Sir Orlando's Policy
When the guests began to arrive our friend the Duchess had apparently
got through her little difficulties, for she received them with that
open, genial hospitality which is so delightful as coming evidently
from the heart. There had not been another word between her and her
husband as to the manner in which the thing was to be done, and she
had determined that the offensive word should pass altogether out of
her memory. The first comer was Mrs. Finn,--who came indeed rather
as an assistant hostess than as a mere guest, and to her the Duchess
uttered a few half-playful hints as to her troubles. "Considering the
time, haven't we done marvels? Because it does look nice,--doesn't
it? There are no dirt heaps about, and it's all as green as though
it had been there since the Conquest. He doesn't like it because it
looks new. And we've got forty-five bedrooms made up. The servants
are all turned out over the stables somewhere,--quite comfortable,
I assure you. Indeed they like it. And by knocking down the ends of
two passages we've brought everything together. And the rooms are all
numbered just like an inn. It was the only way. And I keep one book
myself, and Locock has another. I have everybody's room, and where it
is, and how long the tenant is to be allowed to occupy it. And here's
the way everybody is to take everybody down to dinner for the next
fortnight. Of course that must be altered, but it is easier when we
have a sort of settled basis. And I have some private notes as to who
should flirt with whom."
"You'd better not let that lie about."
"Nobody could understand a word of it if they had it. A. B. always
means X. Y. Z. And this is the code of the Gatherum Archery Ground.
I never drew a bow in my life,--not a real bow in the flesh, that is,
my dear,--and yet I've made 'em all out, and had them printed. The
way to make a thing go down is to give it some special importance.
And I've gone through the bill of fare for the first week with
Millepois, who is a perfect gentleman,--perfect." Then she gave a
little sigh as she remembered that word from her husband, which had
so wounded her. "I used to think that Plantagenet worked hard when he
was doing his decimal coinage; but I don't think he ever stuck to it
as I have done."
"What does the Duke say to it all?"
"Ah; well, upon the whole he behaves like an angel. He behaves so
well that half my time I think I'll shut it all up and have done with
it,--for his sake. And then, the other half, I'm determined to go on
with it,--also for his sake."
"He has not been displeased?"
"Ask no questions, my dear, and you'll hear no stories. You haven't
been married twice without knowing that women can't have everything
smooth. He only said one word. It was rather hard to bear, but it has
passed away."
That afternoon there was quite a crowd. Among the first comers were
Mr. and Mrs. Roby, and Mr. and Mrs. Rattler. And there were Sir
Orlando and Lady Drought, Lord Ramsden, and Sir Timothy Beeswax.
These gentlemen with their wives represented, for the time, the
Ministry of which the Duke was the head, and had been asked in order
that their fealty and submission might be thus riveted. There were
also there Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, with Lord Thrift and his daughter
Angelica, who had belonged to former Ministries,--one on the Liberal
and the other on the Conservative side,--and who were now among the
Duke's guests, in order that they and others might see how wide the
Duke wished to open his hands. And there was our friend Ferdinand
Lopez, who had certainly made the best use of his opportunities in
securing for himself so great a social advantage as an invitation to
Gatherum Castle. How could any father, who was simply a barrister,
refuse to receive as his son-in-law a man who had been a guest at the
Duke of Omnium's country house? And then there were certain people
from the neighbourhood;--Frank Gresham of Greshamsbury, with his wife
and daughter, the master of the hounds in those parts, a rich squire
of old blood, and head of the family to which one of the aspirant
Prime Ministers of the day belonged. And Lord Chiltern, another
master of fox hounds, two counties off,--and also an old friend of
ours,--had been asked to meet him, and had brought his wife. And
there was Lady Rosina De Courcy, an old maid, the sister of the
present Earl De Courcy, who lived not far off and had been accustomed
to come to Gatherum Castle on state occasions for the last thirty
years,--the only relic in those parts of a family which had lived
there for many years in great pride of place; for her elder brother,
the Earl, was a ruined man, and her younger brothers were living with
their wives abroad, and her sisters had married, rather lowly in the
world, and her mother now was dead, and Lady Rosina lived alone in
a little cottage outside the old park palings, and still held fast
within her bosom all the old pride of the De Courcys. And then
there were Captain Gunner and Major Pountney, two middle-aged young
men, presumably belonging to the army, whom the Duchess had lately
enlisted among her followers as being useful in their way. They could
eat their dinners without being shy, dance on occasions, though very
unwillingly, talk a little, and run on messages;--and they knew the
peerage by heart, and could tell the details of every unfortunate
marriage for the last twenty years. Each thought himself, especially
since this last promotion, to be indispensably necessary to the
formation of London society, and was comfortable in a conviction that
he had thoroughly succeeded in life by acquiring the privilege of
sitting down to dinner three times a week with peers and peeresses.
The list of guests has by no means been made as complete here as it
was to be found in the county newspapers, and in the "Morning Post"
of the time; but enough of names has been given to show of what
nature was the party. "The Duchess has got rather a rough lot to
begin with," said the Major to the Captain.
"Oh, yes. I knew that. She wanted me to be useful, so of course I
came. I shall stay here this week, and then be back in September."
Up to this moment Captain Gunner had not received any invitation for
September, but then there was no reason why he should not do so.
"I've been getting up that archery code with her," said Pountney,
"and I was pledged to come down and set it going. That little Gresham
girl isn't a bad looking thing."
"Rather flabby," said Captain Gunner.
"Very nice colour. She'll have a lot of money, you know."
"There's a brother," said the Captain.
"Oh, yes; there's a brother, who will have the Greshamsbury property,
but she's to have her mother's money. There's a very odd story about
all that, you know." Then the Major told the story, and told every
particular of it wrongly. "A man might do worse than look there,"
said the Major. A man might have done worse, because Miss Gresham was
a very nice girl; but of course the Major was all wrong about the
money.
"Well;--now you've tried it, what do you think about it?" This
question was put by Sir Timothy to Sir Orlando as they sat in a
corner of the archery ground, under the shelter of a tent, looking
on while Major Pountney taught Mrs. Boffin how to fix an arrow to
her bowstring. It was quite understood that Sir Timothy was inimical
to the Coalition though he still belonged to it, and that he would
assist in breaking it up if only there were a fair chance of his
belonging to the party which would remain in power. Sir Timothy
had been badly treated, and did not forget it. Now Sir Orlando had
also of late shown some symptoms of a disturbed ambition. He was
the Leader of the House of Commons, and it had become an almost
recognised law of the Constitution that the Leader of the House of
Commons should be the First Minister of the Crown. It was at least
understood by many that such was Sir Orlando's reading of the laws of
the Constitution.
"We've got along, you know," said Sir Orlando.
"Yes;--yes. We've got along. Can you imagine any possible
concatenation of circumstances in which we should not get along?
There's always too much good sense in the House for an absolute
collapse. But are you contented?"
"I won't say I'm not," said the cautious baronet. "I didn't look for
very great things from a Coalition, and I didn't look for very great
things from the Duke."
"It seems to me that the one achievement to which we've all looked
has been the reaching the end of the Session in safety. We've done
that certainly."
"It is a great thing to do, Sir Timothy. Of course the main work of
Parliament is to raise supplies;--and, when that has been done with
ease, when all the money wanted has been voted without a break-down,
of course Ministers are very glad to get rid of the Parliament. It is
as much a matter of course that a Minister should dislike Parliament
now as that a Stuart King should have done so two hundred and fifty
years ago. To get a Session over and done with is an achievement and
a delight."
"No Ministry can go on long on that far niente principle, and no
minister who accedes to it will remain long in any ministry."
Sir Timothy in saying this might be alluding to the Duke, or the
reference might be to Sir Orlando himself. "Of course, I'm not in
the Cabinet, and am not entitled to say a word; but I think that if
I were in the Cabinet, and if I were anxious,--which I confess I'm
not,--for a continuation of the present state of things, I should
endeavour to obtain from the Duke some idea of his policy for the
next Session." Sir Orlando was a man of certain parts. He could speak
volubly,--and yet slowly,--so that reporters and others could hear
him. He was patient, both in the House and in his office, and had the
great gift of doing what he was told by men who understood things
better than he did himself. He never went very far astray in his
official business, because he always obeyed the clerks and followed
precedents. He had been a useful man,--and would still have remained
so had he not been lifted a little too high. Had he been only one in
the ruck on the Treasury Bench he would have been useful to the end;
but special honour and special place had been assigned to him, and
therefore he desired still bigger things. The Duke's mediocrity of
talent and of energy and of general governing power had been so often
mentioned of late in Sir Orlando's hearing, that Sir Orlando had
gradually come to think that he was the Duke's equal in the Cabinet,
and that perhaps it behoved him to lead the Duke. At the commencement
of their joint operations he had held the Duke in some awe, and
perhaps something of that feeling in reference to the Duke personally
still restrained him. The Dukes of Omnium had always been big people.
But still it might be his duty to say a word to the Duke. Sir Orlando
assured himself that if ever convinced of the propriety of doing so,
he could say a word even to the Duke of Omnium. "I am confident that
we should not go on quite as we are at present," said Sir Timothy as
he closed the conversation.
"Where did they pick him up?" said the Major to the Captain, pointing
with his head to Ferdinand Lopez, who was shooting with Angelica
Thrift and Mr. Boffin and one of the Duke's private secretaries.
"The Duchess found him somewhere. He's one of those fabulously rich
fellows out of the City who make a hundred thousand pounds at a blow.
They say his people were grandees of Spain."
"Does anybody know him?" asked the Major.
"Everybody soon will know him," answered the Captain. "I think I
heard that he's going to stand for some place in the Duke's interest.
He don't look the sort of fellow I like; but he's got money and
he comes here, and he's good looking,--and therefore he'll be a
success." In answer to this the Major only grunted. The Major was a
year or two older than the Captain, and therefore less willing even
than his friend to admit the claims of new comers to social honours.
Just at this moment the Duchess walked across the ground up to the
shooters, accompanied by Mrs. Finn and Lady Chiltern. She had not
been seen in the gardens before that day, and of course a little
concourse was made round her. The Major and the Captain, who had been
driven away by the success of Ferdinand Lopez, returned with their
sweetest smiles. Mr. Boffin put down his treatise on the nature of
Franchises, which he was studying in order that he might lead an
opposition against the Ministry next Session, and even Sir Timothy
Beeswax, who had done his work with Sir Orlando, joined the throng.
"Now I do hope," said the Duchess, "that you are all shooting by the
new code. That is, and is to be, the Gatherum Archery Code, and I
shall break my heart if anybody rebels."
"There are one or two men," said Major Pountney very gravely, "who
won't take the trouble to understand it."
"Mr. Lopez," said the Duchess, pointing with her finger at our
friend, "are you that rebel?"
"I fear I did suggest--" began Mr. Lopez.
"I will have no suggestions,--nothing but obedience. Here are Sir
Timothy Beeswax and Mr. Boffin, and Sir Orlando Drought is not far
off; and here is Mr. Rattler, than whom no authority on such a
subject can be better. Ask them whether in other matters suggestions
are wanted."
"Of course not," said Major Pountney.
"Now, Mr. Lopez, will you or will you not be guided by a strict and
close interpretation of the Gatherum Code? Because, if not, I'm
afraid we shall feel constrained to accept your resignation."
"I won't resign, and I will obey," said Lopez.
"A good ministerial reply," said the Duchess. "I don't doubt but
that in time you'll ascend to high office and become a pillar of the
Gatherum constitution. How does he shoot, Miss Thrift?"
"He will shoot very well indeed, Duchess, if he goes on and
practises," said Angelica, whose life for the last seven years had
been devoted to archery. Major Pountney retired far away into the
park, a full quarter of a mile off, and smoked a cigar under a tree.
Was it for this that he had absolutely given up a month to drawing
out this code of rules, going backwards and forwards two or three
times to the printers in his desire to carry out the Duchess's
wishes? "Women are so d---- ungrateful!" he said aloud in his
solitude, as he turned himself on the hard ground. "And some men are
so d---- lucky!" This fellow, Lopez, had absolutely been allowed to
make a good score off his own intractable disobedience.
The Duchess's little joke about the Ministers generally, and the
advantages of submission on their part to their chief, was thought by
some who heard it not to have been made in good taste. The joke was
just such a joke as the Duchess would be sure to make,--meaning very
little but still not altogether pointless. It was levelled rather at
her husband than at her husband's colleagues who were present, and
was so understood by those who really knew her,--as did Mrs. Finn,
and Mr. Warburton, the private secretary. But Sir Orlando and Sir
Timothy and Mr. Rattler, who were all within hearing, thought that
the Duchess had intended to allude to the servile nature of their
position; and Mr. Boffin, who heard it, rejoiced within himself,
comforting himself with the reflection that his withers were unwrung,
and thinking with what pleasure he might carry the anecdote into the
farthest corners of the clubs. Poor Duchess! 'Tis pitiful to think
that after such Herculean labours she should injure the cause by one
slight unconsidered word, more, perhaps, than she had advanced it by
all her energy.
During this time the Duke was at the Castle, but he showed himself
seldom to his guests,--so acting, as the reader will I hope
understand, from no sense of the importance of his own personal
presence, but influenced by a conviction that a public man should not
waste his time. He breakfasted in his own room, because he could thus
eat his breakfast in ten minutes. He read all the papers in solitude,
because he was thus enabled to give his mind to their contents. Life
had always been too serious to him to be wasted. Every afternoon
he walked for the sake of exercise, and would have accepted any
companion if any companion had especially offered himself. But he
went off by some side-door, finding the side-door to be convenient,
and therefore when seen by others was supposed to desire to remain
unseen. "I had no idea there was so much pride about the Duke," Mr.
Boffin said to his old colleague, Sir Orlando. "Is it pride?" asked
Sir Orlando. "It may be shyness," said the wise Boffin. "The two
things are so alike you can never tell the difference. But the man
who is cursed by either should hardly be a Prime Minister."
It was on the day after this that Sir Orlando thought that the moment
had come in which it was his duty to say that salutary word to the
Duke which it was clearly necessary that some colleague should say,
and which no colleague could have so good a right to say as he who
was the Leader of the House of Commons. He understood clearly that
though they were gathered together then at Gatherum Castle for
festive purposes, yet that no time was unfit for the discussion of
State matters. Does not all the world know that when in autumn the
Bismarcks of the world, or they who are bigger than Bismarcks, meet
at this or that delicious haunt of salubrity, the affairs of the
world are then settled in little conclaves, with greater ease,
rapidity, and certainty than in large parliaments or the dull
chambers of public offices? Emperor meets Emperor, and King meets
King, and as they wander among rural glades in fraternal intimacy,
wars are arranged, and swelling territories are enjoyed in
anticipation. Sir Orlando hitherto had known all this, but had hardly
as yet enjoyed it. He had been long in office, but these sweet
confidences can of their very nature belong only to a very few. But
now the time had manifestly come.
It was Sunday afternoon, and Sir Orlando caught the Duke in the very
act of leaving the house for his walk. There was no archery, and many
of the inmates of the Castle were asleep. There had been a question
as to the propriety of Sabbath archery, in discussing which reference
had been made to Laud's book of sports, and the growing idea that the
National Gallery should be opened on the Lord's-day. But the Duchess
would not have the archery. "We are just the people who shouldn't
prejudge the question," said the Duchess. The Duchess with various
ladies, with the Pountneys and Gunners, and other obedient male
followers, had been to church. None of the Ministers had of course
been able to leave the swollen pouches which are always sent out
from London on Saturday night, probably,--we cannot but think,--as
arranged excuses for such defalcation, and had passed their mornings
comfortably dozing over new novels. The Duke, always right in his
purpose but generally wrong in his practice, had stayed at home
working all the morning, thereby scandalising the strict, and had
gone to church alone in the afternoon, thereby offending the social.
The church was close to the house, and he had gone back to change his
coat and hat, and to get his stick. But as he was stealing out of the
little side-gate, Sir Orlando was down upon him. "If your Grace is
going for a walk, and will admit of company, I shall be delighted to
attend you," said Sir Orlando. The Duke professed himself to be well
pleased, and in truth was pleased. He would be glad to increase his
personal intimacy with his colleagues if it might be done pleasantly.
They had gone nearly a mile across the park, watching the stately
movements of the herds of deer, and talking of this and that trifle,
before Sir Orlando could bring about an opportunity for uttering his
word. At last he did it somewhat abruptly. "I think upon the whole we
did pretty well last Session," he said, standing still under an old
oak-tree.
"Pretty well," re-echoed the Duke.
"And I suppose we have not much to be afraid of next Session?"
"I am afraid of nothing," said the Duke.
"But--;" then Sir Orlando hesitated. The Duke, however, said not a
word to help him on. Sir Orlando thought that the Duke looked more
ducal than he had ever seen him look before. Sir Orlando remembered
the old Duke, and suddenly found that the uncle and nephew were very
like each other. But it does not become the Leader of the House of
Commons to be afraid of any one. "Don't you think," continued Sir
Orlando, "we should try and arrange among ourselves something of a
policy? I am not quite sure that a ministry without a distinct course
of action before it can long enjoy the confidence of the country.
Take the last half century. There have been various policies,
commanding more or less of general assent; free trade--." Here Sir
Orlando gave a kindly wave of his hand, showing that on behalf of his
companion he was willing to place at the head of the list a policy
which had not always commanded his own assent;--"continued reform
in Parliament, to which I have, with my whole heart, given my poor
assistance." The Duke remembered how the bathers' clothes were
stolen, and that Sir Orlando had been one of the most nimble-fingered
of the thieves. "No popery, Irish grievances, the ballot,
retrenchment, efficiency of the public service, all have had their
time."
"Things to be done offer themselves, I suppose, because they are in
themselves desirable; not because it is desirable to have something
to do."
"Just so;--no doubt. But still, if you will think of it, no ministry
can endure without a policy. During the latter part of the last
Session it was understood that we had to get ourselves in harness
together, and nothing more was expected from us; but I think we
should be prepared with a distinct policy for the coming year. I fear
that nothing can be done in Ireland."
"Mr. Finn has ideas--."
"Ah, yes;--well, your Grace. Mr. Finn is a very clever young man
certainly; but I don't think we can support ourselves by his plan of
Irish reform." Sir Orlando had been a little carried away by his own
eloquence and the Duke's tameness, and had interrupted the Duke. The
Duke again looked ducal, but on this occasion Sir Orlando did not
observe his countenance. "For myself, I think, I am in favour of
increased armaments. I have been applying my mind to the subject,
and I think I see that the people of this country do not object to a
slightly rising scale of estimates in that direction. Of course there
is the county suffrage--"
"I will think of what you have been saying," said the Duke.
"As to the county suffrage--"
"I will think it over," said the Duke. "You see that oak. That is the
largest tree we have here at Gatherum; and I doubt whether there be a
larger one in this part of England." The Duke's voice and words were
not uncourteous, but there was something in them which hindered Sir
Orlando from referring again on that occasion to county suffrages or
increased armaments.