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

Diana do, Diana of the Petty Bag, but abandon her pride of place to some rude Orion? In other words, the ministry had been compelled to resign, and with them Mr. Harold Smith.

“And so poor Harold is out, before he has well tasted the sweets of office,” said Sowerby, writing to his friend the parson; “and as far as I know, the only piece of Church patronage which has fallen in the way of the ministry since he joined it, has made its way down to Framley⁠—to my great joy and contentment.” But it hardly tended to Mark’s joy and contentment on the same subject that he should be so often reminded of the benefit conferred upon him.

Terrible was this breakdown of the ministry, and especially to Harold Smith, who to the last had had confidence in that theory of new blood. He could hardly believe that a large majority of the House should vote against a government which he had only just joined. “If we are to go on in this way,” he said to his young friend Green Walker, “the Queen’s government cannot be carried on.” That alleged difficulty as to carrying on the Queen’s government has been frequently mooted in late years since a certain great man first introduced the idea. Nevertheless, the Queen’s government is carried on, and the propensity and aptitude of men for this work seems to be not at all on the decrease. If we have but few young statesmen, it is because the old stagers are so fond of the rattle of their harness.

“I really do not see how the Queen’s government is to be carried on,” said Harold Smith to Green Walker, standing in a corner of one of the lobbies of the House of Commons on the first of those days of awful interest, in which the Queen was sending for one crack statesman after another; and some anxious men were beginning to doubt whether or no we should, in truth, be able to obtain the blessing of another cabinet. The gods had all vanished from their places. Would the giants be good enough to do anything for us or no? There were men who seemed to think that the giants would refuse to do anything for us. “The House will now be adjourned over till Monday, and I would not be in her Majesty’s shoes for something,” said Mr. Harold Smith.

“By Jove! no,” said Green Walker, who in these days was a stanch Harold Smithian, having felt a pride in joining himself on as a substantial support to a cabinet minister. Had he contented himself with being merely a Brockite, he would have counted as nobody. “By Jove! no,” and Green Walker opened his eyes and shook his head, as he thought of the perilous condition in which her Majesty must be placed. “I happen to know that Lord ⸻ won’t join them unless he has the Foreign Office,” and he mentioned some hundred-handed Gyas supposed to be of the utmost importance to the counsels of the Titans.

“And that, of course, is impossible. I don’t see what on earth they are to do. There’s Sidonia; they do say that he’s making some difficulty now.” Now Sidonia was another giant, supposed to be very powerful.

“We all know that the Queen won’t see him,” said Green Walker, who, being a member of Parliament for the Crewe Junction, and nephew to Lady Hartletop, of course had perfectly correct means of ascertaining what the Queen would do, and what she would not.

“The fact is,” said Harold Smith, recurring again to his own situation as an ejected god, “that the House does not in the least understand what it is about;⁠—doesn’t know what it wants. The question I should like to ask them is this: do they intend that the Queen shall have a government, or do they not? Are they prepared to support such men as Sidonia and Lord De Terrier? If so, I am their obedient humble servant; but I shall be very much surprised, that’s all.” Lord De Terrier was at this time recognized by all men as the leader of the giants.

“And so shall I⁠—deucedly surprised. They can’t do it, you know. There are the Manchester men. I ought to know something about them down in my country; and I say they can’t support Lord De Terrier. It wouldn’t be natural.”

“Natural! Human nature has come to an end, I think,” said Harold Smith, who could hardly understand that the world should conspire to throw over a government which he had joined, and that, too, before the world had waited to see how much he would do for it; “the fact is this, Walker, we have no longer among us any strong feeling of party.”

“No, not a d⁠⸺,” said Green Walker, who was very energetic in his present political aspirations.

“And till we can recover that, we shall never be able to have a government firm-seated and sure-handed. Nobody can count on men from one week to another. The very members who in one month place a minister in power, are the very first to vote against him in the next.”

“We must put a stop to that sort of thing, otherwise we shall never do any good.”

“I don’t mean to deny that Brock was wrong with reference to Lord Brittleback. I think that he was wrong, and I said so all through. But, heavens on earth⁠—!” and instead of completing his speech Harold Smith turned away his head, and struck his hands together in token of his astonishment at the fatuity of the age. What he probably meant to express was this: that if such a good deed as that late appointment made at the Petty Bag Office were not held sufficient to atone for that other evil deed to which he had alluded, there would be an end of all justice in sublunary matters. Was no offence to be forgiven, even when so great virtue had been displayed?

“I attribute it all to Supplehouse,”