Endymion by Benjamin Disraeli (book club books .TXT) 📖

tossed her parasol on the table, and then she said, "But what is the matter with you, Endymion? you look quite sad. You do not mean you really take our defeat--which is not certain yet--so much to heart. Believe me, opposition has its charms; indeed, I sometimes think the principal reason why I have enjoyed our ministerial life so much is, that it has been from the first a perpetual struggle for existence."

"I do not pretend to be quite indifferent to the probably impending change," said Endymion, "but I cannot say there is anything about it which would affect my feelings very deeply."

"What is it, then?"

"It is this business about which you and Myra are so kindly interesting yourselves," said Endymion with some emotion; "I do not think I could go into parliament."

"Not go into parliament!" exclaimed Lady Montfort. "Why, what are men made for except to go into parliament? I am indeed astounded."

"I do not disparage parliament," said Endymion; "much the reverse. It is a life that I think would suit me, and I have often thought the day might come"----

"The day has come," said Lady Montfort, "and not a bit too soon. Mr. Fox went in before he was of age, and all young men of spirit should do the same. Why! you are two-and-twenty!"

"It is not my age," said Endymion hesitatingly; "I am not afraid about that, for from the life which I have led of late years, I know a good deal about the House of Commons."

"Then what is it, dear Endymion?" said Lady Montfort impatiently.

"It will make a great change in my life," said Endymion calmly, but with earnestness, "and one which I do not feel justified in accepting."

"I repeat to you, that you need give yourself no anxiety about the seat," said Lady Montfort. "It will not cost you a shilling. I and your sister have arranged all that. As she very wisely said, 'It must be done,' and it is done. All you have to do is to write an address, and make plenty of speeches, and you are M.P. for life, or as long as you like."

"Possibly; a parliamentary adventurer, I might swim or I might sink; the chances are it would be the latter, for storms would arise, when those disappear who have no root in the country, and no fortune to secure them breathing time and a future."

"Well, I did not expect, when you handed me out of my carriage to-day, that I was going to listen to a homily on prudence."

"It is not very romantic, I own," said Endymion, "but my prudence is at any rate not a commonplace caught up from copy-books. I am only two-and-twenty, but I have had some experience, and it has been very bitter. I have spoken to you, dearest lady, sometimes of my earlier life, for I wished you to be acquainted with it, but I observed also you always seemed to shrink from such confidence, and I ceased from touching on what I saw did not interest you."

"Quite a mistake. It greatly interested me. I know all about you and everything. I know you were not always a clerk in a public office, but the spoiled child of splendour. I know your father was a dear good man, but he made a mistake, and followed the Duke of Wellington instead of Mr. Canning. Had he not, he would probably be alive now, and certainly Secretary of State, like Mr. Sidney Wilton. But _you_ must not make a mistake, Endymion. My business in life, and your sister's too, is to prevent your making mistakes. And you are on the eve of making a very great one if you lose this golden opportunity. Do not think of the past; you dwell on it too much. Be like me, live in the present, and when you dream, dream of the future."

"Ah! the present would be adequate, it would be fascination, if I always had such a companion as Lady Montfort," said Endymion, shaking his head. "What surprises me most, what indeed astounds me, is that Myra should join in this counsel--Myra, who knows all, and who has felt it perhaps deeper even than I did. But I will not obtrude these thoughts on you, best and dearest of friends. I ought not to have made to you the allusions to my private position which I have done, but it seemed to me the only way to explain my conduct, otherwise inexplicable."

"And to whom ought you to say these things if not to me," said Lady Montfort, "whom you called just now your best and dearest friend? I wish to be such to you. Perhaps I have been too eager, but, at any rate, it was eagerness for your welfare. Let us then be calm. Speak to me as you would to Myra. I cannot be your twin, but I can be your sister in feeling."

He took her hand and gently pressed it to his lips; his eyes would have been bedewed, had not the dreadful sorrows and trials of his life much checked his native susceptibility. Then speaking in a serious tone, he said, "I am not without ambition, dearest Lady Montfort; I have had visions which would satisfy even you; but partly from my temperament, still more perhaps from the vicissitudes of my life, I have considerable waiting powers. I think if one is patient and watches, all will come of which one is capable; but no one can be patient who is not independent. My wants are moderate, but their fulfilment must be certain. The break-up of the government, which deprives me of my salary as a private secretary, deprives me of luxuries which I can do without--a horse, a brougham, a stall at the play, a flower in my button-hole--but my clerkship is my freehold. As long as I possess it, I can study, I can work, I can watch and comprehend all the machinery of government. I can move in society, without which a public man, whatever his talents or acquirements, is in life playing at blind-man's buff. I must sacrifice this citadel of my life if I go into parliament. Do not be offended, therefore, if I say to you, as I shall say to Myra, I have made up my mind not to surrender it. It is true I have the misfortune to be a year older than Charles Fox when he entered the senate, but even with this great disadvantage I am sometimes conceited enough to believe that I shall succeed, and to back myself against the field."


CHAPTER LXVII

Mr. Waldershare was delighted when the great secret was out, and he found that the ministry intended to dissolve, and not resign. It was on a Monday that Lord John Russell made this announcement, and Waldershare met Endymion in the lobby of the House of Commons. "I congratulate you, my dear boy; your fellows, at least, have pluck. If they lose, which I think they will, they will have gained at least three months of power, and irresponsible power. Why! they may do anything in the interval, and no doubt will. You will see; they will make their chargers consuls. It beats the Bed-Chamber Plot, and I always admired that. One hundred days! Why, the Second Empire lasted only one hundred days. But what days! what excitement! They were worth a hundred years at Elba."

"Your friends do not seem quite so pleased as you are," said Endymion.

"My friends, as you call them, are old fogies, and want to divide the spoil among the ancient hands. It will be a great thing for Peel to get rid of some of these old friends. A dissolution permits the powerful to show their power. There is Beaumaris, for example; now he will have an opportunity of letting them know who Lord Beaumaris is. I have a dream; he must be Master of the Horse. I shall never rest till I see Imogene riding in that golden coach, and breaking the line with all the honours of royalty."

"Mr. Ferrars," said the editor of a newspaper, seizing his watched-for opportunity as Waldershare and Endymion separated, "do you think you could favour me this evening with Mr. Sidney Wilton's address? We have always supported Mr. Wilton's views on the corn laws, and if put clearly and powerfully before the country at this junction, the effect might be great, perhaps even, if sustained, decisive."

Eight-and-forty hours and more had elapsed since the conversation between Endymion and Lady Montfort; they had not been happy days. For the first time during their acquaintance there had been constraint and embarrassment between them. Lady Montfort no longer opposed his views, but she did not approve them. She avoided the subject; she looked uninterested in all that was going on around her; talked of joining her lord and going a-fishing; felt he was right in his views of life. "Dear Simon was always right," and then she sighed, and then she shrugged her pretty shoulders. Endymion, though he called on her as usual, found there was nothing to converse about; politics seemed tacitly forbidden, and when he attempted small talk Lady Montfort seemed absent--and once absolutely yawned.

What amazed Endymion still more was, that, under these rather distressing circumstances, he did not find adequate support and sympathy in his sister. Lady Roehampton did not question the propriety of his decision, but she seemed quite as unhappy and as dissatisfied as Lady Montfort.

"What you say, dearest Endymion, is quite unanswerable, and I alone perhaps can really know that; but what I feel is, I have failed in life. My dream was to secure you greatness, and now, when the first occasion arrives, it seems I am more than powerless."

"Dearest sister! you have done so much for me."

"Nothing," said Lady Roehampton; "what I have done for you would have been done by every sister in this metropolis. I dreamed of other things; I fancied, with my affection and my will, I could command events, and place you on a pinnacle. I see my folly now; others have controlled your life, not I--as was most natural; natural, but still bitter."

"Dearest Myra!"

"It is so, Endymion. Let us deceive ourselves no longer. I ought not to have rested until you were in a position which would have made you a master of your destiny."

"But if there should be such a thing as destiny, it will not submit to the mastery of man."

"Do not split words with me; you know what I mean; you feel what I mean; I mean much more than I say, and you understand much more than I say. My lord told me to ask you to dine with us, if you called, but I will not ask you. There is no joy in meeting at present. I feel as I felt in our last year at Hurstley."

"Oh! don't say that, dear Myra!" and Endymion sprang forward and kissed her very much. "Trust me; all will come right; a little patience, and all will come right."

"I have had patience enough in life," said Lady Roehampton; "years of patience, the most doleful, the most dreary, the most dark and tragical. And I bore it all, and I bore it well, because I thought of you, and had confidence in you, and confidence in your star; and because, like an idiot, I had schooled myself to believe that, if I devoted my will to you, that star would triumph."

So, the reader will see, that our hero was not in a very serene and genial mood when he was buttonholed