The reader has been told that Lord Chiltern was a red man, and that peculiarity of his personal appearance was certainly the first to strike a stranger. It imparted a certain look of ferocity to him, which was apt to make men afraid of him at first sight. Women are not actuated in the same way, and are accustomed to look deeper into men at the first sight than other men will trouble themselves to do. His beard was red, and was clipped, so as to have none of the softness of waving hair. The hair on his head also was kept short, and was very red — and the colour of his face was red. Nevertheless he was a handsome man, with well-cut features, not tall, but very strongly built, and with a certain curl in the corner of his eyelids which gave to him a look of resolution — which perhaps he did not possess. He was known to be a clever man, and when very young had had the reputation of being a scholar. When he was three-and-twenty grey-haired votaries of the turf declared that he would make his fortune on the race-course — so clear-headed was he as to odds, so excellent a judge of a horse’s performances, and so gifted with a memory of events. When he was five-and-twenty he had lost every shilling of a fortune of his own, had squeezed from his father more than his father ever chose to name in speaking of his affairs to anyone, and was known to be in debt. But he had sacrificed himself on one or two memorable occasions in conformity with turf laws of honour, and men said of him, either that he was very honest or very chivalric — in accordance with the special views on the subject of the man who was speaking. It was reported now that he no longer owned horses on the turf — but this was doubted by some who could name the animals which they said that he owned, and which he ran in the name of Mr Macnab — said some; of Mr Pardoe — said others; of Mr Chickerwick — said a third set of informants. The fact was that Lord Chiltern at this moment had no interest of his own in any horse upon the turf.
But all the world knew that he drank. He had taken by the throat a proctor’s bull-dog when he had been drunk at Oxford, had nearly strangled the man, and had been expelled. He had fallen through his violence into some terrible misfortune at Paris, had been brought before a public judge, and his name and his infamy had been made notorious in every newspaper in the two capitals. After that he had fought a ruffian at Newmarket, and had really killed him with his fists. In reference to this latter affray it had been proved that the attack had been made on him, that he had not been to blame, and that he had not been drunk. After a prolonged investigation he had come forth from that affair without disgrace. He would have done so, at least, if he had not been heretofore disgraced. But we all know how the man well spoken of may steal a horse, while he who is of evil repute may not look over a hedge. It was asserted widely by many who were supposed to know all about everything that Lord Chiltern was in a fit of delirium tremens when he killed the ruffian at Newmarket. The worst of that latter affair was that it produced the total estrangement which now existed between Lord Brentford and his son, Lord Brentford would not believe that his son was in that matter more sinned against than sinning. “Such things do not happen to other men’s sons,” he said, when Lady Laura pleaded for her brother. Lady Laura could not induce her father to see his son, but so far prevailed that no sentence of banishment was pronounced against Lord Chiltern. There was nothing to prevent the son sitting at his father’s table if he so pleased. He never did so please — but nevertheless he continued to live in the house in Portman Square; and when he met the Earl, in the hall, perhaps, or on the staircase, would simply bow to him. Then the Earl would bow again, and shuffle on — and look very wretched, as no doubt he was. A grown-up son must be the greatest comfort a man can have — if he be his father’s best friend; but otherwise he can hardly be a comfort. As it was in this house, the son was a constant thorn in his father’s side.
“What does he do when we leave London?” Lord Brentford once said to his daughter.
“He stays here, papa.”
“But he hunts still?”
“Yes, he hunts — and he has a room somewhere at an inn — down in Northamptonshire. But he is mostly in London. They have trains on purpose.”
“What a life for my son!” said the Earl. What a life! Of course no decent person will let him into his house.” Lady Laura did not know what to say to this, for in truth Lord Chiltern was not fond of staying at the houses of persons whom the Earl would have called decent.
General Effingham, the father of Violet, and Lord Brentford had been the closest and dearest of friends. They had been young men in the same regiment, and through life each had confided in the other. When the General’s only son, then a youth of seventeen, was killed in one of our grand New Zealand wars, the bereaved father and the Earl had been together for a month in their sorrow. At that time Lord Chiltern’s career had still been open to hope — and the one man had contrasted his lot with the other. General Effingham lived long enough to hear the Earl declare that his lot was the happier of the two. Now the General was dead, and Violet, the daughter of a second wife, was all that was left of the Effinghams. This second wife had been a Miss Plummer, a lady from the city with much money, whose sister had married Lord Baldock. Violet in this way had fallen to the care of the Baldock people, and not into the hands of her father’s friends. But, as the reader will have surmised, she had ideas of her own of emancipating herself from Baldock thraldom.
Twice before that last terrible affair at Newmarket, before the quarrel between the father and the son had been complete, Lord Brentford had said a word to his daughter — merely a word — of his son in connection with Miss Effingham.
“If he thinks of it I shall be glad to see him on the subject. You may tell him so.” That had been the first word. He had just then resolved that the affair in Paris should be regarded as condoned — as among the things to be forgotten. “She is too good for him; but if he asks her let him tell her everything.” That had been the second word, and had been spoken immediately subsequent to a payment of twelve thousand pounds made by the Earl towards the settlement of certain Doncaster accounts. Lady Laura in negotiating for the money had been very eloquent in describing some honest — or shall we say chivalric — sacrifice which had brought her brother into this special difficulty. Since that the Earl had declined to interest himself in his son’s matrimonial affairs; and when Lady Laura had once again mentioned the matter, declaring her belief that it would be the means of saving her brother Oswald, the Earl had desired her to be silent. “Would you wish to destroy the poor child?” he had said. Nevertheless Lady Laura felt sure that if she were to go to her father with a positive statement that Oswald and Violet were engaged, he would relent and would accept Violet as his daughter. As for the payment of Lord Chiltern’s present debts — she had a little scheme of her own about that.
Miss Effingham, who had been already two days in Portman Square, had not as yet seen Lord Chiltern. She knew that he lived in the house, that is, that he slept there, and probably ate his breakfast in some apartment of his own; but she knew also that the habits of the house would not by any means make it necessary that they should meet. Laura and her brother probably saw each other daily — but they never went into society together, and did not know the same sets of people. When she had announced to Lady Baldock her intention of spending the first fortnight of her London season with her friend Lady Laura, Lady Baldock had as a matter of course — “jumped upon her,” as Miss Effingham would herself call it.
“You are going to the house of the worst reprobate in all England,” said Lady Baldock.
“What — dear old Lord Brentford, whom papa loved so well!”
“I mean Lord Chiltern, who, only last year — murdered a man!”
“That is not true, aunt.”
“There is worse than that — much worse. He is always — tipsy, and always gambling, and always — But it is quite unfit that I should speak a word more to you about such a man as Lord Chiltern. His name ought never to be mentioned.”
“Then why did you mention it, aunt?”
Lady Baldock’s process of jumping upon her niece — in which I think the aunt had generally the worst of the exercise — went on for some time, but Violet of course carried her point.
“If she marries him there will be an end of everything,” said Lady Baldock to her daughter Augusta.
“She has more sense than that, mamma,” said Augusta.
“I don’t think she has any sense at all,” said Lady Baldock — “not in the least. I do wish my poor sister had lived — I do indeed.”
Lord Chiltern was now in the room with Violet — immediately upon that conversation between Violet and his sister as to the expediency of Violet becoming his wife. Indeed his entrance had interrupted the conversation before it was over. “I am so glad to see you, Miss Effingham,” he said. “I came in thinking that I might find you.”
“Here I am, as large as life,” she said, getting up from her corner on the sofa and giving him her hand. “Laura and I have been discussing the affairs of the nation for the last two days, and have nearly brought our discussion to an end.” She could not help looking, first at his eye and then at his hand, not as wanting evidence to the truth of the statement which his sister had made, but because the idea of a drunkard’s eye and a drunkard’s hand had been brought before her mind. Lord Chiltern’s hand was like the hand of any other man, but there was something in his eye that almost frightened her. It looked as though he would not hesitate to wring his wife’s neck round, if ever he should be brought to threaten to do so. And then his eye, like the rest of him, was red. No — she did not think that she could ever bring herself to marry him. Why take a venture that was double-dangerous, when there were so many ventures open to her, apparently with very little of danger attached to them? “If it should ever be said that I loved him, I would do it all the same,” she said to herself.
“If I did not come and see you here, I suppose that I should never see you,” said he, seating himself. “I do not often go to parties, and when I do you are not likely to be there.”
“We might make our little arrangements for meeting,” said she, laughing, “My aunt, Lady Baldock, is going to have an evening next week.”
“The servants would be ordered to put me out of the house.”
“Oh no. You can tell her that I invited you.”
“I don’t think that Oswald and Lady Baldock are great friends,” said Lady Laura.
“Or he might come and take you and me to the Zoo on Sunday. That’s the proper sort of thing for a brother and a friend to do.”
“I hate that place in the Regent’s Park,” said Lord Chiltern.
“When were you there last?” demanded Miss Effingham.
“When I came home once from Eton. But I won’t go again till I can come home from Eton again.” Then he altered his tone as he continued to speak. “People would look at me as if I were the wildest beast in the whole collection.”
“Then,” said Violet, if you won’t go to Lady Baldock’s or to the Zoo, we must confine ourselves to Laura’s drawing-room — unless, indeed, you like to take me to the top of the Monument.”
“I’ll take you to the top of the Monument with pleasure.”
“What do you say, Laura?”
“I say that you are a foolish girl,” said Lady Laura, “and that I will have nothing to do with such a scheme.”
“Then there is nothing for it but that you should come here; and as you live in the house, and as I am sure to be here every morning, and as you have no possible occupation for your time, and as we have nothing particular to do with ours — I daresay I shan’t see you again before I go to my aunt’s in Berkeley Square.”
“Very likely not,” he said.
“And why not, Oswald?” asked his sister.
He passed his hand over his face before he answered her. “Because she and I run in different grooves now, and are not such meet playfellows as we used to be once. Do you remember my taking you away right through Saulsby Wood once on the old pony, and not bringing you back till tea-time, and Miss Blink going and telling my father?”
“Do I remember it? I think it was the happiest day in my life. His pockets were crammed full of gingerbread and Everton toffee, and we had three bottles of lemonade slung on to the pony’s saddlebows. I thought it was a pity that we should ever come back.”
“It was a pity,” said Lord Chiltern.
“But, nevertheless, substantially necessary,” said Lady Laura.
“Failing our power of reproducing the toffee, I suppose it was,” said Violet.
“You were not Miss Effingham then,” said Lord Chiltern.
“No — not as yet. These disagreeable realities of life grow upon one; do they not? You took off my shoes and dried them for me at a woodman’s cottage. I am obliged to put up with my maid’s doing those things now. And Miss Blink the mild is changed for Lady Baldock the martinet. And if I rode about with you in a wood all day I should be sent to Coventry instead of to bed. And so you see everything is changed as well as my name.”
“Everything is not changed,” said Lord Chiltern, getting up from his seat. “I am not changed — at least not in this, that as I loved you better than any being in the world — better even than Laura there — so do I love you now infinitely the best of all. Do not look so surprised at me. You knew it before as well as you do now — and Laura knows it. There is no secret to be kept in the matter among us three.”
“But, Lord Chiltern — “ said Miss Effingham, rising also to her feet, and then pausing, not knowing how to answer him. There had been a suddenness in his mode of addressing her which had, so to say, almost taken away her breath; and then to be told by a man of his love before his sister was in itself, to her, a matter so surprising, that none of those words came at her command which will come, as though by instinct, to young ladies on such occasions.
“You have known it always,” said he, as though he were angry with her.
“Lord Chiltern,” she replied, you must excuse me if I say that you are, at the least, very abrupt. I did not think when I was going back so joyfully to our childish days that you would turn the tables on me in this way.”
“He has said nothing that ought to make you angry,” said Lady Laura.
“Only because he has driven me to say that which will make me appear to be uncivil to himself. Lord Chiltern, I do not love you with that love of which you are speaking now. As an old friend I have always regarded you, and I hope that I may always do so.” Then she got up and left the room.
“Why were you so sudden with her — so abrupt — so loud?” said his sister, coming up to him and taking him by the arm almost in anger.
“It would make no difference,” said he. She does not care for me.”
“It makes all the difference in the world,” said Lady Laura, “Such a woman as Violet cannot be had after that fashion. You must begin again.”
“I have begun and ended,” he said.
“That is nonsense. Of course you will persist. It was madness to speak in that way today. You may be sure of this, however, that there is no one she likes better than you. You must remember that you have done much to make any girl afraid of you.”
“I do remember it.”
“Do something now to make her fear you no longer. Speak to her softly. Tell her of the sort of life which you would live with her. Tell her that all is changed. As she comes to love you, she will believe you when she would believe no one else on that matter.”
“Am I to tell her a lie?” said Lord Chiltern, looking his sister full in the face. Then he turned upon his heel and left her.
The session went on very calmly after the opening battle which ousted Lord de Terrier and sent Mr Mildmay back to the Treasury — so calmly that Phineas Finn was unconsciously disappointed, as lacking that excitement of contest to which he had been introduced in the first days of his parliamentary career. From time to time certain waspish attacks were made by Mr Daubeny, now on this Secretary of State and now on that; but they were felt by both parties to mean nothing; and as no great measure was brought forward, nothing which would serve by the magnitude of its interests to divide the liberal side of the House into fractions, Mr Mildmay’s Cabinet was allowed to hold its own in comparative peace and quiet. It was now July — the middle of July — and the member for Loughshane had not yet addressed the House. How often had he meditated doing so; how he had composed his speeches walking round the Park on his way down to the House; how he got his subjects up — only to find on hearing them discussed that he really knew little or nothing about them; how he had his arguments and almost his very words taken out of his mouth by some other member; and lastly, how he had actually been deterred from getting upon his legs by a certain tremor of blood round his heart when the moment for rising had come — of all this he never said a word to any man. Since that last journey to county Mayo, Laurence Fitzgibbon had been his most intimate friend, but he said nothing of all this even to Laurence Fitzgibbon. To his other friend, Lady Laura Standish, he did explain something of his feelings, not absolutely describing to her the extent of hindrance to which his modesty had subjected him, but letting her know that he had his qualms as well as his aspirations. But as Lady Laura always recommended patience, and more than once expressed her opinion that a young member would be better to sit in silence at least for one session, he was not driven to the mortification of feeling that he was incurring her contempt by his bashfulness. As regarded the men among whom he lived, I think he was almost annoyed at finding that no one seemed to expect that he should speak. Barrington Erle, when he had first talked of sending Phineas down to Loughshane, had predicted for him all manner of parliamentary successes, and had expressed the warmest admiration of the manner in which Phineas had discussed this or that subject at the union. “We have not above one or two men in the House who can do that kind of thing,” Barrington Erle had once said. But now no allusions whatever were made to his powers of speech, and Phineas in his modest moments began to be more amazed than ever that he should find himself seated in that chamber.
To the forms and technicalities of parliamentary business he did give close attention, and was unremitting in his attendance. On one or two occasions he ventured to ask a question of the Speaker, and as the words of experience fell into his ears, he would tell himself that he was going through his education — that he was learning to be a working member, and perhaps to be a statesman. But his regrets with reference to Mr Low and the dingy chambers in Old Square were very frequent; and had it been possible for him to undo all that he had done, he would often have abandoned to someone else the honour of representing the electors of Loughshane.
But he was supported in all his difficulties by the kindness of his friend, Lady Laura Standish. He was often in the house in Portman Square, and was always received with cordiality, and, as he thought, almost with affection. She would sit and talk to him, sometimes saying a word about her brother and sometimes about her father, as though there were more between them than the casual intimacy of London acquaintance. And in Portman Square he had been introduced to Miss Effingham, and had found Miss Effingham to be — very nice. Miss Effingham had quite taken to him, and he had danced with her at two or three parties, talking always, as he did so, about Lady Laura Standish.
“I declare, Laura, I think your friend Mr Finn is in love with you,” said Violet to Lady Laura one night.
“I don’t think that. He is fond of me, and so am I of him. He is so honest, and so naive without being awkward! And then he is undoubtedly clever.”
“And so uncommonly handsome,” said Violet.
“I don’t know that that makes much difference,” said Lady Laura.
“I think it does if a man looks like a gentleman as well.”
“Mr Finn certainly looks like a gentleman,” said Lady Laura.
“And no doubt is one,” said Violet, I wonder whether he has got any money.”
“Not a penny, I should say.”
“How does such a man manage to live? There are so many men like that, and they are always mysteries to me. I suppose he’ll have to marry an heiress.”
“Whoever gets him will not have a bad husband,” said Lady Laura Standish.
Phineas during the summer had very often met Mr Kennedy. They sat on the same side of the House, they belonged to the same club, they dined together more than once in Portman Square, and on one occasion Phineas had accepted an invitation to dinner sent to him by Mr Kennedy himself. “A slower affair I never saw in my life,” he said afterwards to Laurence Fitzgibbon. “Though there were two or three men there who talk everywhere else, they could not talk at his table.” “He gave you good wine, I should say, said Fitzgibbon, “and let me tell you that that covers a multitude of sins.” In spite, however, of all these opportunities for intimacy, now, nearly at the end of the session, Phineas had hardly spoken a dozen words to Mr Kennedy, and really knew nothing whatsoever of the man, as one friend — or even as one acquaintance knows another. Lady Laura had desired him to be on good terms with Mr Kennedy, and for that reason he had dined with him. Nevertheless he disliked Mr Kennedy, and felt quite sure that Mr Kennedy disliked him. He was therefore rather surprised when he received the following note:
“ Albany, — 3, July 17, 186 —
“ MY DEAR MR FINN,
“I shall have some friends at Loughlinter next month, and should be very glad if you will join us. I will name the 16th August. I don’t know whether you shoot, but there are grouse and deer.
“Yours truly,
ROBERT KENNEDY ”
What was he to do? He had already begun to feel rather uncomfortable at the prospect of being separated from all his new friends as soon as the session should be over. Laurence Fitzgibbon had asked him to make another visit to county Mayo, but that he had declined. Lady Laura had said something to him about going abroad with her brother, and since that there had sprung up a sort of intimacy between him and Lord Chiltern; but nothing had been fixed about this foreign trip, and there were pecuniary objections to it which put it almost out of his power. The Christmas holidays he would of course pass with his family at Killaloe, but he hardly liked the idea of hurrying off to Killaloe immediately the session should be over. Everybody around him seemed to be looking forward to pleasant leisure doings in the country. Men talked about grouse, and of the ladies at the houses to which they were going and of the people whom they were to meet. Lady Laura had said nothing of her own movements for the early autumn, and no invitation had come to him to go to the Earl’s country house. He had already felt that everyone would depart and that he would be left — and this had made him uncomfortable. What was he to do with the invitation from Mr Kennedy? He disliked the man, and had told himself half a dozen times that he despised him. Of course he must refuse it. Even for the sake of the scenery, and the grouse, and the pleasant party, and the feeling that going to Loughlinter in August would be the proper sort of thing to do, he must refuse it! But it occurred to him at last that he would call in Portman Square before he wrote his note.
“Of course you will go,” said Lady Laura, in her most decided tone.
“And why?”
“In the first place it is civil in him to ask you, and why should you be uncivil in return?”
“There is nothing uncivil in not accepting a man’s invitation,” said Phineas.
“We are going,” said Lady Laura, and I can only say that I shall be disappointed if you do not go too. Both Mr Gresham and Mr Monk will be there, and I believe they have never stayed together in the same house before. I have no doubt there are a dozen men on your side of the House who would give their eyes to be there. Of course you will go.”
Of course he did go. The note accepting Mr Kennedy’s invitation was written at the Reform Club within a quarter of an hour of his leaving Portman Square. He was very careful in writing to be not more familiar or more civil than Mr Kennedy had been to himself, and then he signed himself “Yours truly, Phineas Finn.” But another proposition was made to him, and a most charming proposition, during the few minutes that he remained in Portman Square. “I am so glad,” said Lady Laura, “because I can now ask you to run down to us at Saulsby for a couple of days on your way to Loughlinter. Till this was fixed I couldn’t ask you to come all the way to Saulsby for two days; and there won’t be room for more between our leaving London and starting to Loughlinter.” Phineas swore that he would have gone if it had been but for one hour, and if Saulsby had been twice the distance. “Very well; come on the 13th and go on the 15th. You must go on the 15th, unless you choose to stay with the housekeeper. And remember, Mr Finn, we have got no grouse at Saulsby.” Phineas declared that he did not care a straw for grouse.
There was another little occurrence which happened before Phineas left London, and which was not altogether so charming as his prospects at Saulsby and Loughlinter. Early in August, when the session was still incomplete, he dined with Laurence Fitzgibbon at the Reform Club. Laurence had specially invited him to do so, and made very much of him on the occasion. “By George, my dear fellow,” Laurence said to him that morning, “nothing has happened to me this session that has given me so much pleasure as your being in the House. Of course there are fellows with whom one is very intimate and of whom one is very fond — and all that sort of thing. But most of these Englishmen on our side are such cold fellows; or else they are like Ratler and Barrington Erle, thinking of nothing but politics. And then as to our own men, there are so many of them one can hardly trust! That’s the truth of it. Your being in the House has been such a comfort to me!” Phineas, who really liked his friend Laurence, expressed himself very warmly in answer to this, and became affectionate, and made sundry protestations of friendship which were perfectly sincere. Their sincerity was tested after dinner, when Fitzgibbon, as they two were seated on a sofa in the corner of the smoking-room, asked Phineas to put his name to the back of a bill for two hundred and fifty pounds at six months’ date.
“But, my dear Laurence,” said Phineas, two hundred and fifty pounds is a sum of money utterly beyond my reach,”
“Exactly, my dear boy, and that’s why I’ve come to you, D’ye think I’d have asked anybody who by any impossibility might have been made to pay anything for me?”
“But what’s the use of it then?”
“All the use in the world. It’s for me to judge of the use, you know. Why, d’ye think I’d ask it if it wasn’t any use? I’ll make it of use, my boy. And take my word, you’ll never hear about it again. It’s just a forestalling of my salary; that’s all. I wouldn’t do it till I saw that we were at least safe for six months to come.” Then Phineas Finn with many misgivings, with much inward hatred of himself for his own weakness, did put his name on the back of the bill which Laurence Fitzgibbon had prepared for his signature.
“So you won’t come to Moydrum again?” said Laurence Fitzgibbon to his friend.
“Not this autumn, Laurence. Your father would think that I want to live there.”
“Bedad, it’s my father would be glad to see you — and the oftener the better.”
“The fact is, my time is filled up.”
“You’re not going to be one of the party at Loughlinter?”
“I believe I am. Kennedy asked me, and people seem to think that everybody is to do what he bids them.”
“I should think so too. I wish he had asked me. I should have thought it as good as a promise of an under-secretaryship. All the Cabinet are to be there, I don’t suppose he ever had an Irishman in his house before. When do you start?”
“Well — on the 12th or 13th. I believe I shall go to Saulsby on my way.”
“The devil you will. Upon my word, Phineas, my boy, you’re the luckiest fellow I know. This is your first year, and you’re asked to the two most difficult houses in England. You have only to look out for an heiress now. There is little Vi Effingham — she is sure to be at Saulsby. Goodbye, old fellow. Don’t you be in the least unhappy about the bill. I’ll see to making that all right.”
Phineas was rather unhappy about the bill; but there was so much that was pleasant in his cup at the present moment, that he resolved, as far as possible, to ignore the bitter of that one ingredient. He was a little in the dark as to two or three matters respecting these coming visits. He would have liked to have taken a servant with him; but he had no servant, and felt ashamed to hire one for the occasion. And then he was in trouble about a gun, and the paraphernalia of shooting. He was not a bad shot at snipe in the bogs of county Clare, but he had never even seen a gun used in England. However, he bought himself a gun — with other paraphernalia, and took a license for himself, and then groaned over the expense to which he found that his journey would subject him. And at last he hired a servant for the occasion. He was intensely ashamed of himself when he had done so, hating himself, and telling himself that he was going to the devil headlong. And why had he done it? Not that Lady Laura would like him the better, or that she would care whether he had a servant or not. She probably would know nothing of his servant. But the people about her would know, and he was foolishly anxious that the people about her should think that he was worthy of her.
Then he called on Mr Low before he started. “I did not like to leave London without seeing you,” he said; “but I know you will have nothing pleasant to say to me.”
“I shall say nothing unpleasant certainly. I see your name in the divisions, and I feel a sort of envy myself.”
“Any fool could go into a lobby,” said Phineas.
“To tell you the truth, I have been gratified to see that you have had the patience to abstain from speaking till you had looked about you. It was more than I expected from your hot Irish blood. Going to meet Mr Gresham and Mr Monk — are you? Well, I hope you may meet them in the Cabinet some day. Mind you come and see me when Parliament meets in February.”
Mrs Bunce was delighted when she found that Phineas had hired a servant; but Mr Bunce predicted nothing but evil from so vain an expense. “Don’t tell me; where is it to come from? He ain’t no richer because he’s in Parliament. There ain’t no wages. M.P. and M.T.,” — whereby Mr Bunce, I fear, meant empty — “are pretty much alike when a man hasn’t a fortune at his back.” “But he’s going to stay with all the lords in the Cabinet,” said Mrs Bunce, to whom Phineas, in his pride, had confided perhaps more than was necessary. “Cabinet, indeed,” said Bunce; “if he’d stick to chambers, and let alone cabinets, he’d do a deal better. Given up his rooms, has he — till February? He don’t expect we’re going to keep them empty for him!”
Phineas found that the house was full at Saulsby, although the sojourn of the visitors would necessarily be so short. There were three or four there on their way on to Loughlinter, like himself — Mr Bonteen and Mr Ratler, with Mr Palliser, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his wife — and there was Violet Effingham, who, however, was not going to Loughlinter. “No, indeed,” she said to our hero, who on the first evening had the pleasure of taking her in to dinner, “unfortunately I haven’t a seat in Parliament, and therefore I am not asked.”
“Lady Laura is going.”
“Yes — but Lady Laura has a Cabinet Minister in her keeping. I’ve only one comfort — you’ll be awfully dull.”
“I daresay it would be very much nicer to stay here,” said Phineas.
“If you want to know my real mind,” said Violet, I would give one of my little fingers to go. There will be four Cabinet Ministers in the house, and four un-Cabinet Ministers, and half a dozen other members of Parliament, and there will be Lady Glencora Palliser, who is the best fun in the world; and, in point of fact, it’s the thing of the year. But I am not asked. You see I belong to the Baldock faction, and we don’t sit on your side of the House, Mr Kennedy thinks that I should tell secrets.”
Why on earth had Mr Kennedy invited him, Phineas Finn, to meet four Cabinet Ministers and Lady Glencora Palliser? He could only have done so at the instance of Lady Laura Standish. It was delightful for Phineas to think that Lady Laura cared for him so deeply; but it was not equally delightful when he remembered how very close must be the alliance between Mr Kennedy and Lady Laura, when she was thus powerful with him.
At Saulsby Phineas did not see much of his hostess. When they were making their plans for the one entire day of this visit, she said a soft word of apology to him. “I am so busy with all these people, that I hardly know what I am doing. But we shall be able to find a quiet minute or two at Loughlinter — unless, indeed, you intend to be on the mountains all day. I suppose you have brought a gun like everybody else?”
“Yes — I have brought a gun, I do shoot; but I am not an inveterate sportsman.”
On that one day there was a great riding party made up, and Phineas found himself mounted, after luncheon, with some dozen other equestrians. Among them were Miss Effingham and Lady Glencora, Mr Ratler and the Earl of Brentford himself. Lady Glencora, whose husband was, as has been said, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and who was still a young woman, and a very pretty woman, had taken lately very strongly to politics, which she discussed among men and women of both parties with something more than ordinary audacity. “What a nice, happy, lazy time you’ve had of it since you’ve been in,” said she to the Earl.
“I hope we have been more happy than lazy,” said the Earl.
“But you’ve done nothing. Mr Palliser has twenty schemes of reform, all mature; but among you you’ve not let him bring in one of them. The Duke and Mr Mildmay and you will break his heart among you.”
“Poor Mr Palliser!”
“The truth is, if you don’t take care he and Mr Monk and Mr Gresham will arise and shake themselves, and turn you all out.”
“We must look to ourselves, Lady Glencora.”
“Indeed, yes — or you will be known to all posterity as the fainéant government.”
“Let me tell you, Lady Glencora, that a fainéant government is not the worst government that England can have, It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.”
“Mr Mildmay is at any rate innocent of that charge,” said Lady Glencora.
They were now riding through a vast wood, and Phineas found himself delightfully established by the side of Violet Effingham. “Mr Ratler has been explaining to me that he must have nineteen next session. Now, if I were you, Mr Finn, I would decline to be counted up in that way as one of Mr Ratler’s sheep.”
“But what am I to do?”
“Do something on your own hook. You men in Parliament are so much like sheep! If one jumps at a gap, all go after him — and then you are penned into lobbies, and then you are fed, and then you are fleeced. I wish I were in Parliament. I’d get up in the middle and make such a speech. You all seem to me to be so much afraid of one another that you don’t quite dare to speak out. Do you see that cottage there?”
“What a pretty cottage it is!”
“Yes — is it not? Twelve years ago I took off my shoes and stockings and had them dried in that cottage, and when I got back to the house I was put to bed for having been out all day in the wood.”
“Were you wandering about alone?”
“No, I wasn’t alone. Oswald Standish was with me. We were children then. Do you know him?”
“Lord Chiltern — yes, I know him. He and I have been rather friends this year.”
“He is very good — is he not?”
“Good — in what way?”
“Honest and generous!”
“I know no man whom I believe to be more so.”
“And he is clever?” asked Miss Effingham.
“Very clever. That is, he talks very well if you will let him talk after his own fashion. You would always fancy that he was going to eat you — but that is his way.”
“And you like him?”
“Very much.”
“I am so glad to hear you say so.”
“Is he a favourite of yours, Miss Effingham?”
“Not now — not particularly. I hardly ever see him. But his sister is the best friend I have, and I used to like him so much when he was a boy! I have not seen that cottage since that day, and I remember it as though it were yesterday. Lord Chiltern is quite changed, is he not?”
“Changed — in what way?”
“They used to say that he was — unsteady you know.”
“I think he is changed. But Chiltern is at heart a Bohemian. It is impossible not to see that at once. He hates the decencies of life.”
“I suppose he does,” said Violet. He ought to marry. If he were married, that would all be cured — don’t you think so?”
“I cannot fancy him with a wife,” said Phineas. There is a savagery about him which would make him an uncomfortable companion for a woman.”
“But he would love his wife?”
“Yes, as he does his horses. And he would treat her well — as he does his horses. But he expects every horse he has to do anything that any horse can do; and he would expect the same of his wife.”
Phineas had no idea how deep an injury he might be doing his friend by this description, nor did it once occur to him that his companion was thinking of herself as the possible wife of this Red Indian. Miss Effingham rode on in silence for some distance, and then she said but one word more about Lord Chiltern. “He was so good to me in that cottage.”
On the following day the party at Saulsby was broken up, and there was a regular pilgrimage towards Loughlinter. Phineas resolved upon sleeping a night at Edinburgh on his way, and he found himself joined in the bands of close companionship with Mr Ratler for the occasion. The evening was by no means thrown away, for he learned much of his trade from Mr Ratler. And Mr Ratler was heard to declare afterwards at Loughlinter that Mr Finn was a pleasant young man.
It soon came to be admitted by all who knew Phineas Finn that he had a peculiar power of making himself agreeable which no one knew how to analyse or define. “I think it is because he listens so well,” said one man. “But the women would not like him for that,” said another. “He has studied when to listen and when to talk,” said a third, The truth, however, was, that Phineas Finn had made no study in the matter at all. It was simply his nature to be pleasant.
Phineas Finn reached Loughlinter together with Mr Ratler in a post-chaise from the neighbouring town. Mr Ratler, who had done this kind of thing very often before, travelled without impediments, but the new servant of our hero’s was stuck outside with the driver, and was in the way. “I never bring a man with me,” said Mr Ratler to his young friend. “The servants of the house like it much better, because they get fee’d; you are just as well waited on, and it don’t cost half as much.” Phineas blushed as he heard all this; but there was the impediment, not to be got rid of for the nonce, and Phineas made the best of his attendant. “It’s one of those points,” said he, “as to which a man never quite makes up his mind. If you bring a fellow, you wish you hadn’t brought him; and if you don’t, you wish you had.” “I’m a great deal more decided in my ways that that,” said Mr Ratler.
Loughlinter, as they approached it, seemed to Phineas to be a much finer place than Saulsby. And so it was, except that Loughlinter wanted that graceful beauty of age which Saulsby possessed. Loughlinter was all of cut stone, but the stones had been cut only yesterday. It stood on a gentle slope, with a greensward falling from the front entrance down to a mountain lake. And on the other side of the Lough there rose a mighty mountain to the skies, Ben Linter. At the foot of it, and all round to the left, there ran the woods of Linter, stretching for miles through crags and bogs and mountain lands. No better ground for deer than the side of Ben Linter was there in all those highlands. And the Linter, rushing down into the Lough through rocks which, in some places, almost met together above its waters, ran so near to the house that the pleasant noise of its cataracts could be heard from the hall door. Behind the house the expanse of drained park land seemed to be interminable; and then, again, came the mountains. There were Ben Linn and Ben Lody — and the whole territory belonging to Mr Kennedy. He was laird of Linn and laird of Linter, as his people used to say. And yet his father had walked into Glasgow as a little boy — no doubt with the normal half-crown in his breeches pocket.
“Magnificent — is it not?” said Phineas to the Treasury Secretary, as they were being driven up to the door.
“Very grand — but the young trees show the new man. A new man may buy a forest; but he can’t get park trees.”
Phineas, at the moment, was thinking how far all these things which he saw, the mountains stretching everywhere around him, the castle, the lake, the river, the wealth of it all, and, more than the wealth, the nobility of the beauty, might act as temptations to Lady Laura Standish. If a woman were asked to have the half of all this, would it be possible that she should prefer to take the half of his nothing? He thought it might be possible for a girl who would confess, or seem to confess, that love should be everything. But it could hardly be possible for a woman who looked at the world almost as a man looked at it — as an oyster to be opened with such weapon as she could find ready to her hand. Lady Laura professed to have a care for all the affairs of the world. She loved politics, and could talk of social science, and had broad ideas about religion, and was devoted to certain educational views. Such a woman would feel that wealth was necessary to her, and would be willing, for the sake of wealth, to put up with a husband without romance. Nay; might it not be that she would prefer a husband without romance? Thus Phineas was arguing to himself as he was driven up to the door of Loughlinter Castle, while Mr Ratler was eloquent on the beauty of old park trees. “After all, a Scotch forest is a very scrubby sort of thing,” said Mr Ratler.
There was nobody in the house — at least, they found nobody; and within half an hour Phineas was walking about the grounds by himself. Mr Ratler had declared himself to be delighted at having an opportunity of writing letters — and no doubt was writing them by the dozen, all dated from Loughlinter, and all detailing the facts that Mr Gresham, and Mr Monk, and Plantagenet Palliser, and Lord Brentford were in the same house with him. Phineas had no letters to write, and therefore rushed down across the broad lawn to the river, of which he heard the noisy tumbling waters. There was something in the air which immediately filled him with high spirits; and, in his desire to investigate the glories of the place, he forgot that he was going to dine with four Cabinet Ministers in a row. He soon reached the stream, and began to make his way up it through the ravine. There was waterfall over waterfall, and there were little bridges here and there which looked to be half natural and half artificial, and a path which required that you should climb, but which was yet a path, and all was so arranged that not a pleasant splashing rush of the waters was lost to the visitor. He went on and on, up the stream, till there was a sharp turn in the ravine, and then, looking upwards, he saw above his head a man and a woman standing together on one of the little half-made wooden bridges. His eyes were sharp, and he saw at a glance that the woman was Lady Laura Standish. He had not recognised the man, but he had very little doubt that it was Mr Kennedy. Of course it was Mr Kennedy, because he would prefer that it should be any other man under the sun. He would have turned back at once if he had thought that he could have done so without being observed; but he felt sure that, standing as they were, they must have observed him. He did not like to join them. He would not intrude himself. So he remained still, and began to throw stones into the river. But he had not thrown above a stone or two when he was called from above. He looked up, and then he perceived that the man who called him was his host. Of course it was Mr Kennedy. Thereupon he ceased to throw stones, and went up the path, and joined them upon the bridge. Mr Kennedy stepped forward, and bade him welcome to Loughlinter. His manner was less cold, and he seemed to have more words at command than was usual with him. “You have not been long,” he said, in finding out the most beautiful spot about the place.”
“Is it not lovely?” said Laura, We have not been here an hour yet, and Mr Kennedy insisted on bringing me here,”
“It is wonderfully beautiful,” said Phineas.
“It is this very spot where we now stand that made me build the house where it is,” said Mr Kennedy, “and I was only eighteen when I stood here and made up my mind. That is just twenty-five years ago.” “So he is forty-three, said Phineas to himself, thinking how glorious it was to be only twenty-five. “And within twelve months,” continued Mr Kennedy, “the foundations were being dug and the stone-cutters were at work.”
“What a good-natured man your father must have been,” said Lady Laura.
“He had nothing else to do with his money but to pour it over my head, as it were. I don’t think he had any other enjoyment of it himself. Will you go a little higher, Lady Laura? We shall get a fine view over to Ben Linn just now.” Lady Laura declared that she would go as much higher as he chose to take her, and Phineas was rather in doubt as to what it would become him to do. He would stay where he was, or go down, or make himself to vanish after any most acceptable fashion; but if he were to do so abruptly it would seem as though he were attributing something special to the companionship of the other two. Mr Kennedy saw his doubt, and asked him to join them. “You may as well come on, Mr Finn. We don’t dine till eight, and it is not much past six yet. The men of business are all writing letters, and the ladies who have been travelling are in bed, I believe.”
“Not all of them, Mr Kennedy,” said Lady Laura. Then they went on with their walk very pleasantly, and the lord of all that they surveyed took them from one point of vantage to another, till they both swore that of all spots upon the earth Loughlinter was surely the most lovely. “I do delight in it, I own,” said the lord. “When I come up here alone, and feel that in the midst of this little bit of a crowded island I have all this to myself — all this with which no other man’s wealth can interfere — I grow proud of my own, till I become thoroughly ashamed of myself. After all, I believe it is better to dwell in cities than in the country — better, at any rate, for a rich man.” Mr Kennedy had now spoken more words than Phineas had heard to fall from his lips during the whole time that they had been acquainted with each other.
“I believe so too,” said Laura, if one were obliged to choose between the two. For myself, I think that a little of both is good for man and woman.”
“There is no doubt about that,” said Phineas.
“No doubt as far as enjoyment goes,” said Mr Kennedy.
He took them up out of the ravine on to the side of the mountain, and then down by another path through the woods to the back of the house. As they went he relapsed into his usual silence, and the conversation was kept up between the other two. At a point not very far from the castle — just so far that one could see by the break of the ground where the castle stood, Kennedy left them. “Mr Finn will take you back in safety, I am sure,” said he, “and, as I am here, I’ll go up to the farm for a moment. If I don’t show myself now and again when I am here, they think I’m indifferent about the “bestials”.”
“Now, Mr Kennedy,” said Lady Laura, you are going to pretend to understand all about sheep and oxen.” Mr Kennedy, owning that it was so, went away to his farm, and Phineas with Lady Laura returned towards the house. “I think, upon the whole,” said Lady Laura, “that that is as good a man as I know.”
“I should think he is an idle one,” said Phineas.
“I doubt that. He is, perhaps, neither zealous nor active. But he is thoughtful and high-principled, and has a method and a purpose in the use which he makes of his money. And you see that he has poetry in his nature too, if you get him upon the right string. How fond he is of the scenery of this place!”
“Any man would be fond of that. I’m ashamed to say that it almost makes me envy him. I certainly never have wished to be Mr Robert Kennedy in London, but I should like to be the Laird of Loughlinter.”
““Laird of Linn and Laird of Linter — Here in summer, gone in winter.” There is some ballad about the old lairds; but that belongs to a time when Mr Kennedy had not been heard of, when some branch of the Mackenzies lived down at that wretched old tower which you see as you first come upon the lake. When old Mr Kennedy bought it there were hardly a hundred acres on the property under cultivation.”
“And it belonged to the Mackenzies.”
“Yes — to the Mackenzie of Linn, as he was called. It was Mr Kennedy, the old man, who was first called Loughlinter. That is Linn Castle, and they lived there for hundreds of years. But these Highlanders, with all that is said of their family pride, have forgotten the Mackenzies already, and are quite proud of their rich landlord.”
“That is unpoetical,” said Phineas.
“Yes — but then poetry is so usually false. I doubt whether Scotland would not have been as prosaic a country as any under the sun but for Walter Scott — and I have no doubt that Henry V owes the romance of his character altogether to Shakespeare.”
“I sometimes think you despise poetry,” said Phineas.
“When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false and when it is true. Tom Moore was always false.”
“Not so false as Byron,” said Phineas with energy.
“Much more so, my friend. But we will not discuss that now. Have you seen Mr Monk since you have been here?”
“I have seen no one. I came with Mr Ratler.”
“Why with Mr Ratler? You cannot find Mr Ratler a companion much to your taste.”
“Chance brought us together. But Mr Ratler is a man of sense, Lady Laura, and is not to be despised.”
“It always seems to me,” said Lady Laura, that nothing is to be gained in politics by sitting at the feet of the little Gamaliels.”
“But the great Gamaliels will not have a novice on their footstools.”
“Then sit at no man’s feet. Is it not astonishing that the price generally put upon any article by the world is that which the owner puts on it? — and that this is specially true of a man’s own self? If you herd with Ratler, men will take it for granted that you are a Ratlerite, and no more. If you consort with Greshams and Pallisers, you will equally be supposed to know your own place.”
“I never knew a Mentor,” said Phineas, so apt as you are to fill his Telemachus with pride.”
“It is because I do not think your fault lies that way. If it did, or if I thought so, my Telemachus, you may be sure that I should resign my position as Mentor. Here are Mr Kennedy and Lady Glencora and Mrs Gresham on the steps.” Then they went up through the Ionic columns on to the broad stone terrace before the door, and there they found a crowd of men and women. For the legislators and statesmen had written their letters, and the ladies had taken their necessary rest.
Phineas, as he was dressing, considered deeply all that Lady Laura had said to him — not so much with reference to the advice which she had given him, though that also was of importance, as to the fact that it had been given by her. She had first called herself his Mentor; but he had accepted the name and had addressed her as her Telemachus. And yet he believed himself to be older than she — if, indeed, there was any difference in their ages. And was it possible that a female Mentor should love her Telemachus — should love him as Phineas desired to be loved by Lady Laura? He would not say that it was impossible. Perhaps there had been mistakes between them — a mistake in his manner of addressing her, and another in hers of addressing him. Perhaps the old bachelor of forty-three was not thinking of a wife. Had this old bachelor of forty-three been really in love with Lady Laura, would he have allowed her to walk home alone with Phineas, leaving her with some flimsy pretext of having to look at his sheep? Phineas resolved that he must at any rate play out his game — whether he were to lose it or to win it; and in playing it he must, if possible, drop something of that Mentor and Telemachus style of conversation. As to the advice given him of herding with Greshams and Pallisers, instead of with Ratlers and Fitzgibbons — he must use that as circumstances might direct. To him, himself, as he thought of it all, it was sufficiently astonishing that even the Ratlers and Fitzgibbons should admit him among them as one of themselves. “When I think of my father and of the old house at Killaloe, and remember that hitherto I have done nothing myself, I cannot understand how it is that I should be at Loughlinter.” There was only one way of understanding it. If Lady Laura really loved him, the riddle might be read.
The rooms at Loughlinter were splendid, much larger and very much more richly furnished than those at Saulsby. But there was a certain stiffness in the movement of things, and perhaps in the manner of some of those present, which was not felt at Saulsby. Phineas at once missed the grace and prettiness and cheery audacity of Violet Effingham, and felt at the same time that Violet Effingham would be out of her element at Loughlinter. At Loughlinter they were met for business. It was at least a semi-political, or perhaps rather a semi-official gathering, and he became aware that he ought not to look simply for amusement. When he entered the drawing-room before dinner, Mr Monk and Mr Palliser, and Mr Kennedy and Mr Gresham, with sundry others, were standing in a wide group before the fireplace, and among them were Lady Glencora Palliser and Lady Laura and Mrs Bonteen. As he approached them it seemed as though a sort of opening was made for himself; but he could see, though others did not, that the movement came from Lady Laura.
“I believe, Mr Monk,” said Lady Glencora, that you and I are the only two in the whole party who really know what we would be at.”
“If I must be divided from so many of my friends,” said Mr Monk, “I am happy to go astray in the company of Lady Glencora Palliser.”
“And might I ask,” said Mr Gresham, with a peculiar smile for which he was famous, “what it is that you and Mr Monk are really at?”
“Making men and women all equal,” said Lady Glencora. “That I take to be the gist of our political theory.”
“Lady Glencora, I must cry off,” said Mr Monk.
“Yes — no doubt. If I were in the Cabinet myself I should not admit so much. There are reticences — of course. And there is an official discretion.”
“But you don’t mean to say, Lady Glencora, that you would really advocate equality?” said Mrs Bonteen.
“I do mean to say so, Mrs Bonteen. And I mean to go further, and to tell you that you are no Liberal at heart unless you do so likewise; unless that is the basis of your political aspirations.”
“Pray let me speak for myself, Lady Glencora.”
“By no means — not when you are criticising me and my politics. Do you not wish to make the lower orders comfortable?”
“Certainly,” said Mrs Bonteen.
“And educated, and happy and good?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“To make them as comfortable and as good as yourself?”
“Better if possible.”
“And I’m sure you wish to make yourself as good and as comfortable as anybody else — as those above you, if anybody is above you? You will admit that?”
“Yes — if I understand you.”
“Then you have admitted everything, and are an advocate for general equality, just as Mr Monk is, and as I am. There is no getting out of it — is there, Mr Kennedy?” Then dinner was announced, and Mr Kennedy walked off with the French Republican on his arm. As she went, she whispered into Mr Kennedy’s ear, “You will understand me. I am not saying that people are equal; but that the tendency of all law-making and of all governing should be to reduce the inequalities.” In answer to which Mr Kennedy said not a word. Lady Glencora’s politics were too fast and furious for his nature.
A week passed by at Loughlinter, at the end of which Phineas found himself on terms of friendly intercourse with all the political magnates assembled in the house, but especially with Mr Monk. He had determined that he would not follow Lady Laura’s advice as to his selection of companions, if in doing so he should be driven even to a seeming of intrusion. He made no attempt to sit at the feet of anybody, and would stand aloof when bigger men than himself were talking, and was content to be less — as indeed he was less — than Mr Bonteen or Mr Ratler. But at the end of a week he found that, without any effort on his part — almost in opposition to efforts on his part — he had fallen into an easy pleasant way with these men which was very delightful to him. He had killed a stag in company with Mr Palliser, and had stopped beneath a crag to discuss with him a question as to the duty on Irish malt. He had played chess with Mr Gresham, and had been told that gentleman’s opinion on the trial of Mr Jefferson Davis. Lord Brentford had — at last — called him Finn, and had proved to him that nothing was known in Ireland about sheep. But with Mr Monk he had had long discussions on abstract questions in politics — and before the week was over was almost disposed to call himself a disciple, or, at least, a follower of Mr Monk. Why not of Mr Monk as well as of any one else? Mr Monk was in the Cabinet, and of all the members of the Cabinet was the most advanced Liberal. “Lady Glencora was not so far wrong the other night,” Mr Monk said to him. “Equality is an ugly word and shouldn’t be used. It misleads, and frightens, and is a bugbear. And she, in using it, had not perhaps a clearly defined meaning for it in her own mind. But the wish of every honest man should be to assist in lifting up those below him, till they be something nearer his own level than he finds them.” To this Phineas assented — and by degrees he found himself assenting to a great many things that Mr Monk said to him.
Mr Monk was a thin, tall, gaunt man, who had devoted his whole life to politics, hitherto without any personal reward beyond that which came to him from the reputation of his name, and from the honour of a seat in Parliament. He was one of four or five brothers — and all besides him were in trade. They had prospered in trade, whereas he had prospered solely in politics; and men said that he was dependent altogether on what his relatives supplied for his support. He had now been in Parliament for more than twenty years, and had been known not only as a Radical but as a Democrat. Ten years since, when he had risen to fame, but not to repute, among the men who then governed England, nobody dreamed that Joshua Monk would ever be a paid servant of the Crown. He had inveighed against one minister after another as though they all deserved impeachment. He had advocated political doctrines which at that time seemed to be altogether at variance with any possibility of governing according to English rules of government. He had been regarded as a pestilent thorn in the sides of all ministers. But now he was a member of the Cabinet, and those whom he had terrified in the old days began to find that he was not so much unlike other men. There are but few horses which you cannot put into harness, and those of the highest spirit will generally do your work the best.
Phineas, who had his eyes about him, thought that he could perceive that Mr Palliser did not shoot a deer with Mr Ratler, and that Mr Gresham played no chess with Mr Bonteen. Bonteen, indeed, was a noisy pushing man whom nobody seemed to like, and Phineas wondered why he should be at Loughlinter, and why he should be in office. His friend Laurence Fitzgibbon had indeed once endeavoured to explain this. “A man who can vote hard, as I call it; and who will speak a few words now and then as they’re wanted, without any ambition that way, may always have his price. And if he has a pretty wife into the bargain, he ought to have a pleasant time of it.” Mr Ratler no doubt was a very useful man, who thoroughly knew his business; but yet, as it seemed to Phineas, no very great distinction was shown to Mr Ratler at Loughlinter. “If I got as high as that,” he said to himself, “I should think myself a miracle of luck. And yet nobody seems to think anything of Ratler. It is all nothing unless one can go to the very top.”
“I believe I did right to accept office,” Mr Monk said to him one day, as they sat together on a rock close by one of the little bridges over the Linter. “Indeed, unless a man does so when the bonds of the office tendered to him are made compatible with his own views, he declines to proceed on the open path towards the prosecution of those views. A man who is combating one ministry after another, and striving to imbue those ministers with his convictions, can hardly decline to become a minister himself when he finds that those convictions of his own are henceforth — or at least for some time to come — to be the ministerial convictions of the day. Do you follow me?”
“Very clearly,” said Phineas. You would have denied your own children had you refused.”
“Unless indeed a man were to feel that he was in some way unfitted for office work. I very nearly provided for myself an escape on that plea — but when I came to sift it, I thought that it would be false. But let me tell you that the delight of political life is altogether in opposition. Why, it is freedom against slavery, fire against clay, movement against stagnation! The very inaccuracy which is permitted to opposition is in itself a charm worth more than all the patronage and all the prestige of ministerial power. You’ll try them both, and then say if you do not agree with me. Give me the full swing of the benches below the gangway, where I needed to care for no one, and could always enjoy myself on my legs as long as I felt that I was true to those who sent me there! That is all over now. They have got me into harness, and my shoulders are sore. The oats, however, are of the best, and the hay is unexceptionable.”
Phineas liked being told that the pleasures of opposition and the pleasures of office were both open to him, and he liked also to be the chosen receptacle of Mr Monk’s confidence. He had come to understand that he was expected to remain ten days at Loughlinter, and that then there was to be a general movement. Since the first day he had seen but little of Mr Kennedy, but he had found himself very frequently with Lady Laura. And then had come up the question of his projected trip to Paris with Lord Chiltern. He had received a letter from Lord Chiltern.
“ DEAR FINN,
“Are you going to Paris with me?
“Yours,
Ccdq;
There had been not a word beyond this, and before he answered it he made up his mind to tell Lady Laura the truth, He could not go to Paris because he had no money.
“I’ve just got that from your brother,” said he.
“How like Oswald. He writes to me perhaps three times in the year, and his letters are just the same. You will go I hope?”
“Well — no.”
“I am sorry for that.”
“I wonder whether I may tell you the real reason, Lady Laura.”
“Nay — I cannot answer that; but unless it be some political secret between you and Mr Monk, I should think you might.”
“I cannot afford to go to Paris this autumn. It seems to be a shocking admission to make — though I don’t know why it should be.”
“Nor I— but Mr Finn, I like you all the better for making it. I am very sorry, for Oswald’s sake. It’s so hard to find any companion for him whom he would like and whom we — that is I— should think altogether — you know what I mean, Mr Finn.”
“Your wish that I should go with him is a great compliment, and I thoroughly wish that I could do it. As it is, I must go to Killaloe and retrieve my finances. I daresay, Lady Laura, you can hardly conceive how very poor a man I am.” There was a melancholy tone about his voice as he said this, which made her think for the moment whether or no he had been right in going into Parliament, and whether she had been right in instigating him to do so. But it was too late to recur to that question now.
“You must climb into office early, and forego those pleasures of opposition which are so dear to Mr Monk,” she said, smiling. “After all, money is an accident which does not count nearly so high as do some other things. You and Mr Kennedy have the same enjoyment of everything around you here.”
“Yes; while it lasts.”
“And Lady Glencora and I stand pretty much on the same footing, in spite of all her wealth — except that she is a married woman. I do not know what she is worth — something not to be counted; and I am worth — just what papa chooses to give me. A ten-pound note at the present moment I should look upon as great riches.” This was the first time she had ever spoken to him of her own position as regards money; but he had heard, or thought that he had heard, that she had been left a fortune altogether independent of her father.
The last of the ten days had now come, and Phineas was discontented and almost unhappy. The more he saw of Lady Laura the more he feared that it was impossible that she should become his wife. And yet from day to day his intimacy with her became more close. He had never made love to her, nor could he discover that it was possible for him to do so. She seemed to be a woman for whom all the ordinary stages of love-making were quite unsuitable. Of course he could declare his love and ask her to be his wife on any occasion on which he might find himself to be alone with her. And on this morning he had made up his mind that he would do so before the day was over. It might be possible that she would never speak to him again — that all the pleasures and ambitious hopes to which she had introduced him might be over as soon as that rash word should have been spoken! But, nevertheless, he would speak it.
On this day there was to be a grouse-shooting party, and the shooters were to be out early. It had been talked of for some day or two past, and Phineas knew that he could not escape it. There had been some rivalry between him and Mr Bonteen, and there was to be a sort of match as to which of the two would kill most birds before lunch. But there had also been some half promise on Lady Laura’s part that she would walk with him up the Linter and come down upon the lake, taking an opposite direction from that by which they had returned with Mr Kennedy.
“But you will be shooting all day,” she said, when he proposed it to her as they were starting for the moor. The waggonet that was to take them was at the door, and she was there to see them start. Her father was one of the shooting party, and Mr Kennedy was another.
“I will undertake to be back in time, if you will not think it too hot. I shall not see you again till we meet in town next year.”
“Then I certainly will go with you — that is to say, if you are here. But you cannot return without the rest of the party, as you are going so far.”
“I’ll get back somehow,” said Phineas, who was resolved that a few miles more or less of mountain should not detain him from the prosecution of a task so vitally important to him. “If we start at five that will be early enough.”
“Quite early enough,” said Lady Laura.
Phineas went off to the mountains, and shot his grouse, and won his match, and ate his luncheon. Mr Bonteen, however, was not beaten by much, and was in consequence somewhat ill-humoured.
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said Mr Bonteen, I’ll back myself for the rest of the day for a ten-pound note.”
Now there had been no money staked on the match at all — but it had been simply a trial of skill, as to which would kill the most birds in a given time. And the proposition for that trial had come from Mr Bonteen himself. “I should not think of shooting for money,” said Phineas.
“And why not? A bet is the only way to decide these things.”
“Partly because I’m sure I shouldn’t hit a bird,” said Phineas, “and partly because I haven’t got any money to lose.”
“I hate bets,” said Mr Kennedy to him afterwards. I was annoyed when Bonteen offered the wager. I felt sure, however, you would not accept it.”
“I suppose such bets are very common,”
“I don’t think men ought to propose them unless they are quite sure of their company. Maybe I’m wrong, and I often feel that I am strait-laced about such things. It is so odd to me that men cannot amuse themselves without pitting themselves against each other. When a man tells me that he can shoot better than I, I tell him that my keeper can shoot better than he.”
“All the same, it’s a good thing to excel,” said Phineas.
“I’m not so sure of that,” said Mr Kennedy. A man who can kill more salmon than anybody else, can rarely do anything else. Are you going on with your match?”
“No; I’m going to make my way to Loughlinter.”
“Not alone?”
“Yes, alone.”
“It’s over nine miles. You can’t walk it.”
Phineas looked at his watch, and found that it was now two o’clock. It was a broiling day in August, and the way back to Loughlinter, for six or seven out of the nine miles, would be along a high road. “I must do it all the same,” said he, preparing for a start. “I have an engagement with Lady Laura Standish; and as this is the last day that I shall see her, I certainly do not mean to break it.”
“An engagement with Lady Laura,” said Mr Kennedy. Why did you not tell me, that I might have a pony ready? But come along. Donald Bean has a pony. He’s not much bigger than a dog, but he’ll carry you to Loughlinter.”
“I can walk it, Mr Kennedy.”
“Yes; and think of the state in which you’d reach Loughlinter! Come along with me.”
“But I can’t take you off the mountain,” said Phineas.
“Then you must allow me to take you off.”
So Mr Kennedy led the way down to Donald Bean’s cottage, and before three o’clock Phineas found himself mounted on a shaggy steed, which, in sober truth, was not much bigger than a large dog. “If Mr Kennedy is really my rival,” said Phineas to himself, as he trotted along, “I almost think that I am doing an unhandsome thing in taking the pony.”
At five o’clock he was under the portico before the front door, and there he found Lady Laura waiting for him — waiting for him, or at least ready for him. She had on her hat and gloves and light shawl, and her parasol was in her hand. He thought that he had never seen her look so young, so pretty, and so fit to receive a lover’s vows. But at the same moment it occurred to him that she was Lady Laura Standish, the daughter of an Earl, the descendant of a line of Earls — and that he was the son of a simple country doctor in Ireland. Was it fitting that he should ask such a woman to be his wife? But then Mr Kennedy was the son of a man who had walked into Glasgow with half-a-crown in his pocket. Mr Kennedy’s grandfather had been — Phineas thought that he had heard that Mr Kennedy’s grandfather had been a Scotch drover; whereas his own grandfather had been a little squire near Ennistimon, in county Clare, and his own first cousin once removed still held the paternal acres at Finn Grove. His family was supposed to be descended from kings in that part of Ireland. It certainly did not become him to fear Lady Laura on the score of rank, if it was to be allowed to Mr Kennedy to proceed without fear on that head. As to wealth, Lady Laura had already told him that her fortune was no greater than his. Her statement to himself on that head made him feel that he should not hesitate on the score of money. They neither had any, and he was willing to work for both. If she feared the risk, let her say so.
It was thus that he argued with himself; but yet he knew — knew as well as the reader will know — that he was going to do that which he had no right to do. It might be very well for him to wait — presuming him to be successful in his love — for the opening of that oyster with his political sword, that oyster on which he proposed that they should both live; but such waiting could not well be to the taste of Lady Laura Standish. It could hardly be pleasant to her to look forward to his being made a junior lord or an assistant secretary before she could establish herself in her home. So he told himself. And yet he told himself at the same time that it was incumbent on him to persevere.
“I did not expect you in the least,” said Lady Laura.
“And yet I spoke very positively.”
“But there are things as to which a man may be very positive, and yet may be allowed to fail. In the first place, how on earth did you get home?”
“Mr Kennedy got me a pony — Donald Bean’s pony.”
“You told him, then?”
“Yes; I told him why I was coming, and that I must be here. Then he took the trouble to come all the way off the mountain to persuade Donald to lend me his pony. I must acknowledge that Mr Kennedy has conquered me at last.”
“I am so glad of that,” said Lady Laura. I knew he would — unless it were your own fault.”
They went up the path by the brook, from bridge to bridge, till they found themselves out upon the open mountain at the top. Phineas had resolved that he would not speak out his mind till he found himself on that spot; that then he would ask her to sit down, and that while she was so seated he would tell her everything. At the present moment he had on his head a Scotch cap with a grouse’s feather in it, and he was dressed in a velvet shooting-jacket and dark knickerbockers; and was certainly, in this costume, as handsome a man as any woman would wish to see. And there was, too, a look of breeding about him which had come to him, no doubt, from the royal Finns of old, which ever served him in great stead. He was, indeed, only Phineas Finn, and was known by the world to be no more; but he looked as though he might have been anybody — a royal Finn himself. And then he had that special grace of appearing to be altogether unconscious of his own personal advantages. And I think that in truth he was barely conscious of them; that he depended on them very little, if at all; that there was nothing of personal vanity in his composition. He had never indulged in any hope that Lady Laura would accept him because he was a handsome man.
“After all that climbing,” he said, will you not sit down for a moment?” As he spoke to her she looked at him and told herself that he was as handsome as a god. “Do sit down for one moment,” he said. “I have something that I desire to say to you, and to say it here.”
“I will,” she said; but I also have something to tell you, and will say it while I am yet standing. Yesterday I accepted an offer of marriage from Mr Kennedy.”
“Then I am too late,” said Phineas, and putting his hands into the pockets of his coat, he turned his back upon her, and walked away across the mountain.
What a fool he had been to let her know his secret when her knowledge of it could be of no service to him — when her knowledge of it could only make him appear foolish in her eyes! But for his life he could not have kept his secret to himself. Nor now could he bring himself to utter a word of even decent civility. But he went on walking as though he could thus leave her there, and never see her again. What an ass he had been in supposing that she cared for him! What a fool to imagine that his poverty could stand a chance against the wealth of Loughlinter! But why had she lured him on? How he wished that he were now grinding, hard at work in Mr Low’s chambers, or sitting at home at Killaloe with the hand of that pretty little Irish girl within his own!
Presently he heard a voice behind him — calling him gently. Then he turned and found that she was very near him. He himself had then been standing still for some moments, and she had followed him. “Mr Finn,” she said.
“Well — yes: what is it?” And turning round he made an attempt to smile.
“Will you not wish me joy, or say a word of congratulation? Had I not thought much of your friendship, I should not have been so quick to tell you of my destiny. No one else has been told, except papa.”
“Of course I hope you will be happy. Of course I do. No wonder he lent me the pony!”
“You must forget all that.”
“Forget what?”
“Well — nothing. You need forget nothing,” said Lady Laura, “for nothing has been said that need be regretted. Only wish me joy, and all will be pleasant.”
“Lady Laura, I do wish you joy, with all my heart — but that will not make all things pleasant. I came up here to ask you to be my wife.”
“No — no, no; do not say it.”
“But I have said it, and will say it again. I, poor, penniless, plain simple fool that I am, have been ass enough to love you, Lady Laura Standish; and I brought you up here today to ask you to share with me — my nothingness. And this I have done on soil that is to be all your own. Tell me that you regard me as a conceited fool — as a bewildered idiot.”
“I wish to regard you as a dear friend — both of my own and of my husband,” said she, offering him her hand.
“Should I have had a chance, I wonder, if I had spoken a week since?”
“How can I answer such a question, Mr Finn? Or, rather, I will answer it fully. It is not a week since we told each other, you to me and I to you, that we were both poor — both without other means than those which come to us from our fathers. You will make your way — will make it surely; but how at present could you marry any woman unless she had money of her own? For me — like so many other girls, it was necessary that I should stay at home or marry someone rich enough to dispense with fortune in a wife. The man whom in all the world I think the best has asked me to share everything with him — and I have thought it wise to accept his offer.”
“And I was fool enough to think that you loved me,” said Phineas. To this she made no immediate answer. “Yes, I was, I feel that I owe it you to tell you what a fool I have been. I did. I thought you loved me. At least I thought that perhaps you loved me. It was like a child wanting the moon — was it not?”
“And why should I not have loved you?” she said slowly, laying her hand gently upon his arm.
“Why not? Because Loughlinter — ”
“Stop, Mr Finn; stop. Do not say to me any unkind word that I have not deserved, and that would make a breach between us. I have accepted the owner of Loughlinter as my husband, because I verily believe that I shall thus do my duty in that sphere of life to which it has pleased God to call me. I have always liked him, and I will love him. For you — may I trust myself to speak openly to you?”
“You may trust me as against all others, except us two ourselves.”
“For you, then, I will say also that I have always liked you since I knew you; that I have loved you as a friend — and could have loved you otherwise had not circumstances showed me so plainly that it would be unwise.”
“Oh, Lady Laura!”
“Listen a moment. And pray remember that what I say to you now must never be repeated to any ears. No one knows it but my father, my brother, and Mr Kennedy. Early in the spring I paid my brother’s debts. His affection to me is more than a return for what I have done for him. But when I did this — when I made up my mind to do it, I made up my mind also that I could not allow myself the same freedom of choice which would otherwise have belonged to me. Will that be sufficient, Mr Finn?”
“How can I answer you, Lady Laura? Sufficient! And you are not angry with me for what I have said?”
“No, I am not angry. But it is understood, of course, that nothing of this shall ever be repeated — even among ourselves. Is that a bargain?”
“Oh, yes. I shall never speak of it again.”
“And now you will wish me joy?”
“I have wished you joy, Lady Laura. And I will do so again. May you have every blessing which the world can give you. You cannot expect me to be very jovial for a while myself; but there will be nobody to see my melancholy moods. I shall be hiding myself away in Ireland. When is the marriage to be?”
“Nothing has been said of that. I shall be guided by him — but there must, of course, be delay. There will be settlements and I know not what. It may probably be in the spring — or perhaps the summer. I shall do just what my betters tell me to do.”
Phineas had now seated himself on the exact stone on which he had wished her to sit when he proposed to tell his own story, and was looking forth upon the lake. It seemed to him that everything had been changed for him while he had been up there upon the mountain, and that the change had been marvellous in its nature. When he had been coming up, there had been apparently two alternatives before him: the glory of successful love — which, indeed, had seemed to him to be a most improbable result of the coming interview — and the despair and utter banishment attendant on disdainful rejection. But his position was far removed from either of these alternatives, She had almost told him that she would have loved him had she not been poor — that she was beginning to love him and had quenched her love, because it had become impossible to her to marry a poor man. In such circumstances he could not be angry with her — he could not quarrel with her; he could not do other than swear to himself that he would be her friend. And yet he loved her better than ever — and she was the promised wife of his rival! Why had not Donald Bean’s pony broken his neck?
“Shall we go down now?” she said.
“Oh, yes.”
“You will not go on by the lake?”
“What is the use? It is all the same now. You will want to be back to receive him in from shooting.”
“Not that, I think. He is above those little cares. But it will be as well we should go the nearest way, as we have spent so much of our time here. I shall tell Mr Kennedy that I have told you — if you do not mind.”
“Tell him what you please,” said Phineas.
“But I won’t have it taken in that way, Mr Finn. Your brusque want of courtesy to me I have forgiven, but I shall expect you to make up for it by the alacrity of your congratulations to him. I will not have you uncourteous to Mr Kennedy.”
“If I have been uncourteous I beg your pardon.”
“You need not do that. We are old friends, and may take the liberty of speaking plainly to each other — but you will owe it to Mr Kennedy to be gracious. Think of the pony.”
They walked back to the house together, and as they went down the path very little was said. Just as they were about to come out upon the open lawn, while they were still under cover of the rocks and shrubs, Phineas stopped his companion by standing before her, and then he made his farewell speech to her.
“I must say goodbye to you. I shall be away early in the morning.”
“Goodbye, and God bless you,” said Lady Laura.
“Give me your hand,” said he. And she gave him her hand. “I don’t suppose you know what it is to love dearly.”
“I hope I do.”
“But to be in love! I believe you do not. And to miss your love! I think — I am bound to think that you have never been so tormented. It is very sore — but I will do my best, like a man, to get over it.”
“Do, my friend, do. So small a trouble will never weigh heavily on shoulders such as yours.”
“It will weigh very heavily, but I will struggle hard that it may not crush me. I have loved you so dearly! As we are parting give me one kiss, that I may think of it and treasure it in my memory!” What murmuring words she spoke to express her refusal of such a request, I will not quote; but the kiss had been taken before the denial was completed, and then they walked on in silence together — and in peace, towards the house.
On the next morning six or seven men were going away, and there was an early breakfast. There were none of the ladies there, but Mr Kennedy, the host, was among his friends. A large drag with four horses was there to take the travellers and their luggage to the station, and there was naturally a good deal of noise at the front door as the preparations for the departure were made. In the middle of them Mr Kennedy took our hero aside. “Laura has told me,” said Mr Kennedy, “that she has acquainted you with my good fortune.”
“And I congratulate you most heartily,” said Phineas, grasping the other’s hand. “You are indeed a lucky fellow.”
“I feel myself to be so,” said Mr Kennedy. Such a wife was all that was wanting to me, and such a wife is very hard to find. Will you remember, Finn, that Loughlinter will never be so full but what there will be a room for you, or so empty but what you will be made welcome? I say this on Lady Laura’s part and on my own.”
Phineas, as he was being carried away to the railway station, could not keep himself from speculating as to how much Kennedy knew of what had taken place during the walk up the Linter. Of one small circumstance that had occurred, he felt quite sure that Mr Kennedy knew nothing.
Phineas Finn’s first session of Parliament was over — his first session with all its adventures. When he got back to Mrs Bunce’s house — for Mrs Bunce received him for a night in spite of her husband’s advice to the contrary — I am afraid he almost felt that Mrs Bunce and her rooms were beneath him. Of course he was very unhappy — as wretched as a man can be; there were moments in which he thought that it would hardly become him to live unless he could do something to prevent the marriage of Lady Laura and Mr Kennedy. But, nevertheless, he had his consolations. These were reflections which had in them much of melancholy satisfaction. He had not been despised by the woman to whom he had told his love. She had not shown him that she thought him to be unworthy of her. She had not regarded his love as an offence. Indeed, she had almost told him that prudence alone had forbidden her to return his passion. And he had kissed her, and had afterwards parted from her as a dear friend. I do not know why there should have been a flavour of exquisite joy in the midst of his agony as he thought of this — but it was so. He would never kiss her again. All future delights of that kind would belong to Mr Kennedy, and he had no real idea of interfering with that gentleman in the fruition of his privileges. But still there was the kiss — an eternal fact. And then, in all respects except that of his love, his visit to Loughlinter had been pre-eminently successful, Mr Monk had become his friend, and had encouraged him to speak during the next session — setting before him various models, and prescribing for him a course of reading. Lord Brentford had become intimate with him. He was on pleasant terms with Mr Palliser and Mr Gresham. And as for Mr Kennedy — he and Mr Kennedy were almost bosom friends. It seemed to him that he had quite surpassed the Ratlers, Fitzgibbons, and Bonteens in that politico-social success which goes so far towards downright political success, and which in itself is so pleasant. He had surpassed these men in spite of their offices and their acquired positions, and could not but think that even Mr Low, if he knew it all, would confess that he had been right.
As to his bosom friendship with Mr Kennedy, that of course troubled him. Ought he not to be driving a poniard into Mr Kennedy’s heart? The conventions of life forbade that; and therefore the bosom friendship was to be excused. If not an enemy to the death, then there could be no reason why he should not be a bosom friend.
He went over to Ireland, staying but one night with Mrs Bunce, and came down upon them at Killaloe like a god out of the heavens. Even his father was well-nigh overwhelmed by admiration, and his mother and sisters thought themselves only fit to minister to his pleasures. He had learned, if he had learned nothing else, to look as though he were master of the circumstances around him, and was entirely free from internal embarrassment. When his father spoke to him about his legal studies, he did not exactly laugh at his father’s ignorance, but he recapitulated to his father so much of Mr Monk’s wisdom at second hand — showing plainly that it was his business to study the arts of speech and the technicalities of the House, and not to study law — that his father had nothing further to say. He had become a man of such dimensions that an ordinary father could hardly dare to inquire into his proceedings; and as for an ordinary mother — such as Mrs Finn certainly was — she could do no more than look after her son’s linen with awe.
Mary Flood Jones — the reader I hope will not quite have forgotten Mary Flood Jones — was in a great tremor when first she met the hero of Loughshane after returning from the honours of his first session. She had been somewhat disappointed because the newspapers had not been full of the speeches he had made in Parliament. And indeed the ladies of the Finn household had all been ill at ease on this head. They could not imagine why Phineas had restrained himself with so much philosophy. But Miss Flood Jones in discussing the matter with the Miss Finns had never expressed the slightest doubt of his capacity or his judgment. And when tidings came — the tidings came in a letter from Phineas to his father — that he did not intend to speak that session, because speeches from a young member on his first session were thought to be inexpedient, Miss Flood Jones and the Miss Finns were quite willing to accept the wisdom of this decision, much as they might regret the effect of it. Mary, when she met her hero, hardly dared to look him in the face, but she remembered accurately all the circumstances of her last interview with him. Could it be that he wore that ringlet near his heart? Mary had received from Barbara Finn certain hairs supposed to have come from the head of Phineas, and these she always wore near her own. And moreover, since she had seen Phineas she had refused an offer of marriage from Mr Elias Bodkin — had refused it almost ignominiously — and when doing so had told herself that she would never be false to Phineas Finn.
“We think it so good of you to come to see us again,” she said.
“Good to come home to my own people?”
“Of course you might be staying with plenty of grandees if you liked it.”
“No, indeed, Mary. It did happen by accident that I had to go to the house of a man whom perhaps you would call a grandee, and to meet grandees there. But it was only for a few days, and I am very glad to be taken in again here, I can assure you.”
“You know how very glad we all are to have you.”
“Are you glad to see me, Mary?”
“Very glad. Why should I not be glad, and Barbara the dearest friend I have in the world? Of course she talks about you — and that makes me think of you.”
“If you knew, Mary, how often I think about you.” Then Mary, who was very happy at hearing such words, and who was walking in to dinner with him at the moment, could not refrain herself from pressing his arm with her little fingers. She knew that Phineas in his position could not marry at once; but she would wait for him — oh, for ever, if he would only ask her. He of course was a wicked traitor to tell her that he was wont to think of her. But Jove smiles at lovers’ perjuries — and it is well that he should do so, as such perjuries can hardly be avoided altogether in the difficult circumstances of a successful gentleman’s life. Phineas was a traitor, of course, but he was almost forced to be a traitor, by the simple fact that Lady Laura Standish was in London, and Mary Flood Jones in Killaloe.
He remained for nearly five months at Killaloe, and I doubt whether his time was altogether well spent. Some of the books recommended to him by Mr Monk he probably did read, and was often to be found encompassed by blue books. I fear that there was a grain of pretence about his blue books and parliamentary papers, and that in these days he was, in a gentle way, something of an impostor. “You must not be angry with me for not going to you,” he said once to Mary’s mother when he had declined an invitation to drink tea; “but the fact is that my time is not my own.” “Pray don’t make any apologies. We are quite aware that we have very little to offer,” said Mrs Flood Jones, who was not altogether happy about Mary, and who perhaps knew more about members of Parliament and blue books than Phineas Finn had supposed. “Mary, you are a fool to think of that man,” the mother said to her daughter the next morning. “I don’t think of him, mamma; not particularly.” “He is no better than anybody else that I can see, and he is beginning to give himself airs,” said Mrs Flood Jones. Mary made no answer; but she went up into her room and swore before a figure of the Virgin that she would be true to Phineas for ever and ever, in spite of her mother, in spite of all the world — in spite, should it be necessary, even of himself.
About Christmas time there came a discussion between Phineas and his father about money. “I hope you find you get on pretty well,” said the doctor, who thought that he had been liberal.
“It’s a tight fit,” said Phineas — who was less afraid of his father than he had been when he last discussed these things.
“I had hoped it would have been ample,” said the doctor.
“Don’t think for a moment, sir, that I am complaining,” said Phineas, “I know it is much more than I have a right to expect.”
The doctor began to make an inquiry within his own breast as to whether his son had a right to expect anything — whether the time had not come in which his son should be earning his own bread. “I suppose,” he said, after a pause, “there is no chance of your doing anything at the bar now?”
“Not immediately. It is almost impossible to combine the two studies together.” Mr Low himself was aware of that, “But you are not to suppose that I have given the profession up.”
“I hope not — after all the money it has cost us.”
“By no means, sir. And all that I am doing now will, I trust, be of assistance to me when I shall come back to work at the law. Of course it is on the cards that I may go into office — and if so, public business will become my profession.”
“And be turned out with the Ministry!”
“Yes; that is true, sir. I must run my chance. If the worst comes to the worst, I hope I might be able to secure some permanent place. I should think that I can hardly fail to do so. But I trust I may never be driven to want it. I thought, however, that we had settled all this before.” Then Phineas assumed a look of injured innocence, as though his father was driving him too hard.
“And in the mean time your money has been enough?” said the doctor, after a pause.
“I had intended to ask you to advance me a hundred pounds,” said Phineas. “There were expenses to which I was driven on first entering Parliament.”
“A hundred pounds.”
“If it be inconvenient, sir, I can do without it.” He had not as yet paid for his gun, or for that velvet coat in which he had been shooting, or, most probably, for the knickerbockers. He knew he wanted the hundred pounds badly; but he felt ashamed of himself in asking for it. If he were once in office — though the office were but a sorry junior lordship — he would repay his father instantly.
“You shall have it, of course,” said the doctor; but do not let the necessity for asking for more hundreds come oftener than you can help.” Phineas said that he would not, and then there was no further discourse about money. It need hardly be said that he told his father nothing of that bill which he had endorsed for Laurence Fitzgibbon.
At last came the time which called him again to London and the glories of London life — to lobbies, and the clubs, and the gossip of men in office, and the chance of promotion for himself; to the glare of the gas-lamps, the mock anger of rival debaters, and the prospect of the Speaker’s wig. During the idleness of the recess he had resolved at any rate upon this — that a month of the session should not have passed by before he had been seen upon his legs in the House — had been seen and heard. And many a time as he had wandered alone, with his gun, across the bogs which lie on the other side of the Shannon from Killaloe, he had practised the sort of address which he would make to the House. He would be short — always short; and he would eschew all action and gesticulation; Mr Monk had been very urgent in his instructions to him on that head; but he would be especially careful that no words should escape him which had not in them some purpose. He might be wrong in his purpose, but purpose there should be. He had been twitted more than once at Killaloe with his silence — for it had been conceived by his fellow-townsmen that he had been sent to Parliament on the special ground of his eloquence. They should twit him no more on his next return. He would speak and would carry the House with him if a human effort might prevail.
So he packed up his things, and started again for London in the beginning of February. “Goodbye, Mary,” he said with his sweetest smile. But on this occasion there was no kiss, and no culling of locks. “I know he cannot help it,” said Mary to herself. “ It is his position. But whether it be for good or evil, I will be true to him.”
“I am afraid you are unhappy,” Babara Finn said to her on the next morning.
“No; I am not unhappy — not at all. I have a deal to make me happy and proud. I don’t mean to be a bit unhappy.” Then she turned away and cried heartily, and Barbara Finn cried with her for company.
Phineas had received two letters during his recess at Killaloe from two women who admired him much, which, as they were both short, shall be submitted to the reader. The first was as follows:
“ Saulsby, October 20, 186 —
“ MY DEAR MR FINN,
“I write a line to tell you that our marriage is to be hurried on as quickly as possible. Mr Kennedy does not like to be absent from Parliament; nor will he be content to postpone the ceremony till the session be over. The day fixed is the 3rd of December, and we then go at once to Rome, and intend to be back in London by the opening of Parliament.
“Yours most sincerely,
“LAURA STANDISH
“Our London address will be No. 52, Grosvenor Place.”
To this he wrote an answer as short, expressing his ardent wishes that those winter hymeneals might produce nothing but happiness, and saying that he would not be in town many days before he knocked at the door of No. 52, Grosvenor Place.
And the second letter was as follows:
“ Great Marlborough Street, December, 186 —
“ DEAR AND HONOURED SIR,
“Bunce is getting ever so anxious about the rooms, and says as how he has a young Equity draftsman and wife and baby as would take the whole house, and all because Miss Pouncefoot said a word about her port wine, which any lady of her age might say in her tantrums, and mean nothing after all. Me and Miss Pouncefoot’s knowed each other for seven years, and what’s a word or two as isn’t meant after that? But, honoured sir, it’s not about that as I write to trouble you, but to ask if I may say for certain that you’ll take the rooms again in February. It’s easy to let them for the month after Christmas, because of the pantomimes. Only say at once, because Bunce is nagging me day after day. I don’t want nobody’s wife and baby to have to do for, and ‘d sooner have a Parliament gent like yourself than any one else.
“Yours umbly and respectful,
“ JANE BUNCE ”
To this he replied that he would certainly come back to the rooms in Great Marlborough Street, should he be lucky enough to find them vacant, and he expressed his willingness to take them on and from the 1st of February. And on the 3rd of February he found himself in the old quarters, Mrs Bunce having contrived, with much conjugal adroitness, both to keep Miss Pouncefoot and to stave off the Equity draftsman’s wife and baby. Bunce, however, received Phineas very coldly, and told his wife the same evening that as far as he could see their lodger would never turn up to be a trump in the matter of the ballot: “If he means well, why did he go and stay with them lords down in Scotland? I knows all about it. I knows a man when I sees him. Mr Low, who’s looking out to be a Tory judge some of these days, is a deal better — because he knows what he’s after.”
Immediately on his return to town, Phineas found himself summoned to a political meeting at Mr Mildmay’s house in St James’s Square. “We’re going to begin in earnest this time,” Barrington Erle said to him at the club.
“I am glad of that,” said Phineas.
“I suppose you heard all about it down at Loughlinter?”
Now, in truth, Phineas had heard very little of any settled plan down at Loughlinter. He had played a game of chess with Mr Gresham, and had shot a stag with Mr Palliser, and had discussed sheep with Lord Brentford, but had hardly heard a word about politics from any one of those influential gentlemen. From Mr Monk he had heard much of a coming Reform Bill; but his communications with Mr Monk had rather been private discussions — in which he had learned Mr Monk’s own views on certain points — than revelations on the intention of the party to which Mr Monk belonged. “I heard of nothing settled,” said Phineas; “but I suppose we are to have a Reform Bill.”
“That is a matter of course.”
“And I suppose we are not to touch the question of ballot.”
“That’s the difficulty,” said Barrington Erle. But of course we shan’t touch it as long as Mr Mildmay is in the Cabinet. He will never consent to the ballot as First Minister of the Crown.”
“Nor would Gresham, or Palliser,” said Phineas, who did not choose to bring forward his greatest gun at first.
“I don’t know about Gresham. It is impossible to say what Gresham might bring himself to do. Gresham is a man who may go any lengths before he has done. Planty Pall,” — for such was the name by which Mr Plantagenet Palliser was ordinarily known among his friends — “would of course go with Mr Mildmay and the Duke.”
“And Monk is opposed to the ballot,” said Phineas.
“Ah, that’s the question. No doubt he has assented to the proposition of a measure without the ballot; but if there should come a row, and men like Turnbull demand it, and the London mob kick up a shindy, I don’t know how far Monk would be steady.”
“Whatever he says, he’ll stick to.”
“He is your leader, then?” asked Barrington.
“I don’t know that I have a leader. Mr Mildmay leads our side; and if anybody leads me, he does. But I have great faith in Mr Monk.”
“There’s one who would go for the ballot tomorrow, if it were brought forward stoutly,” said Barrington Erle to Mr Ratler a few minutes afterwards, pointing to Phineas as he spoke.
“I don’t think much of that young man,” said Ratler.
Mr Bonteen and Mr Ratler had put their heads together during that last evening at Loughlinter, and had agreed that they did not think much of Phineas Finn. Why did Mr Kennedy go down off the mountain to get him a pony? And why did Mr Gresham play chess with him? Mr Ratler and Mr Bonteen may have been right in making up their minds to think but little of Phineas Finn, but Barrington Erle had been quite wrong when he had said that Phineas would “go for the ballot” tomorrow. Phineas had made up his mind very strongly that he would always oppose the ballot. That he would hold the same opinion throughout his life, no one should pretend to say; but in his present mood, and under the tuition which he had received from Mr Monk, he was prepared to demonstrate, out of the House and in it, that the ballot was, as a political measure, unmanly, ineffective, and enervating. Enervating had been a great word with Mr Monk, and Phineas had clung to it with admiration.
The meeting took place at Mr Mildmay’s on the third day of the session. Phineas had of course heard of such meetings before, but had never attended one. Indeed, there had been no such gathering when Mr Mildmay’s party came into power early in the last session. Mr Mildmay and his men had then made their effort in turning out their opponents, and had been well pleased to rest awhile upon their oars. Now, however, they must go again to work, and therefore the liberal party was collected at Mr Mildmay’s house, in order that the liberal party might be told what it was that Mr Mildmay and his Cabinet intended to do.
Phineas Finn was quite in the dark as to what would be the nature of the performance on this occasion, and entertained some idea that every gentleman present would be called upon to express individually his assent or dissent in regard to the measure proposed. He walked to St James’s Square with Laurence Fitzgibbon; but even with Fitzgibbon was ashamed to show his ignorance by asking questions. “After all,” said Fitzgibbon, “this kind of thing means nothing. I know as well as possible, and so do you, what Mr Mildmay will say — and then Gresham will say a few words; and then Turnbull will make a murmur, and then we shall all assent — to anything or to nothing — and then it will be over.” Still Phineas did not understand whether the assent required would or would not be an individual personal assent. When the affair was over he found that he was disappointed, and that he might almost as well have stayed away from the meeting — except that he had attended at Mr Mildmay’s bidding, and had given a silent adhesion to Mr Mildmay’s plan of reform for that session. Laurence Fitzgibbon had been very nearly correct in his description of what would occur. Mr Mildmay made a long speech. Mr Turnbull; the great Radical of the day — he man who was supposed to represent what many called the Manchester school of politics — asked half a dozen questions. In answer to these Mr Gresham made a short speech. Then Mr Mildmay made another speech, and then all was over. The gist of the whole thing was, that there should be a Reform Bill — very generous in its enlargement of the franchise — but no ballot. Mr Turnbull expressed his doubt whether this would be satisfactory to the country; but even Mr Turnbull was soft in his tone and complaisant in his manner. As there was no reporter present — that plan of turning private meetings at gentlemen’s houses into public assemblies not having been as yet adopted — there could be no need for energy or violence. They went to Mr Mildmay’s house to hear Mr Mildmay’s plan — and they heard it.
Two days after this Phineas was to dine with Mr Monk. Mr Monk had asked him in the lobby of the House. “I don’t give dinner parties,” he said, “but I should like you to come and meet Mr Turnbull.” Phineas accepted the invitation as a matter of course. There were many who said that Mr Turnbull was the greatest man in the nation, and that the nation could be saved only by a direct obedience to Mr Turnbull’s instructions. Others said that Mr Turnbull was a demagogue and at heart a rebel; that he was un-English, false and very dangerous. Phineas was rather inclined to believe the latter statement; and as danger and dangerous men are always more attractive than safety and safe men, he was glad to have an opportunity of meeting Mr Turnbull at dinner.
In the meantime he went to call on Lady Laura, whom he had not seen since the last evening which he spent in her company at Loughlinter — whom, when he was last speaking to her, he had kissed close beneath the falls of the Linter. He found her at home, and with her was her husband. “Here is a Darby and Joan meeting, is it not?” she said, getting up to welcome him. He had seen Mr Kennedy before, and had been standing close to him during the meeting at Mr Mildmay’s.
“I am very glad to find you both together.”
“But Robert is going away this instant,” said Lady Laura. “Has he told you of our adventures at Rome?”
“Not a word.”
“Then I must tell you — but not now. The dear old Pope was so civil to us. I came to think it quite a pity that he should be in trouble.”
“I must be off,” said the husband, getting up. But I shall meet you at dinner, I believe.”
“Do you dine at Mr Monk’s?”
“Yes, and am asked expressly to hear Turnbull make a convert of you. There are only to be us four. Au revoir.” Then Mr Kennedy went, and Phineas found himself alone with Lady Laura. He hardly knew how to address her, and remained silent. He had not prepared himself for the interview as he ought to have done, and felt himself to be awkward. She evidently expected him to speak, and for a few seconds sat waiting for what he might say.
At last she found that it was incumbent on her to begin. “Were you surprised at our suddenness when you got my note?”
“A little. You had spoken of waiting.”
“I had never imagined that he would have been impetuous. And he seems to think that even the business of getting himself married would not justify him staying away from Parliament. He is a rigid martinet in all matters of duty.”
“I did not wonder that he should be in a hurry, but that you should submit.”
“I told you that I should do just what the wise people told me. I asked papa, and he said that it would be better. So the lawyers were driven out of their minds, and the milliners out of their bodies, and the thing was done.”
“Who was there at the marriage?”
“Oswald was not there. That I know is what you mean to ask, Papa said that he might come if he pleased. Oswald stipulated that he should be received as a son. Then my father spoke the hardest word that ever fell from his mouth.”
“What did he say?”
“I will not repeat it — not altogether. But he said that Oswald was not entitled to a son’s treatment. He was very sore about my money, because Robert was so generous as to his settlement. So the breach between them is as wide as ever.”
“And where is Chiltern now?” said Phineas.
“Down in Northamptonshire, staying at some inn from whence he hunts. He tells me that he is quite alone — that he never dines out, never has any one to dine with him, that he hunts five or six days a week — and reads at night.”
“That is not a bad sort of life.”
“Not if the reading is any good. But I cannot bear that he should be so solitary. And if he breaks down in it, then his companions will not be fit for him. Do you ever hunt?”
“Oh yes — at home in county Clare. All Irishmen hunt.”
“I wish you would go down to him and see him. He would be delighted to have you.”
Phineas thought over the proposition before he answered it, and then made the reply that he had made once before. “I would do so, Lady Laura — but that I have no money for hunting in England.”
“Alas, alas!” said she, smiling. How that hits one on every side!”
“I might manage it — for a couple of days — in March.”
“Do not do what you think you ought not to do,” said Lady Laura.
“No; certainly. But I should like it, and if I can I will.”
“He could mount you, I have no doubt. He has no other expense now, and keeps a stable full of horses. I think he has seven or eight. And now tell me, Mr Finn; when are you going to charm the House? Or is it your first intention to strike terror?”
He blushed — he knew that he blushed as he answered. “Oh, I suppose I shall make some sort of attempt before long. I can’t bear the idea of being a bore.”
“I think you ought to speak, Mr Finn.”
“I do not know about that, but I certainly mean to try. There will be lots of opportunities about the new Reform Bill. Of course you know that Mr Mildmay is going to bring it in at once. You hear all that from Mr Kennedy.”
“And papa has told me, I still see papa almost every day. You must call upon him. Mind you do.” Phineas said that he certainly would. “Papa is very lonely now, and I sometimes feel that I have been almost cruel in deserting him. And I think that he has a horror of the house — especially later in the year — always fancying that he will meet Oswald. I am so unhappy about it all, Mr Finn.”
“Why doesn’t your brother marry?” said Phineas, knowing nothing as yet of Lord Chiltern and Violet Effingham. “If he were to marry well, that would bring your father round.”
“Yes — it would.”
“And why should he not?”
Lady Laura paused before she answered; and then she told the whole story. “He is violently in love, and the girl he loves has refused him twice.”
“Is it with Miss Effingham?” asked Phineas, guessing the truth at once, and remembering what Miss Effingham had said to him when riding in the wood.
“Yes — with Violet Effingham; my father’s pet, his favourite, whom he loves next to myself — almost as well as myself; whom he would really welcome as a daughter. He would gladly make her mistress of his house, and of Saulsby, Everything would then go smoothly.”
“But she does not like Lord Chiltern?”
“I believe she loves him in her heart; but she is afraid of him. As she says herself, a girl is bound to be so careful of herself. With all her seeming frolic, Violet Effingham is very wise.”
Phineas, though not conscious of anything akin to jealousy, was annoyed at the revelation made to him. Since he had heard that Lord Chiltern was in love with Miss Effingham, he did not like Lord Chiltern quite as well as he had done before. He himself had simply admired Miss Effingham, and had taken pleasure in her society; but, though this had been all, he did not like to hear of another man wanting to marry her, and he was almost angry with Lady Laura for saying that she believed Miss Effingham loved her brother. If Miss Effingham had twice refused Lord Chiltern, that ought to have been sufficient. It was not that Phineas was in love with Miss Effingham himself. As he was still violently in love with Lady Laura, any other love was of course impossible; but, nevertheless, there was something offensive to him in the story as it had been told. “If it be wisdom on her part,” said he, answering Lady Laura’s last words, “you cannot find fault with her for her decision.”
“I find no fault — but I think my brother would make her happy.”
Lady Laura, when she was left alone, at once reverted to the tone in which Phineas Finn had answered her remarks about Miss Effingham. Phineas was very ill able to conceal his thoughts, and wore his heart almost upon his sleeve. “Can it be possible that he cares for her himself?” That was the nature of Lady Laura’s first question to herself upon the matter. And in asking herself that question, she thought nothing of the disparity in rank or fortune between Phineas Finn and Violet Effingham. Nor did it occur to her as at all improbable that Violet might accept the love of him who had so lately been her own lover. But the idea grated against her wishes on two sides. She was most anxious that Violet should ultimately become her brother’s wife — and she could not be pleased that Phineas should be able to love any woman.
I must beg my readers not to be carried away by those last words into any erroneous conclusion. They must not suppose that Lady Laura Kennedy, the lately married bride, indulged a guilty passion for the young man who had loved her. Though she had probably thought often of Phineas Finn since her marriage, her thoughts had never been of a nature to disturb her rest. It had never occurred to her even to think that she regarded him with any feeling that was an offence to her husband. She would have hated herself had any such idea presented itself to her mind. She prided herself on being a pure high-principled woman, who had kept so strong a guard upon herself as to be nearly free from the dangers of those rocks upon which other women made shipwreck of their happiness. She took pride in this, and would then blame herself for her own pride. But though she so blamed herself, it never occurred to her to think that to her there might be danger of such shipwreck. She had put away from herself the idea of love when she had first perceived that Phineas had regarded her with more than friendship, and had accepted Mr Kennedy’s offer with an assured conviction that by doing so she was acting best for her own happiness and for that of all those concerned. She had felt the romance of the position to be sweet when Phineas had stood with her at the top of the falls of the Linter, and had told her of the hopes which he had dared to indulge. And when at the bottom of the falls he had presumed to take her in his arms, she had forgiven him without difficulty to herself, telling herself that that would be the alpha and the omega of the romance of her life. She had not felt herself bound to tell Mr Kennedy of what had occurred — but she had felt that he could hardly have been angry even had he been told. And she had often thought of her lover since, and of his love — telling herself that she too had once had a lover, never regarding her husband in that light; but her thoughts had not frightened her as guilty thoughts will do. There had come a romance which had been pleasant, and it was gone. It had been soon banished — but it had left to her a sweet flavour, of which she loved to taste the sweetness though she knew that it was gone. And the man should be her friend, but especially her husband’s friend. It should be her care to see that his life was successful — and especially her husband’s care. It was a great delight to her to know that her husband liked the man. And the man would marry, and the man’s wife should be her friend. All this had been very pure and very pleasant. Now an idea had flitted across her brain that the man was in love with someone else — and she did not like it!
But she did not therefore become afraid of herself, or in the least realise at once the danger of her own position. Her immediate glance at the matter did not go beyond the falseness of men. If it were so, as she suspected — if Phineas had in truth transferred his affections to Violet Effingham, of how little value was the love of such a man! It did not occur to her at this moment that she also had transferred hers to Robert Kennedy, or that, if not, she had done worse. But she did remember that in the autumn this young Phoebus among men had turned his back upon her out upon the mountain that he might hide from her the agony of his heart when he learned that she was to be the wife of another man; and that now, before the winter was over, he could not hide from her the fact that his heart was elsewhere! And then she speculated, and counted up facts, and satisfied herself that Phineas could not even have seen Violet Effingham since they two had stood together upon the mountain. How false are men! — how false and how weak of heart!
“Chiltern and Violet Effingham!” said Phineas to himself, as he walked away from Grosvenor Place. “Is it fair that she should be sacrificed because she is rich, and because she is so winning and so fascinating that Lord Brentford would receive even his son for the sake of receiving also such a daughter-in-law?” Phineas also liked Lord Chiltern; had seen or fancied that he had seen fine things in him; had looked forward to his regeneration, hoping, perhaps, that he might have some hand in the good work. But he did not recognise the propriety of sacrificing Violet Effingham even for work so good as this, If Miss Effingham had refused Lord Chiltern twice, surely that ought to be sufficient. It did not occur to him that the love of such a girl as Violet would be a great treasure — to himself. As regarded himself, he was still in love — hopelessly in love, with Lady Laura Kennedy!
It was a Wednesday evening and there was no House — and at seven o’clock Phineas was at Mr Monk’s hall door. He was the first of the guests, and he found Mr Monk alone in the dining-room. “I am doing butler,” said Mr Monk, who had a brace of decanters in his hands, which he proceeded to put down in the neighbourhood of the fire. “But I have finished, and now we will go upstairs to receive the two great men properly.”
“I beg your pardon for coming too early,” said Finn.
“Not a minute too early. Seven is seven, and it is I who am too late. But, Lord bless you, you don’t think I’m ashamed of being found in the act of decanting my own wine! I remember Lord Palmerston saying before some committee about salaries, five or six years ago now, I daresay, that it wouldn’t do for an English Minister to have his hall door opened by a maidservant. Now, I’m an English Minister, and I’ve got nobody but a maidservant to open my hall door, and I’m obliged to look after my own wine. I wonder whether it’s improper? I shouldn’t like to be the means of injuring the British Constitution.”
“Perhaps if you resign soon, and if nobody follows your example, grave evil results may be avoided.”
“I sincerely hope so, for I do love the British Constitution; and I love also the respect in which members of the English Cabinet are held. Now Turnbull, who will be here in a moment, hates it all; but he is a rich man, and has more powdered footmen hanging about his house than ever Lord Palmerston had himself.”
“He is still in business.”
“Oh yes — and makes his thirty thousand a year. Here he is. How are you, Turnbull? We were talking about my maidservant. I hope she opened the door for you properly.”
“Certainly — as far as I perceived,” said Mr Turnbull, who was better at a speech than a joke. “A very respectable young woman I should say.”
“There is not one more so in all London,” said Mr Monk; “but Finn seems to think that I ought to have a man in livery.”
“It is a matter of perfect indifference to me,” said Mr Turnbull. “I am one of those who never think of such things.”
“Nor I either,” said Mr Monk. Then the laird of Loughlinter was announced, and they all went down to dinner.
Mr Turnbull was a good-looking robust man about sixty, with long grey hair and a red complexion, with hard eyes, a well-cut nose, and full lips. He was nearly six feet high, stood quite upright, and always wore a black swallow-tail coat, black trousers, and a black silk waistcoat. In the House, at least, he was always so dressed, and at dinner tables. What difference there might be in his costume when at home at Staleybridge few of those who saw him in London had the means of knowing. There was nothing in his face to indicate special talent. No one looking at him would take him to be a fool; but there was none of the fire of genius in his eye, nor was there in the lines of his mouth any of that play of thought or fancy which is generally to be found in the faces of men and women who have made themselves great. Mr Turnbull had certainly made himself great, and could hardly have done so without force of intellect. He was one of the most popular, if not the most popular politician in the country. Poor men believed in him, thinking that he was their most honest public friend; and men who were not poor believed in his power, thinking that his counsels must surely prevail. He had obtained the ear of the House and the favour of the reporters, and opened his voice at no public dinner, on no public platform, without a conviction that the words spoken by him would be read by thousands. The first necessity for good speaking is a large audience; and of this advantage Mr Turnbull had made himself sure. And yet it could hardly be said that he was a great orator. He was gifted with a powerful voice, with strong, and I may, perhaps, call them broad convictions, with perfect self-reliance, with almost unlimited powers of endurance, with hot ambition, with no keen scruples, and with a moral skin of great thickness. Nothing said against him pained him, no attacks wounded him, no raillery touched him in the least. There was not a sore spot about him, and probably his first thoughts on waking every morning told him that he, at least, was totus teres atque rotundus. He was, of course, a thorough Radical — and so was Mr Monk. But Mr Monk’s first waking thoughts were probably exactly the reverse of those of his friend. Mr Monk was a much hotter man in debate than Mr Turnbull — but Mr Monk was ever doubting of himself, and never doubted of himself so much as when he had been most violent, and also most effective, in debate. When Mr Monk jeered at himself for being a Cabinet Minister and keeping no attendant grander than a parlour-maid, there was a substratum of self-doubt under the joke.
Mr Turnbull was certainly a great Radical, and as such enjoyed a great reputation. I do not think that high office in the State had ever been offered to him; but things had been said which justified him, or seemed to himself to justify him, in declaring that in no possible circumstances would he serve the Crown. “I serve the people,” he had said, “and much as I respect the servants of the Crown, I think that my own office is the higher.” He had been greatly called to task for this speech; and Mr Mildmay, the present Premier, had asked him whether he did not recognise the so-called servants of the Crown as the most hard-worked and truest servants of the people. The House and the press had supported Mr Mildmay, but to all that Mr Turnbull was quite indifferent; and when an assertion made by him before three or four thousand persons at Manchester, to the effect that he — he specially — was the friend and servant of the people, was received with acclamation, he felt quite satisfied that he had gained his point. Progressive reform in the franchise, of which manhood suffrage should be the acknowledged and not far distant end, equal electoral districts, ballot, tenant right for England as well as Ireland, reduction of the standing army till there should be no standing army to reduce, utter disregard of all political movements in Europe, an almost idolatrous admiration for all political movements in America, free trade in everything except malt, and an absolute extinction of a State Church — these were among the principal articles in Mr Turnbull’s political catalogue. And I think that when once he had learned the art of arranging his words as he stood upon his legs, and had so mastered his voice as to have obtained the ear of the House, the work of his life was not difficult. Having nothing to construct, he could always deal with generalities. Being free from responsibility, he was not called upon either to study details or to master even great facts. It was his business to inveigh against existing evils, and perhaps there is no easier business when once the privilege of an audience has been attained. It was his work to cut down forest-trees, and he had nothing to do with the subsequent cultivation of the land. Mr Monk had once told Phineas Finn how great were the charms of that inaccuracy which was permitted to the opposition. Mr Turnbull no doubt enjoyed these charms to the full, though he would sooner have put a padlock on his mouth for a month than have owned as much. Upon the whole, Mr Turnbull was no doubt right in resolving that he would not take office, though some reticence on that subject might have been more becoming to him.
The conversation at dinner, though it was altogether on political subjects, had in it nothing of special interest as long as the girl was there to change the plates; but when she was gone, and the door was closed, it gradually opened out, and there came on to be a pleasant sparring match between the two great Radicals — the Radical who had joined himself to the governing powers, and the Radical who stood aloof. Mr Kennedy barely said a word now and then, and Phineas was almost as silent as Mr Kennedy. He had come there to hear some such discussion, and was quite willing to listen while guns of such great calibre were being fired off for his amusement.
“I think Mr Mildmay is making a great step forward,” said Mr Turnbull.
“I think he is,” said Mr Monk.
“I did not believe that he would ever live to go so far. It will hardly suffice even for this year; but still coming from him, it is a great deal. It only shows how far a man may be made to go, if only the proper force be applied. After all, it matters very little who are the Ministers.”
“That is what I have always declared,” said Mr Monk.
“Very little indeed. We don’t mind whether it be Lord de Terrier, or Mr Mildmay, or Mr Gresham, or you yourself, if you choose to get yourself made First Lord of the Treasury.”
“I have no such ambition, Turnbull.”
“I should have thought you had. If I went in for that kind of thing myself, I should like to go to the top of the ladder. I should feel that if I could do any good at all by becoming a Minister, I could only do it by becoming first Minister.”
“You wouldn’t doubt your own fitness for such a position?”
“I doubt my fitness for the position of any Minister,” said Mr Turnbull.
“You mean that on other grounds,” said Mr Kennedy.
“I mean it on every ground,” said Mr Turnbull, rising on his legs and standing with his back to the fire. “Of course I am not fit to have diplomatic intercourse with men who would come to me simply with the desire of deceiving me. Of course I am unfit to deal with members of Parliament who would flock around me because they wanted places. Of course I am unfit to answer every man’s question so as to give no information to any one.”
“Could you not answer them so as to give information?” said Mr Kennedy.
But Mr Turnbull was so intent on his speech that it may be doubted whether he heard this interruption. He took no notice of it as he went on. “Of course I am unfit to maintain the proprieties of a seeming confidence between a Crown all-powerless and a people all-powerful. No man recognises his own unfitness for such work more clearly than I do, Mr Monk. But if I took in hand such work at all, I should like to be the leader, and not the led. Tell us fairly, now, what are your convictions worth in Mr Mildmay’s Cabinet?”
“That is a question which a man may hardly answer himself,” said Mr Monk.
“It is a question which a man should at least answer for himself before he consents to sit there,” said Mr Turnbull, in a tone of voice which was almost angry.
“And what reason have you for supposing that I have omitted that duty?” said Mr Monk.
“Simply this — that I cannot reconcile your known opinions with the practices of your colleagues.”
“I will not tell you what my convictions may be worth in Mr Mildmay’s Cabinet. I will not take upon myself to say that they are worth the chair on which I sit when I am there. But I will tell you what my aspirations were when I consented to fill that chair, and you shall judge of their worth. I thought that they might possibly leaven the batch of bread which we have to bake — giving to the whole batch more of the flavour of reform than it would have possessed had I absented myself. I thought that when I was asked to join Mr Mildmay and Mr Gresham, the very fact of that request indicated liberal progress, and that if I refused the request I should be declining to assist in good work.”
“You could have supported them, if anything were proposed worthy of support,” said Mr Turnbull.
“Yes; but I could not have been so effective in taking care that some measure be proposed worthy of support as I may possibly be now. I thought a good deal about it, and I believe that my decision was right.”
“I am sure you were right,” said Mr Kennedy.
“There can be no juster object of ambition than a seat in the Cabinet,” said Phineas.
“Sir, I must dispute that,” said Mr Turnbull, turning round upon our hero. “I regard the position of our high Ministers as most respectable.”
“Thank you for so much,” said Mr Monk. But the orator went on again, regardless of the interruption:
“The position of gentlemen in inferior offices — of gentlemen who attend rather to the nods and winks of their superiors in Downing Street than to the interest of their constituents — I do not regard as being highly respectable.”
“A man cannot begin at the top,” said Phineas.
“Our friend Mr Monk has begun at what you are pleased to call the top,” said Mr Turnbull. “But I will not profess to think that even he has raised himself by going into office. To be an independent representative of a really popular commercial constituency is, in my estimation, the highest object of an Englishman’s ambition.”
“But why commercial, Mr Turnbull?” said Mr Kennedy.
“Because the commercial constituencies really do elect their own members in accordance with their own judgments, whereas the counties and the small towns are coerced either by individuals or by a combination of aristocratic influences.”
“And yet,” said Mr Kennedy, there are not half a dozen Conservatives returned by all the counties in Scotland.”
“Scotland is very much to be honoured,” said Mr Turnbull.
Mr Kennedy was the first to take his departure, and Mr Turnbull followed him very quickly. Phineas got up to go at the same time, but stayed at his host’s request, and sat for a while smoking a cigar.
“Turnbull is a wonderful man,” said Mr Monk.
“Does he not domineer too much?”
“His fault is not arrogance, so much as ignorance that there is, or should be, a difference between public and private life. In the House of Commons a man in Mr Turnbull’s position must speak with dictatorial assurance. He is always addressing, not the House only, but the country at large, and the country will not believe in him unless he believe in himself. But he forgets that he is not always addressing the country at large. I wonder what sort of a time Mrs Turnbull and the little Turnbulls have of it?”
Phineas, as he went home, made up his mind that Mrs Turnbull and the little Turnbulls must probably have a bad time of it.
It was known that whatever might be the details of Mr Mildmay’s bill, the ballot would not form a part of it; and as there was a strong party in the House of Commons, and a very numerous party out of it, who were desirous that voting by ballot should be made a part of the electoral law, it was decided that an independent motion should be brought on in anticipation of Mr Mildmay’s bill. The arrangement was probably one of Mr Mildmay’s own making; so that he might be hampered by no opposition on that subject by his own followers if — as he did not doubt — the motion should be lost. It was expected that the debate would not last over one night, and Phineas resolved that he would make his maiden speech on this occasion. He had very strong opinions as to the inefficacy of the ballot for any good purposes, and thought that he might be able to strike out from his convictions some sparks of that fire which used to be so plentiful with him at the old debating clubs. But even at breakfast that morning his heart began to beat quickly at the idea of having to stand on his legs before so critical an audience.
He knew that it would be well that he should if possible get the subject off his mind during the day, and therefore went out among the people who certainly would not talk to him about the ballot. He sat for nearly an hour in the morning with Mr Low, and did not even tell Mr Low that it was his intention to speak on that day. Then he made one or two other calls, and at about three went up to Portman Square to look for Lord Chiltern. It was now nearly the end of February, and Phineas had often seen Lady Laura. He had not seen her brother, but had learned from his sister that he had been driven up to London by the frost. He was told by the porter at Lord Brentford’s that Lord Chiltern was in the house, and as he was passing through the hall he met Lord Brentford himself. He was thus driven to speak, and felt himself called upon to explain why he was there. “I am come to see Lord Chiltern,” he said.
“Is Lord Chiltern in the house?” said the Earl, turning to the servant.
“Yes, my lord; his lordship arrived last night.”
“You will find him upstairs, I suppose,” said the Earl. “For myself I know nothing of him.” He spoke in an angry tone, as though he resented the fact that any one should come to his house to call upon his son; and turned his back quickly upon Phineas. But he thought better of it before he reached the front door, and turned again. “By the bye,” said he, what majority shall we have tonight, Finn?”
“Pretty nearly as many as you please to name, my lord,” said Phineas.
“Well — yes; I suppose we are tolerably safe. You ought to speak upon it.”
“Perhaps I may,” said Phineas, feeling that he blushed as he spoke.
“Do,” said the Earl. Do. If you see Lord Chiltern will you tell him from me that I should be glad to see him before he leaves London. I shall be at home till noon tomorrow.” Phineas, much astonished at the commission given to him, of course said that he would do as he was desired, and then passed on to Lord Chiltern’s apartments.
He found his friend standing in the middle of the room, without coat and waistcoat, with a pair of dumb-bells in his hands. “When there’s no hunting I’m driven to this kind of thing,” said Lord Chiltern.
“I suppose it’s good exercise,” said Phineas.
“And it gives me something to do. When I’m in London I feel like a gipsy in church, till the time comes for prowling out at night. I’ve no occupation for my days whatever, and no place to which I can take myself. I can’t stand in a club window as some men do, and I should disgrace any decent club if I did stand there. I belong to the Travellers, but I doubt whether the porter would let me go in.”
“I think you pique yourself on being more of an outer Bohemian than you are,” said Phineas.
“I pique myself on this, that whether Bohemian or not, I will go nowhere that I am not wanted. Though — for the matter of that, I suppose I’m not wanted here.” Then Phineas gave him the message from his father. “He wishes to see me tomorrow morning?” continued Lord Chiltern. “Let him send me word what it is he has to say to me. I do not choose to be insulted by him, though he is my father.”
“I would certainly go, if I were you.”
“I doubt it very much, if all the circumstances were the same. Let him tell me what he wants.”
“Of course I cannot ask him, Chiltern.”
“I know what he wants very well. Laura has been interfering and doing no good. You know Violet Effingham?”
“Yes; I know her,” said Phineas, much surprised.
“They want her to marry me.”
“And you do not wish to marry her?”
“I did not say that. But do you think that such a girl as Miss Effingham would marry such a man as I am? She would be much more likely to take you. By George, she would! Do you know that she has three thousand a year of her own?”
“I know that she has money.”
“That’s about the tune of it. I would take her without a shilling tomorrow, if she would have me — because I like her. She is the only girl I ever did like. But what is the use of my liking her? They have painted me so black among them, especially my father, that no decent girl would think of marrying me.”
“Your father can’t be angry with you if you do your best to comply with his wishes.”
“I don’t care a straw whether he be angry or not. He allows me eight hundred a year, and he knows that if he stopped it I should go to the Jews the next day. I could not help myself. He can’t leave an acre away from me, and yet he won’t join me in raising money for the sake of paying Laura her fortune.”
“Lady Laura can hardly want money now.”
“That detestable prig whom she has chosen to marry, and whom I hate with all my heart, is richer than ever Croesus was; but nevertheless Laura ought to have her own money. She shall have it some day.”
“I would see Lord Brentford, if I were you.”
“I will think about it. Now tell me about coming down to Willingford. Laura says you will come some day in March. I can mount you for a couple of days and should be delighted to have you. My horses all pull like the mischief, and rush like devils, and want a deal of riding; but an Irishman likes that.”
“I do not dislike it particularly.”
“I like it. I prefer to have something to do on horseback. When a man tells me that a horse is an armchair, I always tell him to put the brute into his bedroom. Mind you come. The house I stay at is called the Willingford Bull, and it’s just four miles from Peterborough.” Phineas swore that he would go down and ride the pulling horses, and then took his leave, earnestly advising Lord Chiltern, as he went, to keep the appointment proposed by his father.
When the morning came, at half past eleven, the son, who had been standing for half an hour with his back to the fire in the large gloomy dining-room, suddenly rang the bell. “Tell the Earl,” he said to the servant, “that I am here and will go to him if he wishes it.” The servant came back, and said that the Earl was waiting. Then Lord Chiltern strode after the man into his father’s room.
“Oswald,” said the father, I have sent for you because I think it may be as well to speak to you on some business. Will you sit down?” Lord Chiltern sat down, but did not answer a word. “I feel very unhappy about your sister’s fortune,” said the Earl.
“So do I— very unhappy. We can raise the money between us, and pay her tomorrow, if you please it.”
“It was in opposition to my advice that she paid your debts.”
“And in opposition to mine too.”
“I told her that I would not pay them, and were I to give her back tomorrow, as you say, the money that she has so used, I should be stultifying myself. But I will do so on one condition. I will join with you in raising the money for your sister, on one condition.”
“What is that?”
“Laura tells me — indeed she has told me often — that you are attached to Violet Effingham.”
“But Violet Effingham, my lord, is unhappily not attached to me.”
“I do not know how that may be. Of course I cannot say. I have never taken the liberty of interrogating her upon the subject.”
“Even you, my lord, could hardly have done that.”
“What do you mean by that? I say that I never have,” said the Earl, angrily.
“I simply mean that even you could hardly have asked Miss Effingham such a question. I have asked her, and she has refused me.”
“But girls often do that, and yet accept afterwards the men whom they have refused. Laura tells me that she believes that Violet would consent if you pressed your suit.”
“Laura knows nothing about it, my lord.”
“There you are probably wrong. Laura and Violet are very close friends, and have no doubt discussed this matter between them. At any rate, it may be as well that you should hear what I have to say. Of course I shall not interfere myself. There is no ground on which I can do so with propriety.”
“None whatever,” said Lord Chiltern.
The Earl became very angry, and nearly broke down in his anger. He paused for a moment, feeling disposed to tell his son to go and never to see him again. But he gulped down his wrath, and went on with his speech. “My meaning, sir, is this — that I have so great faith in Violet Effingham, that I would receive her acceptance of your hand as the only proof which would be convincing to me of amendment in your mode of life. If she were to do so, I would join with you in raising money to pay your sister, would make some further sacrifice with reference to an income for you and your wife, and — would make you both welcome to Saulsby — if you chose to come.” The Earl’s voice hesitated much and became almost tremulous as he made the last proposition. And his eyes had fallen away from his son’s gaze, and he had bent a little over the table, and was moved. But he recovered himself at once, and added, with all proper dignity, “If you have anything to say I shall be glad to hear it.”
“All your offers would be nothing, my lord, if I did not like the girl.”
“I should not ask you to marry a girl if you did not like her, as you call it.”
“But as to Miss Effingham, it happens that our wishes jump together. I have asked her, and she has refused me. I don’t even know where to find her to ask her again. If I went to Lady Baldock’s house the servants would not let me in.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Yours partly, my lord. You have told everybody that I am the devil, and now all the old women believe it.”
“I never told anybody so.”
“I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I will go down to Lady Baldock’s today. I suppose she is at Baddingham. And if I can get speech of Miss Effingham — ”
“Miss Effingham is not at Baddingham. Miss Effingham is staying with your sister in Grosvenor Place. I saw her yesterday.”
“She is in London?”
“I tell you that I saw her yesterday.”
“Very well, my lord. Then I will do the best I can. Laura will tell you of the result.”
The father would have given the son some advice as to the mode in which he should put forward his claim upon Violet’s hand, but the son would not wait to hear it. Choosing to presume that the conference was over, he went back to the room in which he had kept his dumb-bells; and for a minute or two went to work at his favourite exercise. But he soon put the dumb-bells down, and began to prepare himself for his work. If this thing was to be done, it might as well be done at once. He looked out of his window, and saw that the streets were in a mess of slush. White snow was becoming black mud, as it will do in London; and the violence of frost was giving way to the horrors of thaw. All would be soft and comparatively pleasant in Northamptonshire on the following morning, and if everything went right he would breakfast at the Willingford Bull. He would go down by the hunting train, and be at the inn by ten. The meet was only six miles distant, and all would be pleasant. He would do this whatever might be the result of his work today — but in the meantime he would go and do his work. He had a cab called, and within half an hour of the time at which he had left his father, he was at the door of his sister’s house in Grosvenor Place. The servants told him that the ladies were at lunch. “I can’t eat lunch,” he said. “Tell them that I am in the drawing-room.”
“He has come to see you,” said Lady Laura, as soon as the servant had left the room.
“I hope not,” said Violet.
“Do not say that.”
“But I do say it. I hope he has not come to see me — that is, not to see me specially. Of course I cannot pretend not to know what you mean.”
“He may think it civil to call if he has heard that you are in town,” said Lady Laura, after a pause.
“If it be only that, I will be civil in return — as sweet as May to him. If it be really only that, and if I were sure of it, I should be really glad to see him.” Then they finished their lunch, and Lady Laura got up and led the way to the drawing-room.
“I hope you remember,” said she, gravely, that you might be a saviour to him.”
“I do not believe in girls being saviours to men. It is the man who should be the saviour to the girl. If I marry at all, I have the right to expect that protection shall be given to me — not that I shall have to give it.”
“Violet, you are determined to misrepresent what I mean.”
Lord Chiltern was walking about the room, and did not sit down when they entered. The ordinary greetings took place, and Miss Effingham made some remark about the frost. “But it seems to be going,” she said, “and I suppose that you will soon be at work again?”
“Yes — I shall hunt tomorrow,” said Lord Chiltern.
“And the next day, and the next, and the next,” said Violet, “till about the middle of April — and then your period of misery will begin!”
“Exactly,” said Lord Chiltern. I have nothing but hunting that I can call an occupation.”
“Why don’t you make one?” said his sister.
“I mean to do so, if it be possible. Laura, would you mind leaving me and Miss Effingham alone for a few minutes?”
Lady Laura got up, and so also did Miss Effingham. “For what purpose?” said the latter. “It cannot be for any good purpose.”
“At any rate I wish it, and I will not harm you.” Lady Laura was now going, but paused before she reached the door. “Laura, will you do as I ask you?” said the brother. Then Lady Laura went.
“It was not that I feared you would harm me, Lord Chiltern,” said Violet.
“No — I know it was not. But what I say is always said awkwardly. An hour ago I did not know that you were in town, but when I was told the news I came at once. My father told me.”
“I am so glad that you see your father.”
“I have not spoken to him for months before, and probably may not speak to him for months again. But there is one point, Violet, on which he and I agree.”
“I hope there will soon be many.”
“It is possible — but I fear not probable. Look here, Violet,” — and he looked at her with all his eyes, till it seemed to her that he was all eyes, so great was the intensity of his gaze — “I should scorn myself were I to permit myself to come before you with a plea for your favour founded on my father’s whims. My father is unreasonable, and has been very unjust to me. He has ever believed evil of me, and has believed it often when all the world knew that he was wrong. I care little for being reconciled to a father who has been so cruel to me.”
“He loves me dearly, and is my friend. I would rather that you should not speak against him to me.”
“You will understand, at least, that I am asking nothing from you because he wishes it, Laura probably has told you that you may make things straight by becoming my wife.”
“She has — certainly, Lord Chiltern.”
“It is an argument that she should never have used. It is an argument to which you should not listen for a moment. Make things straight indeed! Who can tell? There would be very little made straight by such a marriage, if it were not that I loved you. Violet, that is my plea, and my only one. I love you so well that I do believe that if you took me I should return to the old ways, and become as other men are, and be in time as respectable, as stupid — and perhaps as ill-natured as old Lady Baldock herself.”
“My poor aunt!”
“You know she says worse things of me than that. Now, dearest, you have heard all that I have to say to you.” As he spoke he came close to her, and put out his hand — but she did not touch it. “I have no other argument to use — not a word more to say. As I came here in the cab I was turning it over in my mind that I might find what best I should say. But, after all, there is nothing more to be said than that.”
“The words make no difference,” she replied.
“Not unless they be so uttered as to force a belief. I do love you. I know no other reason but that why you should be my wife. I have no other excuse to offer for coming to you again. You are the one thing in the world that to me has any charm. Can you be surprised that I should be persistent in asking for it?” He was looking at her still with the same gaze, and there seemed to be a power in his eye from which she could not escape. He was still standing with his right hand out, as though expecting, or at least hoping, that her hand might be put into his.
“How am I to answer you?” she said.
“With your love, if you can give it to me. Do you remember how you swore once that you would love me for ever and always?”
“You should not remind me of that. I was a child then — a naughty child,” she added, smiling; “and was put to bed for what I did on that day.”
“Be a child still.”
“Ah, if we but could!”
“And have you no other answer to make me?”
“Of course I must answer you. You are entitled to an answer. Lord Chiltern, I am sorry that I cannot give you the love for which you ask.”
“Never?”
“Never.”
“Is it myself personally, or what you have heard of me, that is so hateful to you?”
“Nothing is hateful to me. I have never spoken of hate. I shall always feel the strongest regard for my old friend and playfellow. But there are many things which a woman is bound to consider before she allows herself so to love a man that she can consent to become his wife.”
“Allow herself! Then it is a matter entirely of calculation.”
“I suppose there should be some thought in it, Lord Chiltern.”
There was now a pause, and the man’s hand was at last allowed to drop, as there came no response to the proffered grasp. He walked once or twice across the room before he spoke again, and then he stopped himself closely opposite to her.
“I shall never try again,” he said.
“It will be better so,” she replied.
“There is something to me unmanly in a man’s persecuting a girl. Just tell Laura, will you, that it is all over; and she may as well tell my father. Goodbye.”
She then tendered her hand to him, but he did not take it — probably did not see it, and at once left the room and the house.
“And yet I believe you love him,” Lady Laura said to her friend in her anger, when they discussed the matter immediately on Lord Chiltern’s departure.
“You have no right to say that, Laura.”
“I have a right to my belief, and I do believe it. I think you love him, and that you lack the courage to risk yourself in trying to save him.”
“Is a woman bound to marry a man if she love him?”
“Yes, she is,” replied Lady Laura impetuously, without thinking of what she was saying; “that is, if she be convinced that she also is loved.”
“Whatever be the man’s character — whatever be the circumstances? Must she do so, whatever friends may say to the contrary? Is there to be no prudence in marriage?”
“There may be a great deal too much prudence,” said Lady Laura.
“That is true. There is certainly too much prudence if a woman marries prudently, but without love.” Violet intended by this no attack upon her friend — had not had present in her mind at the moment any idea of Lady Laura’s special prudence in marrying Mr Kennedy; but Lady Laura felt it keenly, and knew at once that an arrow had been shot which had wounded her.
“We shall get nothing,” she said, by descending to personalities with each other.”
“I meant none, Laura.”
“I suppose it is always hard,” said Lady Laura, for any one person to judge altogether of the mind of another. If I have said anything severe of your refusal of my brother, I retract it. I only wish that it could have been otherwise.”
Lord Chiltern, when he left his sister’s house, walked through the slush and dirt to a haunt of his in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, and there he remained through the whole afternoon and evening. A certain Captain Clutterbuck joined him, and dined with him. He told nothing to Captain Clutterbuck of his sorrow, but Captain Clutterbuck could see that he was unhappy.
“Let’s have another bottle of “cham,”” said Captain Clutterbuck, when their dinner was nearly over. ““Cham” is the only thing to screw one up when one is down a peg.”
“You can have what you like,” said Lord Chiltern; but I shall have some brandy and water.”
“The worst of brandy and water is, that one gets tired of it before the night is over,” said Captain Clutterbuck.
Nevertheless, Lord Chiltern did go down to Peterborough the next day by the hunting train, and rode his horse Bonebreaker so well in that famous run from Sutton springs to Gidding that after the run young Piles — of the house of Piles, Sarsnet, and Gingham — offered him three hundred pounds for the animal.
“He isn’t worth above fifty,” said Lord Chiltern.
“But I’ll give you the three hundred,” said Piles.
“You couldn’t ride him if you’d got him,” said Lord Chiltern.
“Oh, couldn’t I!” said Piles. But Mr Piles did not continue the conversation, contenting himself with telling his friend Grogram that that red devil Chiltern was as drunk as a lord.
Phineas took his seat in the House with a consciousness of much inward trepidation of heart on that night of the ballot debate. After leaving Lord Chiltern he went down to his club and dined alone. Three or four men came and spoke to him; but he could not talk to them at his ease, nor did he quite know what they were saying to him. He was going to do something which he longed to achieve, but the very idea of which, now that it was so near to him, was a terror to him. To be in the House and not to speak would, to his thinking, be a disgraceful failure. Indeed, he could not continue to keep his seat unless he spoke. He had been put there that he might speak. He would speak. Of course he would speak. Had he not already been conspicuous almost as a boy orator? And yet, at this moment he did not know whether he was eating mutton or beef, or who was standing opposite to him and talking to him, so much was he in dread of the ordeal which he had prepared for himself. As he went down to the House after dinner, he almost made up his mind that it would be a good thing to leave London by one of the night mail trains. He felt himself to be stiff and stilted as he walked, and that his clothes were uneasy to him. When he turned into Westminster Hall he regretted more keenly than ever he had done that he had seceded from the keeping of Mr Low. He could, he thought, have spoken very well in court, and would there have learned that self-confidence which now failed him so terribly. It was, however, too late to think of that. He could only go in and take his seat.
He went in and took his seat, and the chamber seemed to him to be mysteriously large, as though benches were crowded over benches, and galleries over galleries. He had been long enough in the House to have lost the original awe inspired by the Speaker and the clerks of the House, by the row of Ministers, and by the unequalled importance of the place. On ordinary occasions he could saunter in and out, and whisper at his ease to a neighbour. But on this occasion he went direct to the bench on which he ordinarily sat, and began at once to rehearse to himself his speech. He had in truth been doing this all day, in spite of the effort that he had made to rid himself of all memory of the occasion. He had been collecting the heads of his speech while Mr Low had been talking to him, and refreshing his quotations in the presence of Lord Chiltern and the dumb-bells. He had taxed his memory and his intellect with various tasks, which, as he feared, would not adjust themselves one with another. He had learned the headings of his speech — so that one heading might follow the other, and nothing be forgotten. And he had learned verbatim the words which he intended to utter under each heading — with a hope that if any one compact part should be destroyed or injured in its compactness by treachery of memory, or by the course of the debate, each other compact part might be there in its entirety, ready for use — or at least so many of the compact parts as treachery of memory and the accidents of the debate might leave to him; so that his speech might be like a vessel, watertight in its various compartments, that would float by the buoyancy of its stern and bow, even though the hold should be waterlogged. But this use of his composed words, even though he should be able to carry it through, would not complete his work — for it would be his duty to answer in some sort those who had gone before him, and in order to do this he must be able to insert, without any prearrangement of words or ideas, little intercalatory parts between those compact masses of argument with which he had been occupying himself for many laborious hours. As he looked round upon the House and perceived that everything was dim before him, that all his original awe of the House had returned, and with it a present quaking fear that made him feel the pulsations of his own heart, he became painfully aware that the task he had prepared for himself was too great. He should, on this the occasion of his rising to his maiden legs, have either prepared for himself a short general speech, which could indeed have done little for his credit in the House, but which might have served to carry off the novelty of the thing, and have introduced him to the sound of his own voice within those walls — or he should have trusted to what his wit and spirit would produce for him on the spur of the moment, and not have burdened himself with a huge exercise of memory. During the presentation of a few petitions he tried to repeat to himself the first of his compact parts — a compact part on which, as it might certainly be brought into use let the debate have gone as it might, he had expended great care. He had flattered himself that there was something of real strength in his words as he repeated them to himself in the comfortable seclusion of his own room, and he had made them so ready to his tongue that he thought it to be impossible that he should forget even an intonation. Now he found that he could not remember the first phrases without unloosing and looking at a small roll of paper which he held furtively in his hand. What was the good of looking at it? He would forget it again in the next moment. He had intended to satisfy the most eager of his friends, and to astound his opponents. As it was, no one would be satisfied — and none astounded but they who had trusted in him.
The debate began, and if the leisure afforded by a long and tedious speech could have served him, he might have had leisure enough. He tried at first to follow all that this advocate for the ballot might say, hoping thence to acquire the impetus of strong interest; but he soon wearied of the work, and began to long that the speech might be ended, although the period of his own martyrdom would thereby be brought nearer to him. At half past seven so many members had deserted their seats, that Phineas began to think that he might be saved all further pains by a “count out.” He reckoned the members present and found that they were below the mystic forty — first by two, then by four, by five, by seven, and at one time by eleven. It was not for him to ask the Speaker to count the House, but he wondered that no-one else should do so. And yet, as the idea of this termination to the night’s work came upon him, and as he thought of his lost labour, he almost took courage again — almost dreaded rather than wished for the interference of some malicious member. But there was no malicious member then present, or else it was known that Lords of the Treasury and Lords of the Admiralty would flock in during the Speaker’s ponderous counting — and thus the slow length of the ballot-lover’s verbosity was permitted to evolve itself without interruption. At eight o’clock he had completed his catalogue of illustrations, and immediately Mr Monk rose from the Treasury bench to explain the grounds on which the Government must decline to support the motion before the House.
Phineas was aware that Mr Monk intended to speak, and was aware also that his speech would be very short. “My idea is”, he had said to Phineas, “that every man possessed of the franchise should dare to have and to express a political opinion of his own; that otherwise the franchise is not worth having; and that men will learn that when all so dare, no evil can come from such daring. As the ballot would make any courage of that kind unnecessary, I dislike the ballot. I shall confine myself to that, and leave the illustration to younger debaters.” Phineas also had been informed that Mr Turnbull would reply to Mr Monk, with the purpose of crushing Mr Monk into dust, and Phineas had prepared his speech with something of an intention of subsequently crushing Mr Turnbull. He knew, however, that he could not command his opportunity. There was the chapter of accidents to which he must accommodate himself; but such had been his programme for the evening.
Mr Monk made his speech — and though he was short, he was very fiery and energetic. Quick as lightning words of wrath and scorn flew from him, in which he painted the cowardice, the meanness, the falsehood of the ballot. “The ballot box”, he said, was the grave of all true political opinion.” Though he spoke hardly for ten minutes, he seemed to say more than enough, ten times enough, to slaughter the argument of the former speaker. At every hot word is it fell Phineas was driven to regret that a paragraph of his own was taken away from him, and that his choicest morsels of standing ground were being cut from under his feet. When Mr Monk sat down, Phineas felt that Mr Monk had said all that he, Phineas Finn, had intended to say.
Then Mr Turnbull rose slowly from the bench below the gangway. With a speaker so frequent and so famous as Mr Turnbull no hurry is necessary. He is sure to have his opportunity. The Speaker’s eye is ever travelling to the accustomed spots. Mr Turnbull rose slowly and began his oration very mildly. “There was nothing”, he said, “that he admired so much as the poetic imagery and the high-flown sentiment of his right honourable friend the member for West Bromwich,” — Mr Monk sat for West Bromwich — “unless it were the stubborn facts and unanswered arguments of his honourable friend who had brought forward this motion.” Then Mr Turnbull proceeded after his fashion to crush Mr Monk. He was very prosaic, very clear both in voice and language, very harsh, and very unscrupulous. He and Mr Monk had been joined together in politics for over twenty years — but one would have thought, from Mr Turnbull’s words, that they had been the bitterest of enemies. Mr Monk was taunted with his office, taunted with his desertion of the liberal party, taunted with his ambition — and taunted with his lack of ambition. “I once thought,” said Mr Turnbull — nay, not long ago I thought, that he and I would have fought this battle for the people, shoulder to shoulder, and knee to knee — but he has preferred that the knee next to his own shall wear a garter, and that the shoulder which supports him shall be decked with a blue ribbon — as shoulders, I presume, are decked in those closet conferences which are called Cabinets.”
Just after this, while Mr Turnbull was still going on with a variety of illustrations drawn from the United States, Barrington Erle stepped across the benches up to the place where Phineas was sitting, and whispered a few words into his ear. “Bonteen is prepared to answer Turnbull, and wishes to do it. I told him that I thought you should have the opportunity, if you wish it.” Phineas was not ready with a reply to Erle at the spur of the moment. “Somebody told me,” continued Erle, “that you had said that you would like to speak tonight.”
“So I did,” said Phineas.
“Shall I tell Bonteen that you will do it?”
The chamber seemed to swim round before our hero’s eyes. Mr Turnbull was still going on with his clear, loud, unpleasant voice, but there was no knowing how long he might go on. Upon Phineas, if he should now consent, might devolve the duty, within ten minutes, within three minutes, of rising there before a full House to defend his great friend, Mr Monk, from a gross personal attack. Was it fit that such a novice as he should undertake such a work as that? Were he to do so, all that speech which he had prepared, with its various self-floating parts, must go for nothing. The task was exactly that which, of all tasks, he would best like to have accomplished, and to have accomplished well. But if he should fail! And he felt that he would fail. For such work a man should have all his senses about him — his full courage, perfect confidence, something almost approaching to contempt for listening opponents, and nothing of fear in regard to listening friends. He should be as a cock in his own farmyard, master of all the circumstances around him. But Phineas Finn had not even as yet heard the sound of his own voice in that room. At this moment, so confused was he, that he did not know where sat Mr Mildmay, and where Mr Daubeny. All was confused, and there arose as it were a sound of waters in his ears, and a feeling as of a great hell around him. “I had rather wait,” he said at last. Bonteen had better reply.” Barrington Erle looked into his face, and then stepping back across the benches, told Mr Bonteen that the opportunity was his.
Mr Turnbull continued speaking quite long enough to give poor Phineas time for repentance; but repentance was of no use. He had decided against himself, and his decision could not be reversed. He would have left the House, only it seemed to him that had he done so every one would look at him. He drew his hat down over his eyes, and remained in his place, hating Mr Bonteen, hating Barrington Erle, hating Mr Turnbull — but hating no one so much as he hated himself. He had disgraced himself for ever, and could never recover the occasion which he had lost.
Mr Bonteen’s speech was in no way remarkable. Mr Monk, he said, had done the State good service by adding his wisdom and patriotism to the Cabinet. The sort of argument which Mr Bonteen used to prove that a man who has gained credit as a legislator should in process of time become a member of the executive, is trite and common, and was not used by Mr Bonteen with any special force. Mr Bonteen was glib of tongue, and possessed that familiarity with the place which poor Phineas had lacked so sorely. There was one moment, however, which was terrible to Phineas. As soon as Mr Bonteen had shown the purpose for which he was on his legs, Mr Monk looked round at Phineas, as though in reproach. He had expected that this work should fall into the hands of one who would perform it with more warmth of heart than could be expected from Mr Bonteen. When Mr Bonteen ceased, two or three other short speeches were made and members fired off their little guns. Phineas having lost so great an opportunity, would not now consent to accept one that should be comparatively valueless. Then there came a division. The motion was lost by a large majority — by any number you might choose to name, as Phineas had said to Lord Brentford; but in that there was no triumph to the poor wretch who had failed through fear, and who was now a coward in his own esteem.
He left the House alone, carefully avoiding all speech with any one. As he came out he had seen Laurence Fitzgibbon in the lobby, but he had gone on without pausing a moment, so that he might avoid his friend. And when he was out in Palace Yard, where was he to go next? He looked at his watch, and found that it was just ten. He did not dare to go to his club, and it was impossible for him to go home and to bed. He was very miserable, and nothing would comfort him but sympathy. Was there any one who would listen to his abuse of himself, and would then answer him with kindly apologies for his own weakness? Mrs Bunce would do it if she knew how, but sympathy from Mrs Bunce would hardly avail. There was but one person in the world to whom he could tell his own humiliation with any hope of comfort, and that person was Lady Laura Kennedy. Sympathy from any man would have been distasteful to him. He had thought for a moment of flinging himself at Mr Monk’s feet and telling all his weakness — but he could not have endured pity even from Mr Monk. It was not to be endured from any man.
He thought that Lady Laura Kennedy would be at home, and probably alone. He knew, at any rate, that he might be allowed to knock at her door, even at that hour. He had left Mr Kennedy in the House, and there he would probably remain for the next hour. There was no man more constant than Mr Kennedy in seeing the work of the day — or of the night — to its end. So Phineas walked up Victoria Street, and from thence into Grosvenor Place, and knocked at Lady Laura’s door. “Yes; Lady Laura was at home; and alone.” He was shown up into the drawing-room, and there he found Lady Laura waiting for her husband.
“So the great debate is over,” she said, with as much of irony as she knew how to throw into the epithet.
“Yes; it is over.”
“And what have they done — those leviathans of the people?”
Then Phineas told her what was the majority.
“Is there anything the matter with you, Mr Finn?” she said, looking at him suddenly. “Are you not well?”
“Yes; I am very well.”
“Will you not sit down? There is something wrong, I know. What is it?”
“I have simply been the greatest idiot, the greatest coward, the most awkward ass that ever lived!”
“What do you mean?”
“I do not know why I should come to tell you of it at this hour at night, but I have come that I might tell you. Probably because there is no one else in the whole world who would not laugh at me.”
“At any rate, I shall not laugh at you,” said Lady Laura.
“But you will despise me.”
“That I am sure I shall not do.”
“You cannot help it. I despise myself. For years I have placed before myself the ambition of speaking in the House of Commons — for years I have been thinking whether there would ever come to me an opportunity of making myself heard in that assembly, which I consider to be the first in the world. Today the opportunity has been offered to me — and, though the motion was nothing, the opportunity was great. The subject was one on which I was thoroughly prepared. The manner in which I was summoned was most flattering to me. I was especially called on to perform a task which was most congenial to my feelings — and I declined because I was afraid.”
“You had thought too much about it, my friend,” said Lady Laura.
“Too much or too little, what does it matter?” replied Phineas, in despair. “There is the fact. I could not do it. Do you remember the story of Conachar in the “Fair Maid of Perth;” — how his heart refused to give him blood enough to fight? He had been suckled with the milk of a timid creature, and, though he could die, there was none of the strength of manhood in him. It is about the same thing with me, I take it.”
“I do not think you are at all like Conachar,” said Lady Laura.
“I am equally disgraced, and I must perish after the same fashion. I shall apply for the Chiltern Hundreds in a day or two.”
“You will do nothing of the kind,” said Lady Laura, getting up from her chair and coming towards him. “You shall not leave this room till you have promised me that you will do nothing of the kind. I do not know as yet what has occurred tonight; but I do know that that modesty which has kept you silent is more often a grace than a disgrace.”
This was the kind of sympathy which he wanted. She drew her chair nearer to him, and then he explained to her as accurately as he could what had taken place in the House on this evening — how he had prepared his speech, how he had felt that his preparation was vain, how he perceived from the course of the debate that if he spoke at all his speech must be very different from what he had first intended; how he had declined to take upon himself a task which seemed to require so close a knowledge of the ways of the House and of the temper of the men, as the defence of such a man as Mr Monk. In accusing himself he, unconsciously, excused himself, and his excuse, in Lady Laura’s ears, was more valid than his accusation.
“And you would give it all up for that?” she said.
“Yes; I think I ought.”
“I have very little doubt but that you were right in allowing Mr Bonteen to undertake such a task. I should simply explain to Mr Monk that you felt too keen an interest in his welfare to stand up as an untried member in his defence. It is not, I think, the work for a man who is not at home in the House. I am sure Mr Monk will feel this, and I am quite certain that Mr Kennedy will think that you have been right.”
“I do not care what Mr Kennedy may think.”
“Why do you say that, Mr Finn? That is not courteous.”
“Simply because I care so much what Mr Kennedy’s wife may think. Your opinion is all in all to me — only that I know you are too kind to me.”
“He would not be too kind to you. He is never too kind to any one. He is justice itself.”
Phineas, as he heard the tones of her voice, could not but feel that there was in Lady Laura’s words something of an accusation against her husband.
“I hate justice,” said Phineas. I know that justice would condemn me. But love and friendship know nothing of justice. The value of love is that it overlooks faults, and forgives even crimes.”
“I, at any rate,” said Lady Laura, will forgive the crime of your silence in the House. My strong belief in your success will not be in the least affected by what you tell me of your failure tonight. You must await another opportunity; and, if possible, you should be less anxious as to your own performance. There is Violet.” As Lady Laura spoke the last words, there was a sound of a carriage stopping in the street, and the front door was immediately opened. “She is staying here, but has been dining with her uncle, Admiral Effingham.” Then Violet Effingham entered the room, rolled up in pretty white furs, and silk cloaks, and lace shawls. “Here is Mr Finn, come to tell us of the debate about the ballot.”
“I don’t care two-pence about the ballot,” said Violet, as she put out her hand to Phineas. “Are we going to have a new iron fleet built? That’s the question.”
“Sir Simeon has come out strong tonight,” said Lady Laura.
“There is no political question of any importance except the question of the iron fleet,” said Violet. “I am quite sure of that, and so, if Mr Finn can tell me nothing about the iron fleet, I’ll go to bed.”
“Mr Kennedy will tell you everything when he comes home,” said Phineas.
“Oh, Mr Kennedy! Mr Kennedy never tells one anything. I doubt whether Mr Kennedy thinks that any woman knows the meaning of the British Constitution.”
“Do you know what it means, Violet?” asked Lady Laura.
“To be sure I do. It is liberty to growl about the iron fleet, or the ballot, or the taxes, or the peers, or the bishops — or anything else, except the House of Commons. That’s the British Constitution. Goodnight, Mr Finn.”
“What a beautiful creature she is!” said Phineas.
“Yes, indeed,” said Lady Laura.
“And full of wit and grace and pleasantness. I do not wonder at your brother’s choice.”
It will be remembered that this was said on the day before Lord Chiltern had made his offer for the third time.
“Poor Oswald! he does not know as yet that she is in town.”
After that Phineas went, not wishing to await the return of Mr Kennedy. He had felt that Violet Effingham had come into the room just in time to remedy a great difficulty. He did not wish to speak of his love to a married woman — to the wife of the man who called him friend — to a woman who he felt sure would have rebuked him. But he could hardly have restrained himself had not Miss Effingham been there.
But as he went home he thought more of Miss Effingham than he did of Lady Laura; and I think that the voice of Miss Effingham had done almost as much towards comforting him as had the kindness of the other.
At any rate, he had been comforted.