Angels Ministers | Page 6

Garter.
LORD B. Ah! how generous, how generous an instinct! How like you,
Madam, to wish it!
QUEEN. What I want to know is, whether, as Prime Minister, you have
any objection?
LORD B. "As Prime Minister." How hard that makes it for me to
answer! How willingly would I say "None"! How reluctantly, on the
contrary, I have to say, "It had better wait."

QUEEN. Wait? Wait till when? I want to do it now.
LORD B. Yes, so do I. But can you risk, Madam, conferring that most
illustrious symbol of honour, and chivalry, and power, on a defeated
monarch? Your royal prestige, Ma'am, must be considered Great and
generous hearts need, more than most, to take prudence into their
counsels.
QUEEN. But do you think, Lord Beaconsfield, that the Turks are going
to be beaten?
LORD B. The Turks are beaten, Madam.... But England will never be
beaten. We shall dictate terms--moderating the demands of Russia; and
under your Majesty's protection the throne of the Kaliphat will be safe--
once more. That, Madam, is the key to our Eastern policy: a grateful
Kaliphat, claiming allegiance from the whole Mahometan world, bound
to us by instincts of self-preservation--and we hold henceforth the
gorgeous East in fee with redoubled security. His power may be a
declining power; but ours remains. Some day, who knows? Egypt,
possibly even Syria, Arabia, may be our destined reward.
(_Like a cat over a bowl of cream, England's Majesty sits lapping all
this up. But, when he has done, her commentary is shrewd and to the
point_.)
QUEEN. The French won't like that!
LORD B. They won't, Madam, they won't. But has it ever been
England's policy, Madam, to mind what the French don't like?
QUEEN (_with relish_). No, it never has been, has it? Ah! you are the
true statesman, Lord Beaconsfield. Mr. Gladstone never talked to me
like that.
LORD B.(_courteously surprised at what does not at all surprise him_).
No?... You must have had interesting conversations with him, Madam,
in the past.
QUEEN (_very emphatically_). I have never once had a conversation
with Mr. Gladstone, in all my life, Lord Beaconsfield. He used to talk
to me as if I were a public meeting--and one that agreed with him, too!
LORD B. Was there, then, any applause, Madam?
QUEEN. No, indeed! I was too shy to say what I thought. I used to
cough sometimes.
LORD B. Rather like coughing at a balloon, I fear. I have always
admired his flights-regarded as a mere _tour de force_--so buoyant, so

sustained, so incalculable! But, as they never touch earth to any
serviceable end, that I could discover--of what use are they? Yet if
there is one man who has helped me in my career--to whom, therefore,
I should owe gratitude--it is he.
QUEEN. Indeed? Now that does surprise me! Tell me, Lord
Beaconsfield, how has he ever helped you?
LORD B. In our party system, Madam, we live by the mistakes of our
opponents. The balance of the popular verdict swings ever this way and
that, relegating us either to victory or defeat, to office or to opposition.
Many times have I trodden the road to power, or passed from it again,
over ruins the origin of which I could recognise either as my own work
or that of another; and most of all has it been over the disappointments,
the disaffections, the disgusts, the disillusionments-- chiefly among his
own party--which my great opponent has left me to profit by. I have
gained experience from what he has been morally blind to; what he has
lacked in understanding of human nature he has left for me to discover.
Only to-day I learn that he has been in the habit of addressing--as you,
Madam, so wittily phrased it--of addressing, "as though she were a
public meeting," that Royal Mistress, whom it has ever been my most
difficult task not to address sometimes as the most charming, the most
accomplished, and the most fascinating woman of the epoch which
bears her name. (_He pauses, then resumes_.) How strange a fatality
directs the fate of each one of us! How fortunate is he who knows the
limits that destiny assigns to him: limits beyond which no word must be
uttered.
(_His oratorical flight, so buoyant and sustained, having come to its
calculated end, he drops deftly to earth, encountering directly for the
first time the flattered smile with which the Queen has listened to
him_.)
Madam, your kind silence reminds me, in the gentlest, the most
considerate way possible, that I am not here to relieve the tedium of a
life made lonely by a bereavement equal to your own, in conversation
however beguiling, or in quest of a sympathy of which, I dare to say, I