The Palliser Novels Part 109

"Next Sunday."

"You will return. You must be here for our wedding; - indeed you must. I will not be married unless you do."

Even this, however, was impossible. He must go on Sunday, and must return no more. Then he made his little farewell speech, which he could not deliver without some awkward stuttering. He would think of her on the day of her marriage, and pray that she might be happy. And he would send her a little trifle before he went, which he hoped she would wear in remembrance of their old friendship.

"She shall wear it, whatever it is, or I'll know the reason why," said Chiltern.

"Hold your tongue, you rough bear!" said Violet. "Of course I'll wear it. And of course I'll think of the giver. I shall have many presents, but few that I will think of so much." Then Phineas left the room, with his throat so full that he could not speak another word.

"He is still broken-hearted about you," said the favoured lover as soon as his rival had left the room.

"It is not that," said Violet. "He is broken-hearted about everything. The whole world is vanishing away from him. I wish he could have made up his mind to marry that German woman with all the money." It must be understood, however, that Phineas had never spoken a word to any one as to the offer which the German woman had made to him.

It was on the morning of the Sunday on which he was to leave London that he saw Lady Laura. He had asked that it might be so, in order that he might then have nothing more upon his mind. He found her quite alone, and he could see by her eyes that she had been weeping. As he looked at her, remembering that it was not yet six years since he had first been allowed to enter that room, he could not but perceive how very much she was altered in appearance. Then she had been three-and-twenty, and had not looked to be a day older. Now she might have been taken to be nearly forty, so much had her troubles preyed upon her spirit, and eaten into the vitality of her youth. "So you have come to say good-bye," she said, smiling as she rose to meet him.

"Yes, Lady Laura; - to say good-bye. Not for ever, I hope, but probably for long."

"No, not for ever. At any rate, we will not think so." Then she paused; but he was silent, sitting with his hat dangling in his two hands, and his eyes fixed upon the floor. "Do you know, Mr. Finn," she continued, "that sometimes I am very angry with myself about you."

"Then it must be because you have been too kind to me."

"It is because I fear that I have done much to injure you. From the first day that I knew you, - do you remember, when we were talking here, in this very room, about the beginning of the Reform Bill; - from that day I wished that you should come among us and be one of us."

"I have been with you, to my infinite satisfaction, - while it lasted."

"But it has not lasted, and now I fear that it has done you harm."

"Who can say whether it has been for good or evil? But of this I am sure you will be certain, - that I am very grateful to you for all the goodness you have shown me." Then again he was silent.

She did not know what it was that she wanted, but she did desire some expression from his lips that should be warmer than an expression of grat.i.tude. An expression of love, - of existing love, - she would have felt to be an insult, and would have treated it as such. Indeed, she knew that from him no such insult could come. But she was in that morbid, melancholy state of mind which requires the excitement of more than ordinary sympathy, even though that sympathy be all painful; and I think that she would have been pleased had he referred to the pa.s.sion for herself which he had once expressed. If he would have spoken of his love, and of her mistake, and have made some half-suggestion as to what might have been their lives had things gone differently, - though she would have rebuked him even for that, - still it would have comforted her. But at this moment, though he remembered much that had pa.s.sed between them, he was not even thinking of the Braes of Linter. All that had taken place four years ago; - and there had been so many other things since which had moved him even more than that! "You have heard what I have arranged for myself?" she said at last.

"Your father has told me that you are going to Dresden."

"Yes; - he will accompany me, - coming home of course for Parliament. It is a sad break-up, is it not? But the lawyer says that if I remain here I may be subject to very disagreeable attempts from Mr. Kennedy to force me to go back again. It is odd, is it not, that he should not understand how impossible it is?"

"He means to do his duty."

"I believe so. But he becomes more stern every day to those who are with him. And then, why should I remain here? What is there to tempt me? As a woman separated from her husband I cannot take an interest in those things which used to charm me. I feel that I am crushed and quelled by my position, even though there is no disgrace in it."

"No disgrace, certainly," said Phineas.

"But I am n.o.body, - or worse than n.o.body."

"And I also am going to be a n.o.body," said Phineas, laughing.

"Ah; you are a man and will get over it, and you have many years before you will begin to be growing old. I am growing old already. Yes, I am. I feel it, and know it, and see it. A woman has a fine game to play; but then she is so easily bowled out, and the term allowed to her is so short."

"A man's allowance of time may be short too," said Phineas.

"But he can try his hand again." Then there was another pause. "I had thought, Mr. Finn, that you would have married," she said in her very lowest voice.

"You knew all my hopes and fears about that."

"I mean that you would have married Madame Goesler."

"What made you think that, Lady Laura?"

"Because I saw that she liked you, and because such a marriage would have been so suitable. She has all that you want. You know what they say of her now?"

"What do they say?"

"That the Duke of Omnium offered to make her his wife, and that she refused him for your sake."

"There is nothing that people won't say; - nothing on earth," said Phineas. Then he got up and took his leave of her. He also wanted to part from her with some special expression of affection, but he did not know how to choose his words. He had wished that some allusion should be made, not to the Braes of Linter, but to the close confidence which had so long existed between them; but he found that the language to do this properly was wanting to him. Had the opportunity arisen he would have told her now the whole story of Mary Flood Jones; but the opportunity did not come, and he left her, never having mentioned the name of his Mary or having hinted at his engagement to any one of his friends in London. "It is better so," he said to himself. "My life in Ireland is to be a new life, and why should I mix two things together that will be so different?"

He was to dine at his lodgings, and then leave them for good at eight o'clock. He had packed up everything before he went to Portman Square, and he returned home only just in time to sit down to his solitary mutton chop. But as he sat down he saw a small note addressed to himself lying on the table among the crowd of books, letters, and papers, of which he had still to make disposal. It was a very small note in an envelope of a peculiar tint of pink, and he knew the handwriting well. The blood mounted all over his face as he took it up, and he hesitated for a moment before he opened it. It could not be that the offer should be repeated to him. Slowly, hardly venturing at first to look at the enclosure, he opened it, and the words which it contained were as follows: - I learn that you are going to-day, and I write a word which you will receive just as you are departing. It is to say merely this, - that when I left you the other day I was angry, not with you, but with myself. Let me wish you all good wishes and that prosperity which I know you will deserve, and which I think you will win.

Yours very truly, M. M. G.

Sunday morning.

Should he put off his journey and go to her this very evening and claim her as his friend? The question was asked and answered in a moment. Of course he would not go to her. Were he to do so there would be only one possible word for him to say, and that word should certainly never be spoken. But he wrote to her a reply, shorter even than her own short note.

Thanks, dear friend. I do not doubt but that you and I understand each other thoroughly, and that each trusts the other for good wishes and honest intentions.

Always yours, P. F.

I write these as I am starting.

When he had written this, he kept it till the last moment in his hand, thinking that he would not send it. But as he slipped into the cab, he gave the note to his late landlady to post.

At the station Bunce came to him to say a word of farewell, and Mrs. Bunce was on his arm.

"Well done, Mr. Finn, well done," said Bunce. "I always knew there was a good drop in you."

"You always told me I should ruin myself in Parliament, and so I have," said Phineas.

"Not at all. It takes a deal to ruin a man if he's got the right sperrit. I've better hopes of you now than ever I had in the old days when you used to be looking out for Government place; - and Mr. Monk has tried that too. I thought he would find the iron too heavy for him." "G.o.d bless you, Mr. Finn," said Mrs. Bunce with her handkerchief up to her eyes. "There's not one of 'em I ever had as lodgers I've cared about half as much as I did for you." Then they shook hands with him through the window, and the train was off.

CHAPTER LXXVI.

Conclusion We are told that it is a bitter moment with the Lord Mayor when he leaves the Mansion House and becomes once more Alderman Jones, of No. 75, Bucklersbury. Lord Chancellors going out of office have a great fall though they take pensions with them for their consolation. And the President of the United States when he leaves the glory of the White House and once more becomes a simple citizen must feel the change severely. But our hero, Phineas Finn, as he turned his back upon the scene of his many successes, and prepared himself for permanent residence in his own country, was, I think, in a worse plight than any of the reduced divinities to whom I have alluded. They at any rate had known that their fall would come. He, like Icarus, had flown up towards the sun, hoping that his wings of wax would bear him steadily aloft among the G.o.ds. Seeing that his wings were wings of wax, we must acknowledge that they were very good. But the celestial lights had been too strong for them, and now, having lived for five years with lords and countesses, with Ministers and orators, with beautiful women and men of fashion, he must start again in a little lodging in Dublin, and hope that the attorneys of that litigious city might be good to him. On his journey home he made but one resolution. He would make the change, or attempt to make it, with manly strength. During his last month in London he had allowed himself to be sad, depressed, and melancholy. There should be an end of all that now. n.o.body at home should see that he was depressed. And Mary, his own Mary, should at any rate have no cause to think that her love and his own engagement had ever been the cause to him of depression. Did he not value her love more than anything in the world? A thousand times he told himself that he did.

She was there in the old house at Killaloe to greet him. Her engagement was an affair known to all the county, and she had no idea that it would become her to be coy in her love. She was in his arms before he had spoken to his father and mother, and had made her little speech to him, - very inaudibly indeed, - while he was covering her sweet face with kisses. "Oh, Phineas, I am so proud of you; and I think you are so right, and I am so glad you have done it." Again he covered her face with kisses. Could he ever have had such satisfaction as this had he allowed Madame Goesler's hand to remain in his?

On the first night of his arrival he sat for an hour downstairs with his father talking over his plans. He felt, - he could not but feel, - that he was not the hero now that he had been when he was last at Killaloe, - when he had come thither with a Cabinet Minister under his wing. And yet his father did his best to prevent the growth of any such feeling. The old doctor was not quite as well off as he had been when Phineas first started with his high hopes for London. Since that day he had abandoned his profession and was now living on the fruits of his life's labour. For the last two years he had been absolved from the necessity of providing an income for his son, and had probably allowed himself to feel that no such demand upon him would again be made. Now, however, it was necessary that he should do so. Could his son manage to live on two hundred a-year? There would then be four hundred a-year left for the wants of the family at home. Phineas swore that he could fight his battle on a hundred and fifty, and they ended the argument by splitting the difference. He had been paying exactly the same sum of money for the rooms he had just left in London; but then, while he held those rooms, his income had been two thousand a-year. Tenant-right was a very fine thing, but could it be worth such a fall as this?

"And about dear Mary?" said the father.

"I hope it may not be very long," said Phineas.

"I have not spoken to her about it, but your mother says that Mrs. Flood Jones is very averse to a long engagement."

"What can I do? She would not wish me to marry her daughter with no other income than an allowance made by you."

"Your mother says that she has some idea that you and she might live together; - that if they let Floodborough you might take a small house in Dublin. Remember, Phineas, I am not proposing it myself."

Then Phineas bethought himself that he was not even yet so low in the world that he need submit himself to terms dictated to him by Mrs. Flood Jones. "I am glad that you do not propose it, sir."

"Why so, Phineas?"

"Because I should have been obliged to oppose the plan even if it had come from you. Mothers-in-law are never a comfort in a house."

"I never tried it myself," said the doctor.

"And I never will try it. I am quite sure that Mary does not expect any such thing, and that she is willing to wait. If I can shorten the term of waiting by hard work, I will do so." The decision to which Phineas had come on this matter was probably made known to Mrs. Flood Jones after some mild fashion by old Mrs. Finn. Nothing more was said to Phineas about a joint household; but he was quite able to perceive from the manner of the lady towards him that his proposed mother-in-law wished him to understand that he was treating her daughter very badly. What did it signify? None of them knew the story of Madame Goesler, and of course none of them would know it. None of them would ever hear how well he had behaved to his little Mary.

But Mary did know it all before he left her to go up to Dublin. The two lovers allowed themselves, - or were allowed by their elders, one week of exquisite bliss together; and during this week, Phineas told her, I think, everything. He told her everything as far as he could do so without seeming to boast of his own successes. How is a man not to tell such tales when he has on his arm, close to him, a girl who tells him her little everything of life, and only asks for his confidence in return? And then his secrets are so precious to her and so sacred, that he feels as sure of her fidelity as though she were a very G.o.ddess of faith and trust. And the temptation to tell is so great. For all that he has to tell she loves him the better and still the better. A man desires to win a virgin heart, and is happy to know, - or at least to believe, - that he has won it. With a woman every former rival is an added victim to the wheels of the triumphant chariot in which she is sitting. "All these has he known and loved, culling sweets from each of them. But now he has come to me, and I am the sweetest of them all." And so Mary was taught to believe of Laura and of Violet and of Madame Goesler, - that though they had had charms to please, her lover had never been so charmed as he was now while she was hanging to his breast. And I think that she was right in her belief. During those lovely summer evening walks along the sh.o.r.es of Lough Derg, Phineas was as happy as he had ever been at any moment of his life.

"I shall never be impatient, - never," she said to him on the last evening. "All I want is that you should write to me."

"I shall want more than that, Mary."

"Then you must come down and see me. When you do come they will be happy, happy days for me. But of course we cannot be married for the next twenty years."

"Say forty, Mary."

"I will say anything that you like; - you will know what I mean just as well. And, Phineas, I must tell you one thing, - though it makes me sad to think of it, and will make me sad to speak of it."

"I will not have you sad on our last night, Mary."

"I must say it. I am beginning to understand how much you have given up for me."

"I have given up nothing for you."

"If I had not been at Killaloe when Mr. Monk was here, and if we had not, - had not, - oh dear, if I had not loved you so very much, you might have remained in London, and that lady would have been your wife."

"Never!" said Phineas stoutly.

"Would she not? She must not be your wife now, Phineas. I am not going to pretend that I will give you up."

"That is unkind, Mary."

"Oh, well; you may say what you please. If that is unkind, I am unkind. It would kill me to lose you."

Had he done right? How could there be a doubt about it? How could there be a question about it? Which of them had loved him, or was capable of loving him as Mary loved him? What girl was ever so sweet, so gracious, so angelic, as his own Mary? He swore to her that he was prouder of winning her than of anything he had ever done in all his life, and that of all the treasures that had ever come in his way she was the most precious. She went to bed that night the happiest girl in all Connaught, although when she parted from him she understood that she was not to see him again till Christmas-Eve.

But she did see him again before the summer was over, and the manner of their meeting was in this wise. Immediately after the pa.s.sing of that scrambled Irish Reform Bill, Parliament, as the reader knows, was dissolved. This was in the early days of June, and before the end of July the new members were again a.s.sembled at Westminster. This session, late in summer, was very terrible; but it was not very long, and then it was essentially necessary. There was something of the year's business which must yet be done, and the country would require to know who were to be the Ministers of the Government. It is not needed that the reader should be troubled any further with the strategy of one political leader or of another, or that more should be said of Mr. Monk and his tenant-right. The House of Commons had offended Mr. Gresham by voting in a majority against him, and Mr. Gresham had punished the House of Commons by subjecting it to the expense and nuisance of a new election. All this is const.i.tutional, and rational enough to Englishmen, though it may be unintelligible to strangers. The upshot on the present occasion was that the Ministers remained in their places and that Mr. Monk's bill, though it had received the substantial honour of a second reading, pa.s.sed away for the present into the limbo of abortive legislation.

All this would not concern us at all, nor our poor hero much, were it not that the great men with whom he had been for two years so pleasant a colleague, remembered him with something of affectionate regret. Whether it began with Mr. Gresham or with Lord Cantrip, I will not say; - or whether Mr. Monk, though now a political enemy, may have said a word that brought about the good deed. Be that as it may, just before the summer session was brought to a close Phineas received the following letter from Lord Cantrip: - Downing Street, August 4, 186.

My dear Mr. Finn, - Mr. Gresham has been talking to me, and we both think that possibly a permanent Government appointment may be acceptable to you. We have no doubt, that should this be the case, your services would be very valuable to the country. There is a vacancy for a poor-law inspector at present in Ireland, whose residence I believe should be in Cork. The salary is a thousand a-year. Should the appointment suit you, Mr. Gresham will be most happy to nominate you to the office. Let me have a line at your early convenience.

Believe me, Most sincerely yours, Cantrip.

He received the letter one morning in Dublin, and within three hours he was on his route to Killaloe. Of course he would accept the appointment, but he would not even do that without telling Mary of his new prospect. Of course he would accept the appointment. Though he had been as yet barely two months in Dublin, though he had hardly been long enough settled to his work to have hoped to be able to see in which way there might be a vista open leading to success, still he had fancied that he had seen that success was impossible. He did not know how to begin, - and men were afraid of him, thinking that he was unsteady, arrogant, and p.r.o.ne to failure. He had not seen his way to the possibility of a guinea.

"A thousand a-year!" said Mary Flood Jones, opening her eyes wide with wonder at the golden future before them.

"It is nothing very great for a perpetuity," said Phineas.

"Oh, Phineas; surely a thousand a-year will be very nice."

"It will be certain," said Phineas, "and then we can be married to-morrow."

"But I have been making up my mind to wait ever so long," said Mary.

"Then your mind must be unmade," said Phineas.

What was the nature of the reply to Lord Cantrip the reader may imagine, and thus we will leave our hero an Inspector of Poor Houses in the County of Cork.

THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS.

First published in serial form in the.

Fortnightly Review from July, 1871, to February, 1873, and in book form in 1872.

VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.