Phineas Finn Part 89

"Alas! no. You have forbidden the banns too effectually for that, and I sit here wearing the willow all alone. Why shouldn't I be allowed to get married as well as another woman, I wonder? I think you have been very hard upon me among you. But sit down, Lady Glencora. At any rate you come in peace."

"Certainly in peace, and with much admiration,--and a great deal of love and affection, and all that kind of thing, if you will only accept it."

"I shall be too proud, Lady Glencora;--for the Duke's sake, if for no other reason."

"And I have to make my apology."

"It was made as soon as your carriage stopped at my door with friendly wheels. Of course I understand. I can know how terrible it all was to you,--even though the dear little Plantagenet might not have been in much danger. Fancy what it would be to disturb the career of a Plantagenet! I am far too well read in history, I can a.s.sure you."

"I said a word for which I am sorry, and which I should not have said."

"Never mind the word. After all, it was a true word. I do not hesitate to say so now myself, though I will allow no other woman to say it,--and no man either. I should have degraded him,--and disgraced him." Madame Goesler now had dropped the bantering tone which she had a.s.sumed, and was speaking in sober earnest. "I, for myself, have nothing about me of which I am ashamed. I have no history to hide, no story to be brought to light to my discredit.

But I have not been so born, or so placed by circ.u.mstances, as make me fit to be the wife of the Duke of Omnium. I should not have been happy, you know."

"You want nothing, dear Madame Goesler. You have all that society can give you."

"I do not know about that. I have much given to me by society, but there are many things that I want;--a bright-faced little boy, for instance, to go about with me in my carriage. Why did you not bring him, Lady Glencora?"

"I came out in my penitential sheet, and when one goes in that guise, one goes alone. I had half a mind to walk."

"You will bring him soon?"

"Oh, yes. He was very anxious to know the other day who was the beautiful lady with the black hair."

"You did not tell him that the beautiful lady with the black hair was a possible aunt, was a possible--? But we will not think any more of things so horrible."

"I told him nothing of my fears, you may be sure."

"Some day, when I am a very old woman, and when his father is quite an old duke, and when he has a dozen little boys and girls of his own, you will tell him the story. Then he will reflect what a madman his great-uncle must have been, to have thought of making a d.u.c.h.ess out of such a wizened old woman as that."

They parted the best of friends, but Lady Glencora was still of opinion that if the lady and the Duke were to be brought together at Matching, or elsewhere, there might still be danger.

CHAPTER LXIII

Showing How the Duke Stood His Ground

Mr. Low the barrister, who had given so many lectures to our friend Phineas Finn, lectures that ought to have been useful, was now himself in the House of Commons, having reached it in the legitimate course of his profession. At a certain point of his career, supposing his career to have been sufficiently prosperous, it becomes natural to a barrister to stand for some const.i.tuency, and natural for him also to form his politics at that period of his life with a view to his further advancement, looking, as he does so, carefully at the age and standing of the various candidates for high legal office. When a man has worked as Mr. Low had worked, he begins to regard the bench wistfully, and to calculate the profits of a two years' run in the Attorney-Generals.h.i.+p. It is the way of the profession, and thus a proper and sufficient number of real barristers finds its way into the House. Mr. Low had been angry with Phineas because he, being a barrister, had climbed into it after another fas.h.i.+on, having taken up politics, not in the proper way as an a.s.sistance to his great profession, but as a profession in itself. Mr. Low had been quite sure that his pupil had been wrong in this, and that the error would at last show itself, to his pupil's cost. And Mrs. Low had been more sure than Mr. Low, having not unnaturally been jealous that a young whipper-snapper of a pupil,--as she had once called Phineas,--should become a Parliament man before her husband, who had worked his way up gallantly, in the usual course. She would not give way a jot even now,--not even when she heard that Phineas was going to marry this and that heiress. For at this period of his life such rumours were afloat about him, originating probably in his hopes as to Violet Effingham and his intimacy with Madame Goesler. "Oh, heiresses!"

said Mrs. Low. "I don't believe in heiresses' money till I see it.

Three or four hundred a year is a great fortune for a woman, but it don't go far in keeping a house in London. And when a woman has got a little money she generally knows how to spend it. He has begun at the wrong end, and they who do that never get themselves right at the last."

At this time Phineas had become somewhat of a fine gentleman, which made Mrs. Low the more angry with him. He showed himself willing enough to go to Mrs. Low's house, but when there he seemed to her to give himself airs. I think that she was unjust to him, and that it was natural that he should not bear himself beneath her remarks exactly as he had done when he was n.o.body. He had certainly been very successful. He was always listened to in the House, and rarely spoke except on subjects which belonged to him, or had been allotted to him as part of his business. He lived quite at his ease with people of the highest rank,--and those of his own mode of life who disliked him did so simply because they regarded with envy his too rapid rise. He rode upon a pretty horse in the park, and was careful in his dress, and had about him an air of comfortable wealth which Mrs. Low thought he had not earned. When her husband told her of his sufficient salary, she would shake her head and express her opinion that a good time was coming. By which she perhaps meant to imply a belief that a time was coming in which her husband would have a salary much better than that now enjoyed by Phineas, and much more likely to be permanent. The Radicals were not to have office for ever, and when they were gone, what then? "I don't suppose he saves a s.h.i.+lling,"

said Mrs. Low. "How can he, keeping a horse in the park, and hunting down in the country, and living with lords? I shouldn't wonder if he isn't found to be over head and ears in debt when things come to be looked into." Mrs. Low was fond of an a.s.sured prosperity, of money in the funds, and was proud to think that her husband lived in a house of his own. "19 10s. ground-rent to the Portman estate is what we pay, Mr. Bunce," she once said to that gallant Radical, "and that comes of beginning at the right end. Mr. Low had nothing when he began the world, and I had just what made us decent the day we married. But he began at the right end, and let things go as they may he can't get a fall." Mr. Bunce and Mrs. Low, though they differed much in politics, sympathised in reference to Phineas.

"I never believes, ma'am, in n.o.body doing any good by getting a place," said Mr. Bunce. "Of course I don't mean judges and them like, which must be. But when a young man has ever so much a year for sitting in a big room down at Whitehall, and reading a newspaper with his feet up on a chair, I don't think it honest, whether he's a Parliament man or whether he ain't." Whence Mr. Bunce had got his notions as to the way in which officials at Whitehall pa.s.s their time, I cannot say; but his notions are very common notions. The British world at large is slow to believe that the great British housekeeper keeps no more cats than what kill mice.

Mr. Low, who was now frequently in the habit of seeing Phineas at the House, had somewhat changed his opinions, and was not so eager in condemning Phineas as was his wife. He had begun to think that perhaps Phineas had shown some knowledge of his own apt.i.tudes in the career which he had sought, and was aware, at any rate, that his late pupil was somebody in the House of Commons. A man will almost always respect him whom those around him respect, and will generally look up to one who is evidently above himself in his own daily avocation. Now Phineas was certainly above Mr. Low in parliamentary reputation. He sat on a front bench. He knew the leaders of parties. He was at home amidst the forms of the House. He enjoyed something of the prestige of Government power. And he walked about familiarly with the sons of dukes and the brothers of earls in a manner which had its effect even on Mr. Low. Seeing these things Mr. Low could not maintain his old opinion as stoutly as did his wife. It was almost a privilege to Mr.

Low to be intimate with Phineas Finn. How then could he look down upon him?

He was surprised, therefore, one day when Phineas discussed the matter with him fully. Phineas had asked him what would be his chance of success if even now he were to give up politics and take to the Bar as the means of earning his livelihood. "You would have uphill work at first, as a matter of course," said Mr. Low.

"But it might be done, I suppose. To have been in office would not be fatal to me?"

"No, not fatal, Nothing of the kind need be fatal. Men have succeeded, and have sat on the bench afterwards, who did not begin till they were past forty. You would have to live down a prejudice created against yourself; that is all. The attorneys do not like barristers who are anything else but barristers."

"The attorneys are very arbitrary, I know," said Phineas.

"Yes;--and there would be this against you--that it is so difficult for a man to go back to the verdure and malleability of pupildom, who has once escaped from the necessary humility of its conditions.

You will find it difficult to sit and wait for business in a Vice-Chancellor's Court, after having had Vice-Chancellors, or men as big as Vice-Chancellors, to wait upon you."

"I do not think much of that."

"But others would think of it, and you would find that there were difficulties. But you are not thinking of it in earnest?"

"Yes, in earnest."

"Why so? I should have thought that every day had removed you further and further from any such idea."

"The ground I'm on at present is so slippery."

"Well, yes. I can understand that. But yet it is less slippery than it used to be."

"Ah;--you do not exactly see. What if I were to lose my seat?"

"You are safe at least for the next four years, I should say."

"Ah;--no one can tell. And suppose I took it into my head to differ from the Government?"

"You must not do that. You have put yourself into a boat with these men, and you must remain in the boat. I should have thought all that was easy to you."

"It is not so easy as it seems. The very necessity of sitting still in the boat is in itself irksome,--very irksome. And then there comes some crisis in which a man cannot sit still."

"Is there any such crisis at hand now?"

"I cannot say that;--but I am beginning to find that sitting still is very disagreeable to me. When I hear those fellows below having their own way, and saying just what they like, it makes me furious. There is Robson. He tried office for a couple of years, and has broken away; and now, by George, there is no man they think so much of as they do of Robson. He is twice the man he was when he sat on the Treasury Bench."

"He is a man of fortune;--is he not?"

"I suppose so. Of course he is, because he lives. He never earns anything. His wife had money."

"My dear Finn, that makes all the difference. When a man has means of his own he can please himself. Do you marry a wife with money, and then you may kick up your heels, and do as you like about the Colonial Office. When a man hasn't money, of course he must fit himself to the circ.u.mstances of a profession."

"Though his profession may require him to be dishonest."

"I did not say that."