Chapter 15. The Duke Receives A Letter,--And Writes One

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_ CHAPTER XV. The Duke Receives a Letter,--and Writes One

The Duke, when he received Mrs. Finn's note, demanding an interview, thought much upon the matter before he replied. She had made her demand as though the Duke had been no more than any other gentleman, almost as though she had a right to call upon him to wait upon her. He understood and admired the courage of this;--but nevertheless he would not go to her. He had trusted her with that which of all things was the most sacred to him, and she had deceived him! He wrote to her as follows:

The Duke of Omnium presents his compliments to Mrs. Finn.
As the Duke thinks that no good could result either to
Mrs. Finn or to himself from an interview, he is obliged
to say that he would rather not do as Mrs. Finn has
requested.

But for the strength of this conviction the Duke would
have waited upon Mrs. Finn most willingly.

 

Mrs. Finn when she received this was not surprised. She had felt sure that such would be the nature of the Duke's answer; but she was also sure that if such an answer did come she would not let the matter rest. The accusation was so bitter to her that she would spare nothing in defending herself,--nothing in labour and nothing in time. She would make him know that she was in earnest. As she could not succeed in getting into his presence she must do this by letter,--and she wrote her letter, taking two days to think of her words.

May 18, 18--.

MY DEAR DUKE OF OMNIUM,

As you will not come to me, I must trouble your Grace
to read what I fear will be a long letter. For it is
absolutely necessary that I should explain my conduct to
you. That you have condemned me I am sure you will not
deny;--nor that you have punished me as far as the power
of punishment was in your hands. If I can succeed in
making you see that you have judged me wrongly, I think
you will admit your error and beg my pardon. You are not
one who from your nature can be brought easily to do this;
but you are one who will certainly do it if you can be
made to feel that by not doing so you would be unjust. I
am myself so clear as to my own rectitude of purpose and
conduct, and am so well aware of your perspicuity, that
I venture to believe that if you will read this letter I
shall convince you.

Before I go any further I will confess that the matter is
one,--I was going to say almost of life and death to me.
Circumstances, not of my own seeking, have for some years
past thrown me so closely into intercourse with your
family that now to be cast off, and to be put on one side
as a disgraced person,--and that so quickly after the
death of her who loved me so dearly and who was so dear to
me,--is such an affront as I cannot bear and hold up my
head afterwards. I have come to be known as her whom your
uncle trusted and loved, as her whom your wife trusted and
loved,--obscure as I was before;--and as her whom, may I
not say, you yourself trusted? As there was much of honour
and very much of pleasure in this, so also was there
something of misfortune. Friendships are safest when the
friends are of the same standing. I have always felt there
was danger, and now the thing I feared has come home to
me.

Now I will plead my case. I fancy, that when first you
heard that I had been cognisant of your daughter's
engagement, you imagined that I was aware of it before I
went to Matching. Had I been so, I should have been guilty
of that treachery of which you accuse me. I did know
nothing of it till Lady Mary told me on the day before I
left Matching. That she should tell me was natural enough.
Her mother had known it, and for the moment,--if I am
not assuming too much in saying so,--I was filling her
mother's place. But, in reference to you, I could not
exercise the discretion which a mother might have used,
and I told her at once, most decidedly, that you must be
made acquainted with the fact.

Then Lady Mary expressed to me her wish,--not that this
matter should be kept any longer from you, for that it
should be told she was as anxious as I was myself,--but
that it should be told to you by Mr. Tregear. It was not
for me to raise any question as to Mr. Tregear's fitness
or unfitness,--as to which indeed I could know nothing.
All I could do was to say that if Mr. Tregear would make
the communication at once, I should feel that I had done
my duty. The upshot was that Mr. Tregear came to me
immediately on my return to London, and agreeing with me
that it was imperative that you be informed, went to you
and did inform you. In all of that, if I have told the
story truly, where has been my offence? I suppose you will
believe me, but your daughter can give evidence as to
every word that I have written.

I think that you have got it into your mind that I have
befriended Mr. Tregear's suit, and that, having received
this impression, you hold it with the tenacity which is
usual to you. There never was a greater mistake. I went to
Matching as the friend of my dear friend;--but I stayed
there at your request, as your friend. Had I been, when
you asked me to do so, a participator in that secret I
could not have honestly remained in the position you
assigned to me. Had I done so, I should have deserved your
ill opinion. As it is I have not deserved it, and your
condemnation of me has been altogether unjust. Should I
not now receive from you a full withdrawal of all charge
against me, I shall be driven to think that after all
the insight which circumstances have given me into your
character, I have nevertheless been mistaken in the
reading of it.

I remain,
Dear Duke of Omnium,
Yours truly,

M. FINN.

I find on looking over my letter that I must add one word
further. It might seem that I am asking for a return of
your friendship. Such is not my purpose. Neither can you
forget that you have accused me,--nor can I. What I expect
is that you should tell me that you in your conduct to me
have been wrong and that I in mine to you have been right.
I must be enabled to feel that the separation between us
has come from injury done to me, and not by me.

 

He did read the letter more than once, and read it with tingling ears, and hot cheeks, and a knitted brow. As the letter went on, and as the woman's sense of wrong grew hot from her own telling of her own story, her words became stronger and still stronger, till at last they were almost insolent in their strength. Were it not that they came from one who did think herself to have been wronged, then certainly they would be insolent. A sense of injury, a burning conviction of wrong sustained, will justify language which otherwise would be unbearable. The Duke felt that, and though his ears were tingling and his brow knitted, he could have forgiven the language, if only he could have admitted the argument. He understood every word of it. When she spoke of tenacity she intended to charge him with obstinacy. Though she had dwelt but lightly on her own services she had made her thoughts on the matter clear enough. "I, Mrs. Finn, who am nobody, have done much to succour and assist you, the Duke of Omnium; and this is the return which I have received!" And then she told him to his face that unless he did something which it would be impossible that he should do, she would revoke her opinion of his honesty! He tried to persuade himself that her opinion about his honesty was nothing to him;--but he failed. Her opinion was very much to him. Though in his anger he had determined to throw her off from him, he knew her to be one whose good opinion was worth having.

Not a word of overt accusation had been made against his wife. Every allusion to her was full of love. But yet how heavy a charge was really made! That such a secret should be kept from him, the father, was acknowledged to be a heinous fault;--but the wife had known the secret and had kept it from him, the father! And then how wretched a thing it was for him that any one should dare to write to him about the wife that had been taken away from him! In spite of all her faults her name was so holy to him that it had never once passed his lips since her death, except in low whispers to himself,--low whispers made in the perfect, double-guarded seclusion of his own chamber. "Cora, Cora," he had murmured, so that the sense of the sound and not the sound itself had come to him from his own lips. And now this woman wrote to him about her freely, as though there were nothing sacred, no religion in the memory of her.

"It was not for me to raise any question as to Mr. Tregear's fitness." Was it not palpable to all the world that he was unfit? Unfit! How could a man be more unfit? He was asking for the hand of one who was second only to royalty--who was possessed of everything, who was beautiful, well-born, rich, who was the daughter of the Duke of Omnium, and he had absolutely nothing of his own to offer.

But it was necessary that he should at last come to the consideration of the actual point as to which she had written to him so forcibly. He tried to set himself to the task in perfect honesty. He certainly had condemned her. He had condemned her and had no doubt punished her to the extent of his power. And if he could be brought to see that he had done this unjustly, then certainly must he beg her pardon. And when he considered it all, he had to own that her intimacy with his uncle and his wife had not been so much of her seeking as of theirs. It grieved him now that it should have been so, but so it was. And after all this,--after the affectionate surrender of herself to his wife's caprices which the woman had made,--he had turned upon her and driven her away with ignominy. That was all true. As he thought of it he became hot, and was conscious of a quivering feeling round his heart. These were bonds indeed; but they were bonds of such a nature as to be capable of being rescinded and cut away altogether by absolute bad conduct. If he could make it good to himself that in a matter of such magnitude as the charge of his daughter she had been untrue to him and had leagued herself against him, with an unworthy lover, then, then--all bonds would be rescinded! Then would his wrath be altogether justified! Then would it have been impossible that he should have done aught else than cast her out! As he thought of this he felt sure that she had betrayed him! How great would be the ignominy to him should he be driven to own to himself that she had not betrayed him! "There should not have been a moment," he said to himself over and over again,--"not a moment!" Yes;--she certainly had betrayed him.

There might still be safety for him in that confident assertion of "not a moment;" but had there been anything of that conspiracy of which he had certainly at first judged her to be guilty? She had told her story, and had then appealed to Lady Mary for evidence. After five minutes of perfect stillness,--but five minutes of misery, five minutes during which great beads of perspiration broke out from him and stood upon his brow, he had to confess to himself that he did not want any evidence. He did believe her story. When he allowed himself to think she had been in league with Tregear he had wronged her. He wiped away the beads from his brow, and again repeated to himself those words which were now his only comfort, "There should not have been a moment;--not a moment!"

It was thus and only thus that he was enabled to assure himself that there need be no acknowledgment of wrong done on his part. Having settled this in his own mind he forced himself to attend a meeting at which his assistance had been asked as to a complex question on Law Reform. The Duke endeavoured to give himself up entirely to the matter; but through it all there was the picture before him of Mrs. Finn waiting for an answer to her letter. If he should confirm himself in his opinion that he had been right, then would any answer be necessary? He might just acknowledge the letter, after the fashion which has come up in official life, than which silence is an insult much more bearable. But he did not wish to insult, nor to punish her further. He would willingly have withdrawn the punishment under which she was groaning could he have done so without self-abasement. Or he might write as she had done,--advocating his own cause with all his strength, using that last one strong argument,--"there should not have been a moment." But there would be something repulsive to his personal dignity in the continued correspondence which this would produce. "The Duke of Omnium regrets to say, in answer to Mrs. Finn's letter, that he thinks no good can be attained by a prolonged correspondence." Such, or of such kind, he thought must be his answer. But would this be a fair return for the solicitude shown by her to his uncle, for the love which had made her so patient a friend to his wife, for the nobility of her own conduct in many things? Then his mind reverted to certain jewels,--supposed to be of enormous value,--which were still in his possession though they were the property of this woman. They had been left to her by his uncle, and she had obstinately refused to take them. Now they were lying packed in the cellars of certain bankers,--but still they were in his custody. What should he now do in this matter? Hitherto, perhaps once in every six months, he had notified to her that he was keeping them as her curator, and she had always repeated that it was a charge from which she could not relieve him. It had become almost a joke between them. But how could he joke with a woman with whom he had quarrelled after this internecine fashion?

What if he were to consult Lady Cantrip? He could not do so without a pang that would be very bitter to him,--but any agony would be better than that arising from a fear that he had been unjust to one who had deserved well of him. No doubt Lady Cantrip would see it in the same light as he had done. And then he would be able to support himself by the assurance that that which he had judged to be right was approved of by one whom the world would acknowledge to be a good judge on such a matter.

When he got home he found his son's letter telling him of the election at Silverbridge. There was something in it which softened his heart to the young man,--or perhaps it was that in the midst of his many discomforts he wished to find something which at least was not painful to him. That his son and his heir should insist on entering political life in opposition to him was of course a source of pain; but, putting that aside, the thing had been done pleasantly enough, and the young member's letter had been written with some good feeling. So he answered the letter as pleasantly as he knew how.

MY DEAR SILVERBRIDGE,

I am glad that you are in Parliament and am glad also
that you should have been returned by the old borough;
though I would that you could have reconciled yourself
to adhering to the politics of your family. But there is
nothing disgraceful in such a change, and I am able to
congratulate you as a father should a son and to wish you
long life and success as a legislator.

There are one or two things I would ask you to
remember;--and firstly this, that as you have voluntarily
undertaken certain duties you are bound as an honest man
to perform them as scrupulously as though you were paid
for doing them. There was no obligation in you to seek the
post;--but having sought it and acquired it you cannot
neglect the work attached to it without being untrue to
the covenant you have made. It is necessary that a young
member of Parliament should bear this in his mind, and
especially a member who has not worked his way up to
notoriety outside the House, because to him there will be
great facility for idleness and neglect.

And then I would have you always remember the purport for
which there is a Parliament elected in this happy and free
country. It is not that some men may shine there, that
some may acquire power, or that all may plume themselves
on being the elect of the nation. It often appears to me
that some members of Parliament so regard their success
in life,--as the fellows of our colleges do too often,
thinking that their fellowships were awarded for their
comfort and not for the furtherance of any object as
education or religion. I have known gentlemen who have
felt that in becoming members of Parliament they had
achieved an object for themselves instead of thinking that
they had put themselves in the way of achieving something
for others. A member of Parliament should feel himself
to be the servant of his country,--and like every other
servant, he should serve. If this be distasteful to a man
he need not go into Parliament. If the harness gall him he
need not wear it. But if he takes the trappings, then he
should draw the coach. You are there as the guardian of
your fellow-countrymen,--that they may be safe, that they
may be prosperous, that they may be well governed and
lightly burdened,--above all that they may be free. If you
cannot feel this to be your duty, you should not be there
at all.

And I would have you remember also that the work of a
member of Parliament can seldom be of that brilliant
nature which is of itself charming; and that the young
member should think of such brilliancy as being possible
to him only at a distance. It should be your first care to
sit and listen so that the forms and methods of the House
may as it were soak into you gradually. And then you must
bear in mind that speaking in the House is but a very
small part of a member's work, perhaps that part which
he may lay aside altogether with the least strain on his
conscience. A good member of Parliament will be good
upstairs in the Committee Rooms, good down-stairs to make
and to keep a House, good to vote, for his party if it
may be nothing better, but for the measures also which he
believes to be for the good of his country.

Gradually, if you will give your thoughts to it, and above
all your time, the theory of legislation will sink into
your mind, and you will find that there will come upon you
the ineffable delight of having served your country to the
best of your ability.

It is the only pleasure in life which has been enjoyed
without alloy by your affectionate father,

OMNIUM.

 

The Duke in writing this letter was able for a few moments to forget Mrs. Finn, and to enjoy the work which he had on hand. _

Read next: Chapter 16. "Poor Boy"

Read previous: Chapter 14. The New Member For Silverbridge

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