THE LAST MEETING AT MATCHING.
The ex-Prime Minister did not carry out his purpose of leaving London in the middle of the season and travelling either to Italy or Norway.He was away from London at Whitsuntide longer perhaps than he might have been if still in office, and during this period regarded himself as a man from whose hands all work had been taken--as one who had been found unfit to carry any longer a burden serviceably; but before June was over he and the Duchess were back in London, and gradually he allowed himself to open his mouth on this or that subject in the House of Lords,--not pitching into everybody all round, as his wife had recommended,--but expressing an opinion now and again, generally in support of his friends, with the dignity which should belong to a retired Prime Minister.The Duchess too recovered much of her good temper,--as far at least as the outward show went.One or two who knew her, especially Mrs Finn, were aware that her hatred and her ideas of revenge were not laid aside; but she went on from day to day anathematizing her special enemies, and abstained from reproaching her husband for his pusillanimity.Then came the question as to the autumn.'Let's have everybody down at Gatherum, just as we had before,' said the Duchess.
The proposition almost took away the Duke's breath.'Why do you want a crowd, like that?'
'Just to show them that we are not beaten because we are turned out.'
'But inasmuch as we were turned out, we were beaten.And what has a gathering of people at my house to do with a political manoeuvre? Do you especially want to go to Gatherum?'
'I hate the place.You know I do.'
'Then why should you propose to go there?' He hardly yet knew his wife well enough to understand that the suggestion had been a joke.'If you don't wish to go abroad--'
'I hate going abroad.'
'Then we'll remain at Matching.You don't hate Matching.'
'Ah dear! There are memories there too.But you like it.'
'My books are there.'
'Blue-books,' said the Duchess.
'And there is plenty of room if you wish to have friends.'
'I suppose we must have somebody.You can't live without your mentor.'
'You can ask whom you please,' he said almost fretfully.
'Lady Rosina, of course,' suggested the Duchess.Then he turned to the papers before him, and wouldn't say another word.The matter ended in a party much as usual being collected at Matching about the middle of October,--Telemachus having spent the early part of the autumn with Mentor at Long Royston.There might perhaps be a dozen guests in the house and among them were Phineas Finn and his wife.And Mr Grey was there, having come back from his eastern mission,--whose unfortunate abandonment of his seat at Silverbridge had cause so many troubles,--and Mrs Grey, who in days now long passed had been almost as necessary to Lady Glencora, as was now her later friend Mrs Finn,--and the Cantrips, and for a short time the St Bungays.But Lady Rosina De Courcy on this occasion was not present.There were few there whom my patient readers have not seen at Matching before; but among those few was Arthur Fletcher.
'So it is to be,' said the Duchess to the member for Silverbridge one morning.She had by this time become intimate with 'her member', as she would sometimes call him in a joke, and had concerned herself much as to his matrimonial prospects.
'Yes, Duchess, it is to be,--unless some unforeseen circumstance should arise.'
'What circumstance?'
'Ladies and gentlemen do sometimes change their minds;--but in this case I do not think it likely.'
'And why ain't you being married now, Mr Fletcher?'
'We have agreed to postpone it till next year;--so that we may be quite sure of our own minds.'
'I know you are laughing at me; but nevertheless I am very glad that it is settled.Pray tell her from me that I shall again call soon as ever she is Mrs Fletcher, though I don't think she repaid either of the last two visits I made her.'
'You must make excuses for her, Duchess.'
'Of course.I know.After all she is a most fortunate woman.
And as for you,--I regard you as a hero among lovers.'
'I'm getting used to it,' she said one day to Mrs Finn.
'Of course you'll get used to it.We get used to anything that chance sends us in a marvellously short time.'
'What I mean is that I can go to bed and sleep, and get up and eat my meals without missing the sound of trumpets so much as Idid at first.I remember hearing of people who lived in a mill, and couldn't sleep when the mill stopped.It was like that with me when our mill stopped at first.I had got myself so used to the excitement of it, that I could hardly live without it.'
'You might have all the excitement still, if you pleased.You need not be dead to politics because your husband is not Prime Minister.'
'No; never again,--unless he should come back.If anyone had told me ten years ago that I should have taken an interest in this or that man being in Government, I should have laughed him to scorn.It did not seem possible to me then that I should care what became of men like Sir Timothy Beeswax and Mr Roby.But Idid get to be anxious about it when Plantagenet was shifted from one office to another.'
'Of course you did.Do you think I am not anxious about Phineas?'
'But when he became Prime Minister, I gave myself up to it altogether.I shall never forget what I felt when he came to me and told me that perhaps it might be so;--but told me also that he would escape from it if it were possible.I was the Lady Macbeth of the occasion all over;--whereas he was so scrupulous, so burdened with conscience! As for me, I would have taken it by any means.Then it was the old Duke played the part of the three witches to a nicety.Well, there hasn't been any absolute murder, and I haven't quite gone mad.'
'Nor need you be afraid though all the woods of Gatherum should come to Matching.'