Coningsby

B >> Benjamin Disraeli >> Coningsby

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Mr. Millbank was vexed, irritated, grieved. Edith, his Edith, the pride
and delight of his existence, who had been to him only a source of
exultation and felicity, was no longer happy, was perhaps pining away; and
there was the appearance, the unjust appearance that he, her fond father,
was the cause and occasion of all this wretchedness. It would appear that
the name of Coningsby, to which he now owed a great debt of gratitude, was
still doomed to bear him mortification and misery. Truly had the young man
said that there was a curse upon their two families. And yet, on
reflection, it still seemed to Mr. Millbank that he had acted with as much
wisdom and real kindness as decision. How otherwise was he to have acted?
The union was impossible; the speedier their separation, therefore,
clearly the better. Unfortunate, indeed, had been his absence from
Hellingsley; unquestionably his presence might have prevented the
catastrophe. Oswald should have hindered all this. And yet Mr. Millbank
could not shut his eyes to the devotion of his son to Coningsby. He felt
he could count on no assistance in this respect from that quarter. Yet how
hard upon him that he should seem to figure as a despot or a tyrant to his
own children, whom he loved, when he had absolutely acted in an inevitable
manner! Edith seemed sad, Oswald sullen; all was changed. All the objects
for which this clear-headed, strong-minded, kind-hearted man had been
working all his life, seemed to be frustrated. And why? Because a young
man had made love to his daughter, who was really in no manner entitled to
do so.

As the autumn drew on, Mr. Millbank found Hellingsley, under existing
circumstances, extremely wearisome; and he proposed to his daughter that
they should pay a visit to their earlier home. Edith assented without
difficulty, but without interest. And yet, as Mr. Millbank immediately
perceived, the change was a judicious one; for certainly the spirits of
Edith seemed to improve after her return to their valley. There were more
objects of interest: change, too, is always beneficial. If Mr. Millbank
had been aware that Oswald had received a letter from Coningsby, written
before he quitted Spain, perhaps he might have recognised a more
satisfactory reason for the transient liveliness of his daughter which had
so greatly gratified him.

About a month after Christmas, the meeting of Parliament summoned Mr.
Millbank up to London; and he had wished Edith to accompany him. But
London in February to Edith, without friends or connections, her father
always occupied and absent from her day and night, seemed to them all, on
reflection, to be a life not very conducive to health or cheerfulness, and
therefore she remained with her brother. Oswald had heard from Coningsby
again from Rome; but at the period he wrote he did not anticipate his
return to England. His tone was affectionate, but dispirited.

Lady Wallinger went up to London after Easter for the season, and Mr.
Millbank, now that there was a constant companion for his daughter, took a
house and carried Edith back with him to London. Lady Wallinger, who had
great wealth and great tact, had obtained by degrees a not inconsiderable
position in society. She had a fine house in a fashionable situation, and
gave profuse entertainments. The Whigs were under obligations to her
husband, and the great Whig ladies were gratified to find in his wife a
polished and pleasing person, to whom they could be courteous without any
annoyance. So that Edith, under the auspices of her aunt, found herself at
once in circles which otherwise she might not easily have entered, but
which her beauty, grace, and experience of the most refined society of the
Continent, qualified her to shine in. One evening they met the Marquis of
Beaumanoir, their friend of Rome and Paris, and admirer of Edith, who from
that time was seldom from their side. His mother, the Duchess, immediately
called both on the Millbanks and the Wallingers; glad, not only to please
her son, but to express that consideration for Mr. Millbank which the Duke
always wished to show. It was, however, of no use; nothing would induce
Mr. Millbank ever to enter what he called aristocratic society. He liked
the House of Commons; never paired off; never missed a moment of it;
worked at committees all the morning, listened attentively to debates all
the night; always dined at Bellamy's when there was a house; and when
there was not, liked dining at the Fishmongers' Company, the Russia
Company, great Emigration banquets, and other joint-stock festivities.
That was his idea of rational society; business and pleasure combined; a
good dinner, and good speeches afterwards.

Edith was aware that Coningsby had returned to England, for her brother
had heard from him on his arrival; but Oswald had not heard since. A
season in London only represented in the mind of Edith the chance, perhaps
the certainty, of meeting Coningsby again; of communing together over the
catastrophe of last summer; of soothing and solacing each other's
unhappiness, and perhaps, with the sanguine imagination of youth,
foreseeing a more felicitous future. She had been nearly a fortnight in
town, and though moving frequently in the same circles as Coningsby, they
had not yet met. It was one of those results which could rarely occur; but
even chance enters too frequently in the league against lovers. The
invitation to the assembly at ---- House was therefore peculiarly
gratifying to Edith, since she could scarcely doubt that if Coningsby were
in town, which her casual inquiries of Lord Beaumanoir induced her to
believe was the case, he would be present. Never, therefore, had she
repaired to an assembly with such a flattering spirit; and yet there was a
fascinating anxiety about it that bewilders the young heart.

In vain Edith surveyed the rooms to catch the form of that being, whom for
a moment she had never ceased to cherish and muse over. He was not there;
and at the very moment when, disappointed and mortified, she most required
solace, she learned from Mr. Melton that Lady Theresa Sydney, whom she
chanced to admire, was going to be married, and to Mr. Coningsby!

What a revelation! His silence, perhaps his shunning of her were no longer
inexplicable. What a return for all her romantic devotion in her sad
solitude at Hellingsley. Was this the end of their twilight rambles, and
the sweet pathos of their mutual loves? There seemed to be no truth in
man, no joy in life! All the feelings that she had so generously lavished,
all returned upon herself. She could have burst into a passion of tears
and buried herself in a cloister.

Instead of that, civilisation made her listen with a serene though
tortured countenance; but as soon as it was in her power, pleading a
headache to Lady Wallinger, she effected, or thought she had effected, her
escape from a scene which harrowed her heart.

As for Coningsby, he passed a sleepless night, agitated by the unexpected
presence of Edith and distracted by the manner in which she had received
him. To say that her appearance had revived all his passionate affection
for her would convey an unjust impression of the nature of his feelings.
His affection had never for a moment swerved; it was profound and firm.
But unquestionably this sudden vision had brought before him, in startling
and more vivid colours, the relations that subsisted between them. There
was the being whom he loved and who loved him; and whatever were the
barriers which the circumstances of life placed against their union, they
were partakers of the solemn sacrament of an unpolluted heart.

Coningsby, as we have mentioned, had signified to Oswald his return to
England: he had hitherto omitted to write again; not because his spirit
faltered, but he was wearied of whispering hope without foundation, and
mourning over his chagrined fortunes. Once more in England, once more
placed in communication with his grandfather, he felt with increased
conviction the difficulties which surrounded him. The society of Lady
Everingham and her sister, who had been at the same time her visitor, had
been a relaxation, and a beneficial one, to a mind suffering too much from
the tension of one idea. But Coningsby had treated the matrimonial project
of his gay-minded hostess with the courteous levity in which he believed
it had first half originated. He admired and liked Lady Theresa; but there
was a reason why he should not marry her, even had his own heart not been
absorbed by one of those passions from which men of deep and earnest
character never emancipate themselves.

After musing and meditating again and again over everything that had
occurred, Coningsby fell asleep when the morning had far advanced,
resolved to rise when a little refreshed and find out Lady Wallinger, who,
he felt sure, would receive him with kindness.

Yet it was fated that this step should not be taken, for while he was at
breakfast, his servant brought him a letter from Monmouth House, apprising
him that his grandfather wished to see him as soon as possible on urgent
business.

CHAPTER III.

Lord Monmouth was sitting in the same dressing-room in which he was first
introduced to the reader; on the table were several packets of papers that
were open and in course of reference; and he dictated his observations to
Monsieur Villebecque, who was writing at his left hand.

Thus were they occupied when Coningsby was ushered into the room.

'You see, Harry,' said Lord Monmouth, 'that I am much occupied to-day, yet
the business on which I wish to communicate with you is so pressing that
it could not be postponed.' He made a sign to Villebecque, and his
secretary instantly retired.

'I was right in pressing your return to England,' continued Lord Monmouth
to his grandson, who was a little anxious as to the impending
communication, which he could not in any way anticipate. 'These are not
times when young men should be out of sight. Your public career will
commence immediately. The Government have resolved on a dissolution. My
information is from the highest quarter. You may be astonished, but it is
a fact. They are going to dissolve their own House of Commons.
Notwithstanding this and the Queen's name, we can beat them; but the race
requires the finest jockeying. We can't give a point. Tadpole has been
here to me about Darlford; he came specially with a message, I may say an
appeal, from one to whom I can refuse nothing; the Government count on the
seat, though with the new Registration 'tis nearly a tie. If we had a good
candidate we could win. But Rigby won't do. He is too much of the old
clique; used up; a hack; besides, a beaten horse. We are assured the name
of Coningsby would be a host; there is a considerable section who support
the present fellow who will not vote against a Coningsby. They have
thought of you as a fit person, and I have approved of the suggestion. You
will, therefore, be the candidate for Darlford with my entire sanction and
support, and I have no doubt you will be successful. You may be sure I
shall spare nothing: and it will be very gratifying to me, after being
robbed of all our boroughs, that the only Coningsby who cares to enter
Parliament, should nevertheless be able to do so as early as I could
fairly desire.'

Coningsby the rival of Mr. Millbank on the hustings of Darlford!
Vanquished or victorious, equally a catastrophe! The fierce passions, the
gross insults, the hot blood and the cool lies, the ruffianism and the
ribaldry, perhaps the domestic discomfiture and mortification, which he
was about to be the means of bringing on the roof he loved best in the
world, occurred to him with anguish. The countenance of Edith, haughty and
mournful last night, rose to him again. He saw her canvassing for her
father, and against him. Madness! And for what was he to make this
terrible and costly sacrifice For his ambition? Not even for that Divinity
or Daemon for which we all immolate so much! Mighty ambition, forsooth, to
succeed to the Rigbys! To enter the House of Commons a slave and a tool;
to move according to instructions, and to labour for the low designs of
petty spirits, without even the consolation of being a dupe. What sympathy
could there exist between Coningsby and the 'great Conservative party,'
that for ten years in an age of revolution had never promulgated a
principle; whose only intelligible and consistent policy seemed to be an
attempt, very grateful of course to the feelings of an English Royalist,
to revive Irish Puritanism; who when in power in 1835 had used that power
only to evince their utter ignorance of Church principles; and who were at
this moment, when Coningsby was formally solicited to join their ranks, in
open insurrection against the prerogatives of the English Monarchy?

'Do you anticipate then an immediate dissolution, sir?' inquired Coningsby
after a moment's pause.

'We must anticipate it; though I think it doubtful. It may be next month;
it may be in the autumn; they may tide over another year, as Lord Eskdale
thinks, and his opinion always weighs with me. He is very safe. Tadpole
believes they will dissolve at once. But whether they dissolve now, or in
a month's time, or in the autumn, or next year, our course is clear. We
must declare our intentions immediately. We must hoist our flag. Monday
next, there is a great Conservative dinner at Darlford. You must attend
it; that will be the finest opportunity in the world for you to announce
yourself.'

'Don't you think, sir,' said Coningsby, 'that such an announcement would
be rather premature? It is, in fact, embarking in a contest which may last
a year; perhaps more.'

'What you say is very true,' said Lord Monmouth; 'no doubt it is very
troublesome; very disgusting; any canvassing is. But we must take things
as we find them. You cannot get into Parliament now in the good old
gentlemanlike way; and we ought to be thankful that this interest has been
fostered for our purpose.'

Coningsby looked on the carpet, cleared his throat as if about to speak,
and then gave something like a sigh.

'I think you had better be off the day after to-morrow,' said Lord
Monmouth. 'I have sent instructions to the steward to do all he can in so
short a time, for I wish you to entertain the principal people.'

'You are most kind, you are always most kind to me, dear sir,' said
Coningsby, in a hesitating tone, and with an air of great embarrassment,
'but, in truth, I have no wish to enter Parliament.'

'What?' said Lord Monmouth.

'I feel that I am not sufficiently prepared for so great a responsibility
as a seat in the House of Commons,' said Coningsby.

'Responsibility!' said Lord Monmouth, smiling. 'What responsibility is
there? How can any one have a more agreeable seat? The only person to whom
you are responsible is your own relation, who brings you in. And I don't
suppose there can be any difference on any point between us. You are
certainly still young; but I was younger by nearly two years when I first
went in; and I found no difficulty. There can be no difficulty. All you
have got to do is to vote with your party. As for speaking, if you have a
talent that way, take my advice; don't be in a hurry. Learn to know the
House; learn the House to know you. If a man be discreet, he cannot enter
Parliament too soon.'

'It is not exactly that, sir,' said Coningsby.

'Then what is it, my dear Harry? You see to-day I have much to do; yet as
your business is pressing, I would not postpone seeing you an hour. I
thought you would have been very much gratified.'

'You mentioned that I had nothing to do but to vote with my party, sir,'
replied Coningsby. 'You mean, of course, by that term what is understood
by the Conservative party.'

'Of course; our friends.'

'I am sorry,' said Coningsby, rather pale, but speaking with firmness, 'I
am sorry that I could not support the Conservative party.'

'By ----!' exclaimed Lord Monmouth, starting in his seat, 'some woman has
got hold of him, and made him a Whig!'

'No, my dear grandfather,' said Coningsby, scarcely able to repress a
smile, serious as the interview was becoming, 'nothing of the kind, I
assure you. No person can be more anti-Whig.'

'I don't know what you are driving at, sir,' said Lord Monmouth, in a
hard, dry tone.

'I wish to be frank, sir,' said Coningsby, 'and am very sensible of your
goodness in permitting me to speak to you on the subject. What I mean to
say is, that I have for a long time looked upon the Conservative party as
a body who have betrayed their trust; more from ignorance, I admit, than
from design; yet clearly a body of individuals totally unequal to the
exigencies of the epoch, and indeed unconscious of its real character.'

'You mean giving up those Irish corporations?' said Lord Monmouth. 'Well,
between ourselves, I am quite of the same opinion. But we must mount
higher; we must go to '28 for the real mischief. But what is the use of
lamenting the past? Peel is the only man; suited to the times and all
that; at least we must say so, and try to believe so; we can't go back.
And it is our own fault that we have let the chief power out of the hands
of our own order. It was never thought of in the time of your great-
grandfather, sir. And if a commoner were for a season permitted to be the
nominal Premier to do the detail, there was always a secret committee of
great 1688 nobles to give him his instructions.'

'I should be very sorry to see secret committees of great 1688 nobles
again,' said Coningsby.

'Then what the devil do you want to see?' said Lord Monmouth.

'Political faith,' said Coningsby, 'instead of political infidelity.'

'Hem!' said Lord Monmouth.

'Before I support Conservative principles,' continued Coningsby, 'I merely
wish to be informed what those principles aim to conserve. It would not
appear to be the prerogative of the Crown, since the principal portion of
a Conservative oration now is an invective against a late royal act which
they describe as a Bed-chamber plot. Is it the Church which they wish to
conserve? What is a threatened Appropriation Clause against an actual
Church Commission in the hands of Parliamentary Laymen? Could the Long
Parliament have done worse? Well, then, if it is neither the Crown nor the
Church, whose rights and privileges this Conservative party propose to
vindicate, is it your House, the House of Lords, whose powers they are
prepared to uphold? Is it not notorious that the very man whom you have
elected as your leader in that House, declares among his Conservative
adherents, that henceforth the assembly that used to furnish those very
Committees of great revolution nobles that you mention, is to initiate
nothing; and, without a struggle, is to subside into that undisturbed
repose which resembles the Imperial tranquillity that secured the
frontiers by paying tribute?'

'All this is vastly fine,' said Lord Monmouth; 'but I see no means by
which I can attain my object but by supporting Peel. After all, what is
the end of all parties and all politics? To gain your object. I want to
turn our coronet into a ducal one, and to get your grandmother's barony
called out of abeyance in your favour. It is impossible that Peel can
refuse me. I have already purchased an ample estate with the view of
entailing it on you and your issue. You will make a considerable alliance;
you may marry, if you please, Lady Theresa Sydney. I hear the report with
pleasure. Count on my at once entering into any arrangement conducive to
your happiness.'

'My dear grandfather, you have ever been to me only too kind and
generous.'

'To whom should I be kind but to you, my own blood, that has never crossed
me, and of whom I have reason to be proud? Yes, Harry, it gratifies me to
hear you admired and to learn your success. All I want now is to see you
in Parliament. A man should be in Parliament early. There is a sort of
stiffness about every man, no matter what may be his talents, who enters
Parliament late in life; and now, fortunately, the occasion offers. You
will go down on Friday; feed the notabilities well; speak out; praise
Peel; abuse O'Connell and the ladies of the Bed-chamber; anathematise all
waverers; say a good deal about Ireland; stick to the Irish Registration
Bill, that's a good card; and, above all, my dear Harry, don't spare that
fellow Millbank. Remember, in turning him out you not only gain a vote for
the Conservative cause and our coronet, but you crush my foe. Spare
nothing for that object; I count on you, boy.'

'I should grieve to be backward in anything that concerned your interest
or your honour, sir,' said Coningsby, with an air of great embarrassment.

'I am sure you would, I am sure you would,' said Lord Monmouth, in a tone
of some kindness.

'And I feel at this moment,' continued Coningsby, 'that there is no
personal sacrifice which I am not prepared to make for them, except one.
My interests, my affections, they should not be placed in the balance, if
yours, sir, were at stake, though there are circumstances which might
involve me in a position of as much mental distress as a man could well
endure; but I claim for my convictions, my dear grandfather, a generous
tolerance.'

'I can't follow you, sir,' said Lord Monmouth, again in his hard tone.
'Our interests are inseparable, and therefore there can never be any
sacrifice of conduct on your part. What you mean by sacrifice of
affections, I don't comprehend; but as for your opinions, you have no
business to have any other than those I uphold. You are too young to form
opinions.'

'I am sure I wish to express them with no unbecoming confidence,' replied
Coningsby; 'I have never intruded them on your ear before; but this being
an occasion when you yourself said, sir, I was about to commence my public
career, I confess I thought it was my duty to be frank; I would not entail
on myself long years of mortification by one of those ill-considered
entrances into political life which so many public men have cause to
deplore.'

'You go with your family, sir, like a gentleman; you are not to consider
your opinions, like a philosopher or a political adventurer.'

'Yes, sir,' said Coningsby, with animation, 'but men going with their
families like gentlemen, and losing sight of every principle on which the
society of this country ought to be established, produced the Reform
Bill.'

'D---- the Reform Bill!' said Lord Monmouth; 'if the Duke had not
quarrelled with Lord Grey on a Coal Committee, we should never have had
the Reform Bill. And Grey would have gone to Ireland.'

'You are in as great peril now as you were in 1830,' said Coningsby.

'No, no, no,' said Lord Monmouth; 'the Tory party is organised now; they
will not catch us napping again: these Conservative Associations have done
the business.'

'But what are they organised for?' said Coningsby. 'At the best to turn
out the Whigs. And when you have turned out the Whigs, what then? You may
get your ducal coronet, sir. But a duke now is not so great a man as a
baron was but a century back. We cannot struggle against the irresistible
stream of circumstances. Power has left our order; this is not an age for
factitious aristocracy. As for my grandmother's barony, I should look upon
the termination of its abeyance in my favour as the act of my political
extinction. What we want, sir, is not to fashion new dukes and furbish up
old baronies, but to establish great principles which may maintain the
realm and secure the happiness of the people. Let me see authority once
more honoured; a solemn reverence again the habit of our lives; let me see
property acknowledging, as in the old days of faith, that labour is his
twin brother, and that the essence of all tenure is the performance of
duty; let results such as these be brought about, and let me participate,
however feebly, in the great fulfilment, and public life then indeed
becomes a noble career, and a seat in Parliament an enviable distinction.'

'I tell you what it is, Harry,' said Lord Monmouth, very drily, 'members
of this family may think as they like, but they must act as I please. You
must go down on Friday to Darlford and declare yourself a candidate for
the town, or I shall reconsider our mutual positions. I would say, you
must go to-morrow; but it is only courteous to Rigby to give him a
previous intimation of your movement. And that cannot be done to-day. I
sent for Rigby this morning on other business which now occupies me, and
find he is out of town. He will return to-morrow; and will be here at
three o'clock, when you can meet him. You will meet him, I doubt not, like
a man of sense,' added Lord Monmouth, looking at Coningsby with a glance
such as he had never before encountered, 'who is not prepared to sacrifice
all the objects of life for the pursuit of some fantastical puerilities.'

His Lordship rang a bell on his table for Villebecque; and to prevent any
further conversation, resumed his papers.

CHAPTER IV.

It would have been difficult for any person, unconscious of crime, to have
felt more dejected than Coningsby when he rode out of the court-yard of
Monmouth House. The love of Edith would have consoled him for the
destruction of his prosperity; the proud fulfilment of his ambition might
in time have proved some compensation for his crushed affections; but his
present position seemed to offer no single source of solace. There came
over him that irresistible conviction that is at times the dark doom of
all of us, that the bright period of our life is past; that a future
awaits us only of anxiety, failure, mortification, despair; that none of
our resplendent visions can ever be realised: and that we add but one more
victim to the long and dreary catalogue of baffled aspirations.

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