Framley Parsonage, Anthony Trollope [popular e readers txt] 📗

Miss Dunstable’s party⁠—by Tom Towers, that most pleasant of all pleasant fellows. And how should he have known it⁠—he who flutters from one sweetest flower of the garden to another,

“Adding sugar to the pink, and honey to the rose,
So loved for what he gives, but taking nothing as he goes”?

But the whisper had grown into a rumour, and the rumour into a fact, and the political world was in a ferment. The giants, furious about their bishops’ pension bill, threatened the House⁠—most injudiciously; and then it was beautiful to see how indignant members got up, glowing with honesty, and declared that it was base to conceive that any gentleman in that House could be actuated in his vote by any hopes or fears with reference to his seat. And so matters grew from bad to worse, and these contending parties never hit at each other with such envenomed wrath as they did now;⁠—having entered the ring together so lately with such manifold promises of goodwill, respect, and forbearance!

But going from the general to the particular, we may say that nowhere was a deeper consternation spread than in the electoral division of West Barsetshire. No sooner had the tidings of the dissolution reached the county than it was known that the duke intended to change his nominee. Mr. Sowerby had now sat for the division since the Reform Bill! He had become one of the county institutions, and by the dint of custom and long establishment had been borne with and even liked by the county gentlemen, in spite of his well-known pecuniary irregularities. Now all this was to be changed. No reason had as yet been publicly given, but it was understood that Lord Dumbello was to be returned, although he did not own an acre of land in the county. It is true that rumour went on to say that Lord Dumbello was about to form close connections with Barsetshire. He was on the eve of marrying a young lady, from the other division indeed, and was now engaged, so it was said, in completing arrangements with the government for the purchase of that noble crown property usually known as the Chace of Chaldicotes. It was also stated⁠—this statement, however, had hitherto been only announced in confidential whispers⁠—that Chaldicotes House itself would soon become the residence of the marquis. The duke was claiming it as his own⁠—would very shortly have completed his claims and taken possession;⁠—and then, by some arrangement between them, it was to be made over to Lord Dumbello.

But very contrary rumours to these got abroad also. Men said⁠—such as dared to oppose the duke, and some few also who did not dare to oppose him when the day of battle came⁠—that it was beyond his grace’s power to turn Lord Dumbello into a Barsetshire magnate. The crown property⁠—such men said⁠—was to fall into the hands of young Mr. Gresham, of Boxall Hill, in the other division, and that the terms of purchase had been already settled. And as to Mr. Sowerby’s property and the house of Chaldicotes⁠—these opponents of the Omnium interest went on to explain⁠—it was by no means as yet so certain that the duke would be able to enter it and take possession. The place was not to be given up to him quietly. A great fight would be made, and it was beginning to be believed that the enormous mortgages would be paid off by a lady of immense wealth. And then a dash of romance was not wanting to make these stories palatable. This lady of immense wealth had been courted by Mr. Sowerby, had acknowledged her love⁠—but had refused to marry him on account of his character. In testimony of her love, however, she was about to pay all his debts.

It was soon put beyond a rumour, and became manifest enough, that Mr. Sowerby did not intend to retire from the county in obedience to the duke’s behests. A placard was posted through the whole division in which no allusion was made by name to the duke, but in which Mr. Sowerby warned his friends not to be led away by any report that he intended to retire from the representation of West Barsetshire. “He had sat,” the placard said, “for the same county during the full period of a quarter of a century, and he would not lightly give up an honour that had been extended to him so often and which he prized so dearly. There were but few men now in the House whose connection with the same body of constituents had remained unbroken so long as had that which bound him to West Barsetshire; and he confidently hoped that that connection might be continued through another period of coming years till he might find himself in the glorious position of being the father of the county members of the House of Commons.” The placard said much more than this, and hinted at sundry and various questions, all of great interest to the county; but it did not say one word of the Duke of Omnium, though everyone knew what the duke was supposed to be doing in the matter. He was, as it were, a great Llama, shut up in a holy of holies, inscrutable, invisible, inexorable⁠—not to be seen by men’s eyes or heard by their ears, hardly to be mentioned by ordinary men at such periods as these without an inward quaking. But nevertheless, it was he who was supposed to rule them. Euphemism required that his name should be mentioned at no public meetings in connection with the coming election; but, nevertheless, most men in the county believed that he could send his dog up to the House of Commons as member for West Barsetshire if it so pleased him.

It was supposed, therefore, that our friend Sowerby would have no chance; but he was lucky in finding assistance in a quarter from which he certainly had not deserved it. He had been a staunch friend of the gods