Dr Finn, of Killaloe, in county Clare, was as well known in those parts — the confines, that is, of the counties Clare, Limerick, Tipperary, and Galway — as was the bishop himself who lived in the same town, and was as much respected. Many said that the doctor was the richer man of the two, and the practice of his profession was extended over almost as wide a district. Indeed the bishop whom he was privileged to attend, although a Roman Catholic, always spoke of their dioceses being conterminate. It will therefore be understood that Dr Finn — Malachi Finn was his full name — had obtained a wide reputation as a country practitioner in the west of Ireland. And he was a man sufficiently well to do, though that boast made by his friends, that he was as warm a man as the bishop, had but little truth to support it. Bishops in Ireland, if they live at home, even in these days, are very warm men; and Dr Finn had not a penny in the world for which he had not worked hard. He had, moreover, a costly family, five daughters and one son, and, at the time of which we are speaking, no provision in the way of marriage or profession had been made for any of them. Of the one son, Phineas, the hero of the following pages, the mother and five sisters were very proud. The doctor was accustomed to say that his goose was as good as any other man’s goose, as far as he could see as yet; but that he should like some very strong evidence before he allowed himself to express an opinion that the young bird partook, in any degree, of the qualities of a swan. From which it may be gathered that Dr Finn was a man of commonsense.
Phineas had come to be a swan in the estimation of his mother and sisters by reason of certain early successes at college. His father, whose religion was not of that bitter kind in which we in England are apt to suppose that all the Irish Roman Catholics indulge, had sent his son to Trinity; and there were some in the neighbourhood of Killaloe — patients, probably, of Dr Duggin, of Castle Connell, a learned physician who had spent a fruitless life in endeavouring to make head against Dr Finn — who declared that old Finn would not be sorry if his son were to turn Protestant and go in for a fellowship. Mrs Finn was a Protestant, and the five Miss Finns were Protestants, and the doctor himself was very much given to dining out among his Protestant friends on a Friday. Our Phineas, however, did not turn Protestant up in Dublin, whatever his father’s secret wishes on that subject may have been. He did join a debating society, to success in which his religion was no bar; and he there achieved a sort of distinction which was both easy and pleasant, and which, making its way down to Killaloe, assisted in engendering those ideas as to swanhood of which maternal and sisterly minds are so sweetly susceptible. “I know half a dozen old windbags at the present moment,” said the doctor, “who were great fellows at debating clubs when they were boys.” “Phineas is not a boy any longer,” said Mrs Finn. “And windbags don’t get college scholarships,” said Matilda Finn, the second daughter. “But papa always snubs Phinny,” said Barbara, the youngest. “I’ll snub you, if you don’t take care,” said the doctor, taking Barbara tenderly by the ear — for his youngest daughter was the doctor’s pet.
The doctor certainly did not snub his son, for he allowed him to go over to London when he was twenty-two years of age, in order that he might read with an English barrister. It was the doctor’s wish that his son might be called to the Irish Bar, and the young man’s desire that he might go to the English Bar. The doctor so far gave way, under the influence of Phineas himself, and of all the young women of the family, as to pay the usual fee to a very competent and learned gentleman in the Middle Temple, and to allow his son one hundred and fifty pounds per annum for three years. Dr Finn, however, was still firm in his intention that his son should settle in Dublin, and take the Munster Circuit — believing that Phineas might come to want home influences and home connections, in spite of the swanhood which was attributed to him.
Phineas sat his terms for three years, and was duly called to the Bar; but no evidence came home as to the acquirement of any considerable amount of law lore, or even as to much law study, on the part of the young aspirant. The learned pundit at whose feet he had been sitting was not especially loud in praise of his pupil’s industry, though he did say a pleasant word or two as to his pupil’s intelligence. Phineas himself did not boast much of his own hard work when at home during the long vacation. No rumours of expected successes — of expected professional successes — reached the ears of any of the Finn family at Killaloe. But, nevertheless, there came tidings which maintained those high ideas in the maternal bosom of which mention has been made, and which were of sufficient strength to induce the doctor, in opposition to his own judgment, to consent to the continued residence of his son in London. Phineas belonged to an excellent club — the Reform Club — and went into very good society. He was hand in glove with the Hon. Laurence Fitzgibbon, the youngest son of Lord Claddagh. He was intimate with Barrington Erle, who had been private secretary — one of the private secretaries — to the great Whig Prime Minister who was lately in but was now out. He had dined three or four times with that great Whig nobleman, the Earl of Brentford. And he had been assured that if he stuck to the English Bar he would certainly do well. Though he might fail to succeed in court or in chambers, he would doubtless have given to him someone of those numerous appointments for which none but clever young barristers are supposed to be fitting candidates. The old doctor yielded for another year, although at the end of the second year he was called upon to pay a sum of three hundred pounds, which was then due by Phineas to creditors in London. When the doctor’s male friends in and about Killaloe heard that he had done so, they said that he was doting. Not one of the Miss Finns was as yet married; and, after all that had been said about the doctor’s wealth, it was supposed that there would not be above five hundred pounds a year among them all, were he to give up his profession. But the doctor, when he paid that three hundred pounds for his son, buckled to his work again, though he had for twelve months talked of giving up the midwifery. He buckled to again, to the great disgust of Dr Duggin, who at this time said very ill-natured things about young Phineas.
At the end of the three years Phineas was called to the Bar, and immediately received a letter from his father asking minutely as to his professional intentions. His father recommended him to settle in Dublin, and promised the one hundred and fifty pounds for three more years, on condition that this advice was followed. He did not absolutely say that the allowance would be stopped if the advice were not followed, but that was plainly to be implied. That letter came at the moment of a dissolution of Parliament. Lord de Terrier, the Conservative Prime Minister, who had now been in office for the almost unprecedentedly long period of fifteen months, had found that he could not face continued majorities against him in the House of Commons, and had dissolved the House. Rumour declared that he would have much preferred to resign, and betake himself once again to the easy glories of opposition; but his party had naturally been obdurate with him, and he had resolved to appeal to the country. When Phineas received his father’s letter, it had just been suggested to him at the Reform Club that he should stand for the Irish borough of Loughshane.
This proposition had taken Phineas Finn so much by surprise that when first made to him by Barrington Erle it took his breath away. What! he stand for Parliament, twenty-four years old, with no vestige of property belonging to him, without a penny in his purse, as completely dependent on his father as he was when he first went to school at eleven years of age! And for Loughshane, a little borough in the county Galway, for which a brother of that fine old Irish peer, the Earl of Tulla, had been sitting for the last twenty years — a fine, high-minded representative of the thorough-going Orange Protestant feeling of Ireland! And the Earl of Tulla, to whom almost all Loughshane belonged — or at any rate the land about Loughshane — was one of his father’s staunchest friends! Loughshane is in county Galway, but the Earl of Tulla usually lived at his seat in county Clare, not more than ten miles from Killaloe, and always confided his gouty feet, and the weak nerves of the old countess, and the stomachs of all his domestics, to the care of Dr Finn. How was it possible that Phineas should stand for Loughshane? From whence was the money to come for such a contest? It was a beautiful dream, a grand idea, lifting Phineas almost off the earth by its glory. When the proposition was first made to him in the smoking-room at the Reform Club by his friend Erle, he was aware that he blushed like a girl, and that he was unable at the moment to express himself plainly — so great was his astonishment and so great his gratification. But before ten minutes had passed by, while Barrington Erle was still sitting over his shoulder on the club sofa, and before the blushes had altogether vanished, he had seen the improbability of the scheme, and had explained to his friend that the thing could not be done. But to his increased astonishment, his friend made nothing of the difficulties. Loughshane, according to Barrington Erle, was so small a place, that the expense would be very little. There were altogether no more than 307 registered electors. The inhabitants were so far removed from the world, and were so ignorant of the world’s good things, that they knew nothing about bribery. The Hon. George Morris, who had sat for the last twenty years, was very unpopular. He had not been near the borough since the last election, he had hardly done more than show himself in Parliament, and had neither given a shilling in the town nor got a place under Government for a single son of Loughshane. “And he has quarrelled with his brother,” said Barrington Erle. “The devil he has! said Phineas. “I thought they always swore by each other.” “It’s at each other they swear now,” said Barrington; “George has asked the Earl for more money, and the Earl has cut up rusty”. Then the negotiator went on to explain that the expenses of the election would be defrayed out of a certain fund collected for such purposes, that Loughshane had been chosen as a cheap place, and that Phineas Finn had been chosen as a safe and promising young man. As for qualification, if any question were raised, that should be made all right. An Irish candidate was wanted, and a Roman Catholic. So much the Loughshaners would require on their own account when instigated to dismiss from their service that thorough-going Protestant, the Hon. George Morris. Then “the party,” — by which Barrington Erle probably meant the great man in whose service he himself had become a politician — required that the candidate should be a safe man, one who would support “the party,” — not a cantankerous, red-hot semi-Fenian, running about to meetings at the Rotunda, and suchlike, with views of his own about tenant-right and the Irish Church. “But I have views of my own,” said Phineas, blushing again. “Of course you have, my dear boy,” said Barrington, clapping him on the back. “I shouldn’t come to you unless you had views. But your views and ours are the same, and you’re just the lad for Galway. You mightn’t have such an opening again in your life, and of course you’ll stand for Loughshane.” Then the conversation was over, the private secretary went away to arrange some other little matter of the kind, and Phineas Finn was left alone to consider the proposition that had been made to him.
To become a member of the British Parliament! In all those hot contests at the two debating clubs to which he had belonged, this had been the ambition which had moved him. For, after all, to what purpose of their own had those empty debates ever tended? He and three or four others who had called themselves Liberals had been pitted against four or five who had called themselves Conservatives, and night after night they had discussed some ponderous subject without any idea that one would ever persuade another, or that their talking would ever conduce to any action or to any result. But each of these combatants had felt — without daring to announce a hope on the subject among themselves — that the present arena was only a trial-ground for some possible greater amphitheatre, for some future debating club in which debates would lead to action, and in which eloquence would have power, even though persuasion might be out of the question.
Phineas certainly had never dared to speak, even to himself, of such a hope. The labours of the Bar had to be encountered before the dawn of such a hope could come to him. And he had gradually learned to feel that his prospects at the Bar were not as yet very promising. As regarded professional work he had been idle, and how then could he have a hope?
And now this thing, which he regarded as being of all things in the world the most honourable, had come to him all at once, and was possibly within his reach! If he could believe Barrington Erle, he had only to lift up his hand, and he might be in Parliament within two months. And who was to be believed on such a subject if not Barrington Erle? This was Erle’s special business, and such a man would not have come to him on such a subject had he not been in earnest, and had he not himself believed in success. There was an opening ready, an opening to this great glory — if only it might be possible for him to fill it!
What would his father say? His father would of course oppose the plan. And if he opposed his father, his father would of course stop his income. And such an income as it was! Could it be that a man should sit in Parliament and live upon a hundred and fifty pounds a year? Since that payment of his debts he had become again embarrassed — to a slight amount. He owed a tailor a trifle, and a bootmaker a trifle — and something to the man who sold gloves and shirts; and yet he had done his best to keep out of debt with more than Irish pertinacity, living very closely, breakfasting upon tea and a roll, and dining frequently for a shilling at a luncheon-house up a court near Lincoln’s Inn. Where should he dine if the Loughshaners elected him to Parliament? And then he painted to himself a not untrue picture of the probable miseries of a man who begins life too high up on the ladder — who succeeds in mounting before he has learned how to hold on when he is aloft. For our Phineas Finn was a young man not without sense — not entirely a windbag. If he did this thing the probability was that he might become utterly a castaway, and go entirely to the dogs before he was thirty. He had heard of penniless men who had got into Parliament, and to whom had come such a fate. He was able to name to himself a man or two whose barks, carrying more sail than they could bear, had gone to pieces among early breakers in this way. But then, would it not be better to go to pieces early than never to carry any sail at all? And there was, at any rate, the chance of success. He was already a barrister, and there were so many things open to a barrister with a seat in Parliament! And as he knew of men who had been utterly ruined by such early mounting, so also did he know of others whose fortunes had been made by happy audacity when they were young. He almost thought that he could die happy if he had once taken his seat in Parliament — if he had received one letter with those grand initials written after his name on the address. Young men in battle are called upon to lead forlorn hopes. Three fall, perhaps, to one who gets through; but the one who gets through will have the Victoria Cross to carry for the rest of his life. This was his forlorn hope; and as he had been invited to undertake the work, he would not turn from the danger. On the following morning he again saw Barrington Erle by appointment, and then wrote the following letter to his father:
“ Reform Club, Feb., 186 —
“ MY DEAR FATHER,
“I am afraid that the purport of this letter will startle you, but I hope that when you have finished it you will think that I am right in my decision as to what I am going to do. You are no doubt aware that the dissolution of Parliament will take place at once, and that we shall be in all the turmoil of a general election by the middle of March. I have been invited to stand for Loughshane, and have consented. The proposition has been made to me by my friend Barrington Erle, Mr Mildmay’s private secretary, and has been made on behalf of the Political Committee of the Reform Club. I need hardly say that I should not have thought of such a thing with a less thorough promise of support than this gives me, nor should I think of it now had I not been assured that none of the expense of the election would fall upon me. Of course I could not have asked you to pay for it.
“But to such a proposition, so made, I have felt that it would be cowardly to give a refusal. I cannot but regard such a selection as a great honour. I own that I am fond of politics, and have taken great delight in their study” — (“Stupid young fool! his father said to himself as he read this) — “and it has been my dream for years past to have a seat in Parliament at some future time.” (“Dream! yes; I wonder whether he has ever dreamed what he is to live upon.”) “The chance has now come to me much earlier than I have looked for it, but I do not think that it should on that account be thrown away. Looking to my profession, I find that many things are open to a barrister with a seat in Parliament, and that the House need not interfere much with a man’s practice.” (“Not if he has got to the top of his tree,” said the doctor.)
“My chief doubt arose from the fact of your old friendship with Lord Tulla, whose brother has filled the seat for I don’t know how many years. But it seems that George Morris must go; or, at least, that he must be opposed by a Liberal candidate. If I do not stand, someone else will, and I should think that Lord Tulla will be too much of a man to make any personal quarrel on such a subject. If he is to lose the borough, why should not I have it as well as another?
“I can fancy, my dear father, all that you will say as to my imprudence, and I quite confess that I have not a word to answer. I have told myself more than once, since last night, that I shall probably ruin myself.” (“I wonder whether he has ever told himself that he will probably ruin me also,” said the doctor.) “But I am prepared to ruin myself in such a cause. I have no one dependent on me; and, as long as I do nothing to disgrace my name, I may dispose of myself as I please. If you decide on stopping my allowance, I shall have no feeling of anger against you. (“How very considerate!” said the doctor.) “And in that case I shall endeavour to support myself by my pen. I have already done a little for the magazines.
“Give my best love to my mother and sisters. If you will receive me during the time of the election, I shall see them soon. Perhaps it will be best for me to say that I have positively decided on making the attempt; that is to say, if the Club Committee is as good as its promise. I have weighed the matter all round, and I regard the prize as being so great, that I am prepared to run any risk to obtain it. Indeed, to me, with my views about politics, the running of such a risk is no more than a duty. I cannot keep my hand from the work now that the work has come in the way of my hand. I shall be most anxious to get a line from you in answer to this.
“Your most affectionate son,
“ PHINEAS FINN ”
I question whether Dr Finn, when he read this letter, did not feel more of pride than of anger — whether he was not rather gratified than displeased, in spite of all that his commonsense told him on the subject. His wife and daughters, when they heard the news, were clearly on the side of the young man. Mrs Finn immediately expressed an opinion that Parliament would be the making of her son, and that everybody would be sure to employ so distinguished a barrister. The girls declared that Phineas ought, at any rate, to have his chance, and almost asserted that it would be brutal in their father to stand in their brother’s way. It was in vain that the doctor tried to explain that going into Parliament could not help a young barrister, whatever it might do for one thoroughly established in his profession; that Phineas, if successful at Loughshane, would at once abandon all idea of earning any income — that the proposition, coming from so poor a man, was a monstrosity — that such an opposition to the Morris family, coming from a son of his, would be gross ingratitude to Lord Tulla. Mrs Finn and the girls talked him down, and the doctor himself was almost carried away by something like vanity in regard to his son’s future position.
Nevertheless he wrote a letter strongly advising Phineas to abandon the project. But he himself was aware that the letter which he wrote was not one from which any success could be expected. He advised his son, but did not command him. He made no threats as to stopping his income. He did not tell Phineas, in so many words, that he was proposing to make an ass of himself. He argued very prudently against the plan, and Phineas, when he received his father’s letter, of course felt that it was tantamount to a paternal permission to proceed with the matter. On the next day he got a letter from his mother full of affection, full of pride — not exactly telling him to stand for Loughshane by all means, for Mrs Finn was not the woman to run openly counter to her husband in any advice given by her to their son — but giving him every encouragement which motherly affection and motherly pride could bestow. “Of course you will come to us,” she said, “if you do make up your mind to be member for Loughshane. We shall all of us be so delighted to have you!” Phineas, who had fallen into a sea of doubt after writing to his father, and who had demanded a week from Barrington Erle to consider the matter, was elated to positive certainty by the joint effect of the two letters from home. He understood it all. His mother and sisters were altogether in favour of his audacity, and even his father was not disposed to quarrel with him on the subject.
“I shall take you at your word,” he said to Barrington Erle at the club that evening.
“What word?” said Erle, who had too many irons in the fire to be thinking always of Loughshane and Phineas Finn, — or who at any rate did not choose to let his anxiety on the subject be seen.
“About Loughshane.”
“All right, old fellow; we shall be sure to carry you through. The Irish writs will be out on the third of March, and the sooner you’re there the better.”
One great difficulty about the borough vanished in a very wonderful way at the first touch. Dr Finn, who was a man stout at heart, and by no means afraid of his great friends, drove himself over to Castlemorris to tell his news to the Earl, as soon as he got a second letter from his son declaring his intention of proceeding with the business, let the results be what they might. Lord Tulla was a passionate old man, and the doctor expected that there would be a quarrel — but he was prepared to face that. He was under no special debt of gratitude to the lord, having given as much as he had taken in the long intercourse which had existed between them — and he agreed with his son in thinking that if there was to be a Liberal candidate at Loughshane, no consideration of old pill-boxes and gallipots should deter his son Phineas from standing. Other considerations might very probably deter him, but not that. The Earl probably would be of a different opinion, and the doctor felt it to be incumbent on him to break the news to Lord Tulla.
“The devil he is!” said the Earl, when the doctor had told his story. “Then I’ll tell you what, Finn, I’ll support him.”
“You support him, Lord Tulla!”
“Yes — why shouldn’t I support him? I suppose it’s not so bad with me in the country that my support will rob him of his chance! I’ll tell you one thing for certain, I won’t support George Morris.”
“But, my lord — ”
“Well; go on.”
“I’ve never taken much part in politics myself, as you know; but my boy Phineas is on the other side.”
“I don’t care a — for sides. What has my party done for me? Look at my cousin, Dick Morris. There’s not a clergyman in Ireland stauncher to them than he has been, and now they’ve given the deanery of Kilfenora to a man that never had a father, though I condescended to ask for it for my cousin. Let them wait till I ask for anything again.” Dr Finn, who knew all about Dick Morris’s debts, and who had heard of his modes of preaching, was not surprised at the decision of the Conservative bestower of Irish Church patronage; but on this subject he said nothing. “And as for George,” continued the Earl, “I will never lift my hand again for him. His standing for Loughshane would be quite out of the question. My own tenants wouldn’t vote for him if I were to ask them myself. Peter Blake” — Mr Peter Blake was the lord’s agent — “told me only a week ago that it would be useless. The whole thing is gone, and for my part I wish they’d disfranchise the borough. I wish they’d disenfranchise the whole country, and send us a military governor. What’s the use of such members as we send? There isn’t one gentleman among ten of them. Your son is welcome for me. What support I can give him he shall have, but it isn’t much. I suppose he had better come and see me.”
The doctor promised that his son should ride over to Castlemorris, and then took his leave — not specially flattered, as he felt that were his son to be returned, the Earl would not regard him as the one gentleman among ten whom the county might send to leaven the remainder of its members — but aware that the greatest impediment in his son’s way was already removed. He certainly had not gone to Castlemorris with any idea of canvassing for his son, and yet he had canvassed for him most satisfactorily. When he got home he did not know how to speak of the matter otherwise than triumphantly to his wife and daughters. Though he desired to curse, his mouth would speak blessings. Before that evening was over the prospects of Phineas at Loughshane were spoken of with open enthusiasm before the doctor, and by the next day’s post a letter was written to him by Matilda, informing him that the Earl was prepared to receive him with open arms. “Papa has been over there and managed it all,” said Matilda.
“I’m told George Morris isn’t going to stand,” said Barrington Erle to Phineas the night before his departure.
“His brother won’t support him. His brother means to support me,” said Phineas.
“That can hardly be so.”
“But I tell you it is. My father has known the Earl these twenty years, and has managed it.”
“I say, Finn, you’re not going to play us a trick, are you?” said Mr Erle, with something like dismay in his voice.
“What sort of trick?”
“You’re not coming out on the other side?”
“Not if I know it,” said Phineas, proudly. Let me assure you I wouldn’t change my views in politics either for you or for the Earl, though each of you carried seats in your breeches pockets. If I go into Parliament, I shall go there as a sound Liberal — not to support a party, but to do the best I can for the country. I tell you so, and I shall tell the Earl the same.”
Barrington Erle turned away in disgust. Such language was to him simply disgusting. It fell upon his ears as false maudlin sentiment falls on the ears of the ordinary honest man of the world. Barrington Erle was a man ordinarily honest. He would not have been untrue to his mother’s brother, William Mildmay, the great Whig Minister of the day, for any earthly consideration. He was ready to work with wages or without wages. He was really zealous in the cause, not asking very much for himself. He had some undefined belief that it was much better for the country that Mr Mildmay should be in power than that Lord de Terrier should be there. He was convinced that Liberal politics were good for Englishmen, and that Liberal politics and the Mildmay party were one and the same thing. It would be unfair to Barrington Erle to deny to him some praise for patriotism. But he hated the very name of independence in Parliament, and when he was told of any man, that that man intended to look to measures and not to men, he regarded that man as being both unstable as water and dishonest as the wind. No good could possibly come from such a one, and much evil might and probably would come. Such a politician was a Greek to Barrington Erle, from whose hands he feared to accept even the gift of a vote. Parliamentary hermits were distasteful to him, and dwellers in political caves were regarded by him with aversion as being either knavish or impractical. With a good Conservative opponent he could shake hands almost as readily as with a good Whig ally; but the man who was neither flesh nor fowl was odious to him. According to his theory of parliamentary government, the House of Commons should be divided by a marked line, and every member should be required to stand on one side of it or on the other. “If not with me, at any rate be against me,” he would have said to every representative of the people in the name of the great leader whom he followed. He thought that debates were good, because of the people outside — because they served to create that public opinion which was hereafter to be used in creating some future House of Commons; but he did not think it possible that any vote should be given on a great question, either this way or that, as the result of a debate; and he was certainly assured in his own opinion that any such changing of votes would be dangerous, revolutionary, and almost unparliamentary. A member’s vote — except on some small crotchety open question thrown out for the amusement of crotchety members — was due to the leader of that member’s party. Such was Mr Erle’s idea of the English system of Parliament, and, lending semi-official assistance as he did frequently to the introduction of candidates into the House, he was naturally anxious that his candidates should be candidates after his own heart. When, therefore, Phineas Finn talked of measures and not men, Barrington Erle turned away in open disgust. But he remembered the youth and extreme rawness of the lad, and he remembered also the careers of other men.
Barrington Erle was forty, and experience had taught him something. After a few seconds, he brought himself to think mildly of the young man’s vanity — as of the vanity of a plunging colt who resents the liberty even of a touch. “By the end of the first session the thong will be cracked over his head, as he patiently assists in pulling the coach uphill, without producing from him even a flick of his tail,” said Barrington Erle to an old parliamentary friend.
“If he were to come out after all on the wrong side,” said the parliamentary friend.
Erle admitted that such a trick as that would be unpleasant, but he thought that old Lord Tulla was hardly equal to so clever a stratagem.
Phineas went to Ireland, and walked over the course at Loughshane. He called upon Lord Tulla, and heard that venerable nobleman talk a great deal of nonsense. To tell the truth of Phineas, I must confess that he wished to talk the nonsense himself; but the Earl would not hear him, and put him down very quickly. “We won’t discuss politics, if you please, Mr Finn; because, as I have already said, I am throwing aside all political considerations.” Phineas, therefore, was not allowed to express his views on the government of the country in the Earl’s sitting-room at Castlemorris. There was, however, a good time coming; and so, for the present, he allowed the Earl to ramble on about the sins of his brother George, and the want of all proper pedigree on the part of the new Dean of Kilfenora. The conference ended with an assurance on the part of Lord Tulla that if the Loughshaners chose to elect Mr Phineas Finn he would not be in the least offended. The electors did elect Mr Phineas Finn — perhaps for the reason given by one of the Dublin Conservative papers, which declared that it was all the fault of the Carlton Club in not sending a proper candidate. There was a great deal said about the matter, both in London and Dublin, and the blame was supposed to fall on the joint shoulders of George Morris and his elder brother. In the meantime, our hero, Phineas Finn, had been duly elected member of Parliament for the borough of Loughshane.
The Finn family could not restrain their triumphings at Killaloe, and I do not know that it would have been natural had they done so. A gosling from such a flock does become something of a real swan by getting into Parliament. The doctor had his misgivings — had great misgivings, fearful forebodings; but there was the young man elected, and he could not help it. He could not refuse his right hand to his son or withdraw his paternal assistance because that son had been specially honoured among the young men of his country. So he pulled out of his hoard what sufficed to pay off outstanding debts — they were not heavy — and undertook to allow Phineas two hundred and fifty pounds a year as long as the session should last.
There was a widow lady living at Killaloe who was named Mrs Flood Jones, and she had a daughter. She had a son also, born to inherit the property of the late Floscabel Flood Jones of Floodborough, as soon as that property should have disembarrassed itself; but with him, now serving with his regiment in India, we shall have no concern. Mrs Flood Jones was living modestly at Killaloe on her widow’s jointure — Floodborough having, to tell the truth, pretty nearly fallen into absolute ruin — and with her one daughter, Mary. Now on the evening before the return of Phineas Finn, Esq., M.P., to London, Mrs, and Miss Flood Jones drank tea at the doctor’s house.
“It won’t make a bit of change in him,” Barbara Finn said to her friend Mary, up in some bedroom privacy before the tea-drinking ceremonies had altogether commenced.
“Oh, it must,” said Mary.
“I tell you it won’t, my dear; he is so good and so true.”
“I know he is good, Barbara; and as for truth, there is no question about it, because he has never said a word to me that he might not say to any girl.”
“That’s nonsense, Mary.”
“He never has, then, as sure as the blessed Virgin watches over us — only you don’t believe she does.”
“Never mind about the Virgin now Mary.”
“But he never has. Your brother is nothing to me, Barbara.”
“Then I hope he will be before the evening is over. He was walking with you all yesterday and the day before.”
“Why shouldn’t he — and we that have known each other all our lives? But, Barbara, pray, pray never say a word of this to any one!”
“Is it I? Wouldn’t I cut out my tongue first?”
“I don’t know why I let you talk to me in this way. There has never been anything between me and Phineas — your brother I mean.”
“I know whom you mean very well.”
“And I feel quite sure that there never will be. Why should there? He’ll go out among great people and be a great man; and I’ve already found out that there’s a certain Lady Laura Standish whom he admires very much.”
“Lady Laura Fiddlestick!”
“A man in Parliament, you know, may look up to anybody,” said Miss Mary Flood Jones.
“I want Phin to look up to you, my dear.”
“That wouldn’t be looking up. Placed as he is now, that would be looking down; and he is so proud that he’ll never do that. But come down, dear, else they’ll wonder where we are.”
Mary Flood Jones was a little girl about twenty years of age, with the softest hair in the world, of a colour varying between brown and auburn — for sometimes you would swear it was the one and sometimes the other; and she was as pretty as ever she could be. She was one of those girls, so common in Ireland, whom men, with tastes that way given, feel inclined to take up and devour on the spur of the moment; and when she liked her lion, she had a look about her which seemed to ask to be devoured. There are girls so cold-looking — pretty girls, too, ladylike, discreet, and armed with all accomplishments — whom to attack seems to require the same sort of courage, and the same sort of preparation, as a journey in quest of the north-west passage, he thinks of a pedestal near the Athenaeum as the most appropriate and most honourable reward of such courage. But, again, there are other girls to abstain from attacking whom is, to a man of any warmth of temperament, quite impossible. They are like water when one is athirst, like plovers’ eggs in March, like cigars when one is out in the autumn. No one ever dreams of denying himself when such temptation comes in the way. It often happens, however, that in spite of appearances, the water will not come from the well, nor the egg from its shell, nor will the cigar allow itself to be lit. A girl of such appearance, so charming, was Mary Flood Jones of Killaloe, and our hero Phineas was not allowed to thirst in vain for a drop from the cool spring.
When the girls went down into the drawing-room Mary was careful to go to a part of the room quite remote from Phineas, so as to seat herself between Mrs Finn and Dr Finn’s young partner, Mr Elias Bodkin, from Ballinasloe. But Mrs Finn and the Miss Finns and all Killaloe knew that Mary had no love for Mr Bodkin, and when Mr Bodkin handed her the hot cake she hardly so much as smiled at him. But in two minutes Phineas was behind her chair, and then she smiled; and in five minutes more she had got herself so twisted round that she was sitting in a corner with Phineas and his sister Barbara; and in two more minutes Barbara had returned to Mr Elias Bodkin, so that Phineas and Mary were uninterrupted. They manage these things very quickly and very cleverly in Killaloe.
“I shall be off tomorrow morning by the early train,” said Phineas.
“So soon — and when will you have to begin — in Parliament, I mean?”
“I shall have to take my seat on Friday. I’m going back just in time.”
“But when shall we hear of your saying something?”
“Never, probably. Not one in ten who go into Parliament ever do say anything.”
“But you will; won’t you? I hope you will. I do so hope you will distinguish yourself — because of your sister, and for the sake of the town, you know.”
“And is that all, Mary?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“You don’t care a bit about myself, then?”
“You know that I do. Haven’t we been friends ever since we were children? Of course it will be a great pride to me that a person whom I have known so intimately should come to be talked about as a great man.”
“I shall never be talked about as a great man.”
“You’re a great man to me already, being in Parliament. Only think — I never saw a member of Parliament in my life before.”
“You’ve seen the bishop scores of times.”
“Is he in Parliament? Ah, but not like you. He couldn’t come to be a Cabinet Minister, and one never reads anything about him in the newspapers. I shall expect to see your name very often, and I shall always look for it. “Mr Phineas Finn paired off with Mr Mildmay.” What is the meaning of pairing off?”
“I’ll explain it all to you when I come back, after learning my lesson.”
“Mind you do come back. But I don’t suppose you ever will. You will be going somewhere to see Lady Laura Standish when you are not wanted in Parliament.”
“Lady Laura Standish! And why shouldn’t you? a course, with your prospects, you should go as much as possible among people of that sort. Is Lady Laura very pretty?”
“She’s about six feet high.”
“Nonsense. I don’t believe that.”
“She would look as though she were, standing by you.”
“Because I am so insignificant and small.”
“Because your figure is perfect, and because she is straggling. She is as unlike you as possible in everything. She has thick lumpy red hair, while yours is all silk and softness. She has large hands and feet, and — ”
“Why, Phineas, you are making her out to be an ogress, and yet I know that you admire her.”
“So I do, because she possesses such an appearance of power. And after all, in spite of the lumpy hair, and in spite of large hands and straggling figure, she is handsome. One can’t tell what it is. One can see that she is quite contented with herself, and intends to make others contented with her. And so she does.”
“I see you are in love with her, Phineas,”
“No; not in love — not with her at least. Of all men in the world, I suppose that I am the last that has a right to be in love. I daresay I shall marry some day.”
“I’m sure I hope you will.”
“But not till I’m forty or perhaps fifty years old. If I was not fool enough to have what men call a high ambition I might venture to be in love now.”
“I’m sure I’m very glad that you’ve got a high ambition. It is what every man ought to have; and I’ve no doubt that we shall hear of your marriage soon — very soon. And then — if she can help you in your ambition, we — shall — all — be so — glad.”
Phineas did not say a word further then. Perhaps some commotion among the party broke up the little private conversation in the corner. And he was not alone with Mary again till there came a moment for him to put her cloak over her shoulders in the back parlour, while Mrs Flood Jones was finishing some important narrative to his mother. It was Barbara, I think, who stood in some doorway, and prevented people from passing, and so gave him the opportunity which he abused.
“Mary,” said he, taking her in his arms, without a single word of love-making beyond what the reader has heard — “one kiss before we part.”
“No, Phineas, no!” But the kiss had been taken and given before she had even answered him. “Oh, Phineas, you shouldn’t!”
“I should. Why shouldn’t I? And, Mary, I will have one morsel of your hair.”
“You shall not; indeed you shall not!” But the scissors were at hand, and the ringlet was cut and in his pocket before she was ready with her resistance. There was nothing further — not a word more, and Mary went away with her veil down, under her mother’s wing, weeping sweet silent tears which no one saw.
“You do love her; don’t you, Phineas?” asked Barbara.
“Bother! Do you go to bed, and don’t trouble yourself about such trifles. But mind you’re up, old girl, to see me off in the morning.”
Everybody was up to see him off in the morning, to give him coffee and good advice, and kisses, and to throw all manner of old shoes after him as he started on his great expedition to Parliament. His father gave him an extra twenty-pound note, and begged him for God’s sake to be careful about his money. His mother told him always to have an orange in his pocket when he intended to speak longer than usual. And Barbara in a last whisper begged him never to forget dear Mary Flood Jones.
Phineas had many serious, almost solemn thoughts on his journey towards London. I am sorry I must assure my female readers that very few of them had reference to Mary Flood Jones. He had, however, very carefully packed up the tress, and could bring that out for proper acts of erotic worship at seasons in which his mind might be less engaged with affairs of state than it was at present. Would he make a failure of this great matter which he had taken in hand? He could not but tell himself that the chances were twenty to one against him. Now that he looked nearer at it all, the difficulties loomed larger than ever, and the rewards seemed to be less, more difficult of approach, and more evanescent. How many members were there who could never get a hearing! How many who only spoke to fail! How many, who spoke well, who could speak to no effect as far as their own worldly prospects were concerned! He had already known many members of Parliament to whom no outward respect or sign of honour was ever given by any one; and it seemed to him, as he thought over it, that Irish members of Parliament were generally treated with more indifference than any others. There were O’B— and O’C— and O’D — for whom no one cared a straw, who could hardly get men to dine with them at the club, and yet they were genuine members of Parliament. Why should he ever be better than O’B — or O’C — or O’D—? And in what way should he begin to be better? He had an idea of the fashion after which it would be his duty to strive that he might excel those gentlemen. He did not give any of them credit for much earnestness in their country’s behalf, and he was minded to be very earnest. He would go to his work honestly and conscientiously, determined to do his duty as best he might, let the results to himself be what they would. This was a noble resolution, and might have been pleasant to him — had he not remembered that smile of derision which had come over his friend Erle’s face when he declared his intention of doing his duty to his country as a Liberal, and not of supporting a party. O’B— and O’C— and O’D— were keen enough to support their party, only they were sometimes a little astray at knowing which was their party for the nonce. He knew that Erle and such men would despise him if he did not fall into the regular groove — and if the Barrington Erles despised him, what would then be left for him?
His moody thoughts were somewhat dissipated when he found one Laurence Fitzgibbon — the Honourable Laurence Fitzgibbon — a special friend of his own, and a very clever fellow, on board the boat as it steamed out of Kingston harbour. Laurence Fitzgibbon had also just been over about his election, and had been returned as a matter of course for his father’s county. Laurence Fitzgibbon had sat in the House for the last fifteen years, and was yet wellnigh as young a man as any in it. And he was a man altogether different from the O’B— s, O’C— s, and O’D— s. Laurence Fitzgibbon could always get the ear of the House if he chose to speak, and his friends declared that he might have been high up in office long since if he would have taken the trouble to work. He was a welcome guest at the houses of the very best people, and was a friend of whom any one might be proud. It had for two years been a feather in the cap of Phineas that he knew Laurence Fitzgibbon. And yet people said that Laurence Fitzgibbon had nothing of his own, and men wondered how he lived. He was the youngest son of Lord Claddagh, an Irish peer with a large family, who could do nothing for Laurence, his favourite child, beyond finding him a seat in Parliament.
“Well, Finn, my boy,” said Laurence, shaking hands with the young member on board the steamer, “so you’ve made it all right at Loughshane.” Then Phineas was beginning to tell all the story, the wonderful story, of George Morris and the Earl of Tulla — how the men of Loughshane had elected him without opposition; how he had been supported by Conservatives as well as Liberals — how unanimous Loughshane had been in electing him, Phineas Finn, as its representative. But Mr Fitzgibbon seemed to care very little about all this, and went so far as to declare that those things were accidents which fell out sometimes one way and sometimes another, and were altogether independent of any merit or demerit on the part of the candidate himself. And it was marvellous and almost painful to Phineas that his friend Fitzgibbon should accept the fact of his membership with so little of congratulation — with absolutely no blowing of trumpets whatever. Had he been elected a member of the municipal corporation of Loughshane, instead of its representative in the British Parliament, Laurence Fitzgibbon could not have made less fuss about it, Phineas was disappointed, but he took the cue from his friend too quickly to show his disappointment. And when, half an hour after their meeting, Fitzgibbon had to be reminded that his companion was not in the House during the last session, Phineas was able to make the remark as though he thought as little about the House as did the old-accustomed member himself.
“As far as I can see as yet,” said Fitzgibbon, we are sure to have seventeen.”
“Seventeen?” said Phineas, not quite understanding the meaning of the number quoted.
“A majority of seventeen. There are four Irish counties and three Scotch which haven’t returned as yet; but we know pretty well what they’ll do. There’s a doubt about Tipperary, of course; but whichever gets in of the seven who are standing, it will be a vote on our side. Now the Government can’t live against that. The uphill strain is too much for them.”
“According to my idea, nothing can justify them in trying to live against a majority.”
“That’s gammon. When the thing is so equal, anything is fair. But you see they don’t like it. Of course there are some among them as hungry as we are; and Dubby would give his toes and fingers to remain in.” Dubby was the ordinary name by which, among friends and foes, Mr Daubeny was known: Mr Daubeny, who at that time was the leader of the Conservative party in the House of Commons. “But most of them,” continued Mr Fitzgibbon, “prefer the other game, and if you don’t care about money, upon my word it’s the pleasanter game of the two.”
“But the country gets nothing done by a Tory Government.”
“As to that, it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other. I never knew a government yet that wanted to do anything. Give a government a real strong majority, as the Tories used to have half a century since, and as a matter of course it will do nothing. Why should it? Doing things, as you call it, is only bidding for power — for patronage and pay.”
“And is the country to have no service done?”
“The country gets quite as much service as it pays for — and perhaps a little more. The clerks in the offices work for the country. And the Ministers work too, if they’ve got anything to manage. There is plenty of work done — but of work in Parliament, the less the better, according to my ideas. It’s very little that ever is done, and that little is generally too much.”
“But the people — ”
“Come down and have a glass of brandy and water, and leave the people alone for the present. The people can take care of themselves a great deal better than we can take care of them.” Mr Fitzgibbon’s doctrine as to the commonwealth was very different from that of Barrington Erle, and was still less to the taste of the new member. Barrington Erle considered that his leader, Mr Mildmay, should be entrusted to make all necessary changes in the laws, and that an obedient House of Commons should implicitly obey that leader in authorising all changes proposed by him — but, according to Barrington Erle, such changes should be numerous and of great importance, and would, if duly passed into law at his lord’s behest, gradually produce such a Whig Utopia in England as has never yet been seen on the face of the earth. Now, according to Mr Fitzgibbon, the present Utopia would be good enough — if only he himself might be once more put into possession of a certain semi-political place about ‘the Court, from which he had heretofore drawn ￡1,000 per annum, without any work, much to his comfort. He made no secret of his ambition, and was chagrined simply at the prospect of having to return to his electors before he could enjoy those good things which he expected to receive from the undoubted majority of seventeen, which had been, or would be, achieved.
“I hate all change as a rule,” said Fitzgibbon; but, upon my word, we ought to alter that. When a fellow has got a crumb of comfort, after waiting for it years and years, and perhaps spending thousands in elections, he has to go back and try his hand again at the last moment, merely in obedience to some antiquated prejudice. Look at poor Jack Bond — the best friend I ever had in the world. He was wrecked upon that rock for ever. He spent every shilling he had in contesting Romford three times running — and three times running he got in. Then they made him Vice-Comptroller of the Granaries, and I’m shot if he didn’t get spilt at Romford on standing for his re-election!”
“And what became of him?”
“God knows. I think I heard that he married an old woman and settled down somewhere. I know he never came up again. Now, I call that a confounded shame. I suppose I’m safe down in Mayo, but there’s no knowing what may happen in these days.”
As they parted at Euston Square, Phineas asked his friend some little nervous question as to the best mode of making a first entrance into the House. Would Laurence Fitzgibbon see him through the difficulties of the oath-taking? But Laurence Fitzgibbon made very little of the difficulty. “Oh — you just come down, and there’ll be a rush of fellows, and you’ll know everybody. You’ll have to hang about for an hour or so, and then you’ll get pushed through. There isn’t time for much ceremony after a general election.”
Phineas reached London early in the morning, and went home to bed for an hour or so. The House was to meet on that very day, and he intended to begin his parliamentary duties at once if he should find it possible to get someone to accompany him. He felt that he should lack courage to go down to Westminster Hall alone, and explain to the policeman and door-keepers that he was the man who had just been elected member for Loughshane. So about noon he went into the Reform Club, and there he found a great crowd of men, among whom there was a plentiful sprinkling of members. Erle saw him in a moment, and came to him with congratulations.
“So you’re all right, Finn,” said he.
“Yes; I’m all right — I didn’t have much doubt about it when I went over.”
“I never heard of a fellow with such a run of luck,” said Erle. “It’s just one of those flukes that occur once in a dozen elections. Any one on earth might have got in without spending a shilling.”
Phineas didn’t at all like this. “I don’t think any one could have got in,” said he, “without knowing Lord Tulla.
“Lord Tulla was nowhere, my dear boy, and could have nothing to say to it. But never mind that. You meet me in the lobby at two. There’ll be a lot of us there, and we’ll go in together. Have you seen Fitzgibbon?” Then Barrington Erle went off to other business, and Finn was congratulated by other men. But it seemed to him that the congratulations of his friends were not hearty. He spoke to some men, of whom he thought that he knew they would have given their eyes to be in Parliament — and yet they spoke of his success as being a very ordinary thing. “Well, my boy, I hope you like it,” said one middle-aged gentleman whom he had known ever since he came up to London, “The difference is between working for nothing and working for money. You’ll have to work for nothing now.”
“That’s about it, I suppose,” said Phineas.
“They say the House is a comfortable club,” said the middle-aged friend, “but I confess that I shouldn’t like being rung away from my dinner myself.”
At two punctually Phineas was in the lobby at Westminster, and then he found himself taken into the House with a crowd of other men. The old and young, and they who were neither old nor young, were mingled together, and there seemed to be very little respect of persons. On three or four occasions there was some cheering when a popular man or a great leader came in; but the work of the day left but little clear impression on the mind of the young member. He was confused, half elated, half disappointed, and had not his wits about him. He found himself constantly regretting that he was there; and as constantly telling himself that he, hardly yet twenty-five, without a shilling of his own, had achieved an entrance into that assembly which by the consent of all men is the greatest in the world, and which many of the rich magnates of the country had in vain spent heaps of treasure in their endeavours to open to their own footsteps. He tried hard to realise what he had gained, but the dust and the noise and the crowds and the want of something august to the eye were almost too strong for him. He managed, however, to take the oath early among those who took it, and heard the Queen’s speech read and the Address moved and seconded. He was seated very uncomfortably, high up on a back seat, between two men whom he did not know; and he found the speeches to be very long. He had been in the habit of seeing such speeches reported in about a column, and he thought that these speeches must take at least four columns each. He sat out the debate on the Address till the House was adjourned, and then he went away to dine at his club. He did go into the dining-room of the House, but there was a crowd there, and he found himself alone — and to tell the truth, he was afraid to order his dinner.
The nearest approach to a triumph which he had in London came to him from the glory which his election reflected upon his landlady. She was a kindly good motherly soul, whose husband was a journeyman law-stationer, and who kept a very decent house in Great Marlborough Street. Here Phineas had lodged since he had been in London, and was a great favourite. “God bless my soul, Mr Phineas,” said she, “only think of your being a member of Parliament!”
“Yes, I’m a member of Parliament, Mrs Bunce.”
“And you’ll go on with the rooms the same as ever? Well, I never thought to have a member of Parliament in ’em.”
Mrs Bunce really had realised the magnitude of the step which her lodger had taken, and Phineas was grateful to her.
Phineas, in describing Lady Laura Standish to Mary Flood Jones at Killaloe, had not painted her in very glowing colours. Nevertheless he admired Lady Laura very much, and she was worthy of admiration. It was probably the greatest pride of our hero’s life that Lady Laura Standish was his friend, and that she had instigated him to undertake the risk of parliamentary life. Lady Laura was intimate also with Barrington Erle, who was, in some distant degree, her cousin; and Phineas was not without a suspicion that his selection for Loughshane, from out of all the young liberal candidates, may have been in some degree owing to Lady Laura’s influence with Barrington Erle. He was not unwilling that it should be so; for though, as he had repeatedly told himself, he was by no means in love with Lady Laura — who was, as he imagined, somewhat older than himself — nevertheless, he would feel gratified at accepting anything from her hands, and he felt a keen desire for some increase to those ties of friendship which bound them together. No — he was not in love with Lady Laura Standish. He had not the remotest idea of asking her to be his wife. So he told himself, both before he went over for his election, and after his return. When he had found himself in a corner with poor little Mary Flood Jones, he had kissed her as a matter of course; but he did not think that he could, in any circumstances, be tempted to kiss Lady Laura. He supposed that he was in love with his darling little Mary — after a fashion. Of course, it could never come to anything, because of the circumstances of his life, which were so imperious to him. He was not in love with Lady Laura, and yet he hoped that his intimacy with her might come to much. He had more than once asked himself how he would feel when somebody else came to be really in love with Lady Laura — for she was by no means a woman to lack lovers — when someone else should be in love with her, and be received by her as a lover; but this question he had never been able to answer. There were many questions about himself which he usually answered by telling himself that it was his fate to walk over volcanoes. “Of course, I shall be blown into atoms some fine day,” he would say; “but after all, that is better than being slowly boiled down into pulp.”
The House had met on a Friday, again on the Saturday morning, and the debate on the Address had been adjourned till the Monday. On the Sunday, Phineas determined that he would see Lady Laura. She professed to be always at home on Sunday, and from three to four in the afternoon her drawing-room would probably be half full of people. There would, at any rate, be comers and goers, who would prevent anything like real conversation between himself and her. But for a few minutes before that he might probably find her alone, and he was most anxious to see whether her reception of him, as a member of Parliament, would be in any degree warmer than that of his other friends. Hitherto he had found no such warmth since he came to London, excepting that which had glowed in the bosom of Mrs Bunce.
Lady Laura Standish was the daughter of the Earl of Brentford, and was the only remaining lady of the Earl’s family. The Countess had been long dead; and Lady Emily, the younger daughter, who had been the great beauty of her day, was now the wife of a Russian nobleman whom she had persisted in preferring to any of her English suitors, and lived at St Petersburg. There was an aunt, old Lady Laura, who came up to town about the middle of May; but she was always in the country except for some six weeks in the season. There was a certain Lord Chiltern, the Earl’s son and heir, who did indeed live at the family town house in Portman Square; but Lord Chiltern was a man of whom Lady Laura’s set did not often speak, and Phineas, frequently as he had been at the house, had never seen Lord Chiltern there. He was a young nobleman of whom various accounts were given by various people; but I fear that the account most readily accepted in London attributed to him a great intimacy with the affairs at Newmarket, and a partiality for convivial pleasures. Respecting Lord Chiltern Phineas had never as yet exchanged a word with Lady Laura. With her father he was acquainted, as he had dined perhaps half a dozen times at the house. The point in Lord Brentford’s character which had more than any other struck our hero, was the unlimited confidence which he seemed to place in his daughter. Lady Laura seemed to have perfect power of doing what she pleased. She was much more mistress of herself than if she had been the wife instead of the daughter of the Earl of Brentford — and she seemed to be quite as much mistress of the house.
Phineas had declared at Killaloe that Lady Laura was six feet high, that she had red hair, that her figure was straggling, and that her hands and feet were large. She was in fact about five feet seven in height, and she carried her height well. There was something of nobility in her gait, and she seemed thus to be taller than her inches. Her hair was in truth red — of a deep thorough redness. Her brother’s hair was the same; and so had been that of her father, before it had become sandy with age. Her sister’s had been of a soft auburn hue, and hers had been said to be the prettiest head of hair in Europe at the time of her marriage. But in these days we have got to like red hair, and Lady Laura’s was not supposed to stand in the way of her being considered a beauty. Her face was very fair, though it lacked that softness which we all love in women. Her eyes, which were large and bright, and very clear, never seemed to quail, never rose and sunk or showed themselves to be afraid of their own power. Indeed, Lady Laura Standish had nothing of fear about her. Her nose was perfectly cut, but was rather large, having the slightest possible tendency to be aquiline. Her mouth also was large, but was full of expression, and her teeth were perfect. Her complexion was very bright, but in spite of its brightness she never blushed. The shades of her complexion were set and steady. Those who knew her said that her heart was so fully under command that nothing could stir her blood to any sudden motion. As to that accusation of straggling which had been made against her, it had sprung from ill-natured observation of her modes of sitting. She never straggled when she stood or walked; but she would lean forward when sitting, as a man does, and would use her arms in talking, and would put her hand over her face, and pass her fingers through her hair — after the fashion of men rather than of women — and she seemed to despise that soft quiescence of her sex in which are generally found so many charms. Her hands and feet were large — as was her whole frame. Such was Lady Laura Standish; and Phineas Finn had been untrue to himself and to his own appreciation of the lady when he had described her in disparaging terms to Mary Flood Jones. But, though he had spoken of Lady Laura in disparaging terms, he had so spoken of her as to make Miss Flood Jones quite understand that he thought a great deal about Lady Laura.
And now, early on the Sunday, he made his way to Portman Square in order that he might learn whether there might be any sympathy for him there. Hitherto he had found none. Everything had been terribly dry and hard, and he had gathered as yet none of the fruit which he had expected that his good fortune would bear for him. It is true that he had not as yet gone among any friends, except those of his club, and men who were in the House along with him — and at the club it might be that there were some who envied him his good fortune, and others who thought nothing of it because it had been theirs for years. Now he would try a friend who, he hoped, could sympathise; and therefore he called in Portman Square at about half past two on the Sunday morning. Yes — Lady Laura was in the drawing-room. The hall porter admitted as much, but evidently seemed to think that he had been disturbed from his dinner before his time. Phineas did not care a straw for the hall porter. If Lady Laura were not kind to him, he would never trouble that hall porter again. He was especially sore at this moment because a valued friend, the barrister with whom he had been reading for the last three years, had spent the best part of an hour that Sunday morning in proving to him that he had as good as ruined himself. “When I first heard it, of course I thought you had inherited a fortune,” said Mr Low. “I have inherited nothing,” Phineas replied — “not a penny; and I never shall.” Then Mr Low had opened his eyes very wide, and shaken his head very sadly, and had whistled.
“I am so glad you have come, Mr Finn,” said Lady Laura, meeting Phineas halfway across the large room.
“Thanks,” said he, as he took her hand.
“I thought that perhaps you would manage to see me before any one else was here.”
“Well — to tell the truth, I have wished it; though I can hardly tell why.”
“I can tell you why, Mr Finn. But never mind — come and sit down. I am so very glad that you have been successful — so very glad. You know I told you that I should never think much of you if you did not at least try it.”
“And therefore I did try.”
“And have succeeded. Faint heart, you know, never did any good. I think it is a man’s duty to make his way into the House — that is, if he ever means to be anybody. Of course it is not every man who can get there by the time that he is five-and-twenty.”
“Every friend that I have in the world says that I have ruined myself.”
“No — I don’t say so,” said Lady Laura.
“And you are worth all the others put together. It is such a comfort to have someone to say a cheery word to one.”
“You shall hear nothing but cheery words here. Papa shall say cheery words to you that shall be better than mine, because they shall be weighted with the wisdom of age. I have heard him say twenty times that the earlier a man goes into the House the better. There is much to learn.”
“But your father was thinking of men of fortune.”
“Not at all — of younger brothers, and barristers, and of men who have their way to make, as you have. Let me see — can you dine here on Wednesday? There will be no party, of course, but papa will want to shake hands with you; and you legislators of the Lower House are more easily reached on Wednesdays than on any other day.”
“I shall be delighted,” said Phineas, feeling, however, that he did not expect much sympathy from Lord Brentford.
“Mr Kennedy dines here — you know Mr Kennedy, of Loughlinter; and we will ask your friend Mr Fitzgibbon. There will be nobody else. As for catching Barrington Erle, that is out of the question at such a time as this.”
“But going back to my being ruined — “ said Phineas, after a pause.
“Don’t think of anything so disagreeable.”
“You must not suppose that I am afraid of it. I was going to say that there are worse things than ruin — or, at any rate, than the chance of ruin. Supposing that I have to emigrate and skin sheep, what does it matter? I myself, being unencumbered, have myself as my own property to do what I like with. With Nelson it was Westminster Abbey or a peerage. With me it is parliamentary success or sheep-skinning.”
“There shall be no sheep-skinning, Mr Finn, I will guarantee you.”
“Then I shall be safe.”
At that moment the door of the room was opened, and a man entered with quick steps, came a few yards in, and then retreated, slamming the door after him. He was a man with thick short red hair, and an abundance of very red beard. And his face was red — and as it seemed to Phineas, his very eyes. There was something in the countenance of the man which struck him almost with dread — something approaching to ferocity.
There was a pause a moment after the door was closed, and then Lady Laura spoke. “It was my brother Chiltern. I do not think that you have ever met him.”
That terrible apparition of the red Lord Chiltern had disturbed Phineas in the moment of his happiness as he sat listening to the kind flatteries of Lady Laura; and though Lord Chiltern had vanished as quickly as he had appeared, there had come no return of his joy. Lady Laura had said some word about her brother, and Phineas had replied that he had never chanced to see Lord Chiltern. Then there had been an awkward silence, and almost immediately other persons had come in. After greeting one or two old acquaintances, among whom an elder sister of Laurence Fitzgibbon was one, he took his leave and escaped out into the square. “Miss Fitzgibbon is going to dine with us on Wednesday,” said Lady Laura. “She says she won’t answer for her brother, but she will bring him if she can.”
“And you’re a member of Parliament now too, they tell me,” said Miss Fitzgibbon, holding up her hands. “I think everybody will be in Parliament before long. I wish I knew some man who wasn’t, that I might think of changing my condition.”
But Phineas cared very little what Miss Fitzgibbon said to him. Everybody knew Aspasia Fitzgibbon, and all who knew her were accustomed to put up with the violence of her jokes and the bitterness of her remarks. She was an old maid, over forty, very plain, who, having reconciled herself to the fact that she was an old maid, chose to take advantage of such poor privileges as the position gave her. Within the last few years a considerable fortune had fallen into her hands, some twenty-five thousand pounds, which had come to her unexpectedly — a wonderful windfall. And now she was the only one of her family who had money at command. She lived in a small house by herself, in one of the smallest streets of Mayfair, and walked about sturdily by herself, and spoke her mind about everything. She was greatly devoted to her brother Laurence — so devoted that there was nothing she would not do for him, short of lending him money.
But Phineas when he found himself out in the square thought nothing of Aspasia Fitzgibbon. He had gone to Lady Laura Standish for sympathy, and she had given it to him in full measure. She understood him and his aspirations if no one else did so on the face of the earth. She rejoiced in his triumph, and was not too hard to tell him that she looked forward to his success. And in what delightful language she had done so! “Faint heart never won fair lady.” It was thus, or almost thus, that she had encouraged him. He knew well that she had in truth meant nothing more than her words had seemed to signify. He did not for a moment attribute to her aught else. But might not he get another lesson from them? He had often told himself that he was not in love with Laura Standish — but why should he not now tell himself that he was in love with her? Of course there would be difficulty. But was it not the business of his life to overcome difficulties? Had he not already overcome one difficulty almost as great; and why should he be afraid of this other? Faint heart never won fair lady! And this fair lady — for at this moment he was ready to swear that she was very fair — was already half won. She could not have taken him by the hand so warmly, and looked into his face so keenly, had she not felt for him something stronger than common friendship.
He had turned down Baker Street from the square, and was now walking towards the Regent’s Park. He would go and see the beasts in the Zoological Gardens; and make up his mind as to his future mode of life in that delightful Sunday solitude. There was very much as to which it was necessary that he should make up his mind. If he resolved that he would ask Lady Laura Standish to be his wife, when should he ask her, and in what manner might he propose to her that they should live? It would hardly suit him to postpone his courtship indefinitely, knowing, as he did know, that he would be one among many suitors. He could not expect her to wait for him if he did not declare himself. And yet he could hardly ask her to come and share with him the allowance made to him by his father! Whether she had much fortune of her own, or little, or none at all, he did not in the least know. He did know that the Earl had been distressed by his son’s extravagance, and that there had been some money difficulties arising from this source.
But his great desire would be to support his own wife by his own labour. At present he was hardly in a fair way to do that, unless he could get paid for his parliamentary work. Those fortunate gentlemen who form “The Government” are so paid. Yes — there was the Treasury Bench open to him, and he must resolve that he would seat himself there. He would make Lady Laura understand this, and then he would ask his question. It was true that at present his political opponents had possession of the Treasury Bench — but all governments are mortal, and Conservative governments in this country are especially prone to die. It was true that he could not hold even a Treasury lordship with a poor thousand a year for his salary without having to face the electors of Loughshane again before he entered upon the enjoyment of his place — but if he could only do something to give a grace to his name, to show that he was a rising man, the electors of Loughshane, who had once been so easy with him, would surely not be cruel to him when he showed himself a second time among them. Lord Tulla was his friend, and he had those points of law in his favour which possession bestows. And then he remembered that Lady Laura was related to almost everybody who was anybody among the high Whigs. She was, he knew, second cousin to Mr Mildmay, who for years had been the leader of the Whigs, and was third cousin to Barrington Erle. The late President of the Council, the Duke of St Bungay, and Lord Brentford had married sisters, and the St Bungay people, and the Mildmay people, and the Brentford people had all some sort of connection with the Palliser people, of whom the heir and coming chief, Plantagenet Palliser, would certainly be Chancellor of the Exchequer in the next Government. Simply as an introduction into official life nothing could be more conducive to chances of success than a matrimonial alliance with Lady Laura. Not that he would have thought of such a thing on that account! No — he thought of it because he loved her; honestly because he loved her. He swore to that half a dozen times, for his own satisfaction. But, loving her as he did, and resolving that in spite of all difficulties she should become his wife, there could be no reason why he should not — on her account as well as on his own — take advantage of any circumstances that there might be in his favour.
As he wandered among the unsavoury beasts, elbowed on every side by the Sunday visitors to the garden, he made up his mind that he would first let Lady Laura understand what were his intentions with regard to his future career, and then he would ask her to join her lot to his. At every turn the chances would of course be very much against him — ten to one against him, perhaps, on every point; but it was his lot in life to have to face such odds. Twelve months since it had been much more than ten to one against his getting into Parliament; and yet he was there. He expected to be blown into fragments — to sheep-skinning in Australia, or packing preserved meats on the plains of Paraguay; but when the blowing into atoms should come, he was resolved that courage to bear the ruin should not be wanting. Then he quoted a line or two of a Latin poet, and felt himself to be comfortable.
“So, here you are again, Mr Finn,” said a voice in his ear.
“Yes, Miss Fitzgibbon; here I am again.”
“I fancied you members of Parliament had something else to do besides looking at wild beasts. I thought you always spent Sunday in arranging how you might most effectually badger each other on Monday.”
“We got through all that early this morning, Miss Fitzgibbon, while you were saying your prayers.”
“Here is Mr Kennedy too — you know him I daresay. He also is a member; but then he can afford to be idle.” But it so happened that Phineas did not know Mr Kennedy, and consequently there was some slight form of introduction.
“I believe I am to meet you at dinner on Wednesday,” — said Phineas — “at Lord Brentford’s.”
“And me too,” said Miss Fitzgibbon.
“Which will be the greatest possible addition to our pleasure,” said Phineas.
Mr Kennedy, who seemed to be afflicted with some difficulty in speaking, and whose bow to our hero had hardly done more than produce the slightest possible motion to the top of his hat, hereupon muttered something which was taken to mean an assent to the proposition as to Wednesday’s dinner. Then he stood perfectly still, with his two hands fixed on the top of his umbrella, and gazed at the great monkeys’ cage. But it was clear that he was not looking at any special monkey, for his eyes never wandered.
“Did you ever see such a contrast in your life?” said Miss Fitzgibbon to Phineas — hardly in a whisper.
“Between what?” said Phineas.
“Between Mr Kennedy and a monkey. The monkey has so much to say for himself, and is so delightfully wicked! I don’t suppose that Mr Kennedy ever did anything wrong in his life.”
Mr Kennedy was a man who had very little temptation to do anything wrong. He was possessed of over a million and a half of money, which he was mistaken enough to suppose he had made himself; whereas it may be doubted whether he had ever earned a penny. His father and his uncle had created a business in Glasgow, and that business now belonged to him. But his father and his uncle, who had toiled through their long lives, had left behind them servants who understood the work, and the business now went on prospering almost by its own momentum. The Mr Kennedy of the present day, the sole owner of the business, though he did occasionally go to Glasgow, certainly did nothing towards maintaining it. He had a magnificent place in Perthshire, called Loughlinter, and he sat for a Scotch group of boroughs, and he had a house in London, and a stud of horses in Leicestershire, which he rarely visited, and was unmarried. He never spoke much to any one, although he was constantly in society. He rarely did anything, although he had the means of doing everything. He had very seldom been on his legs in the House of Commons, though he had sat there for ten years. He was seen about everywhere, sometimes with one acquaintance and sometimes with another — but it may be doubted whether he had any friend. It may be doubted whether he had ever talked enough to any man to make that man his friend. Laurence Fitzgibbon tried him for one season, and after a month or two asked for a loan of a few hundred pounds. “I never lend money to any one under any circumstances,” said Mr Kennedy, and it was the longest speech which had ever fallen from his mouth in the hearing of Laurence Fitzgibbon. But though he would not lend money, he gave a great deal — and he would give it for almost every object. “Mr Robert Kennedy, M.P., Loughlinter, ￡105,” appeared on almost every charitable list that was advertised. No one ever spoke to him as to this expenditure, nor did he ever speak to any one. Circulars came to him and the cheques were returned. The duty was a very easy one to him, and he performed it willingly. Had any amount of inquiry been necessary, it is possible that the labour would have been too much for him. Such was Mr Robert Kennedy, as to whom Phineas had heard that he had during the last winter entertained Lord Brentford and Lady Laura, with very many other people of note, at his place in Perthshire.
“I very much prefer the monkey,” said Phineas to Miss Fitzgibbon.
“I thought you would,” said she. Like to like, you know. You have both of you the same aptitude for climbing. But the monkeys never fall, they tell me.”
Phineas, knowing that he could gain nothing by sparring with Miss Fitzgibbon, raised his hat and took his leave. Going out of a narrow gate he found himself again brought into contact with Mr Kennedy. “What a crowd there is here,” he said, finding himself bound to say something. Mr Kennedy, who was behind him, answered him not a word. Then Phineas made up his mind that Mr Kennedy was insolent with the insolence of riches, and that he would hate Mr Kennedy.
He was engaged to dine on this Sunday with Mr Low, the barrister, with whom he had been reading for the last three years. Mr Low had taken a strong liking to Phineas, as had also Mrs Low, and the tutor had more than once told his pupil that success in his profession was certainly open to him if he would only stick to his work. Mr Low was himself an ambitious man, looking forward to entering Parliament at some future time, when the exigencies of his life of labour might enable him to do so; but he was prudent, given to close calculation, and resolved to make the ground sure beneath his feet in every step that he took forward. When he first heard that Finn intended to stand for Loughshane he was stricken with dismay, and strongly dissuaded him. “The electors may probably reject him. That’s his only chance now,” Mr Low had said to his wife, when he found that Phineas was, as he thought, foolhardy. But the electors of Loughshane had not rejected Mr Low’s pupil, and Mr Low was now called upon to advise what Phineas should do in his present circumstances. There is nothing to prevent the work of a Chancery barrister being done by a member of Parliament. Indeed, the most successful barristers are members of Parliament. But Phineas Finn was beginning at the wrong end, and Mr Low knew that no good would come of it.
“Only think of your being in Parliament, Mr Finn,” said Mrs Low.
“It is wonderful, isn’t it?” said Phineas.
“It took us so much by surprise!” said Mrs Low. As a rule one never hears of a barrister going into Parliament till after he’s forty.”
“And I’m only twenty-five. I do feel that I’ve disgraced myself. I do, indeed, Mrs Low.”
“No — you’ve not disgraced yourself, Mr Finn. The only question is, whether it’s prudent. I hope it will all turn out for the best, most heartily.” Mrs Low was a very matter-of-fact lady, four or five years older than her husband, who had had a little money of her own, and was possessed of every virtue under the sun. Nevertheless she did not quite like the idea of her husband’s pupil having got into Parliament. If her husband and Phineas Finn were dining anywhere together, Phineas, who had come to them quite a boy, would walk out of the room before her husband. This could hardly be right! Nevertheless she helped Phineas to the nicest bit of fish she could find, and had he been ill, would dive nursed him with the greatest care.
After dinner, when Mrs Low had gone upstairs, there came the great discussion between the tutor and the pupil, for the sake of which this little dinner had been given. When Phineas had last been with Mr Low — on the occasion of his showing himself at his tutor’s chambers after his return from Ireland — he had not made up his mind so thoroughly on certain points as he had done since he had seen Lady Laura. The discussion could hardly be of any avail now — but it could not be avoided.
“Well, Phineas, and what do you mean to do?” said Mr Low. Everybody who knew our hero, or nearly everybody, called him by his Christian name. There are men who seem to be so treated by general consent in all societies. Even Mrs Low, who was very prosaic, and unlikely to be familiar in her mode of address, had fallen into the way of doing it before the election. But she had dropped it, when the Phineas whom she used to know became a member of Parliament.
“That’s the question — isn’t it?” said Phineas.
“Of course you’ll stick to your work?”
“What — to the Bar?”
“Yes — to the Bar.”
“I am not thinking of giving it up permanently.”
“Giving it up,” said Mr Low, raising his hands in surprise. “If you give it up, how do you intend to live? Men are not paid for being members of Parliament.”
“Not exactly. But, as I said before, I am not thinking of giving it up — permanently.”
“You mustn’t give it up at all — not for a day; that is, if you ever mean to do any good.”
“There I think that perhaps you may be wrong, Low!”
“How can I be wrong? Did a period of idleness ever help a man in any profession? And is it not acknowledged by all who know anything about it, that continuous labour is more necessary in our profession than in any other?”
“I do not mean to be idle.”
“What is it you do mean, Phineas?”
“Why simply this. Here I am in Parliament. We must take that as a fact.”
“I don’t doubt the fact.”
“And if it be a misfortune, we must make the best of it. Even you wouldn’t advise me to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds at once.”
“I would — tomorrow. My dear fellow, though I do not like to give you pain, if you come to me I can only tell you what I think. My advice to you is to give it up tomorrow. Men would laugh at you for a few weeks, but that is better than being ruined for life.”
“I can’t do that,” said Phineas, sadly.
“Very well — then let us go on,” said Mr Low. If you won’t give up your seat, the next best thing will be to take care that it shall interfere as little as possible with your work. I suppose you must sit upon some Committees.”
“My idea is this — that I will give up one year to learning the practices of the House.”
“And do nothing?”
“Nothing but that. Why, the thing is a study in itself. As for learning it in a year, that is out of the question. But I am convinced that if a man intends to be a useful member of Parliament, he should make a study of it.”
“And how do you mean to live in the meantime?” Mr Low, who was an energetic man, had assumed almost an angry tone of voice. Phineas for awhile sat silent — not that he felt himself to be without words for a reply, but that he was thinking in what fewest words he might best convey his ideas. “You have a very modest allowance from your father, on which you have never been able to keep yourself free from debt,” continued Mr Low.
“He has increased it.”
“And will it satisfy you to live here, in what will turn out to be parliamentary club idleness, on the savings of his industrious life? I think you will find yourself unhappy if you do that. Phineas, my dear fellow, as far as I have as yet been able to see the world, men don’t begin either very good or very bad. They have generally good aspirations with infirm purposes — or, as we may say, strong bodies with weak legs to carry them. Then, because their legs are weak, they drift into idleness and ruin. During all this drifting they are wretched, and when they have thoroughly drifted they are still wretched. The agony of their old disappointment still clings to them. In nine cases out of ten it is someone small unfortunate event that puts a man astray at first. He sees some woman and loses himself with her — or he is taken to a racecourse and unluckily wins money — or some devil in the shape of a friend lures him to tobacco and brandy. Your temptation has come in the shape of this accursed seat in Parliament.” Mr Low had never said a soft word in his life to any woman but the wife of his bosom, had never seen a racehorse, always confined himself to two glasses of port after dinner, and looked upon smoking as the darkest of all the vices.
“You have made up your mind, then, that I mean to be idle?”
“I have made up my mind that your time will be wholly unprofitable — if you do as you say you intend to do.”
“But you do not know my plan; just listen to me.” Then Mr Low did listen, and Phineas explained his plan — saying, of course, nothing of his love for Lady Laura, but giving Mr Low to understand that he intended to assist in turning out the existing Government and to mount up to some seat — a humble seat at first — on the Treasury bench, by the help of his exalted friends and by the use of his own gifts of eloquence. Mr Low heard him without a word. “Of course,” said Phineas, after the first year my time will not be fully employed, unless I succeed. And if I fail totally — for, of course, I may fail altogether — ”
“It is possible,” said Mr Low.
“If you are resolved to turn yourself against me, I must not say another word,” said Phineas, with anger.
“Turn myself against you! I would turn myself any way so that I might save you from the sort of life which you are preparing for yourself. I see nothing in it that can satisfy any manly heart. Even if you are successful, what are you to become? You will be the creature of some minister, not his colleague. You are to make your way up the ladder by pretending to agree whenever agreement is demanded from you, and by voting whether you agree or do not. And what is to be your reward? Some few precarious hundreds a year, lasting just so long as a party may remain in power and you can retain a seat in Parliament! It is at the best slavery and degradation, — even if you are lucky enough to achieve the slavery.”
“You yourself hope to go into Parliament and join a ministry some day,” said Phineas.
Mr Low was not quick to answer, but he did answer at last. “That is true, though I have never told you so. Indeed, it is hardly true to say that I hope it. I have my dreams, and sometimes dare to tell myself that they may possibly become waking facts. But if ever I sit on a Treasury bench I shall sit there by special invitation, having been summoned to take a high place because of my professional success. It is but a dream after all, and I would not have you repeat what I have said to anyone. I had no intention to talk about myself.”
“I am sure that you will succeed,” said Phineas.
“Yes — I shall succeed. I am succeeding. I live upon what I earn, like a gentleman, and can already afford to be indifferent to work that I dislike. After all, the other part of it — that of which I dream — is but an unnecessary adjunct; the gilding on the gingerbread. I am inclined to think that the cake is more wholesome without it.”
Phineas did not go upstairs into Mrs Low’s drawing-room on that evening, nor did he stay very late with Mr Low. He had heard enough of counsel to make him very unhappy — to shake from him much of the audacity which he had acquired for himself during his morning’s walk — and to make him almost doubt whether, after all, the Chiltern Hundreds would not be for him the safest escape from his difficulties. But in that case he must never venture to see Lady Laura Standish again.
No — in such case as that — should he resolve upon taking the advice of his old friend Mr Low, Phineas Finn must make up his mind never to see Lady Laura Standish again! And he was in love with Lady Laura Standish — and, for aught he knew, Lady Laura Standish might be in love with him. As he walked home from Mr Low’s house in Bedford Square, he was by no means a triumphant man. There had been much more said between him and Mr Low than could be laid before the reader in the last chapter. Mr Low had urged him again and again, and had prevailed so far that Phineas, before he left the house, had promised to consider that suicidal expedient of the Chiltern Hundreds. What a by-word he would become if he were to give up Parliament, having sat there for about a week. But such immediate giving up was one of the necessities of Mr Low’s programme. According to Mr Low’s teaching, a single year passed amidst the miasma of the House of Commons would be altogether fatal to any chance of professional success. And Mr Low had at any rate succeeded in making Phineas believe that he was right in this lesson. There was his profession, as to which Mr Low assured him that success was within his reach; and there was Parliament on the other side, as to which he knew that the chances were all against him, in spite of his advantage of a seat. That he could not combine the two, beginning with Parliament, he did believe. Which should it be? That was the question which he tried to decide as he walked home from Bedford Square to Great Marlborough Street. He could not answer the question satisfactorily, and went to bed an unhappy man.
He must at any rate go to Lord Brentford’s dinner on Wednesday, and, to enable him to join in the conversation there, must attend the debates on Monday and Tuesday. The reader may perhaps be best made to understand how terrible was our hero’s state of doubt by being told that for awhile he thought of absenting himself from these debates, as being likely to weaken his purpose of withdrawing altogether from the House. It is not very often that so strong a fury rages between party and party at the commencement of the session that a division is taken upon the Address. It is customary for the leader of the opposition on such occasions to express his opinion in the most courteous language, that his right honourable friend, sitting opposite to him on the Treasury bench, has been, is, and will be wrong in everything that he thinks, says, or does in public life; but that, as anything like factious opposition is never adopted on that side of the House, the Address to the Queen, in answer to that most fatuous speech which has been put into Her Majesty’s gracious mouth, shall be allowed to pass unquestioned. Then the leader of the House thanks his adversary for his consideration, explains to all men how happy the country ought to be that the Government has not fallen into the disgracefully incapable hands of his right honourable friend opposite; and after that the Address is carried amidst universal serenity. But such was not the order of the day on the present occasion. Mr Mildmay, the veteran leader of the liberal side of the House, had moved an amendment to the Address, and had urged upon the House, in very strong language, the expediency of showing, at the very commencement of the session, that the country had returned to Parliament a strong majority determined not to put up with Conservative inactivity. “I conceive it to be my duty,” Mr Mildmay had said, “at once to assume that the country is unwilling that the right honourable gentlemen opposite should keep their seats on the bench upon which they sit, and in the performance of that duty I am called upon to divide the House upon the Address to Her Majesty.” And if Mr Mildmay used strong language, the reader may be sure that Mr Mildmay’s followers used language much stronger. And Mr Daubeny, who was the present leader of the House, and representative there of the Ministry — Lord de Terrier, the Premier, sitting in the House of Lords — was not the man to allow these amenities to pass by without adequate replies. He and his friends were very strong in sarcasm, if they failed in argument, and lacked nothing for words, though it might perhaps be proved that they were short in numbers. It was considered that the speech in which Mr Daubeny reviewed the long political life of Mr Mildmay, and showed that Mr Mildmay had been at one time a bugbear, and then a nightmare, and latterly simply a fungus, was one of the severest attacks, if not the most severe, that had been heard in that House since the Reform Bill. Mr Mildmay, the while, was sitting with his hat low down over his eyes, and many men said that he did not like it. But this speech was not made till after that dinner at Lord Brentford’s, of which a short account must be given.
Had it not been for the overwhelming interest of the doings in Parliament at the commencement of the session, Phineas might have perhaps abstained from attending, in spite of the charm of novelty. For, in truth, Mr Low’s words had moved him much. But if it was to be his fate to be a member of Parliament only for ten days, surely it would be well that he should take advantage of the time to hear such a debate as this. It would be a thing to talk of to his children in twenty years’ time, or to his grandchildren in fifty — and it would be essentially necessary that he should be able to talk of it to Lady Laura Standish. He did, therefore, sit in the House till one on the Monday night, and till two on the Tuesday night, and heard the debate adjourned till the Thursday. On the Thursday Mr Daubeny was to make his great speech, and then the division would come.
When Phineas entered Lady Laura’s drawing-room on the Wednesday before dinner, he found the other guests all assembled. Why men should have been earlier in keeping their dinner engagements on that day than on any other he did not understand; but it was the fact, probably, that the great anxiety of the time made those who were at all concerned in the matter very keen to hear and to be heard. During these days everybody was in a hurry — everybody was eager; and there was a common feeling that not a minute was to be lost. There were three ladies in the room — Lady Laura, Miss Fitzgibbon, and Mrs Bonteen. The latter was the wife of a gentleman who had been a junior Lord of the Admiralty in the late Government, and who lived in the expectation of filling, perhaps, some higher office in the Government which, as he hoped, was soon to be called into existence. There were five gentlemen besides Phineas Finn himself — Mr Bonteen, Mr Kennedy, Mr Fitzgibbon, Barrington Erle, who had been caught in spite of all that Lady Laura had said as to the difficulty of such an operation, and Lord Brentford. Phineas was quick to observe that every male guest was in Parliament, and to tell himself that he would not have been there unless he also had had a seat.
“We are all here now,” said the Earl, ringing the bell.
“I hope I’ve not kept you waiting,” said Phineas.
“Not at all,” said Lady Laura. I do not know why we are in such a hurry. And how many do you say it will be, Mr Finn?”
“Seventeen, I suppose,” said Phineas.
“More likely twenty-two,” said Mr Bonteen. There is Colcleugh so ill they can’t possibly bring him up, and young Rochester is at Vienna, and Gunning is sulking about something, and Moody has lost his eldest son. By George! they pressed him to come up, although Frank Moody won’t be buried till Friday.”
“I don’t believe it,” said Lord Brentford.
“You ask some of the Carlton fellows, and they’ll own it.”
“If I’d lost every relation I had in the world,” said Fitzgibbon, “I’d vote on such a question as this. Staying away won’t bring poor Frank Moody back to life.”
“But there’s a decency in these matters, is there not, Mr Fitzgibbon?” said Lady Laura.
“I thought they had thrown all that kind of thing overboard long ago,” said Miss Fitzgibbon. “It would be better that they should have no veil, than squabble about the thickness of it.”
Then dinner was announced. The Earl walked off with Miss Fitzgibbon, Barrington Erle took Mrs Bonteen, and Mr Fitzgibbon took Lady Laura.
“I’ll bet four pounds to two it’s over nineteen,” said Mr Bonteen, as he passed through the drawing-room door. The remark seemed to have been addressed to Mr Kennedy, and Phineas therefore made no reply.
“I daresay it will,” said Kennedy, but I never bet.”
“But you vote — sometimes, I hope,” said Bonteen.
“Sometimes,” said Mr Kennedy.
“I think he is the most odious man that ever I set my eyes on,” said Phineas to himself as he followed Mr Kennedy into the dining-room. He had observed that Mr Kennedy had been standing very near to Lady Laura in the drawing-room, and that Lady Laura had said a few words to him. He was more determined than ever that he would hate Mr Kennedy, and would probably have been moody and unhappy throughout the whole dinner had not Lady Laura called him to a chair at her left hand. It was very generous of her; and the more so, as Mr Kennedy had, in a half-hesitating manner, prepared to seat himself in that very place. As it was, Phineas and Mr Kennedy were neighbours, but Phineas had the place of honour.
“I suppose you will not speak during the debate?” said Lady Laura.
“Who? I? Certainly not. In the first place, I could not get a hearing, and, in the next place, I should not think of commencing on such an occasion. I do not know that I shall ever speak at all.”
“Indeed you will. You are just the sort of man who will succeed with the House. What I doubt is, whether you will do as well in office.”
“I wish I might have the chance.”
“Of course you can have the chance if you try for it. Beginning so early, and being on the right side — and, if you will allow me to say so, among the right set — there can be no doubt that you may take office if you will. But I am not sure that you will be tractable. You cannot begin, you know, by being Prime Minister.”
“I have seen enough to realise that already,” said Phineas.
“If you will only keep that little fact steadily before your eyes, there is nothing you may not reach in official life. But Pitt was Prime Minister at four-and-twenty, and that precedent has ruined half our young politicians.”
“It has not affected me, Lady Laura.”
“As far as I can see, there is no great difficulty in government. A man must learn to have words at command when he is on his legs in the House of Commons, in the same way as he would if he were talking to his own servants. He must keep his temper; and he must be very patient. As far as I have seen Cabinet Ministers, they are not more clever than other people.”
“I think there are generally one or two men of ability in the Cabinet.”
“Yes, of fair ability. Mr Mildmay is a good specimen. There is not, and never was, anything brilliant in him. He is not eloquent, nor, as far as I am aware, did he ever create anything. But he has always been a steady, honest, persevering man, and circumstances have made politics come easy to him.”
“Think of the momentous questions which he has been called upon to decide,” said Phineas.
“Every question so handled by him has been decided rightly according to his own party, and wrongly according to the Party opposite. A political leader is so sure of support and so sure of attack, that it is hardly necessary for him to be even anxious to be right. For the country’s sake, he should have officials under him who know the routine of business.”
“You think very badly then of politics as a profession.”
“No; I think of them very highly. It must be better to deal with the repeal of laws than the defending of criminals. But all this is papa’s wisdom, not mine. Papa has never been in the Cabinet yet, and therefore of course he is a little caustic.”
“I think he was quite right,” said Barrington Erle stoutly. He spoke so stoutly that everybody at the table listened to him.
“I don’t exactly see the necessity for such internecine war just at present,” said Lord Brentford.
“I must say I do,” said the other. Lord de Terrier took office knowing that he was in a minority. We had a fair majority of nearly thirty when he came in.”
“Then how very soft you must have been to go out,” said Miss Fitzgibbon.
“Not in the least soft,” continued Barrington Erle. We could not command our men, and were bound to go out. For aught we knew, some score of them might have chosen to support Lord de Terrier, and then we should have owned ourselves beaten for the time.”
“You were beaten — hollow,” said Miss Fitzgibbon.
“Then why did Lord de Terrier dissolve?”
“A Prime Minister is quite right to dissolve in such a position,” said Lord Brentford. “He must do so for the Queen’s sake. It is his only chance.”
“Just so. It is, as you say, his only chance, and it is his right. His very possession of power will give him near a score of votes, and if he thinks that he has a chance, let him try it. We maintain that he had no chance, and that he must have known that he had none — that if he could not get on with the late House, he certainly could not get on with a new House. We let him have his own way as far as we could in February. We had failed last summer, and if he could get along he was welcome. But he could not get along.”
“I must say I think he was right to dissolve,” said Lady Laura.
“And we are right to force the consequences upon him as quickly as we can. He practically lost nine seats by his dissolution. Look at Loughshane.”
“Yes; look at Loughshane,” said Miss Fitzgibbon. The country at any rate has gained something there.”
“It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good, Mr Finn,” said the Earl.
“What on earth is to become of poor George?” said Mr Fitzgibbon. “I wonder whether anyone knows where he is. George wasn’t a bad sort of fellow.”
“Roby used to think that he was a very bad fellow,” said Mr Bonteen. “Roby used to swear that it was hopeless trying to catch him.” It may be as well to explain that Mr Roby was a Conservative gentleman of great fame who had for years acted as Whip under Mr Daubeny, and who now filled the high office of Patronage Secretary to the Treasury. “I believe in my heart,” continued Mr Bonteen, “that Roby is rejoiced that poor George Morris should be out in the cold.”
“If seats were halveable, he should share mine, for the sake of auld lang syne,” said Laurence Fitzgibbon.
“But not tomorrow night,” said Barrington Erle; the division tomorrow will be a thing not to be joked with. Upon my word I think they’re right about old Moody. All private considerations should give way. And as for Gunning, I’d have him up or I’d know the reason why.”
“And shall we have no defaulters, Barrington?” asked Lady Laura.
“I’m not going to boast, but I don’t know of one for whom we need blush. Sir Everard Powell is so bad with gout that he can’t even bear anyone to look at him, but Ratler says that he’ll bring him up.” Mr Ratler was in those days the Whip on the liberal side of the House.
“Unfortunate wretch!” said Miss Fitzgibbon.
“The worst of it is that he screams in his paroxysms,” said Mr Bonteen.
“And you mean to say that you’ll take him into the lobby,” said Lady Laura.
“Undoubtedly,” said Barrington Erle. Why not? He has no business with a seat if he can’t vote. But Sir Everard is a good man, and he’ll be there if laudanum and bath-chair make it possible.”
The same kind of conversation went on during the whole of dinner, and became, if anything, more animated when the three ladies had left the room. Mr Kennedy made but one remark, and then he observed that as far as he could see a majority of nineteen would be as serviceable as a majority of twenty. This he said in a very mild voice, and in a tone that was intended to be expressive of doubt; but in spite of his humility Barrington Erle flew at him almost savagely — as though a liberal member of the House of Commons was disgraced by so mean a spirit; and Phineas found himself despising the man for his want of zeal.
“If we are to beat them, let us beat them well,” said Phineas.
“Let there be no doubt about it,” said Barrington Erle.
“I should like to see every man with a seat polled,” said Bonteen.
“Poor Sir Everard!” said Lord Brentford. It will kill him, no doubt, but I suppose the seat is safe.”
“Oh, yes; Llanwrwsth is quite safe,” said Barrington, in his eagerness omitting to catch Lord Brentford’s grim joke.
Phineas went up into the drawing-room for a few minutes after dinner, and was eagerly desirous of saying a few more words — he knew not what words — to Lady Laura. Mr Kennedy and Mr Bonteen had left the dining-room first, and Phineas again found Mr Kennedy standing close to Lady Laura’s shoulder. Could it be possible that there was anything in it? Mr Kennedy was an unmarried man, with an immense fortune, a magnificent place, a seat in Parliament, and was not perhaps above forty years of age. There could be no reason why he should not ask Lady Laura to be his wife — except, indeed, that he did not seem to have sufficient words at command to ask anybody for anything. But could it be that such a woman as Lady Laura could accept such a man as Mr Kennedy because of his wealth, and because of his fine place — a man who had not a word to throw to a dog, who did not seem to be possessed of an idea, who hardly looked like a gentleman — so Phineas told himself. But in truth Mr Kennedy, though he was a plain, unattractive man, with nothing in his personal appearance to call for remark, was not unlike a gentleman in his usual demeanour. Phineas himself, it may be here said, was six feet high, and very handsome, with bright blue eyes, and brown wavy hair, and light silken beard. Mrs Low had told her husband more than once that he was much too handsome to do any good. Mr Low, however, had replied that young Finn had never shown himself to be conscious of his own personal advantages. “He’ll learn it soon enough,” said Mrs Low. “Some woman will tell him, and then he’ll be spoilt.” I do not think that Phineas depended much as yet on his own good looks, but he felt that Mr Kennedy ought to be despised by such a one as Lady Laura Standish, because his looks were not good. And she must despise him! It could not be that a woman so full of life should be willing to put up with a man who absolutely seemed to have no life within him. And yet why was he there, and why was he allowed to hang about just over her shoulders? Phineas Finn began to feel himself to be an injured man.
But Lady Laura had the power of dispelling instantly this sense of injury. She had done it effectually in the dining-room by calling him to the seat by her side, to the express exclusion of the millionaire, and she did it again now by walking away from Mr Kennedy to the spot on which Phineas had placed himself somewhat sulkily.
“Of course you’ll be at the club on Friday morning after the division,” she said.
“No doubt.”
“When you leave it, come and tell me what are your impressions, and what you think of Mr Daubeny’s speech. There’ll be nothing done in the House before four, and you’ll be able to run up to me.”
“Certainly I will.”
“I have asked Mr Kennedy to come, and Mr Fitzgibbon. I am so anxious about it, that I want to hear what different people say. You know, perhaps, that papa is to be in the Cabinet if there’s a change.”
“Is he indeed?”
“Oh yes — and you’ll come up?”
“Of course I will. Do you expect to hear much of an opinion from Mr Kennedy?”
“Yes, I do. You don’t quite know Mr Kennedy yet. And you must remember that he will say more to me than he will to you. He’s not quick, you know, as you are, and he has no enthusiasm on any subject — but he has opinions, and sound opinions too.” Phineas felt that Lady Laura was in a slight degree scolding him for the disrespectful manner in which he had spoken of Mr Kennedy; and he felt also that he had committed himself — that he had shown himself to be sore, and that she had seen and understood his soreness.
“The truth is I do not know him,” said he, trying to correct his blunder.
“No — not as yet. But I hope that you may some day, as he is one of those men who are both useful and estimable.”
“I do not know that I can use him,” said Phineas; but if you wish it, I will endeavour to esteem him.”
“I wish you to do both — but that will all come in due time. I think it probable that in the early autumn there will be a great gathering of the real Whig Liberals at Loughlinter — of those, I mean, who have their heart in it, and are at the same time gentlemen. If it is so, I should be sorry that you should not be there. You need not mention it, but Mr Kennedy has just said a word about it to papa, and a word from him always means so much! Well — goodnight; and mind you come up on Friday. You are going to the club, now, of course, I envy you men your clubs more than I do the House — though I feel that a woman’s life is only half a life, as she cannot have a seat in Parliament.”
Then Phineas went away, and walked down to Pall Mall with Laurence Fitzgibbon. He would have preferred to take his walk alone, but he could not get rid of his affectionate countryman. He wanted to think over what had taken place during the evening; and, indeed, he did so in spite of his friend”s conversation. Lady Laura, when she first saw him after his return to London, had told him how anxious her father was to congratulate him on his seat, but the Earl had not spoken a word to him on the subject. The Earl had been courteous, as hosts customarily are, but had been in no way specially kind to him. And then Mr Kennedy! As to going to Loughlinter, he would not do such a thing — not though the success of the liberal party were to depend on it. He declared to himself that there were some things which a man could not do. But although he was not altogether satisfied with what had occurred in Portman Square, he felt as he walked down arm-in-arm with Fitzgibbon that Mr Low and Mr Low’s counsels must be scattered to the winds. He had thrown the die in consenting to stand for Loughshane, and must stand the hazard of the cast.
“Bedad, Phin, my boy, I don’t think you’re listening to me at all,” said Laurence Fitzgibbon.
“I’m listening to every word you say,” said Phineas.
“And if I have to go down to the ould country again this session, you’ll go with me?”
“If I can I will.”
“That’s my boy! And it’s I that hope you’ll have the chance. What’s the good of turning these fellows out if one isn’t to get something for one’s trouble?”
It was three o’clock on the Thursday night before Mr Daubeny’s speech was finished. I do not think that there was any truth in the allegation made at the time, that he continued on his legs an hour longer than the necessities of his speech required, in order that five or six very ancient Whigs might be wearied out and shrink to their beds. Let a Whig have been ever so ancient and ever so weary, he would not have been allowed to depart from Westminster Hall that night. Sir Everard Powell was there in his bath-chair at twelve, with a doctor on one side of him and a friend on the other, in some purlieu of the House, and did his duty like a fine old Briton as he was. That speech of Mr Daubeny’s will never be forgotten by anyone who heard it. Its studied bitterness had perhaps never been equalled, and yet not a word was uttered for the saying of which he could be accused of going beyond the limits of parliamentary antagonism. It is true that personalities could not have been closer, that accusations of political dishonesty and of almost worse than political cowardice and falsehood could not have been clearer, that no words in the language could have attributed meaner motives or more unscrupulous conduct. But, nevertheless, Mr Daubeny in all that he said was parliamentary, and showed himself to be a gladiator thoroughly well trained for the arena in which he had descended to the combat. His arrows were poisoned, and his lance was barbed, and his shot was heated red — because such things are allowed. He did not poison his enemies’ wells or use Greek fire, because those things are not allowed. He knew exactly the rules of the combat. Mr Mildmay sat and heard him without once raising his hat from his brow, or speaking a word to his neighbour. Men on both sides of the House said that Mr Mildmay suffered terribly; but as Mr Mildmay uttered no word of complaint to anyone, and was quite ready to take Mr Daubeny by the hand the next time they met in company, I do not know that anyone was able to form a true idea of Mr Mildmay’s feelings. Mr Mildmay was an impassive man who rarely spoke of his own feelings, and no doubt sat with his hat low down over his eyes in order that no man might judge of them on that occasion by the impression on his features. “If he could have left off half an hour earlier it would have been perfect as an attack,” said Barrington Erle in criticising Mr Daubeny’s speech, “but he allowed himself to sink into comparative weakness, and the glory of it was over before the end.” — Then came the division. The Liberals had 333 votes to 314 for the Conservatives, and therefore counted a majority of 19. It was said that so large a number of members had never before voted at any division.
“I own I’m disappointed,” said Barrington Erle to Mr Ratler.
“I thought there would be twenty,” said Mr Ratler. I never went beyond that. I knew they would have old Moody up, but I thought Gunning would have been too hard for them.”
“They say they’ve promised them both peerages.”
“Yes — if they remain in. But they know they’re going out.”
“They must go, with such a majority against them,” said Barrington Erle.
“Of course they must,” said Mr Ratler. Lord de Terrier wants nothing better, but it is rather hard upon poor Daubeny. I never saw such an unfortunate old Tantalus.”
“He gets a good drop of real water now and again, and I don’t pity him in the least. He’s clever of course, and has made his own way, but I’ve always a feeling that he has no business where he is. I suppose we shall know all about it at Brooks’s by one o’clock tomorrow.”
Phineas, though it had been past five before he went to bed — for there had been much triumphant talking to be done among liberal members after the division — was up at his breakfast at Mrs Bunce’s lodgings by nine. There was a matter which he was called upon to settle immediately in which Mrs Bunce herself was much interested, and respecting which he had promised to give an answer on this very morning. A set of very dingy chambers up two pairs of stairs at No. 9, Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn, to which Mr Low had recommended him to transfer himself and all his belongings, were waiting his occupation, should he resolve upon occupying them. If he intended to commence operations as a barrister, it would be necessary that he should have chambers and a clerk; and before he had left Mr Low’s house on Sunday evening he had almost given that gentleman authority to secure for him these rooms at No. 9. “Whether you remain in Parliament or no, you must make a beginning,” Mr Low had said; “and how are you even to pretend to begin if you don’t have chambers?” Mr Low hoped that he might be able to wean Phineas away from his Parliament bauble — that he might induce the young barrister to give up his madness, if not this session or the next, at any rate before a third year had commenced. Mr Low was a persistent man, liking very much when he did like, and loving very strongly when he did love. He would have many a tug for Phineas Finn before he would allow that false Westminster Satan to carry off the prey as altogether his own. If he could only get Phineas into the dingy chambers he might do much!
But Phineas had now become so imbued with the atmosphere of politics, had been so breathed upon by Lady Laura and Barrington Erle, that he could no longer endure the thought of any other life than that of a life spent among the lobbies. A desire to help to beat the Conservatives had fastened on his very soul, and almost made Mr Low odious in his eyes. He was afraid of Mr Low, and for the nonce would not go to him any more — but he must see the porter at Lincoln’s Inn, he must write a line to Mr Low, and he must tell Mrs Bunce that for the present he would still keep on her rooms. His letter to Mr Low was as follows:
“ Great Marlborough Street, May, 186 —
“ MY DEAR LOW,
“I have made up my mind against taking the chambers, and am now off to the Inn to say that I shall not want them. Of course, I know what you will think of me, and it is very grievous to me to have to bear the hard judgment of a man whose opinion I value so highly; but, in the teeth of your terribly strong arguments, I think that there is something to be said on my side of the question. This seat in Parliament has come in my way by chance, and I think it would be pusillanimous in me to reject it, feeling, as I do, that a seat in Parliament confers very great honour. I am, too, very fond of politics, and regard legislation as the finest profession going. Had I any one dependent on me, I probably might not be justified in following the bent of my inclination. But I am all alone in the world, and therefore have a right to make the attempt. If, after a trial of one or two sessions, I should fail in that which I am attempting, it will not even then be too late to go back to the better way. I can assure you that at any rate it is not my intention to be idle.
“I know very well how you will fret and fume over what I say, and how utterly I shall fail in bringing you round to my way of thinking; but as I must write to tell you of my decision, I cannot refrain from defending myself to the best of my ability.
“Yours always faithfully,
“ PHINEAS FINN ”
Mr Low received this letter at his chambers, and when he had read it, he simply pressed his lips closely together, placed the sheet of paper back in its envelope, and put it into a drawer at his left hand. Having done this, he went on with what work he had before him, as though his friend’s decision were a matter of no consequence to him. As far as he was concerned the thing was done, and there should be an end of it. So he told himself; but nevertheless his mind was full of it all day; and, though he wrote not a word of answer to Phineas, he made a reply within his own mind to every one of the arguments used in the letter. “Great honour! How can there be honour in what comes, as he says, by chance? He hasn’t sense enough to understand that the honour comes from the mode of winning it, and from the mode of wearing it; and that the very fact of his being member for Loughshane at this instant simply proves that Loughshane should have had no privilege to return a member! No one dependent on him! Are not his father and his mother and his sisters dependent on him as long as he must eat their bread till he can earn bread of his own? He will never earn bread of his own. He will always be eating bread that others have earned.” In this way, before the day was over, Mr Low became very angry, and swore to himself that he would have nothing more to say to Phineas Finn. But yet he found himself creating plans for encountering and conquering the parliamentary fiend who was at present so cruelly potent with his pupil. It was not till the third evening that he told his wife that Finn had made up his mind not to take chambers. “Then I would have nothing more to say to him,” said Mrs Low, savagely. “For the present I can have nothing more to say to him.” “But neither now nor ever, said Mrs Low, with great asis; “he has been false to you.” No, said Mr Low, who was a man thoroughly and thoughtfully just at all points; “he has not been false to me. He has always meant what he has said, when he was saying it. But he is weak and blind, and flies like a moth to the candle; one pities the poor moth, and would save him a stump of his wing if it be possible.”
Phineas, when he had written his letter to Mr Low, started off for Lincoln’s Inn, making his way through the well-known dreary streets of Soho, and through St Giles’s, to Long Acre. He knew every corner well, for he had walked the same road almost daily for the last three years. He had conceived a liking for the route, which he might easily have changed without much addition to the distance, by passing through Oxford Street and Holborn; but there was an air of business on which he prided himself in going by the most direct passage, and he declared to himself very often that things dreary and dingy to the eye might be good in themselves. Lincoln’s Inn itself is dingy, and the Law Courts therein are perhaps the meanest in which Equity ever disclosed herself. Mr Low’s three rooms in the Old Square, each of them brown with the binding of law books and with the dust collected on law papers, and with furniture that had been brown always, and had become browner with years, were perhaps as unattractive to the eye of a young pupil as any rooms which were ever entered. And the study of the Chancery law itself is not an alluring pursuit till the mind has come to have some insight into the beauty of its ultimate object. Phineas, during his three years’ course of reasoning on these things, had taught himself to believe that things ugly on the outside might be very beautiful within; and had therefore come to prefer crossing Poland Street and Soho Square, and so continuing his travels by the Seven Dials and Long Acre. His morning walk was of a piece with his morning studies, and he took pleasure in the gloom of both. But now the taste of his palate had been already changed by the glare of the lamps in and about palatial Westminster, and he found that St Giles’s was disagreeable. The ways about Pall Mall and across the Park to Parliament Street, or to the Treasury, were much pleasanter, and the new offices in Downing Street; already half built, absorbed all that interest which he had hitherto been able to take in the suggested but uncommenced erection of new Law Courts in the neighbourhood of Lincoln’s Inn. As he made his way to the porter’s lodge under the great gateway of Lincoln’s Inn, he told himself that he was glad that he had escaped, at any rate for a while, from a life so dull and dreary. If he could only sit in chambers at the Treasury instead of chambers in that old court, how much pleasanter it would be! After all, as regarded that question of income, it might well be that the Treasury chambers should be the more remunerative, and the more quickly remunerative, of the two. And, as he thought, Lady Laura might be compatible with the Treasury chambers and Parliament, but could not possibly be made compatible with Old Square, Lincoln’s Inn.
But nevertheless there came upon him a feeling of sorrow when the old man at the lodge seemed to be rather glad than otherwise that he did not want the chambers. “Then Mr Green can have them,” said the porter; “that’ll be good news for Mr Green. I don’t know what the gen’lemen ‘ll do for chambers if things goes on as they’re going.” Mr Green was welcome to the chambers as far as Phineas was concerned; but Phineas felt nevertheless a certain amount of regret that he should have been compelled to abandon a thing which was regarded both by the porter and by Mr Green as being so desirable. He had however written his letter to Mr Low, and made his promise to Barrington Erle, and was bound to Lady Laura Standish; and he walked out through the old gateway into Chancery Lane, resolving that he would not even visit Lincoln’s Inn again for a year. There were certain books — law books — which he would read at such intervals of leisure as politics might give him; but within the precincts of the Inns of Court he would not again put his foot for twelve months, let learned pundits of the law — such for instance as Mr and Mrs Low — say what they might.
He had told Mrs Bunce, before he left his home after breakfast, that he should for the present remain under her roof. She had been much gratified, not simply because lodgings in Great Marlborough Street are less readily let than chambers in Lincoln’s Inn, but also because it was a great honour to her to have a member of Parliament in her house. Members of Parliament are not so common about Oxford Street as they are in the neighbourhood of Pall Mall and St James’s Square. But Mr Bunce, when he came home to his dinner, did not join as heartily as he should have done in his wife’s rejoicing. Mr Bunce was in the employment of certain copying law-stationers in Carey Street, and had a strong belief in the law as a profession — but he had none whatever in the House of Commons. “And he’s given up going into chambers?” said Mr Bunce to his wife.
“Given it up altogether for the present,” said Mrs Bunce.
“And he don’t mean to have no clerk?” said Mr Bunce.
“Not unless it is for his Parliament work.”
“There ain’t no clerks wanted for that, and what’s worse, there ain’t no fees to pay ’em. I’ll tell you what it is, Jane — if you don’t look sharp there won’t be nothing to pay you before long.”
“And he in Parliament, Jacob!”
“There ain’t no salary for being in Parliament. There are scores of them Parliament gents ain’t got so much as’ll pay their dinners for ’em. And then if anybody does trust ’em, there’s no getting at ’em to make ’em pay as there is at other folk.”
“I don’t know that our Mr Phineas will ever be like that, Jacob.”
“That’s gammon, Jane. That’s the way as women gets themselves took in always. Our Mr Phineas! Why should our Mr Phineas be better than anybody else?”
“He’s always acted handsome, Jacob.”
“There was one time he could not pay his lodgings for wellnigh nine months, till his governor come down with the money. I don’t know whether that was handsome. It knocked me about terrible, I know.”
“He always meant honest, Jacob.”
“I don’t know that I care much for a man’s meaning when he runs short of money. How is he going to see his way, with his seat in Parliament, and this giving up of his profession? He owes us near a quarter now.”
“He paid me two months this morning, Jacob; so he don’t owe a farthing.”
“Very well — so much the better for us. I shall just have a few words with Mr Low, and see what he says to it. For myself I don’t think half so much of Parliament folk as some do. They’re for promising everything before they’s elected; but not one in twenty of ’em is as good as his word when he gets there.”
Mr Bunce was a copying journeyman, who spent ten hours a day in Carey Street with a pen between his fingers; and after that he would often spend two or three hours of the night with a pen between his fingers in Marlborough Street. He was a thoroughly hard-working man, doing pretty well in the world, for he had a good house over his head, and always could find raiment and bread for his wife and eight children; but, nevertheless, he was an unhappy man because he suffered from political grievances, or, I should more correctly say, that his grievances were semi-political and semi-social. He had no vote, not being himself the tenant of the house in Great Marlborough Street. The tenant was a tailor who occupied the shop, whereas Bunce occupied the whole of the remainder of the premises. He was a lodger, and lodgers were not as yet trusted with the franchise. And he had ideas, which he himself admitted to be very raw, as to the injustice of the manner in which he was paid for his work. So much a folio, without reference to the way in which his work was done, without regard to the success of his work, with no questions asked of himself, was, as he thought, no proper way of remunerating a man for his labours. He had long since joined a Trade union, and for two years past had paid a subscription of a shilling a week towards its funds. He longed to be doing some battle against his superiors, and to be putting himself in opposition to his employers — not that he objected personally to Messrs Foolscap, Margin, and Vellum, who always made much of him as a useful man — but because some such antagonism would be manly, and the fighting of some battle would be the right thing to do. “If Labour don’t mean to go to the wall himself,” Bunce would say to his wife, “Labour must look alive, and put somebody else there.”
Mrs Bunce was a comfortable motherly woman, who loved her husband but hated politics. As he had an aversion to his superiors in the world because they were superiors, so had she a liking for them for the same reason. She despised people poorer than herself, and thought it a fair subject for boasting that her children always had meat for dinner. If it was ever so small a morsel, she took care that they had it, in order that the boast might be maintained. The world had once or twice been almost too much for her — when, for instance, her husband had been ill; and again, to tell the truth, for the last three months of that long period in which Phineas had omitted to pay his bills; but she had kept a fine brave heart during those troubles, and could honestly swear that the children always had a bit of meat, though she herself had been occasionally without it for days together. At such times she would be more than ordinarily meek to Mr Margin, and especially courteous to the old lady who lodged in her first-floor drawing-room — for Phineas lived up two pairs of stairs — and she would excuse such servility by declaring that there was no knowing how soon she might want assistance. But her husband, in such emergencies, would become furious and quarrelsome, and would declare that Labour was going to the wall, and that something very strong must be done at once. That shilling which Bunce paid weekly to the union she regarded as being absolutely thrown away — as much so as though he cast it weekly into the Thames. And she had told him so, over and over again, making heart-piercing allusions to the eight children and to the bit of meat. He would always endeavour to explain to her that there was no other way under the sun for keeping Labour from being sent to the wall — but he would do so hopelessly and altogether ineffectually, and she had come to regard him as a lunatic to the extent of that one weekly shilling.
She had a woman’s instinctive partiality for comeliness in a man, and was very fond of Phineas Finn because he was handsome. And now she was very proud of him because he was a member of Parliament. She had heard — from her husband, who had told her the fact with much disgust — that the sons of Dukes and Earls go into Parliament, and she liked to think that the fine young man to whom she talked more or less every day should sit with the sons of Dukes and Earls. When Phineas had really brought distress upon her by owing her some thirty or forty pounds, she could never bring herself to be angry with him — because he was handsome and because he dined out with Lords. And she had triumphed greatly over her husband, who had desired to be severe upon his aristocratic debtor, when the money had all been paid in a lump.
“I don’t know that he’s any great catch,” Bunce had said, when the prospect of their lodger’s departure had been debated between them.
“Jacob,” said his wife, I don’t think you feel it when you’ve got people respectable about you.”
“The only respectable man I know,” said Jacob, is the man as earns his bread; and Mr Finn, as I take it, is a long way from that yet.”
Phineas returned to his lodgings before he went down to his club, and again told Mrs Bunce that he had altogether made up his mind about the chambers. “If you’ll keep me I shall stay here for the first session I daresay.”
“Of course we shall be only too proud, Mr Finn; and though it mayn’t perhaps be quite the place for a member of Parliament — ”
“But I think it is quite the place.”
“It’s very good of you to say so, Mr Finn, and we’ll do our very best to make you comfortable. Respectable we are, I may say; and though Bunce is a bit rough sometimes — ”
“Never to me, Mrs Bunce.”
“But he is rough — and silly, too, with his radical nonsense, paying a shilling a week to a nasty union just for nothing. Still he means well, and there ain’t a man who works harder for his wife and children — that I will say of him. And if he do talk politics — ”
“But I like a man to talk politics, Mrs Bunce.”
“For a gentleman in Parliament of course it’s proper; but I never could see what good it could do to a law-stationer; and when he talks of Labour going to the wall, I always ask him whether he didn’t get his wages regular last Saturday. But, Lord love you, Mr Finn, when a man as is a journeyman has took up politics and joined a Trade union, he ain’t no better than a milestone for his wife to take and talk to him.”
After that Phineas went down to the Reform Club, and made one of those who were buzzing there in little crowds and uttering their prophecies as to future events. Lord de Terrier was to go out. That was certain. Whether Mr Mildmay was to come in was uncertain. That he would go to Windsor tomorrow morning was not to be doubted; but it was thought very probable that he might plead his age, and decline to undertake the responsibility of forming a Ministry.
“And what then?” said Phineas to his friend Fitzgibbon.
“Why, then there will be a choice out of three. There is the Duke, who is the most incompetent man in England; there is Monk, who is the most unfit; and there is Gresham, who is the most unpopular. I can’t conceive it possible to find a worse Prime Minister than either of the three — but the country affords no other.”
“And which would Mildmay name?”
“All of them — one after the other, so as to make the embarrassment the greater.” That was Mr Fitzgibbon’s description of the crisis; but then it was understood that Mr Fitzgibbon was given to romancing.
Fitzgibbon and Phineas started together from Pall Mall for Portman Square — as both of them had promised to call on Lady Laura — but Fitzgibbon turned in at Brooks’s as they walked up St James’s Square, and Phineas went on by himself in a cab. “You should belong here,” said Fitzgibbon as his friend entered the cab, and Phineas immediately began to feel that he would have done nothing till he could get into Brooks’s. It might be very well to begin by talking Politics at the Reform Club. Such talking had procured for him his seat at Loughshane. But that was done now, and something more than talking was wanted for any further progress. Nothing, as he told himself, of political import was managed at the Reform Club. No influence from thence was ever brought to bear upon the adjustment of places under the Government, or upon the arrangement of cabinets. It might be very well to count votes at the Reform Club; but after the votes had been counted — had been counted successfully — Brooks’s was the place, as Phineas believed, to learn at the earliest moment what would be the exact result of the success. He must get into Brooks’s, if it might be possible for him. Fitzgibbon was not exactly the man to propose him. Perhaps the Earl of Brentford would do it.
Lady Laura was at home, and with her was sitting — Mr Kennedy. Phineas had intended to be triumphant as he entered Lady Laura’s room. He was there with the express purpose of triumphing in the success of their great party, and of singing a pleasant paean in conjunction with Lady Laura. But his trumpet was put out of tune at once when he saw Mr Kennedy. He said hardly a word as he gave his hand to Lady Laura — and then afterwards to Mr Kennedy, who chose to greet him with this show of cordiality.
“I hope you are satisfied, Mr Finn,” said Lady Laura, laughing.
“Oh yes.”
“And is that all? I thought to have found your joy quite irrepressible.”
“A bottle of soda-water, though it is a very lively thing when opened, won’t maintain its vivacity beyond a certain period, Lady Laura.”
“And you have had your gas let off already?”
“Well — yes; at any rate, the sputtering part of it. Nineteen is very well, but the question is whether we might not have had twenty-one.”
“Mr Kennedy has just been saying that not a single available vote has been missed on our side. He has just come from Brooks’s, and that seems to be what they say there.”
So Mr Kennedy also was a member of Brooks’s! At the Reform Club there certainly had been an idea that the number might have been swelled to twenty-one; but then, as Phineas began to understand, nothing was correctly known at the Reform Club. For an accurate appreciation of the Political balance of the day, you must go to Brooks’s.
“Mr Kennedy must of course be right,” said Phineas. I don’t belong to Brooks’s myself. But I was only joking, Lady Laura. There is, I suppose, no doubt that Lord de Terrier is out, and that is everything.”
“He has probably tendered his resignation,” said Mr Kennedy.
“That is the same thing,” said Phineas, roughly.
“Not exactly,” said Lady Laura. Should there be any difficulty about Mr Mildmay, he might, at the Queen’s request, make another attempt.”
“With a majority of nineteen against him!” said Phineas. “Surely Mr Mildmay is not the only man in the country. There is the Duke, and there is Mr Gresham — and there is Mr Monk.” Phineas had at his tongue’s end all the lesson that he had been able to learn at the Reform Club.
“I should hardly think the Duke would venture,” said Mr Kennedy.
“Nothing venture, nothing have,” said Phineas. It is all very well to say that the Duke is incompetent, but I do not know that anything very wonderful is required in the way of genius. The Duke has held his own in both Houses successfully, and he is both honest and popular. I quite agree that a Prime Minister at the present day should be commonly honest, and more than commonly popular.”
“So you are all for the Duke, are you?” said Lady Laura, again smiling as she spoke to him.
“Certainly — if we are deserted by Mr Mildmay. Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t find it quite so easy to make up my mind as you do. I am inclined to think that Mr Mildmay will form a government; and as long as there is that prospect, I need hardly commit myself to an opinion as to his probable successor.” Then the objectionable Mr Kennedy took his leave, and Phineas was left alone with Lady Laura.
“It is glorious — is it not?” he began, as soon as he found the field to be open for himself and his own manoeuvering. But he was very young, and had not as yet learned the manner in which he might best advance his cause with such a woman as Lady Laura Standish. He was telling her too clearly that he could have no gratification in talking with her unless he could be allowed to have her all to himself. That might be very well if Lady Laura were in love with him, but would hardly be the way to reduce her to that condition.
“Mr Finn,” said she, smiling as she spoke, I am sure that you did not mean it, but you were uncourteous to my friend Mr Kennedy.”
“Who? I? Was I? Upon my word, I didn’t intend to be uncourteous.”
“If I had thought you had intended it, of course I could not tell you of it. And now I take the liberty — for it is a liberty — ”
“Oh no.”
“Because I feel so anxious that you should do nothing to mar your chances as a rising man.”
“You are only too kind to me — always.”
“I know how clever you are, and how excellent are all your instincts; but I see that you are a little impetuous. I wonder whether you will be angry if I take upon myself the task of mentor.”
“Nothing you could say would make me angry — though you might make me very unhappy.”
“I will not do that if I can help it. A mentor ought to be very old, you know, and I am infinitely older than you are.”
“I should have thought it was the reverse — indeed, I may say that I know that it is,” said Phineas.
“I am not talking of years. Years have very little to do with the comparative ages of men and women. A woman at forty is quite old, whereas a man at forty is young.” Phineas, remembering that he had put down Mr Kennedy’s age as forty in his own mind, frowned when he heard this, and walked about the room in displeasure. “And therefore,” continued Lady Laura, “I talk to you as though I were a kind of grandmother.”
“You shall be my great-grandmother if you will only be kind enough to me to say what you really think.”
“You must not then be so impetuous, and you must be a little more careful to be civil to persons to whom you may not take any particular fancy. Now Mr Kennedy is a man who may be very useful to you.”
“I do not want Mr Kennedy to be of use to me.”
“That is what I call being impetuous — being young — being a boy. Why should not Mr Kennedy be of use to you as well as any one else? You do not mean to conquer the world all by yourself.”
“No — but there is something mean to me in the expressed idea that I should make use of any man — and more especially of a man whom I don’t like.”
“And why do you not like him, Mr Finn?”
“Because he is one of my Dr Fells.”
“You don’t like him simply because he does not talk much. That may be a good reason why you should not make of him an intimate companion — because you like talkative people; but it should be no ground for dislike.”
Phineas paused for a moment before he answered her, thinking whether or not it would be well to ask her some question which might produce from her a truth which he would not like to hear. Then he did ask it. “And do you like him?” he said.
She too paused, but only for a second. “Yes — I think I may say that I do like him.”
“No more than that?”
“Certainly no more than that — but that I think is a great deal.”
“I wonder what you would say if any one asked you whether you liked me,” said Phineas, looking away from her through the window.
“Just the same — but without the doubt, if the person who questioned me had any right to ask the question. There are not above one or two who could have such a right.”
“And I was wrong, of course, to ask it about Mr Kennedy,” said Phineas, looking out into the Square.
“I did not say so.”
“But I see you think it.”
“You see nothing of the kind. I was quite willing to be asked the question by you, and quite willing to answer it. Mr Kennedy is a man of great wealth.”
“What can that have to do with it?”
“Wait a moment, you impetuous Irish boy, and hear me out.” Phineas liked being called an impetuous Irish boy, and came close to her, sitting where he could look up into her face; and there came a smile upon his own, and he was very handsome. “I say that he is a man of great wealth,” continued Lady Laura; “and as wealth gives influence, he is of great use — politically — to the party to which he belongs.”
“Oh, politically!”
“Am I to suppose you care nothing for politics? To such men, to men who think as you think, who are to sit on the same benches with yourself, and go into the same lobby, and be seen at the same club, it is your duty to be civil both for your own sake and for that of the cause. It is for the hermits of society to indulge in personal dislikings — for men who have never been active and never mean to be active. I had been telling Mr Kennedy how much I thought of you — as a good Liberal.”
“And I came in and spoilt it all.”
“Yes, you did. You knocked down my little house, and I must build it all up again.”
“Don’t trouble yourself, Lady Laura.”
“I shall. It will be a great deal of trouble — a great deal, indeed; but I shall take it. I mean you to be very intimate with Mr Kennedy, and to shoot his grouse, and to stalk his deer, and to help to keep him in progress as a liberal member of Parliament. I am quite prepared to admit, as a friend, that he would go back without some such help.”
“Oh — I understand.”
“I do not believe that you do understand at all, but I must endeavour to make you do so by degrees. If you are to be my political pupil, you must at any rate be obedient. The next time you meet Mr Kennedy, ask him his opinion instead of telling him your own. He has been in Parliament twelve years, and he was a good deal older than you when he began.” At this moment a side door was opened, and the red-haired, red-bearded man whom Phineas had seen before entered the room. He hesitated a moment, as though he were going to retreat again, and then began to pull about the books and toys which lay on one of the distant tables, as though he were in quest of some article. And he would have retreated had not Lady Laura called to him.
“Oswald,” she said, let me introduce you to Mr Finn. Mr Finn, I do not think you have ever met my brother, Lord Chiltern.” Then the two young men bowed, and each of them muttered something. “Do not be in a hurry, Oswald. You have nothing special to take you away. Here is Mr Finn come to tell us who are all the possible new Prime Ministers. He is uncivil enough not to have named papa.”
“My father is out of the question,” said Lord Chiltern.
“Of course he is,” said Lady Laura, but I may be allowed my little joke.”
“I suppose he will at any rate be in the Cabinet,” said Phineas.
“I know nothing whatever about politics,” said Lord Chiltern.
“I wish you did,” said his sister — with all my heart.”
“I never did — and I never shall, for all your wishing. It’s the meanest trade going I think, and I’m sure it’s the most dishonest. They talk of legs on the turf, and of course there are legs; but what are they to the legs in the House? I don’t know whether you are in Parliament, Mr Finn.”
“Yes, I am; but do not mind me.”
“I beg your pardon. Of course there are honest men there, and no doubt you are one of them.”
“He is indifferent honest — as yet,” said Lady Laura.
“I was speaking of men who go into Parliament to look after Government places,” said Lord Chiltern.
“That is just what I’m doing,” said Phineas. Why should not a man serve the Crown? He has to work very hard for what he earns.”
“I don’t believe that the most of them work at all. However, I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean you in particular.”
“Mr Finn is such a thorough politician that he will never forgive you,” said Lady Laura.
“Yes, I will,” said Phineas, and I’ll convert him some day. If he does come into the House, Lady Laura, I suppose he’ll come on the right side?”
“I’ll never go into the House, as you call it,” said Lord Chiltern. “But, I’ll tell you what; I shall be very happy if you’ll dine with me tomorrow at Moroni’s. They give you a capital little dinner at Moroni’s, and they’ve the best Chateau Yquem in London.”
“Do,” said Lady Laura, in a whisper. Oblige me.
Phineas was engaged to dine with one of the Vice-Chancellors on the day named. He had never before dined at the house of this great law luminary, whose acquaintance he had made through Mr Low, and he had thought a great deal of the occasion. Mrs Freemantle had sent him the invitation nearly a fortnight ago, and he understood there was to be an elaborate dinner party. He did not know it for a fact, but he was in hopes of meeting the expiring Lord Chancellor. He considered it to be his duty never to throw away such a chance. He would in all respects have preferred Mr Freemantle’s dinner in Eaton Place, dull and heavy though it might probably be, to the chance of Lord Chiltern’s companions at Moroni’s. Whatever might be the faults of our hero, he was not given to what is generally called dissipation by the world at large — by which the world means self-indulgence. He cared not a brass farthing for Moroni’s Chateau Yquem, nor for the wondrously studied repast which he would doubtless find prepared for him at that celebrated establishment in St James’s Street — not a farthing as compared with the chance of meeting so great a man as Lord Moles. And Lord Chiltern’s friends might probably be just the men whom he would not desire to know. But Lady Laura’s request overrode everything with him. She had asked him to oblige her, and of course he would do so. Had he been going to dine with the incoming Prime Minister, he would have put off his engagement at her request. He was not quick enough to make an answer without hesitation; but after a moment’s pause he said he should be most happy to dine with Lord Chiltern at Moroni’s.
“That’s right; 7.30 sharp — only I can tell you you won’t meet any other members.” Then the servant announced more visitors, and Lord Chiltern escaped out of the room before he was seen by the new comers. These were Mrs Bonteen and Laurence Fitzgibbon, and then Mr Bonteen — and after them Mr Ratler, the Whip, who was in a violent hurry, and did not stay there a moment, and then Barrington Erle and young Lord James Fitz-Howard, the youngest son of the Duke of St Bungay. In twenty or thirty minutes there was a gathering of liberal political notabilities in Lady Laura’s drawing-room. There were two great pieces of news by which they were all enthralled. Mr Mildmay would not be Prime Minister, and Sir Everard Powell was — dead. Of course nothing quite positive could be known about Mr Mildmay. He was to be with the Queen at Windsor on the morrow at eleven o’clock, and it was improbable that he would tell his mind to any one before he told it to Her Majesty. But there was no doubt that he had engaged “the Duke,” — so he was called by Lord James — to go down to Windsor with him, that he might be in readiness if wanted. “I have learned that at home,” said Lord James, who had just heard the news from his sister, who had heard it from the Duchess. Lord James was delighted with the importance given to him by his father’s coming journey. From this, and from other equally well-known circumstances, it was surmised that Mr Mildmay would decline the task proposed to him. This, nevertheless, was only a surmise — whereas the fact with reference to Sir Everard was fully substantiated. The gout had flown to his stomach, and he was dead. “By — yes; as dead as a herring,” said Mr Ratler, who at that moment, however, was not within hearing of either of the ladies present. And then he rubbed his hands, and looked as though he were delighted. And he was delighted — not because his old friend Sir Everard was dead, but by the excitement of the tragedy. “Having done so good a deed in his last moments,” said Laurence Fitzgibbon, “we may take it for granted that he will go straight to heaven.” “I hope there will be no crowner’s quest, Ratler,” said Mr Bonteen; “if there is I don’t know how you’ll get out of it.” “I don’t see anything in it so horrible, said Mr Ratler. “If a fellow dies leading his regiment we don’t think anything of it. Sir Everard’s vote was of more service to his country than anything that a colonel or a captain can do.” But nevertheless I think that Mr Ratler was somewhat in dread of future newspaper paragraphs, should it be found necessary to summon a coroner’s inquisition to sit upon poor Sir Everard.
While this was going on Lady Laura took Phineas apart for a moment. “I am so much obliged to you; I am indeed,” she said.
“What nonsense!”
“Never mind whether it’s nonsense or not — but I am. I can’t explain it all now, but I do so want you to know my brother. You may be of the greatest service to him — of the very greatest. He is not half so bad as people say he is. In many ways he is very good — very good. And he is very clever.”
“At any rate I will think and believe no ill of him.”
“Just so — do not believe evil of him — not more evil than you see. I am so anxious — so very anxious to try to put him on his legs, and I find it so difficult to get any connecting link with him. Papa will not speak with him — because of money.”
“But he is friends with you.”
“Yes; I think he loves me. I saw how distasteful it was to you to go to him — and probably you were engaged?”
“One can always get off those sort of things if there is an object.”
“Yes — just so. And the object was to oblige me — was it not?”
“Of course it was. But I must go now. We are to hear Daubeny’s statement at four, and I would not miss it for worlds.”
“I wonder whether you would go abroad with my brother in the autumn? But I have no right to think of such a thing — have I? At any rate I will not think of it yet. Goodbye — I shall see you perhaps on Sunday if you are in town.”
Phineas walked down to Westminster with his mind very full of Lady Laura and Lord Chiltern. What did she mean by her affectionate manner to himself, and what did she mean by the continual praises which she lavished upon Mr Kennedy? Of whom was she thinking most, of Mr Kennedy, or of him? She had called herself his mentor. Was the description of her feelings towards himself, as conveyed in that name, of a kind to be gratifying to him? No — he thought not. But then might it not be within his power to change the nature of those feelings? She was not in love with him at present. He could not make any boast to himself on that head. But it might be within his power to compel her to love him. The female mentor might be softened. That she could not love Mr Kennedy, he thought that he was quite sure. There was nothing like love in her manner to Mr Kennedy. As to Lord Chiltern, Phineas would do whatever might be in his power. All that he really knew of Lord Chiltern was that he had gambled and that he had drunk.
In the House of Lords that night, and in the House of Commons, the outgoing Ministers made their explanations. As our business at the present moment is with the Commons, we will confine ourselves to their chamber, and will do so the more willingly because the upshot of what was said in the two places was the same. The outgoing ministers were very grave, very self-laudatory, and very courteous. In regard to courtesy it may be declared that no stranger to the ways of the place could have understood how such soft words could be spoken by Mr Daubeny, beaten, so quickly after the very sharp words which he had uttered when he only expected to be beaten. He announced to his fellow-commoners that his right honourable friend and colleague Lord de Terrier had thought it right to retire from the Treasury. Lord de Terrier, in constitutional obedience to the vote of the Lower House, had resigned, and the Queen had been graciously pleased to accept Lord de Terrier’s resignation, Mr Daubeny could only inform the House that Her Majesty had signified her pleasure that Mr Mildmay should wait upon her tomorrow at eleven o’clock. Mr Mildmay — so Mr Daubeny understood — would be with Her Majesty tomorrow at that hour. Lord de Terrier had found it to be his duty to recommend Her Majesty to send for Mr Mildmay. Such was the real import of Mr Daubeny’s speech. That further portion of it in which he explained with blandest, most beneficent, honey-flowing words that his party would have done everything that the country could require of any party, had the House allowed it to remain on the Treasury benches for a month or two — and explained also that his party would never recriminate, would never return evil for evil, would in no wise copy the factious opposition of their adversaries; that his party would now, as it ever had done, carry itself with the meekness of the dove, and the wisdom of the serpent — all this, I say, was so generally felt by gentlemen on both sides of the House to be “leather and prunella”, that very little attention was paid to it. The great point was that Lord de Terrier had resigned, and that Mr Mildmay had been summoned to Windsor.
The Queen had sent for Mr Mildmay in compliance with advice given to her by Lord de Terrier. And yet Lord de Terrier and his first lieutenant had used all the most practised efforts of their eloquence for the last three days in endeavouring to make their countrymen believe that no more unfitting Minister than Mr Mildmay ever attempted to hold the reins of office! Nothing had been too bad for them to say of Mr Mildmay — and yet, in the very first moment in which they found themselves unable to carry on the Government themselves, they advised the Queen to send for that most incompetent and baneful statesman! We who are conversant with our own methods of politics, see nothing odd in this, because we are used to it; but surely in the eyes of strangers our practice must be very singular. There is nothing like it in any other country — nothing as yet. Nowhere else is there the same good humoured, affectionate, prize-fighting ferocity in politics. The leaders of our two great parties are to each other exactly as are the two champions of the ring who knock each other about for the belt and for five hundred pounds a side once in every two years. How they fly at each other, striking as though each blow should carry death if it were but possible! And yet there is no one whom the Birmingham Bantam respects so highly as he does Bill Burns the Brighton Bully, or with whom he has so much delight in discussing the merits of a pot of half-and-half. And so it was with Mr Daubeny and Mr Mildmay. In private life Mr Daubeny almost adulated his elder rival — and Mr Mildmay never omitted an opportunity of taking Mr Daubeny warmly by the hand. It is not so in the United States. There the same political enmity exists, but the political enmity produces private hatred. The leaders of parties there really mean what they say when they abuse each other, and are in earnest when they talk as though they were about to tear each other limb from limb. I doubt whether Mr Daubeny would have injured a hair of Mr Mildmay’s venerable head, even for an assurance of six continued months in office.
When Mr Daubeny had completed his statement, Mr Mildmay simply told the House that he had received and would obey Her Majesty’s commands. The House would of course understand that he by no means meant to aver that the Queen would even commission him to form a Ministry. But if he took no such command from Her Majesty it would become his duty to recommend Her Majesty to impose the task upon some other person. Then everything was said that had to be said, and members returned to their clubs. A certain damp was thrown over the joy of some excitable Liberals by tidings which reached the House during Mr Daubeny’s speech. Sir Everard Powell was no more dead than was Mr Daubeny himself. Now it is very unpleasant to find that your news is untrue, when you have been at great pains to disseminate it. “Oh, but he is dead,” said Mr Ratler. “Lady Powell assured me half an hour ago,” said Mr Ratler’s opponent, “that he was at that moment a great deal better than he had been for the last three months. The journey down to the House did him a world of good.” “Then we’ll have him down for every division,” said Mr Ratler.
The political portion of London was in a ferment for the next five days. On the Sunday morning it was known that Mr Mildmay had declined to put himself at the head of a liberal Government. He and the Duke of St Bungay, and Mr Plantagenet Palliser, had been in conference so often, and so long, that it may almost be said they lived together in conference. Then Mr Gresham had been with Mr Mildmay — and Mr Monk also. At the clubs it was said by many that Mr Monk had been with Mr Mildmay; but it was also said very vehemently by others that no such interview had taken place, Mr Monk was a Radical, much admired by the people, sitting in Parliament for that most Radical of all constituencies, the Pottery Hamlets, who had never as yet been in power. It was the great question of the day whether Mr Mildmay would or would not ask Mr Monk to join him; and it was said by those who habitually think at every period of change that the time has now come in which the difficulties to forming a government will at last be found to be insuperable, that Mr Mildmay could not succeed either with Mr Monk or without him. There were at the present moment two sections of these gentlemen — the section which declared that Mr Mildmay had sent for Mr Monk, and the section which declared that he had not. But there were others, who perhaps knew better what they were saying, by whom it was asserted that the whole difficulty lay with Mr Gresham. Mr Gresham was willing to serve with Mr Mildmay — with certain stipulations as to the special seat in the Cabinet which he himself was to occupy, and as to the introduction of certain friends of his own; but — so said these gentlemen who were supposed really to understand the matter — Mr Gresham was not willing to serve with the Duke and with Mr Palliser. Now, everybody who knew anything knew that the Duke and Mr Palliser were indispensable to Mr Mildmay. And a liberal Government, with Mr Gresham in the opposition, could not live half through a session! All Sunday and Monday these things were discussed; and on the Monday Lord de Terrier absolutely stated to the Upper House that he had received Her Majesty’s commands to form another government, Mr Daubeny, in half a dozen most modest words — in words hardly audible, and most unlike himself — made his statement in the Lower House to the same effect. Then Mr Ratler, and Mr Bonteen, and Mr Barrington Erle, and Mr Laurence Fitzgibbon aroused themselves and swore that such things could not be. Should the prey which they had won for themselves, the spoil of their bows and arrows, be snatched from out of their very mouths by treachery? Lord de Terrier and Mr Daubeny could not venture even to make another attempt unless they did so in combination with Mr Gresham. Such a combination, said Mr Barrington Erle, would be disgraceful to both parties, but would prove Mr Gresham to be as false as Satan himself. Early on the Tuesday morning, when it was known that Mr Gresham had been at Lord de Terrier’s house, Barrington Erle was free to confess that he had always been afraid of Mr Gresham. “I have felt for years,” said he, “that if anybody could break up the party it would be Mr Gresham.”
On that Tuesday morning Mr Gresham certainly was with Lord de Terrier, but nothing came of it. Mr Gresham was either not enough like Satan for the occasion, or else he was too closely like him. Lord de Terrier did not bid high enough, or else Mr Gresham did not like biddings from that quarter. Nothing then came from this attempt, and on the Tuesday afternoon the Queen again sent for Mr Mildmay. On the Wednesday morning the gentlemen who thought that the insuperable difficulties had at length arrived, began to wear their longest faces, and to be triumphant with melancholy forebodings. Now at last there was a deadlock. Nobody could form a government. It was asserted that Mr Mildmay had fallen at her Majesty’s feet dissolved in tears, and had implored to be relieved from further responsibility. It was well known to many at the clubs that the Queen had on that morning telegraphed to Germany for advice. There were men so gloomy as to declare that the Queen must throw herself into the arms of Mr Monk, unless Mr Mildmay would consent to rise from his knees and once more buckle on his ancient armour. “Even that would be better than Gresham,” said Barrington Erle, in his anger. “I’ll tell you what it is,” said Ratler, “we shall have Gresham and Monk together, and you and I shall have to do their biddings.” Mr Barrington Erle’s reply to that suggestion I may not dare to insert in these pages.
On the Wednesday night, however, it was known that everything had been arranged, and before the Houses met on the Thursday every place had been bestowed, either in reality or in imagination. The Times, in its second edition on the Thursday, gave a list of the Cabinet, in which four places out of fourteen were rightly filled. On the Friday it named ten places aright, and indicated the law officers, with only one mistake in reference to Ireland; and on the Saturday it gave a list of the Under Secretaries of State, and Secretaries and Vice-Presidents generally, with wonderful correctness as to the individuals, though the offices were a little jumbled. The Government was at last formed in a manner which everybody had seen to be the only possible way in which a government could be formed. Nobody was surprised, and the week’s work was regarded as though the regular routine of government making had simply been followed. Mr Mildmay was Prime Minister; Mr Gresham was at the Foreign Office; Mr Monk was at the Board of Trade; the Duke was President of the Council; the Earl of Brentford was Privy Seal; and Mr Palliser was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Barrington Erle made a step up in the world, and went to the Admiralty as Secretary; Mr Bonteen was sent again to the Admiralty; and Laurence Fitzgibbon became a junior Lord of the Treasury. Mr Ratler was, of course, installed as Patronage Secretary to the same Board. Mr Ratler was perhaps the only man in the party as to whose destination there could not possibly be a doubt. Mr Ratler had really qualified himself for a position in such a way as to make all men feel that he would, as a matter of course, be called upon to fill it. I do not know whether as much could be said on behalf of any other man in the new Government.
During all this excitement, and through all these movements, Phineas Finn felt himself to be left more and more out in the cold. He had not been such a fool as to suppose that any office would be offered to him. He had never hinted at such a thing to his one dearly intimate friend, Lady Laura. He had not hitherto opened his mouth in Parliament. Indeed, when the new Government was formed he had not been sitting for above a fortnight. Of course nothing could be done for him as yet. But, nevertheless, he felt himself to be out in the cold. The very men who had discussed with him the question of the division — who had discussed it with him because his vote was then as good as that of any other member — did not care to talk to him about the distribution of places. He, at any rate, could not be one of them. He, at any rate, could not be a rival. He could neither mar nor assist. He could not be either a successful or a disappointed sympathiser — because he could not himself be a candidate. The affair which perhaps disgusted him more than anything else was the offer of an office — not in the Cabinet, indeed, but one supposed to confer high dignity — to Mr Kennedy. Mr Kennedy refused the offer, and this somewhat lessened Finn’s disgust, but the offer itself made him unhappy.
“I suppose it was made simply because of his money,” he said to Fitzgibbon.
“I don’t believe that,” said Fitzgibbon. People seem to think that he has got a head on his shoulders, though he has got no tongue in it. I wonder at his refusing it because of the Right Honourable.”
“I am so glad that Mr Kennedy refused,” said Lady Laura to him.
“And why? He would have been the Right Hon. Robert Kennedy for ever and ever.” Phineas when he said this did not as yet know exactly how it would have come to pass that such honour — the honour of the enduring prefix to his name — would have come in the way of Mr Kennedy had Mr Kennedy accepted the office in question; but he was very quick to learn all these things, and, in the meantime, he rarely made any mistake about them.
“What would that have been to him — with his wealth?” said Lady Laura. “He has a position of his own and need not care for such things. There are men who should not attempt what is called independence in Parliament. By doing so they simply decline to make themselves useful. But there are a few whose special walk in life it is to be independent, and, as it were, unmoved by parties.”
“Great Akinetoses! You know Orion,” said Phineas.
“Mr Kennedy is not an Akinetos,” said Lady Laura.
“He holds a very proud position,” said Phineas, ironically.
“A very proud position indeed,” said Lady Laura, in sober earnest.
The dinner at Moroni’s had been eaten, and Phineas had given an account of the entertainment to Lord Chiltern’s sister. There had been only two other guests, and both of them had been men on the turf. “I was the first there,” said Phineas, and he surprised me ever so much by telling me that you had spoken to him of me before.”
“Yes; I did so. I wish him to know you. I want him to know some men who think of something besides horses. He is very well educated, you know, and would certainly have taken honours if he had not quarrelled with the people at Christ Church.”
“Did he take a degree?”
“No — they sent him down. It is best always to have the truth among friends. Of course you will hear it some day. They expelled him because he was drunk.” Then Lady Laura burst out into tears, and Phineas sat near her, and consoled her, and swore that if in any way he could befriend her brother he would do so.
Mr Fitzgibbon at this time claimed a promise which he said that Phineas had made to him — that Phineas would go over with him to Mayo to assist at his re-election. And Phineas did go. The whole affair occupied but a week, and was chiefly memorable as being the means of cementing the friendship which existed between the two Irish members.
“A thousand a year!” said Laurence Fitzgibbon, speaking of the salary of his office. “It isn’t much; is it? And every fellow to whom I owe a shilling will be down upon me. If I had studied my own comfort, I should have done the same as Kennedy.”
It was now the middle of May, and a month had elapsed since the terrible difficulty about the Queen’s Government had been solved. A month had elapsed, and things had shaken themselves into their places with more of ease and apparent fitness than men had given them credit for possessing. Mr Mildmay, Mr Gresham, and Mr Monk were the best friends in the world, swearing by each other in their own house, and supported in the other by as gallant a phalanx of Whig peers as ever were got together to fight against the instincts of their own order in compliance with the instincts of those below them. Lady Laura’s father was in the Cabinet, to Lady Laura’s infinite delight. It was her ambition to be brought as near to political action as was possible for a woman without surrendering any of the privileges of feminine inaction. That women should even wish to have votes at parliamentary elections was to her abominable, and the cause of the Rights of Women generally was odious to her; but, nevertheless, for herself, she delighted in hoping that she too might be useful — in thinking that she too was perhaps, in some degree, politically powerful; and she had received considerable increase to such hopes when her father accepted the Privy Seal. The Earl himself was not an ambitious man, and, but for his daughter, would have severed himself altogether from political life before this time. He was an unhappy man — being an obstinate man, and having in his obstinacy quarrelled with his only son. In his unhappiness he would have kept himself alone, living in the country, brooding over his wretchedness, were it not for his daughter. On her behalf, and in obedience to her requirements, he came yearly up to London, and, perhaps in compliance with her persuasion, had taken some part in the debates of the House of Lords. It is easy for a peer to be a statesman, if the trouble of the life be not too much for him. Lord Brentford was now a statesman, if a seat in the Cabinet be proof of statesmanship.
At this time, in May, there was staying with Lady Laura in Portman Square a very dear friend of hers, by name Violet Effingham. Violet Effingham was an orphan, an heiress, and a beauty; with a terrible aunt, one Lady Baldock, who was supposed to be the dragon who had Violet, as a captive maiden, in charge. But as Miss Effingham was of age, and was mistress of her own fortune, Lady Baldock was, in truth, not omnipotent as a dragon should be. The dragon, at any rate, was not now staying in Portman Square, and the captivity of the maiden was therefore not severe at the present moment. Violet Effingham was very pretty, but could hardly be said to be beautiful. She was small, with light crispy hair, which seemed to be ever on the flutter round her brows, and which yet was never a hair astray. She had sweet, soft grey eyes, which never looked at you long, hardly for a moment — but which yet, in that half moment, nearly killed you by the power of their sweetness. Her cheek was the softest thing in nature, and the colour of it, when its colour was fixed enough to be told, was a shade of pink so faint and creamy that you would hardly dare to call it by its name. Her mouth was perfect, not small enough to give that expression of silliness which is so common, but almost divine, with the temptation of its full, rich, ruby lips. Her teeth, which she but seldom showed, were very even and very white, and there rested on her chin the dearest dimple that ever acted as a loadstar to men’s eyes. The fault of her face, if it had a fault, was in her nose — which was a little too sharp, and perhaps too small. A woman who wanted to depreciate Violet Effingham had once called her a pug-nosed puppet; but I, as her chronicler, deny that she was pug-nosed — and all the world who knew her soon came to understand that she was no puppet. In figure she was small, but not so small as she looked to be. Her feet and hands were delicately fine, and there was a softness about her whole person, an apparent compressibility, which seemed to indicate that she might go into very small compass. Into what compass and how compressed, there were very many men who held very different opinions. Violet Effingham was certainly no puppet. She was great at dancing — as perhaps might be a puppet — but she was great also at archery, great at skating — and great, too, at hunting. With reference to that last accomplishment, she and Lady Baldock had had more than one terrible tussle, not always with advantage to the dragon. “My dear aunt,” she had said once during the last winter, “I am going to the meet with George,” — George was her cousin, Lord Baldock, and was the dragon’s son — “and there, let there be an end of it.” “And you will promise me that you will not go further,” said the dragon. “I will promise nothing today to any man or to any woman,” said Violet. What was to be said to a young lady who spoke in this way, and who had become of age only a fortnight since? She rode that day the famous run from Bagnall’s Gorse to Foulsham Common, and was in at the death. Violet Effingham was now sitting in conference with her friend Lady Laura, and they were discussing matters of high import — of very high import, indeed — to the interests of both of them. “I do not ask you to accept him,” said Lady Laura.
“That is lucky,” said the other, as he has never asked me.”
“He has done much the same. You know that he loves you.”
“I know — or fancy that I know — that so many men love me! But, after all, what sort of love is it? It is just as when you and I, when we see something nice in a shop, call it a dear duck of a thing, and tell somebody to go and buy it, let the price be ever so extravagant. I know my own position, Laura. I’m a dear duck of a thing.”
“You are a very dear thing to Oswald.”
“But you, Laura, will some day inspire a grand passion — or I daresay have already, for you are a great deal too close to tell — and then there will be cutting of throats, and a mighty hubbub, and a real tragedy. I shall never go beyond genteel comedy — unless I run away with somebody beneath me, or do something awfully improper.”
“Don’t do that, dear.”
“I should like to, because of my aunt. I should indeed. If it were possible, without compromising myself, I should like her to be told some morning that I had gone off with the curate.”
“How can you be so wicked, Violet!”
“It would serve her right, and her countenance would be so awfully comic. Mind, if it is ever to come off I must be there to see it. I know what she would say as well as possible. She would turn to poor Gussy. “Augusta,” she would say, ‘I always expected it. I always did.’ Then I should come out and curtsey to her, and say so prettily, ‘Dear aunt, it was only our little joke.’ That’s my line. But for you — you, if you planned it, would go off tomorrow with Lucifer himself if you liked him.”
“But failing Lucifer, I shall probably be very humdrum.”
“You don’t mean that there is anything settled, Laura?”
“There is nothing settled — or any beginning of anything that ever can be settled. But I am not talking about myself. He has told me that if you will accept him, he will do anything that you and I may ask him.”
“Yes — he will promise.”
“Did you ever know him to break his word?”
“I know nothing about him, my dear. How should I?”
“Do not pretend to be ignorant and meek, Violet. You do know him — much better than most girls know the men they marry. You have known him, more or less intimately, all your life.”
“But am I bound to marry him because of that accident?”
“No; you are not bound to marry him — unless you love him.”
“I do not love him,” said Violet, with slow, atic words, and a little forward motion of her face, as though she were specially eager to convince her friend that she was quite in earnest in what she said.
“I fancy, Violet, that you are nearer to loving him than any other man.”
“I am not at all near to loving any man. I doubt whether I ever shall be. It does not seem to me to be possible to myself to be what girls call in love. I can like a man, I do like, perhaps, half a dozen. I like them so much that if I go to a house or to a party it is quite a matter of importance to me whether this man or that will or will not be there. And then I suppose I flirt with them. At least Augusta tells me that my aunt says that I do. But as for caring about any one of them in the way of loving him — wanting to marry him, and have him all to myself, and that sort of thing — I don’t know what it means.”
“But you intend to be married some day,” said Lady Laura.
“Certainly I do. And I don’t intend to wait very much longer. I am heartily tired of Lady Baldock, and though I can generally escape among my friends, that is not sufficient. I am beginning to think that it would be pleasant to have a house of my own. A girl becomes such a Bohemian when she is always going about, and doesn’t quite know where any of her things are.”
Then there was a silence between them for a few minutes. Violet Effingham was doubled up in a corner of a sofa, with her feet tucked under her, and her face reclining upon one of her shoulders. And as she talked she was playing with a little toy which was constructed to take various shapes as it was flung this way or that. A bystander looking at her would have thought that the toy was much more to her than the conversation. Lady Laura was sitting upright, in a common chair, at a table not far from her companion, and was manifestly devoting herself altogether to the subject that was being discussed between them. She had taken no lounging, easy attitude, she had found no employment for her fingers, and she looked steadily at Violet as she talked — whereas Violet was looking only at the little manikin which she tossed. And now Laura got up and came to the sofa, and sat close to her friend. Violet, though she somewhat moved one foot, so as to seem to make room for the other, still went on with her play.
“If you do marry, Violet, you must choose some one man out of the lot.”
“That’s quite true, my dear, I certainly can’t marry them all.”
“And how do you mean to make the choice?”
“I don’t know. I suppose I shall toss up.”
“I wish you would be in earnest with me.”
“Well — I will be in earnest. I shall take the first that comes after I have quite made up my mind. You’ll think it very horrible, but that is really what I shall do. After all, a husband is very much like a house or a horse. You don’t take your house because it’s the best house in the world, but because just then you want a house. You go and see a house, and if it’s very nasty you don’t take it. But if you think it will suit pretty well, and if you are tired of looking about for houses, you do take it. That’s the way one buys one’s horses — and one’s husbands.”
“And you have not made up your mind yet?”
“Not quite. Lady Baldock was a little more decent than usual just before I left Baddingham. When I told her that I meant to have a pair of ponies, she merely threw up her hands and grunted. She didn’t gnash her teeth, and curse and swear, and declare to me that I was a child of perdition.”
“What do you mean by cursing and swearing?”
“She told me once that if I bought a certain little dog, it would lead to my being everlastingly — you know what. She isn’t so squeamish as I am, and said it out.”
“What did you do?”
“I bought the little dog, and it bit my aunt’s heel. I was very sorry then, and gave the creature to Mary Rivers. He was such a beauty! I hope the perdition has gone with him, for I don’t like Mary Rivers at all. I had to give the poor beasty to somebody, and Mary Rivers happened to be there. I told her that Puck was connected with Apollyon, but she didn’t mind that. Puck was worth twenty guineas, and I daresay she has sold him.”
“Oswald may have an equal chance then among the other favourites?” said Lady Laura, after another pause.
“There are no favourites, and I will not say that any man may have a chance. Why do you press me about your brother in this way?”
“Because I am so anxious. Because it would save him, Because you are the only woman for whom he has ever cared, and because he loves you with all his heart; and because his father would be reconciled to him tomorrow if he heard that you and he were engaged.”
“Laura, my dear — ”
“Well.”
“You won’t be angry if I speak out?”
“Certainly not. After what I have said, you have a right to speak out.”
“It seems to me that all your reasons are reasons why he should marry me — not reasons why I should marry him.”
“Is not his love for you a reason?”
“No,” said Violet, pausing — and speaking the word in the lowest possible whisper. “If he did not love me, that, if known to me, should be a reason why I should not marry him. Ten men may love me — I don’t say that any man does — ”
“He does.”
“But I can’t marry all the ten. And as for that business of saving him — ”
“You know what I mean!”
“I don’t know that I have any special mission for saving young men. I sometimes think that I shall have quite enough to do to save myself. It is strange what a propensity I feel for the wrong side of the post.
“I feel the strongest assurance that you will always keep on the right side.”
“Thank you, my dear. I mean to try, but I’m quite sure that the jockey who takes me in hand ought to be very steady himself. Now, Lord Chiltern — ”
“Well — out with it. What have you to say?”
“He does not bear the best reputation in this world as a steady man. Is he altogether the sort of man that mammas of the best kind are seeking for their daughters? I like a roué myself — and a prig who sits all night in the House, and talks about nothing but church rates and suffrage, is to me intolerable. I prefer men who are improper, and all that sort of thing. If I were a man myself I should go in for everything I ought to leave alone. I know I should. But you see — I’m not a man, and I must take care of myself. The wrong side of a post for a woman is so very much the wrong side. I like a fast man, but I know that I must not dare to marry the sort of man that I like.”
“To be one of us, then — the very first among us — would that be the wrong side?”
“You mean that to be Lady Chiltern in the present tense, and Lady Brentford in the future, would be promotion for Violet Effingham in the past?”
“How hard you are, Violet!”
“Fancy — that it should come to this — that you should call me hard, Laura. I should like to be your sister. I should like well enough to be your father’s daughter. I should like well enough to be Chiltern’s friend. I am his friend. Nothing that any one has ever said of him has estranged me from him. I have fought for him till I have been black in the face. Yes, I have — with my aunt. But I am afraid to be his wife. The risk would be so great. Suppose that I did not save him, but that he brought me to shipwreck instead?”
“That could not be!”
“Could it not? I think it might be so very well. When I was a child they used to be always telling me to mind myself. It seems to me that a child and a man need not mind themselves. Let them do what they may, they can be set right again. Let them fall as they will, you can put them on their feet. But a woman has to mind herself — and very hard work it is when she has a dragon of her own driving her ever the wrong way.”
“I want to take you from the dragon.”
“Yes — and to hand me over to a griffin.”
“The truth is, Violet, that you do not know Oswald. He is not a griffin.”
“I did not mean to he uncomplimentary. Take any of the dangerous wild beasts you please. I merely intend to point out that he is a dangerous wild beast. I daresay he is noble-minded, and I will call him a lion if you like it better. But even with a lion there is risk.”
“Of course there will be risk. There is risk with every man — unless you will be contented with the prig you described. Of course there would be risk with my brother. He has been a gambler.”
“They say he is one still.”
“He has given it up in part, and would entirely at your instance.”
“And they say other things of him, Laura.”
“It is true. He has had paroxysms of evil life which have well-nigh ruined him.”
“And these paroxysms are so dangerous! Is he not in debt?”
“He is — but not deeply. Every shilling that he owes would be paid — every shilling. Mind, I know all his circumstances, and I give you my word that every shilling should be paid. He has never lied — and he has told me everything. His father could not leave an acre away from him if he would, and would not if he could.”
“I did not ask as fearing that. I spoke only of a dangerous habit. A paroxysm of spending money is apt to make one so uncomfortable. And then — ”
“Well.”
“I don’t know why I should make a catalogue of your brother’s weaknesses.”
“You mean to say that he drinks too much?”
“I do not say so. People say so. The dragon says so. And as I always find her sayings to be untrue, I suppose this is like the rest of them.”
“It is untrue if it be said of him as a habit.”
“It is another paroxysm, just now and then.”
“Do not laugh at me, Violet, when I am taking his part, or I shall be offended.”
“But you see, if I am to be his wife, it is — rather important.”
“Still you need not ridicule me.”
“Dear Laura, you know I do not ridicule you. You know I love you for what you are doing. Would not I do the same, and fight for him down to my nails if I had a brother?”
“And therefore I want you to be Oswald’s wife — because I know that you would fight for him. It is not true that he is a — drunkard. Look at his hand, which is as steady as yours. Look at his eye. Is there a sign of it? He has been drunk, once or twice, perhaps — and has done fearful things.”
“It might be that he would do fearful things to me.”
“You never knew a man with a softer heart or with a finer spirit. I believe as I sit here that if he were married tomorrow, his vices would fall from him like old clothes.”
“You will admit, Laura, that there will be some risk for the wife.”
“Of course there will be a risk. Is there not always a risk?”
“The men in the city would call this double-dangerous, I think,” said Violet. Then the door was opened, and the man of whom they were speaking entered the room.