Angels Ministers | Page 7

feel assured. For, in a sense, it is as to a public assembly, or rather as to
a great institution, immemorially venerable and august that I have to
address myself when, obedient to your summons, I come to be
consulted as your Majesty's First Minister of State. If, therefore, your

royal mind have any inquiries, any further commands to lay upon me, I
am here, Madam, to give effect to them in so far as I can.
(_This time he has really finished, but with so artful an abbreviation at
the point where her interest has been most roused that the Queen would
fain have him go on. And so the conversation continues to flow along
intimate channels_.)
QUEEN. No, dear Lord Beaconsfield, not to-day! Those official
matters can wait. After you have said so much, and said it so
beautifully, I would rather still talk with you as a friend. Of friends you
and I have not many; those who make up our world, for the most part,
we have to keep at a distance. But while I have many near relatives,
children and descendants, I remember that you have none. So your case
is the harder.
LORD B. Ah, no, Madam, indeed! I have my children--descendants
who will live after me, I trust--in those policies which, for the welfare
of my beloved country, I confide to the care of a Sovereign whom I
revere and love....I am not unhappy in my life, Madam; far less in my
fortune; only, as age creeps on, I find myself so lonely, so solitary, that
sometimes I have doubt whether I am really alive, or whether the voice,
with which now and then I seek to reassure myself, be not the voice of
a dead man.
QUEEN (_almost tearfully_). No, no, my dear Lord Beaconsfield, you
mustn't say that!
LORD B.(_gallantly_). I won't say anything, Madam, that you forbid,
or that you dislike. You invited me to speak to you as a friend; so I
have done, so I do. I apologise that I have allowed sadness, even for a
moment, to trouble the harmony-the sweetness--of our conversation.
QUEEN. Pray, do not apologise! It has been a very great privilege; I
beg that you will go on! Tell me--you spoke of bereavement--I wish
you would tell me more--about your wife.
(_The sudden request touches some latent chord; and it is with genuine
emotion that he answers_.)
LORD B. Ah! My wife! To her I owed everything.
QUEEN. She was devoted to you, wasn't she?
LORD B. I never read the depth of her devotion-till after her death.
Then, Madam--this I have told to nobody but yourself--then I found
among her papers--addressed "to my dear husband"--a message, written

only a few days before her death, with a hand shaken by that
nerve-racking and fatal malady which she endured so
patiently--begging me to marry again.
(_The Queen is now really crying, and finds speech difficult._)
QUEEN. And you, you--? Dear Lord Beaconsfield; did you mean--had
you ever meant----?
LORD B. I did not then, Madam; nor have I ever done so since. It is
enough if I allow myself--to love.
QUEEN. Oh, yes, yes; I understand--better than others would. For that
has always been my own feeling.
LORD B. In the history of my race, Madam, there has been a great
tradition of faithfulness between husbands and wives. For the hardness
of our hearts, we are told, Moses permitted us to give a writing of
divorcement. But we have seldom acted on it. In my youth I became a
Christian; I married a Christian. But that was no reason for me to desert
the nobler traditions of my race--for they are in the blood and in the
heart. When my wife died I had no thought to marry again; and when I
came upon that tender wish, still I had no thought for it; my mind
would not change. Circumstances that have happened since have sealed
irrevocably my resolution-never to marry again.
QUEEN. Oh, I think that is so wise, so right, so noble of you!
(_The old Statesman rises, pauses, appears to hesitate, then in a voice
charged with emotion says_)
LORD B. Madam, will you permit me to kiss your hand?
(_The hand graciously given, and the kiss fervently implanted, he falls
back once more to a respectful distance. But the emotional excitement
of the interview has told upon him, and it is in a wavering voice of
weariness that he now speaks_.)
LORD B. You have been very forbearing with me, Madam, not to
indicate that I have outstayed either my welcome or your powers of
endurance. Yet so much conversation must necessarily have tired you.
May I then crave permission, Madam, to withdraw. For, to speak truly,
I do need some rest.