“Well, you have made up your government?” asked Lady Montfort of the
prime minister as he entered her boudoir. He shook his head.
“Have you seen her?” he inquired.
“No, not yet; I suppose she will see me as soon as any one.”
“I am told she is utterly overwhelmed.”
“She was devoted to him; it was the happiest union I ever knew; but
Lady Roehampton is not the woman to be utterly overwhelmed. She has too
imperial a spirit for that.”
“It is a great misfortune,” said the prime minister. “We have not been
lucky since we took the reins.”
“Well, there is no use in deploring. There is nobody else to take the
reins, so you may defy misfortunes. The question now is, what are you
going to do?”
“Well, there seems to me only one thing to do. We must put Rawchester
there.”
“Rawchester!” exclaimed Lady Montfort, “what, ‘Niminy-Piminy’?”
“Well, he is conciliatory,” said the premier, “and if you are not very
clever, you should be conciliatory.”
“He never knows his own mind for a week together.”
“We will take care of his mind,” said the prime minister, “but he has
travelled a good deal, and knows the public men.”
“Yes,” said Lady Montfort, “and the public men, I fear, know him.”
“Then he can make a good House of Lords’ speech, and we have a
first-rate man in the Commons; so it will do.”
“I do not think your first-rate man in the House of Commons will
remain,” said Lady Montfort drily.
“You do not mean that?” said the prime minister, evidently alarmed.
“His health is delicate,” said Lady Montfort; “had it not been for
his devotion to Lord Roehampton, I know he thought of travelling for a
couple of years.”
“Ferrars’ health delicate?” said the premier; “I thought he was the
picture of health and youthful vigour. Health is one of the elements
to be considered in calculating the career of a public man, and I have
always predicted an eminent career for Ferrars, because, in addition to
his remarkable talents, he had apparently such a fine constitution.”
“No health could stand working under Lord Rawchester.”
“Well, but what am I to do? I cannot make Mr. Ferrars secretary of
state.”
“Why not?”
The prime minister looked considerably perplexed. Such a promotion could
not possibly have occurred to him. Though a man of many gifts, and
a statesman, he had been educated in high Whig routine, and the
proposition of Lady Montfort was like recommending him to make a curate
a bishop.
“Well,” he said, “Ferrars is a very clever fellow. He is our rising
young man, and there is no doubt that, if his health is not so delicate
as you fear, he will mount high; but though our rising young man, he is
a young man, much too young to be a secretary of state. He wants age,
larger acquaintance with affairs, greater position, and more root in the
country.”
“What was Mr. Canning’s age, who held Mr. Ferrars’ office, when he was
made secretary of state? and what root in the country had he?”
When the prime minister got back to Downing Street, he sent immediately
for his head whip. “Look after Ferrars,” he said; “they are trying to
induce him to resign office. If he does, our embarrassments will be
extreme. Lord Rawchester will be secretary of state; send a paragraph
at once to the papers announcing it. But look after Ferrars, and
immediately, and report to me.”
Lord Roehampton had a large entailed estate, though his affairs were
always in a state of confusion. That seems almost the inevitable result
of being absorbed in the great business of governing mankind. If there
be exceptions among statesmen of the highest class, they will generally
be found among those who have been chiefly in opposition, and so have
had leisure and freedom of mind sufficient to manage their estates. Lord
Roehampton had, however, extensive powers of charging his estate in lieu
of dower, and he had employed them to their utmost extent; so his
widow was well provided for. The executors were Mr. Sidney Wilton and
Endymion.
After a short period, Lady Roehampton saw Adriana, and not very long
after, Lady Montfort. They both of them, from that time, were her
frequent, if not constant, companions, but she saw no one else. Once
only, since the terrible event, was she seen by the world, and that was
when a tall figure, shrouded in the darkest attire, attended as chief
mourner at the burial of her lord in Westminster Abbey. She remained
permanently in London, not only because she had no country house,
but because she wished to be with her brother. As time advanced, she
frequently saw Mr. Sidney Wilton, who, being chief executor of the
will, and charged with all her affairs, had necessarily much on which to
consult her. One of the greatest difficulties was to provide her with a
suitable residence, for of course, she was not to remain in the family
mansion in St. James’ Square. That difficulty was ultimately overcome
in a manner highly interesting to her feelings. Her father’s mansion in
Hill Street, where she had passed her prosperous and gorgeous childhood,
was in the market, and she was most desirous to occupy it. “It will seem
like a great step towards the restoration,” she said to Endymion. “My
plans are, that you should give up the Albany, and that we should live
together. I should like to live together in Hill Street; I should like
to see our nursery once more. The past then will be a dream, or at least
all the past that is disagreeable. My fortune is yours; as we are twins,
it is likely that I may live as long as you do. But I wish you to be
the master of the house, and in time receive your friends in a manner
becoming your position. I do not think that I shall ever much care to go
out again, but I may help you at home, and then you can invite women; a
mere bachelor’s house is always dull.”
There was one difficulty still in this arrangement. The mansion in Hill
Street was not to be let, it was for sale, and the price naturally for
such a mansion in such a situation, was considerable; quite beyond the
means of Lady Roehampton who had a very ample income, but no capital.
This difficulty, however, vanished in a moment. Mr. Sidney Wilton
purchased the house; he wanted an investment, and this was an excellent
one; so Lady Roehampton became his tenant.
The change was great in the life of Myra, and she felt it. She loved her
lord, and had cut off her beautiful hair, which reached almost to
her feet, and had tied it round his neck in his coffin. But Myra,
notwithstanding she was a woman, and a woman of transcendent beauty, had
never had a romance of the heart. Until she married, her pride and love
for her brother, which was part of her pride, had absorbed her being.
When she married, and particularly as time advanced, she felt all the
misery of her existence had been removed, and nothing could exceed the
tenderness and affectionate gratitude, and truly unceasing devotion,
which she extended to the gifted being to who she owed this deliverance.
But it was not in the nature of things that she could experience those
feelings which still echo in the heights of Meilleraie, and compared
with which all the glittering accidents of fortune sink into
insignificance.
The year rolled on, an agitated year of general revolution. Endymion
himself was rarely in society, for all the time which the House of
Commons spared to him he wished chiefly to dedicate to his sister. His
brougham was always ready to take him up to Hill Street for one of those
somewhat hurried, but amusing little dinners, which break the monotony
of parliamentary life. And sometimes he brought a companion, generally
Mr. Wilton, and sometimes they met Lady Montfort or Adriana, now
ennobled as the daughter of Lord Hainault. There was much to talk about,
even if they did not talk about themselves and their friends, for
every day brought great events, fresh insurrections, new constitutions,
changes of dynasties, assassinations of ministers, states of siege,
evanescent empires, and premature republics.
On one occasion, having previously prepared his sister, who seemed not
uninterested by the suggestion, Endymion brought Thornberry to dine in
Hill Street. There was no one else present except Adriana. Job was a
great admirer of Lady Roehampton, but was a little awestruck by her. He
remembered her in her childhood, a beautiful being who never smiled. She
received him very graciously, and after dinner, inviting him to sit by
her on the sofa, referred with delicacy to old times.
“Your ladyship,” said Thornberry, “would not know that I live myself now
at Hurstley.”
“Indeed!” said Myra, unaffectedly surprised.
“Well, it happened in this way; my father now is in years, and can no
longer visit us as he occasionally did in Lancashire; so wishing to see
us all, at least once more, we agreed to pay him a visit. I do not
know how it exactly came about, but my wife took a violent fancy to the
place. They all received us very kindly. The good rector and his dear
kind wife made it very pleasant, and the archbishop was there--whom we
used to call Mr. Nigel--only think! That is a wonderful affair. He is
not at all high and mighty, but talked with us, and walked with us, just
the same as in old days. He took a great fancy to my boy, John Hampden,
and, after all, my boy is to go to Oxford, and not to Owens College, as
I had first intended.”
“That is a great change.”
“Well, I wanted him to go to Owens College, I confess, but I did not
care so much about Mill Hill. That was his mother’s fancy; she was
very strong about that. It is a Nonconformist school, but I am not a
Nonconformist. I do not much admire dogmas, but I am a Churchman as my
fathers were. However, John Hampden is not to go to Mill Hill. He has
gone to a sort of college near Oxford, which the archbishop recommended
to us; the principal, and all the tutors are clergyman--of course of our
Church. My wife was quite delighted with it all.”
“Well, that is a good thing.”
“And so,” continued Thornberry, “she got it into her head she should
like to live at Hurstley, and I took the place. I am afraid I have been
foolish enough to lay out a great deal of money there--for a place not
my own. Your ladyship would not know the old hall. I have, what
they call, restored it, and upon my word, except the new hall of the
Clothworkers’ Company, where I dined the other day, I do not know
anything of the kind that is prettier.”
“The dear old hall!” murmured Lady Roehampton.
In time, though no one mentioned it, everybody thought that if an
alliance ultimately took place between Lady Roehampton and Mr. Sidney
Wilton, it would be the most natural thing in the world, and everybody
would approve it. True, he was her father’s friend, and much her senior,
but then he was still good-looking, very clever, very much considered,
and lord of a large estate, and at any rate he was a younger man than
her late husband.
When these thoughts became more rife in society, and began to take
the form of speech, the year was getting old, and this reminds us of
a little incident which took place many months previously, at the
beginning of the year, and which we ought to record.
Shortly after the death of Lord Roehampton, Prince Florestan called one
morning in St. James’ Square. He said he would not ask Lady Roehampton
to see him, but he was obliged suddenly to leave England, and he did not
like to depart without personally inquiring after her. He left a letter
and a little packet. And the letter ran thus:
“I am obliged, madam, to leave England suddenly, and it is probable that
we shall never meet again. I should be happy if I had your prayers! This
little jewel enclosed belonged to my mother, the Queen Agrippina. She
told me that I was never to part with it, except to somebody I loved
as much as herself. There is only one person in the world to whom I owe
affection. It is to her who from the first was always kind to me, and
who, through dreary years of danger and anxiety, has been the charm and
consolation of the life of
“Florestan.”