really,” he added with a laugh, “when you think how very unlikely it is that I can have any knowledge of the future Mrs Winton——”
The young man grew red and hot with a mixture of embarrassment and resentful excitement, stung by the look and the tone. “It is your daughter,” he said, “who has given me permission to come to you. It is of Lady Jane I want to speak. You cannot think me less worthy of her than I think myself.”
“Lady Jane!” The Duke grew pale; he took his hand out of his waistcoat, and stared at the audacious suitor with dismay. Then he recovered himself with an effort, and snatched at a smile as if it had been something that hung on the wall, and put it on tremulously. “Ah! ah! I see,” he added. “You think she might render you assistance. Speak a good word for you?—eh?” The attempt to be jocular, which was entirely out of his habits, convulsed his countenance. “Yes, yes, I see! that is what you mean,” he said.
There was a pause, and the two men looked each other in the face. A monarch confronted by the whole embodied force of revolution—scorning it, hating it—yet with an insidious suggestion of alarm underneath all—on one hand; and on the other the revolution embodied—pale with lofty anger and a sense of its own rights, yet not without a regret, a sympathetic pang for the old king about to be discrowned. The mutual contemplation lasted not more than a few moments, though it seemed so long. Then the Duke turned on his heel with a grimace which in his agitation he intended for a laugh. “I prefer,” he said, “on the whole, that Lady Jane should not be appealed to. My disposition to serve you was personal. The ladies of my family are not less amicably inclined, I am sure; but I do not wish them to be mixed up—in short you will understand that, wishing you well in every way, I must advise you to trust to your own attractions in a matrimonial point of view. I cannot permit my daughter to interfere.”
He had moved about while he was speaking, but at the end returned to his place and fixed Winton with the commanding look, straight in the eyes, of a man determined to intimidate an applicant. It was the least successful way in which he could have attempted to influence the present suitor. Winton’s excitement rose to such a pitch that he recovered his calm and self-possession as if by magic.
“I feel that I have explained myself badly,” he said, “and this is not a matter on which there can be any misunderstanding between us. I must ask you to listen to me calmly for a moment.”