Book 4 Chapter 11
On the evening of the day that Egremont had met Sybil in the Abbey ofWestminster, and subsequently parted from her under circumstances sodistressing, the Countess of Marney held a great assembly at the familymansion in St James Square, which Lord Marney had intended to have letto a new club, and himself and his family to have taken refuge for ashort season at an hotel, but he drove so hard a bargain that before thelease was signed, the new club, which mainly consisted of an ingeniousindividual who had created himself secretary, had vanished. Then it wasagreed that the family mansion should be inhabited for the season bythe family; and to-night Arabella was receiving all that great world ofwhich she herself was a distinguished ornament.
"We come to you as early as possible my dear Arabella," said LadyDeloraine to her daughter-in-law.
"You are always so good! Have you seen Charles? I was in hopes he wouldhave come," Lady Marney added in a somewhat mournful tone.
"He is at the House: otherwise I am sure he would have been here," saidLady Deloraine, glad that she had so good a reason for an absence, whichunder any circumstances she well knew would have occurred.
"I fear you will be sadly in want of beaus this evening, my love. Wedined at the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine's, and all our cavaliers vanished.They talk of an early division."
"I really wish all these divisions were over," said Lady Marney. "Theyare very anti-social. Ah! here is Lady de Mowbray."
Alfred Mountchesney hovered round Lady Joan Fitz-Warene, who wasgratified by the devotion of the Cupid of May Fair. He utteredinconceivable nothings, and she replied to him in incomprehensiblesomethings. Her learned profundity and his vapid lightness effectivelycontrasted. Occasionally he caught her eye and conveyed to her theanguish of his soul in a glance of self-complacent softness.
Lady St Julians leaning on the arm of the Duke of Fitz-Aquitaine stoppedto speak to Lady Joan. Lady St Julians was determined that the heiressof Mowbray should marry one of her sons. She watched therefore witha restless eye all those who attempted to monopolize Lady Joan'sattention, and contrived perpetually to interfere with their manoeuvres.In the midst of a delightful conversation that seemed to approach acrisis, Lady St Julians was sure to advance, and interfere with someaffectionate appeal to Lady Joan, whom she called her "dear child" and"sweetest love," while she did not deign even to notice the unhappycavalier whom she had thus as it were unhorsed.
"My sweet child!" said Lady St Julians to Lady Joan, "you have no ideahow unhappy Frederick is this evening, but he cannot leave the House,and I fear it will be a late affair."
Lady Joan looked as if the absence or presence of Frederick was to hera matter of great indifference, and then she added, "I do not think thedivision so important as is generally imagined. A defeat upon a questionof colonial government does not appear to me of sufficient weight todissolve a cabinet."
"Any defeat will do that now," said Lady St Julians, "but to tell youthe truth I am not very sanguine. Lady Deloraine says they will be beat:she says the radicals will desert them; but I am not so sure. Why shouldthe radicals desert them? And what have we done for the radicals? Had weindeed foreseen this Jamaica business, and asked some of them to dinner,or given a ball or two to their wives and daughters! I am sure if I hadhad the least idea that we had so good a chance of coming in, I shouldnot have cared myself to have done something; even to have invited theirwomen."
"But you are such a capital partisan, Lady St Julians," said the Duke ofFitz-Aquitaine, who with the viceroyalty of Ireland dexterouslydangled before his eyes for the last two years, had become a thoroughconservative and had almost as much confidence in Sir Robert as in LordStanley.
"I have made great sacrifices," said Lady St Julians. "I went once andstayed a week at Lady Jenny Spinner's to gain her looby of a son and hiseighty thousand a-year, and Lord St Julians proposed him at White's; andthen after all the whigs made him a peer! They certainly make more oftheir social influences than we do. That affair of that Mr Trenchard wasa blow. Losing a vote at such a critical time, when if I had had onlya remote idea of what was passing through his mind, I would have evenasked him to Barrowley for a couple of days."
A foreign diplomatist of distinction had pinned Lord Marney, and wasdexterously pumping him as to the probable future.
"But is the pear ripe?" said the diplomatist.
"The pear is ripe if we have courage to pluck it," said Lord Marney;"but our fellows have no pluck."
"But do you think that the Duke of Wellington--" and here thediplomatist stopped and looked up in Lord Marney's face, as if he wouldconvey something that he would not venture to express.
"Here he is," said Lord Marney, "he will answer the question himself."
Lord Deloraine and Mr Ormsby passed by; the diplomatist addressed them:"You have not been to the Chamber?"
"No," said Lord Deloraine; "but I hear there is hot work. It will belate."
"Do you think--," said the diplomatist, and he looked up in the face ofLord Deloraine.
"I think that in the long run everything will have an end," said LordDeloraine.
"Ah!" said the diplomatist.
"Bah!" said Lord Deloraine as he walked away with Mr Ormsby. "I rememberthat fellow--a sort of equivocal attache at Paris, when we were therewith Monmouth at the peace: and now he is a quasi ambassador, andribboned and starred to the chin."
"The only stars I have got," said Mr Ormsby demurely, "are four stars inIndia stock."
Lady Firebrace and Lady Maud Fitz-Warene were announced: they had justcome from the Commons; a dame and damsel full of political enthusiasm.Lady Firebrace gave critical reports and disseminated many contradictoryestimates of the result; Lady Maud talked only of a speech made by LordMilford, which from the elaborate noise she made about it, you wouldhave supposed to have been the oration of the evening; on the contrary,it had lasted only a few minutes and in a thin house had been nearlyinaudible; but then, as Lady Maud added, "it was in such good taste!"
Alfred Mountchesney and Lady Joan Fitz-Warene passed Lady Marney who wasspeaking to Lord Deloraine. "Do you think," said Lady Marney, "that MrMountchesney will bear away the prize?"
Lord Deloraine shook his head. "These great heiresses can never make uptheir minds. The bitter drop rises in all their reveries."
"And yet," said Lady Marney, "I would just as soon be married for mymoney as my face."
Soon after this there was a stir in the saloons; a murmur, the ingressof many gentlemen: among others Lord Valentine, Lord Milford, MrEgerton, Mr Berners, Lord Fitz-Heron, Mr Jermyn. The House was up; thegreat Jamaica division was announced; the radicals had thrown over thegovernment, who left in a majority of only five, had already intimatedtheir sense of the unequivocal feeling of the House with respect tothem. It was known that on the morrow the government would resign.
Lady Deloraine, prepared for the great result, was calm: Lady StJulians, who had not anticipated it, was in a wild flutter of distractedtriumph. A vague yet dreadful sensation came over her in the midst ofher joy that Lady Deloraine had been beforehand with her; had made hercombinations with the new Minister; perhaps even sounded the Court. Atthe same time that in this agitating vision the great offices of thepalace which she had apportioned to herself and her husband seemedto elude her grasp; the claims and hopes and interests of her variouschildren haunted her perplexed consciousness. What if Charles Egremontwere to get the place which she had projected for Frederick or Augustus?What if Lord Marney became master of the horse? Or Lord Deloraine wentagain to Ireland? In her nervous excitement she credited all thesecatastrophes; seized upon "the Duke" in order that Lady Deloraine mightnot gain his ear, and resolved to get home as soon as possible, in orderthat she might write without a moment's loss of time to Sir Robert.
"They will hardly go out without making some peers," said Sir VavasourFirebrace to Mr Jermyn.
"Why they have made enough."
"Hem! I know Tubbe Swete has a promise, and so has Cockawhoop. I don'tthink Cockawhoop
could show again at Boodle's without a coronet."
"I don't see why these fellows should go out," said Mr Ormsby. "Whatdoes it signify whether ministers have a majority of five, or ten ortwenty? In my time, a proper majority was a third of the House. That wasLord Liverpool's majority. Lord Monmouth used to say that there wereten families in this country who, if they could only agree, could alwaysshare the government. Ah! those were the good old times! We never hadadjourned debates then; but sate it out like gentlemen who had beenused all their lives to be up all night, and then supped at Watier'safterwards."
"Ah! my dear Ormsby," said Mr Berners, "do not mention Watier's; youmake my mouth water."
"Shall you stand for Birmingham, Ormsby, if there be a dissolution?"said Lord Fitz-Heron.
"I have been asked," said Mr Ormsby; "but the House of Commons is notthe House of Commons of my time, and I have no wish to re-enter it. If Ihad a taste for business, I might be a member of the Marylebone vestry."
"All I repeat," said Lord Marney to his mother, as he rose from the sofawhere he had been some time in conversation with her, "that if there beany idea that I wish Lady Marney should be a lady in waiting, it is anerror, Lady Deloraine. I wish that to be understood. I am a domesticman, and I wish Lady Marney to be always with me; and what I want I wantfor myself. I hope in arranging the household the domestic character ofevery member of it will be considered. After all that has occurred thecountry expects that."
"But my dear George, I think it is really premature--"
"I dare say it is; but I recommend you, my dear mother, to be alive.I heard Lady St Julians just now in the supper room asking the Duke topromise her that her Augustus should be a Lord of the Admiralty. Shesaid the Treasury would not do, as there was no house, and that withsuch a fortune as his wife brought him he could not hire a house under athousand a-year."
"He will not have the Admiralty," said Lady Deloraine.
"She looks herself to the Robes."
"Poor woman!" said Lady Deloraine.
"Is it quite true?" said a great whig dame to Mr Egerton, one of her ownparty.
"Quite," he said.
"I can endure anything except Lady St Julian's glance of triumph," saidthe whig dame. "I really think if it were only to ease her Majesty fromsuch an infliction, they ought to have held on."
"And must the household be changed?" said Mr Egerton. "Do not lookso serious," said the whig dame smiling with fascination "we aresurrounded by the enemy."
"Will you be at home to-morrow early?" said Mr Egerton.
"As early as you please."
"Very well, we will talk then. Lady Charlotte has heard something; nousverrons."
"Courage; we have the Court with us, and the Country cares for nothing."