 Chapter 6 of Phineas Redux This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollop Chapter 6 Recording by Ken of Acunes Phineas and his old friends. Phineas Finn returned from Tankerville to London in Much Better Spirits than those which had accompanied him on his journey-theather. He was not elected, but then, before the election, he had come to believe that it was quite out of the question that he should be elected. And now he did think it probable that he should get the seat on a petition. A scrutiny used to be a very expensive business, but under the existing law, made as the scrutiny would be in the borough itself, it would cost but little. And that little, should he be successful, would fall on the shoulders of Mr. Broughborough. Should he knock off eight votes and lose none himself, he would be member for Tankerville. He knew that many votes had been given for Broughborough, which, if the truth were known of them, would be knocked off. And he did not know that the same could be said of any one of those by which he had been supported. But unfortunately the judge by whom all this would be decided might not reach Tankerville in his travels till after Christmas, perhaps not till after Easter, and in the meantime, what should he do with himself? As for going back to Dublin, that was now out of the question. He had entered upon a feverish state of existence in which it was impossible that he should live in Ireland. Should he ultimately fail in regard to his seat, he must vanish out of the world. While he remained in his condition he would not even endeavour to think how he might, in such case, best bestow himself. For the present he would remain within the region of politics and live as near as he could to the world of the wheel of which the sound was so dear to him. Of one club he had always remained a member, and he had already been re-elected a member of the Reform. So he took up his residence once more at the house of a certain Mr and Mrs Bunce in Great Marlborough Street, with whom he had lodged when he first became a Member of Parliament. So you're at the old game, Mr Finn, said his landlord. Yes, at the old game, I suppose it's the same with you. Now Mr Bunce had been a very violent politician, and used to rejoice in calling himself a Democrat. Pretty much the same, Mr Finn, I don't see that things are much better than they used to be. They tell me at the People's Banner office that the Lords have had as much to do with this election as with any that ever went before it. Perhaps they don't know much about it at the People's Banner office. I thought Mr Slide and the People's Banner had gone over to the other side, Bunce. Mr Slide is pretty wide awake, whatever side he's on. Not but what he's disgraced himself by what he's been and done now. Mr Slide in former days had been the editor of the People's Banner, and circumstances had arisen in consequence of which there had been some acquaintance between him and our hero. I see you was hammering away at the church down at Tankerville. I just said a word or two. You was all right there, Mr Finn. I can't say as I ever saw very much in your religion, but what a man keeps in the way of religion for his own use is never nothing to me, as what I keep says nothing to him. I'm afraid you don't keep much, Mr Bunce. That's nothing to you, neither is it, sir. No, indeed. But when we read of churches, as is called state churches, churches as have bishops you and I have to pay for as never goes into them, but we don't pay the bishops, Mr Bunce. Oh yes we do, because if they wasn't paid the money would come to us to do as we pleased with it. We proved all that when we paired them down a bit. What's an ecclesiastical commission? Only another name for a box to put the money into till you want to take it out again. When we hear of churches such as these, as is not kept up by the people uses them, just as the theatres are, Mr Finn, or the gin shops, then I know there's a deal more to be done before honest men can come by their own. You're right enough, Mr Finn, you are, as far as churches go, and you was right too when you cut and run off the treasury bench. I hope you ain't going to sit on that stool again." Mr Bunce was a privileged person, and Mrs Bunce made up for his apparent rudeness by her own affectionate cordiality. Dearly me, and isn't it a thing for sore eyes to have you back again? I never expected this, but I'll do for you, Mr Finn, just as I ever did in the old days, when it was I that was sorry when I heard of the poor young lady's death. So I was, Mr Finn. Well, then I won't mention a name ever again. But after all there's been betwixt you and us, it wouldn't be natural to pass it by without one word, would it, Mr Finn? Well, yes, he's just the same man as ever without a half of the difference. He's gone on paying that shilling to the union every week of his life, just as he used to. I never got so much out of it, not as a junketing into the country that he didn't. Makes me that sick sometimes when I think of where it's gone to, that I don't know how to bear it. Well, yes, that is true, Mr Finn. There never was a man better at bringing home his money to his wife than Bunce, paying that shelling. If he'd drink it, which he never does, I think I'd bear it better than give it to that nasty union. And young Jack writes, as well as his father, pretty nigh, Mr Finn, which is a comfort. Mr Bunce was a journeyman's scrivener at the law stationers, and keeps himself, but he don't bring home his money, nor yet it can't be expected, Mr Finn. I know what the youngins will do and what they won't. And Mary Jane is quite handy about the house now, only she do break things, which is an aggravation, and the hot water shall always up at eight o'clock to a minute, if I bring it with my own hand, Mr Finn. And so he was established once more, in his old rooms, in great Marble Street. And as he sat back in the armchair, which he used to know so well, a hundred memories of former days crowded back upon him. Lord Chilton, for a few months, had lived with him, and then there had arisen a quarrel, which he had for a time thought would dissolve his old life into ruin. Now Lord Chilton was again his very intimate friend, and there had used to sit a needy moneylender, whom he'd been unable to banish. Alas, alas, how soon might he now require that moneylender's services? And then he recollected how he had left these rooms, to go into others, grander and more appropriate to his life, when he had filled high office under the state. Would there ever again come to him such cause for migration? And would he again be able to load the frame of the looking-glass over the fire with countless cards from Countess's and Minister's wives? He had opened the oyster for himself once, though it had closed again with so sharp a snap when the point of his knife had been withdrawn. Would he be able to insert the point again between those two difficult shells? Would the Countess's once more be kind to him? Would drawing-rooms be open to him, and sometimes open to him, and to no other? Then he thought of certain special drawing-rooms in which wonderful things had been said to him. Since that he had been a married man, and those special drawing-rooms, and those wonderful words, had in no degree actuated him in his choice of a wife. He had left all those things of his own free will, as though telling himself that there was a better life than they offered to him. But was he sure that he had found it to be better? He had certainly sighed for the gods which he had left. While his young wife was living, he had kept his eyes down so that she should not hear them. But he had been forced to acknowledge that his new life had been vapid and flavourless. Now he had been tempted back again to the old haunts. Would the Countess's cards be showered upon him again? One card, or rather note, had reached him while he was yet at Tankerville, reminding him of old days. It was from Mrs. Lowe, the wife of the barrister, with whom he had worked when he had been a law student in London. She had asked him to come and dine with them after the old fashion in Baker Street, naming a day as to which she presumed that he would by that time have finished his affairs at Tankerville, intimating also that Mr. Lowe would then have finished his at North Broughton. Now Mr. Lowe had sat for North Broughton before Phineas left London, and his wife spoke of the seat as a certainty. Phineas could not keep himself from feeling that Mrs. Lowe intended to triumph over him. But nevertheless he accepted the invitation. They were very glad to see him, explaining that, as nobody was supposed to be in town, nobody had been asked to meet him. In former days he had been very intimate in that house, having received from both of them much kindness, mingled, perhaps, with some touch of severity on the part of the lady. But the ground for that was gone, and Mrs. Lowe was no longer painfully severe. A few words were said as to his great loss. Mrs. Lowe once raised her eyebrows in pretended surprise when Phineas explained that he had thrown up his place, and then they settled down on the question of the day. And so, said Mrs. Lowe, you've begun to attack the church. It must be remembered that at this moment Mr. Dobiny had not as yet electrified the mines of East Barsonshire, and that therefore Mrs. Lowe was not disturbed. To Mrs. Lowe, church and state was the very breath of her nostrils, and if her husband could not be said to live by means of the same atmosphere, it was because the breath of his nostrils had been drawn chiefly in the Vice-Chancellor's Court in Lincoln's Inn. But he, no doubt, would be very much disturbed indeed, should he ever be told that he was required, as an expectant member of Mr. Dobiny's party, to vote for the disestablishment of the Church of England. You don't mean that I am guilty of throwing the first stone, said Phineas. They have been throwing stones at the temple since first it was built, said Mrs. Lowe, with energy, but they have fallen off its polished shafts in dust and fragments. I'm afraid that Mrs. Lowe, when she allowed herself to speak thus energetically, entertained some confused idea that the Church of England and the Christian religion were one and the same thing, or at least, that they had been brought into the world together. You haven't thrown the first stone, said Mr. Lowe, but you have taken up the throwing at the first moment in which stones may be dangerous. No stones can be dangerous, said Mrs. Lowe. The idea of a state church, said Phineas, is opposed to my theory of political progress. What I hope is that my friends will not suppose that I attack the Protestant Church because I am a Roman Catholic. If I were a priest it would be my business to do so, but I am not a priest. Mr. Lowe gave his old friend a bottle of his best wine, and in all friendly observances treated him with due affection. But neither did he, nor did his wife, for a moment abstain from attacking their guest in respect to his speeches at Tankerville. It seemed indeed, to Phineas, that as Mrs. Lowe was buckled up in such triple armour that she feared nothing, she might have been less loud in expressing her abhorrence of the enemies of the church. If she feared nothing, why should she scream so loudly? Between the two he was a good deal crushed and confounded, and Mrs. Lowe was very triumphant when she allowed him to escape from her hounds at ten o'clock. But at that moment nothing had yet been heard in Baker Street of Mr. Dobine's proposition to the electors of East Barsonshire. Poor Mrs. Lowe, we can foresee that there is much grief in store for her, and some rocks ahead too in the political career of her husband. Phineas was still in London hanging about the clubs doing nothing, discussing Mr. Dobine's wonderful treachery with such men as came up to town, and waiting for the meeting of Parliament when he received the following letter from Lady Laura Kennedy. Dresden, November 18th. My dear Mr. Phine, I have heard with great pleasure from my sister-in-law that you have been staying with them at Harrington Hall. It seems so like old days that you and Oswald and Violet should be together, so much more natural than that you should be living in Dublin. I cannot conceive of you as living any other life than that of the House of Commons, Downing Street and the clubs, nor do I wish to do so. And when I hear of you at Harrington Hall I know that you are on your way to the other things. Do tell me what life is like with Oswald and Violet. Of course he never writes. He is one of those men who, on marrying, assume that they have at last got a person to do a duty which has always hitherto been neglected. Violet does write, but tells me little or nothing of themselves. Her letters are very nice, full of anecdote, well written, letters that are fit to be kept and printed, but they are never family letters. She is inimitable in discussing the miseries of her own position as the wife of a master of hounds, but the miseries are evidently fictitious as the art is real. She told me how poor dear Lady Baldock communicated to you her unhappiness about her daughter in a manner that made even me laugh, and would make thousands laugh in days to come were it ever to be published. But of her inside life, of her baby, or of her husband as a husband, she never says a word. You will have seen it all and have enough of the feminine side of a man's character to be able to tell me how they are living. I'm sure they are happy together because Violet has more common sense than any woman I ever knew. And pray tell me about the affair at Tancerville. My cousin Barrington writes me word that you will certainly get the seat. He declares that Mr Broburer is almost disposed not to fight the battle, though a man more disposed to fight never bribed an elector. But Barrington seems to think that you managed as well as you did by getting outside the traces, as he calls it. We certainly did not think that you would come out strong against the church. Don't suppose that I can. For myself, I hate to think of the coming severance, but if it must come, why not by your hands as well as by any other? It is hardly possible that you in your heart should love a Protestant, ascendant church. But as Barrington says, a horse won't get oats unless he works steady between the traces. As to myself, what am I to say to you? I and my father live here a sad, somber, solitary life together. We have a large, furnished house outside the town, with a pleasant view and a pretty garden. He does nothing. He reads the English papers. Talks of English parties is driven out and eats his dinner and sleeps. At home, as you know, not only did he take an active part in politics, but he was active also in the management of his own property. Now it seems to him to be almost too great a trouble to write a letter to his steward. And all this has come upon him because of me. He is here because he cannot bear that I should live alone. I have offered to return to him to Salisbury, thinking Mr. Kennedy would trouble me no further, or to remain here by myself. But he will consent to neither. In truth the burden of idleness has now fallen upon him so heavily that he cannot shake it off. He dreads that he may be called upon to do anything. To me it is all one tragedy. I cannot but think of things as they were two or three years since. My father and my husband were both in the cabinet, and you, young as you were, stood but one step below it. Oswald was out in the cold. He was very poor. Papa thought all evil of him. Violet had refused him over and over again. He quarreled with you and all the world seemed against him. Then, of a sudden, you vanished, and we vanished. An ineffable misery fell upon me and upon my wretched husband. All our good things went from us at a blow. I and my poor father became as it were outcasts. But Oswald suddenly retricked his beams, and his flaming in the forehead of the morning sky. He, I believe, has no more than he had deserved. He won his wife honestly, did he not? And he has ever been honest. It is my pride to think I never gave him up, but the bitter part of my cup consists in this. That as he has won what he has deserved, so have we. I complain of no injustice. Our castle was built upon the sand. Why should Mr. Kennedy have been a cabinet minister? And why should I have been his wife? There is no one else of whom I can ask that question as I can of you, and no one else who can answer it as you can. Of Mr. Kennedy it is singular how little I know and how little I ever hear. There is no one whom I can ask to tell me of him. That he did not attend during the last session I do know. And we presume that he has now abandoned his seat. I fear that his health is bad, or perhaps worse still, that his mind is affected by the gloom of his life. I suppose that he lives exclusively at Lachlynta. From time to time I implored by him to return to my duty beneath his roof. He grounds his demand on no affection of his own, or no presumption that any affection can remain with me. He says no word of happiness. He offers no comfort. He does not attempt to persuade with promises of future care. He makes his claim simply on holy writ, and on the feeling of duty which thence ought to weigh upon me. He has never even told me that he loves me, but he is persistent in declaring that those whom God has joined together nothing human should separate. Since I have been here I have written to him once. Some sad, long, weary letter. Since that I am constrained to leave his letters unanswered. And now, my friend, could you not do for me a great kindness? For a while till the inquiry be made at Tankerville your time must be vacant. Can you not come and see us? I have told Papa that I should ask you, and he would be delighted. I cannot explain to you what it would be to me to be able to talk again to one who knows all the errors and all the efforts of my past life as you do. Dresden is very cold in the winter. I do not know whether you would mind that. We are very particular about the rooms, but my father bears the temperature wonderfully well, though he complains. In March we move down south for a couple of months. Do come if you can. Most sincerely yours, Laura Kennedy. If you come, of course you will have yourself brought direct to us. If you can learn anything of Mr. Kennedy's life and of his real condition, pray do. The faint rooms which reach me are painfully distressing. Phineas Redux by Antony Trollop Chapter 7 Coming Home from Hunting Lady children was probably right when she declared that her husband must have been made to be a master of hounds, presuming it to be granted that somebody must be master of hounds. Such necessity certainly does exist in this, the present condition of England. Hunting prevails, hunting men increase in numbers, foxes are preserved, farmers do not rebel, owners of covarts, even when they are not hunting men themselves, acknowledge the fact and do not dare to maintain their pheasants at the expense of the much better loved four-footed animal. Hounds are bred and horses are trained specially to the work. A master of fox hounds is a necessity of the period. Allowing so much we cannot but allow also that Lord children must have been made to fill the situation. He understood hunting, and perhaps there was nothing else requiring acute intelligence that he did understand. And he understood hunting, not only as a huntsman understands it, in that branch of the science which refers simply to the judicious pursuit of the fox being probably inferior to his own huntsman in that respect. But he knew exactly what men should do and what they should not. In regard to all those various interests with which he was brought in contact he knew when to hold fast to his own claims and when to make no claims at all. He was afraid of no one, but he was possessed of a sense of justice which induced him to acknowledge the rights of those around him. When he found that the earths were not stopped in Trumpton Wood, from which he judged that the keeper would complain that the hounds would not or could not kill any of the cubs found there, he wrote in very round terms to the duke who owned it. If his grace did not want to have the wood drawn, let him say so. If he did, let him have the earths stopped. But when that great question came up as to the Gartlow Covert's, when that uncommonly disagreeable gentleman, Mr. Smith of Gartlow, gave notice that the hounds should not be admitted into his place at all, Lord Chiltern soon put the whole matter straight by taking part with the disagreeable gentleman. The disagreeable gentleman had been ill-used. Men had ridden among his young laurels. If gentlemen who did hunt, so said Lord Chiltern to his own supporters, did not know how to conduct themselves in a manner of hunting, how was it to be expected that a gentleman who did not hunt should do so? On this occasion Lord Chiltern raided his own hunt so roundly that Mr. Smith and he were quite in a bond together, and the Gartlow Covert's were reopened. Now all the world knows that the Gartlow Covert's, though small, are material as being in the very center of the break country. It is essential that a master of hounds should be somewhat feared by the men who ride with him. There should be much awe mixed with the love felt for him. He should be a man with whom other men will not care to argue. An irrational, cut and thrust, unscrupulous, but yet distinctly honest man, one who can be tyrannical but will tyrannize only over the evil spirits. A man capable of intense cruelty to those alongside of him, but who will know whether his victim does in truth deserve scalping before he draws his knife. He should be savage and yet good-humored, severe and yet forbearing, truculent and pleasant in the same moment. He should exercise unflinching authority, but should do so with the consciousness that he can support it only by his own popularity. His speech should be short and sysive, always to the point, but never founded on argument. His rules are based on no reason and will never bear discussion. He must be the most candid of men, also the most close, and yet never a hypocrite. He must condescend to no explanation, and yet must impress men with an assurance that his decisions will certainly be right. He must rule all as though no man's special welfare were of any account, and yet must administer all so as to offend none. Friends he must have, but not favorites. He must be self-sacrificing, diligent, eager, and watchful. He must be strong in help, strong in heart, strong in purpose, and strong in purse. He must be economical and yet lavish, generous as the wind, and yet obdurate as the frost. He should be assured that of all human pursuits, hunting is the best, and that of all living things, a fox is the most valuable. He must so train his heart as to feel for the fox a mingled tenderness and cruelty which is inexplicable to ordinary men and women. His desire to preserve the brute and then to kill him should be equally intense and passionate. And he should do it all in accordance with a code of unwritten laws which cannot be learnt without profound study. It may not perhaps be truly asserted that Lord Chiltern answered this description in every detail, but he combined so many of the qualities required that his wife showed her discernment when she declared that he seemed to have been made to be a master of hounds. Early in that November he was riding home with Miss Palliser by his side while the huntsmen and whips were trotting on with the hounds before him. You call that a good run, don't you? No, I don't. What was the matter with it? I declare it seems to me that something is always wrong. Men like hunting better than anything else and yet I never find any man contented. In the first place we didn't kill. You know you're short of foxes at Gartlow, said Miss Palliser, who, as is the manner with all hunting ladies, like to show that she understood the affairs of the hunt. If I knew there were but one fox in a county and I got upon that one fox I would like to kill that one fox, barring a vixen in March. I thought it very nice. It was fast enough for anybody. You might go as fast with a drag if that's all. I'll tell you something else. We should have killed him if Moll hadn't once ridden over the hounds when we came out of a little wood. I spoke very sharply to him. I heard you, Lord Children. And I suppose you thought I was a brute. Who, I? No, I didn't. Not particularly, you know. Men do say such things to each other. He doesn't mind that I fancy. I suppose a man does not like to be told that directly he shows himself in a run the sport is all over and the hounds ought to be taken home. Did I say that? I don't remember now what I said, but I know he made me angry. Come, let us trot on. They can take the hounds home without us. Good night, cocks, said Miss Palliser as they passed by the pack. Poor Mr. Moll. I did pity him, and I do think he does care for it, though he is so impassive. He would be with us now, only he is chewing the cut of his unhappiness and solitude half a mile behind us. That is hard upon you. Hard upon me, Lord Children, it is hard upon him and perhaps upon you. Why should it be hard upon me? Hard upon him, I should have said, though why it shouldn't be the other way I don't know. He's a friend of yours. Certainly. And then a special friend, I suppose. As a matter of course, Violet talks to me about you both. No doubt she does. When once a woman is married she should be regarded as having thrown off her allegiance to her own sex. She is sure to be treacherous at any rate in one direction. Not that Lady Children can tell anything of me that might not be told to all the world as far as I am concerned. There is nothing in it, then. Nothing at all. Honor bright? Oh, honor as bright as it ever is in such matters as these. I am sorry for that. Very sorry. Why so, Lord Children? Because if you were engaged to him I thought that perhaps you might have induced him to write a little less forward. Lord Children, said Miss Palliser seriously, I will never again speak to you a word on any subject except hunting. At this moment Gerard Mall came up behind them with a cigar in his mouth, apparently quite unconscious of any of that displeasure as to which Miss Palliser had supposed that he was chewing the cud in solitude. That was the goodest thing, Children, he said. Very good. And the hounds hunted him well to the end. Very well. It's odd how the scent will die away at a moment. You see they couldn't carry on a field after we got out of the cops. Not a field. Considering all things I am glad we didn't kill him. Uncommon glad, said Lord Children. Then they trotted on in silence a little way and Mall again dropped behind. I'm blessed if he knows that I spoke to him, roughly, said Lord Children. He's deaf, I think, when he chooses to be. You're not sorry, Lord Children? Not in the least. Nothing will ever do any good. As for offending him you might as well swear at a tree and think to offend it. There's comfort in that, anyway. I wonder whether he'd talk to you if I went away. I hope that you won't try the experiment. I don't believe he would or I'd go at once. I wonder whether you really do care for him. Not in the least. Or he for you. Quite indifferent, I should say. But I can't answer for him, Lord Children, quite as positively as I can for myself. You know as things go people have to play at caring for each other. That's what we call flirting. Just the reverse. Flirting I take to be the excitement of love without its reality and without its ordinary result in marriage. This playing at caring has none of the excitement, but it often leads to the result and sometimes ends in downright affection. If Maul perseveres then you'll take him and by and by you'll come to like him. In twenty years it might come to that if we were always to live in the same house, but as he leaves Harrington tomorrow, and we may probably not meet each other for the next four years, I think the chance is small. Then Maul trotted up again, and after riding in silence with the other two for half an hour, he pulled out his case and lit a fresh cigar from the end of the old one which he threw away. Have a backy, children, he said. No, thank you. I never smoked going home. My mind is too full. I've all that family behind to think of, and I'm generally out of sorts with the miseries of the day. I must say another word to the cocks, or I should have to go to the kennels on my way home. And so he dropped behind. Gerard Maul smoked half his cigar before he spoke a word, and this palacer was quite resolved that she would not open her mouth till he had spoken. I suppose he likes it, he said at last. Who likes what, Mr. Maul? Children likes blowing fellows up. It's a part of his business. That's the way I look at it, but I should think it must be disagreeable. He takes such a deal of trouble about it. I heard him going on today to someone as though his whole soul depended on it. He is very energetic. Just so. I'm quite sure it's a mistake. What does a man ever get by it? Folks around you soon discount it till it goes for nothing. I don't think energy goes for nothing, Mr. Maul. A bull in a china shop is not a useful animal, nor is he ornamental, but there can be no doubt of his energy. The hare was full of energy, but he didn't win the race. The man who stands still is the man who keeps his ground. You don't stand still when you're out hunting. No, I ride about, and children swears at me. Every man is a fool sometimes. And your wisdom, perfect at all other times, breaks down in the hunting field? I don't, in the least, mind your chaffing. I know what you think of me just as well as though you told me. What do I think of you? That I'm a poor creature, generally half asleep, shallow-pated, slow-blooded, ignorant, useless, and unambitious. Certainly unambitious, Mr. Maul. And that word carries all the others. What's the good of ambition? There's the man they were talking about last night, that Irishman. Mr. Finn? Yes, Phineas Finn. He is an ambitious fellow. He'll have to starve according to what children was saying. I've since enough to know I can't do any good. You are sensible, I admit. Very well, Miss Palliser. You can say just what you like, of course. You have that privilege. I did not mean to say anything severe. I do admit that you are master of a certain philosophy, for which much may be said, but you are not to expect that I shall express an approval which I do not feel. But I want you to approve it. Ah, there I fear I cannot oblige you. I want you to approve it, though no one else may. Though all else should do so, I cannot. Then take the task of curing the sick one and of strengthening the weak one into your own hands, if you will teach perhaps I may learn. I have no mission for teaching, Mr. Mall. You once said that—that do not be so ungenerous as to throw in my teeth what I once said, if I ever said a word, that I would not now repeat. I do not think that I am ungenerous, Miss Palliser. I am sure you are not. Nor am I self-confident. I am obliged to seek comfort from such scraps of encouragement as may have fallen in my way here and there. I once did think that you intended to love me. Does love go by intentions? I think so, frequently with men and much more so with girls. It will never go so with me. I shall never intend to love anyone. If I ever love any man it will be because I am made to do so, despite my intentions. As a fortress is taken—well, if you like to put it so—only I claim this advantage that I can always get rid of my enemy when he bores me. Am I boring you now? I didn't say so. Here is Lord Chiltern again, and I know by the rattle of his horse's feet that something is the matter. Lord Chiltern came up full of wrath. One of the men's horses was thoroughly broken down, and as the master said, wasn't worth the saddle he carried. He didn't care a blank for the horse, but the man hadn't told him. At this rate there won't be anything to carry anybody by Christmas. You'll have to buy some more, said Gerard Mall. Buy some more, said Lord Chiltern, turning round and looking at the man. He talks of buying horses as he would sugar-plums. Then they trotted in at the gate, and in two minutes were at the hall door. End of Chapter 7. Recording by Leanne Howlett Chapter 8 of Phineas Redux This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Leanne Howlett Phineas Redux by Antony Trollop Chapter 8. The Address Before the 11th of November, the day on which Parliament was to meet, the whole country was in a hubbub. Consternation and triumph were perhaps equally predominant and equally strong. There were those who declared that now at length was Great Britain to be ruined than actual present truth, and those who asserted that, of a sudden, after a fashion so wholly unexpected as to be divine, as great fires, great famines, and great wars are called divine, a mighty hand had been stretched out to take away the remaining incubus of superstition, priest craft, and bigotry under which England had hitherto been laboring. The proposed disestablishment of the State Church of England was, of course, the subject of this diversity of opinion. And there was not only diversity, but with it great confusion. The political feelings of the country are, as a rule, so well marked that it is easy, as to almost every question, to separate the sheep from the goats. With but few exceptions one can tell where to look for the supporters and where for the opponents of one measure or of another. Meetings are called in this or in that public hall to assist or to combat the minister of the day, and men know what they are about. But now it was not so. It was understood that Mr. Dobiny, the accredited leader of the conservatives, was about to bring in the bill, but no one as yet knew who would support the bill. His own party to a man, without a single exception, were certainly opposed to the measure in their minds. It must be so. It could not but be certain that they should hate it. Each individual sitting on the conservative side in either house did most certainly within his own bosom cry Ichabod when the fatal news reached his ears. But such private opinions and inward wailings need not and probably would not guide the body. Ichabod had been cried before, though probably never with such intensity of feeling. Disestablishment might be worse than free trade or household suffrage, but was not more absolutely opposed to conservative convictions that had been those great measures. And yet the party as a party had swallowed them both. To the first and lesser evil, a compact little body of staunch commoners had stood forth in opposition. But nothing had come of it to those true Britons beyond a feeling of living in the cold shade of exclusion. When the greater evil arrived, that of household suffrage, a measure which twenty years since would hardly have been advocated by the advanced liberals of the day, the conservatives had learned to acknowledge the folly of clinging to their own convictions and had swallowed the dose without serious disruption of their ranks. Every man, with but an exception or two, took the measure up, some with faces so singularly distorted as to create true pity, some with an assumption of indifference, some with affected glee. But in the double process the party had become used to this mode of carrying on the public service. As poor old England must go to the dogs, as the doom had been pronounced against the country that it should be ruled by the folly of the many foolish and not by the wisdom of the few wise, why should the few wise remain out in the cold, seeing as they did that by so doing no good would be done to the country? Desensions among their foes did, when properly used, give them power. But such power they could only use by carrying measures which they themselves believed to be ruinous. But the ruin would be a certain should they abstain. Each individual might have gloried in standing aloof, in hiding his face beneath his toga, and in remembering that Rome did once exist in her splendor. But a party cannot afford to hide its face in its toga. A party has to be practical. A party can only live by having its share of garters, lord lieutenants, bishops, and attorney generals. Though the country were roined, the party should be supported. Hitherto the party had been supported, and had laterally enjoyed almost its share of stars and garters, thanks to the individual skill and strategy of that great English political von Moltke, Mr. Dabony. And now what would the party say about the disestablishment of the church? Even a party must draw the line somewhere. It was bad to sacrifice things mundane, but this thing was the very holy of holies. Was nothing to be conserved by a conservative party? What if Mr. Dabony were to explain some day to the electors of East Barsonshire that an hereditary peerage was an absurdity? What if, in some rural nook of his Biosha, he should suggest an ambiguous language to the farmers that a republic was the only form of government capable of a logical defense? Duke had already said to Duke and Earl to Earl, and Baronet to Baronet, that there must be a line somewhere. Bishops, as a rule, say but little to each other, and now were afraid to say anything. The church, which had been, which was, so truly beloved, surely that must be beyond the line. And yet they're crept through the very marrow of the party, an agonizing belief that Mr. Dabony would carry the bulk of his party with him into the lobby of the House of Commons. But if such was the dismay of the conservatives, how shall any writer depict the consternation of the liberals? If there be a feeling odious to the mind of a sober, hardworking man, it is the feeling that the bread he has earned is to be taken out of his mouth. The pay, the patronage, the powers, and the pleasure of government were all due to the liberals. God bless my soul, said Mr. Rattler, who always saw things in a practical light. We have a larger fighting majority than any party has had since Lord Liverpool's time. They have no right to attempt it. They are bound to go out. There is nothing of honesty left in politics, said Mr. Bond Teem, declaring that he was sick of the life. Barrington Earl thought that the whole liberal party should oppose the measure. Though they were liberals, they were not Democrats, nor yet infidels. But when Barrington Earl said this, the great leaders of the liberal party had not as yet decided on their ground of action. There was much difficulty in reaching any decision. It had been asserted so often that the disestablishment of the Church was only a question of time that the intelligence of the country had gradually so learned to regard it. Who had said so, men did not know and did not inquire, but the words were spoken everywhere. Parsons with sad hearts, men who in their own parishes were enthusiastic, pure, pious, and useful, whispered them in the dead of the night to the wives of their bosoms. Bishops who had become less pure by contact with the world at clubs shrugged their shoulders and wagged their heads, and remembered comfortably the sanctity of vested interests. Statesmen listened to them with politeness and did not deny that they were true. In the free intercourse of closest friendships the matter was discussed between ex-secretaries of state. The press teamed with the assertion that it was only a question of time. Some fervent, credulous friends predicted another century of life. Some hard-hearted logical opponents thought that twenty years would put an end to the anomaly. A few stout enemies had sworn on the hustings with an anathema that the present session should see the deposition from her high place of this eldest daughter of the woman of Babylon. But none had expected the blow so soon as this, and none certainly had expected it from this hand. But what should the liberal party do? Rattler was foreposing Mr. Dabony with all their force, without touching the merits of the case. It was no fitting work for Mr. Dabony, and the suddenness of the proposition coming from such a quarter would justify them now and forever, even though they themselves should disestablish everything before the session were over. Barrington Earl, suffering under a real political conviction for once in his life, was desirous of a positive and chivalric defense of the church. He believed in the twenty years. Mr. Bontein shut himself up and discussed. Things were amiss, and he thought the evil was due to want of party zeal on the part of his own leader, Mr. Gresham. He did not dare to say this, lest, when the house door should at last be opened, he might not be invited to enter with the others, but such was his conviction. If we were at all a little less in the abstract, and little more in the concrete, it would be better for us. Lawrence Fitzgibbon, when these words have been whispered to him by Mr. Bontein, had hardly understood them. But it had been explained to him that his friend had meant, men not measures. When Parliament met Mr. Gresham, the leader of the liberal party, had not as yet expressed any desire to his general followers. The queen's speech was read, and the one paragraph which seemed to possess any great public interest, was almost a repetition of the words which Mr. Dabony had spoken to the electors of East Barsonshire. It will probably be necessary for you to review the connection which still exists between and which binds together the church and the state. Mr. Dabony's words had, of course, been more fluent, but the gist of the expression was the same. He had been quite in earnest when addressing his friends in the country, and though there had been but an interval of a few weeks, the conservative party in the two houses heard the paragraph read without surprise and without a murmur. Some said that the gentleman on the treasury bench in the House of Commons did not look to be comfortable. Mr. Dabony sat with his hat over his brow, mute, apparently impassive and unapproachable, during the reading of the speech and the moving and seconding of the address. The House was very full, and there was much murmuring on the side of the opposition. But from the government benches hardly a sound was heard, as a young gentleman from one of the Midland Counties and a deputy lieutenant's uniform who had hitherto been known for no particular ideas of his own, but had been believed to be at any rate true to the church, explained, not in very clear language, that the time had at length come when the interests of religion demanded a wider support and a fuller sympathy than could be afforded under that system of church endowment and state establishment for which the country had hitherto been so grateful and for which the country had such boundless occasion for gratitude. Another gentleman in the uniform of the guards seconded the address and declared that nothing was a sagacity of a legislature so necessary as in discerning the period in which that which had hitherto been good ceased to be serviceable. The status pupillaris was mentioned and it was understood that he had implied that England was now old enough to go on in matters of religion without a tutor in the shape of a state church. Who makes the speeches absolutely puts together the words which are uttered when the address is moved and seconded. It can hardly be that lessons are prepared and sent to the noble lords and honorable gentlemen to be learned by heart like a schoolboy's task. And yet from their construction style and general tone, from the platitudes which they contain as well as from the general safety and good sense of the remarks, from the absence of any attempt to improve a great occasion by the fire of oratory, one cannot but be convinced that a very absolute control is exercised. The gorgeously appareled speakers who seem to have great latitude allowed them in the matter of clothing have certainly very little in the matter of language and that it always seems that either of the four might have made the speech of any of the others. It could not have been the case that the honorable colonel Malbray Dick, the member for West Bastard, had really elaborated out of his own head that theory of the status pupillaris. A better fellow or a more popular officer or a sweeter tempered gentleman than Malbray Dick does not exist, but he certainly never entertained advanced opinions respecting the religious education of his country. When he is at home with his family, he always goes to church, and there has been an end of it. And then the fight began. The thunderbolts of opposition were unloosed, and the fires of political rancor blazed high. Mr. Gresham rose to his legs and declared to all the world that which he had hitherto kept secret from his own party. It was known afterwards that in discussion with his own dearly beloved political friend, Lord Cantrip, he had expressed his unbounded anger at the duplicity, greed for power, and want of patriotism displayed by his opponent. But he had acknowledged that the blow had come so quick and so unexpectedly that he thought it better to leave the matter to the house without instruction from himself. He now reveled in sarcasm, and before his speech was over, raged into wrath, he would move an amendment to the address for two reasons. First because this was no moment for bringing before Parliament the question of the church establishment, when as yet no well-considered opportunity of expressing itself on the subject had been afforded to the country. And secondly, because any measure of reform on that matter should certainly not come to them from the right honorable gentleman opposite. As to the first objection, he should withhold his arguments to the bill suggested had been presented to them. It was in handling the second that he displayed his great power of invective. All those men who then sat in the house and who on that night crowded the galleries remember his tones as turning to the dissenters who usually supported him, and pointing over the table to his opponents, he uttered that well-worn quotation, quad minime raris. Then he paused and began again, quad minime raris, graya panditour ab urbe. The power and inflection of his voice at the word graya were certainly very wonderful. He ended by moving an amendment to the address and asking for support equally from one side of the house as from the other. When at length Mr. Dobby moved his hat from his brow and rose to his legs, he began by expressing his thankfulness that he had not been made a victim to the personal violence of the right honorable gentleman. He continued the same strange of badanage throughout, in which he was thought to have been wrong, as it was a method of defense or attack, for which his peculiar powers hardly suited him. As to any bill that was to be laid upon the table, he had not as yet produced it. He did not doubt that the dissenting interests of the country would welcome relief from an anomaly. Let it come whence it might, when graya ab urbe, and he waved his hand back to the clustering conservatives who sat behind him, that the right honorable gentleman should be angry he could understand, as the return to power of the right honorable gentleman and his party had been anticipated, and he might almost say discounted as a certainty. Then when Mr. Dobby sat down, the house was adjourned. CHAPTER IX OF FINIEST REDUX CHAPTER IX THE BEGINNING OF THE BATTLE, as recorded in the last chapter, took place on a Friday, Friday 11th of November, and consequently to entire days intervened before the debate could be renewed. There seemed to prevail an opinion during the interval that Mr. Gresham had been imprudent. It was acknowledged by all men that no final speech than that delivered by him had ever been heard within the walls of that house. It was acknowledged also that as regarded the question of oratory Mr. Dobbyny had failed signally, but the strategy of the minister was said to have been excellent, whereas that of the X minister was very loudly condemned. There is nothing so prejudicial to cause as temper. This man is declared to be unfit for any position of note, because he always shows temper. Anything can be done with another man, he can be made to fit almost any hole, because he has his temper under command. It may indeed be assumed that a man who loses his temper while he is speaking is endeavouring to speak the truth such as he believes it to be, and again it may be assumed that a man who speaks constantly without losing his temper is not always entitled to the same implicit faith. Whether or not this be a reason the more for preferring the calm and trunky man may be doubted, but the calm and trunky man is preferred for public services. We want practical results rather than truth. A clear hat is worth more than an honest heart. In a matter of horse flesh, of what use is it to have all manner of good gifts if your horse won't go wither you want him and refuses to stop when you bid him? Mr. Grasham had been very indiscreet and had especially sinned in opposing the address without arrangements with his party. And he made the matter worse by retreating within his own shell during the whole of that Saturday, Sunday and Monday morning. Lord Kentrip was with him three or four times, and he saw both Mr. Pelizer, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer under him, and Mr. Rettler. But he went amidst no congregation of liberals and asked for no support. He told Rettler that he wished gentlemen to vote all together in accordance with their opinions, and it came to be whispered in certain circles that he had resigned, or was resigning, or would resign the leadership of his party. Men said that his passions were too much for him, and that he was destroyed by feelings of regret on almost off remorse. The ministers held a cabinet council on the Monday morning, and it was supposed afterwards that that also had been stormy. Two gentlemen had certainly resigned their seats in the government before their house met at four o'clock, and there were rumors abroad that others would do so if the suggested measures should be found really too amount to disestablishment. The rumors were, of course, worthy of no belief, as the transactions of the cabinet are of necessity secret. Lord Dremont at the War Office, and Mr. Boffin from the Board of Trade, did, however, actually resign, and Mr. Boffin's explanations in the house were heard before the debate was resumed. Mr. Boffin had certainly not joined the present ministry, so he said, with a view of destroying the church. He had no other remark to make, and he was sure that the house would appreciate the cause which had induced him to seat himself below the gangway. The house cheered very loudly, and Mr. Boffin was the hero of ten minutes. Mr. Durbinay detracted something from this triumph by the overstrained and perhaps ironic pathos with which he deplored the loss of his right honourable friends' services. Now, this right honourable gentleman had never been specially serviceable. But the wonder of the world arose from the fact that only two gentlemen, out of the twenty or thirty who composed the government, did give up their places on this occasion. And this was a conservative government. With what a force of agony did all the rattlers of the day repeat that inappropriate name. Conservatives! And yet they were ready to abandon the church at the bidding of such a man as Mr. Durbinay. Rattler himself almost felt that he loved the church. Only two resignations, whereas it had been expected that the whole house would fall to pieces. Was it possible that these earls, that marquise, and the two dukes, and those staunch old Tory squires, should remain in a government pledge to disestablish the church? Was all the honesty, all the truth of a great party confined to the bosoms of Mr. Boffin and Lord Dremond? Doubtless they were all easels. But would they sell their great birthright for so very small a mess of potage? The Parsons in the country and the little squires, who would rarely come up to London, spoke of it all exactly as did the rattlers. There were parishes in the country in which Mr. Boffin was canonized, though up to that day no cabinet minister could well have been less known to fame than was Mr. Boffin. What would those Liberals do, who would naturally rejoice in the disestablishment of the church? Those members of the lower house, who had always spoken of the ascendency of protestant episcopacy with a bitter acrimony of exclusion. After all, the success or failure of Mr. Domeny must depend not on his own party, but on them. It must always be so, when measures of reform are advocated by a conservative ministry. There will always be a number of untrained men ready to take the gift without looking at the giver. They have not expected relief from the hands of Greeks, but will take it when it comes from Greeks or Trojans. What would Mr. Turnbull say in his debate? And what, Mr. Monk? Mr. Turnbull was the people's tribune of the day. Mr. Monk had also been a tribune, then a minister, and now was again something less than a tribune. But there were a few men in the house and some out of it, who regarded Mr. Monk as the honestest and most patriotic politician of the day. The debate was long and stormy, but was peculiarly memorable for the skill with which Mr. Domeny's higher colleagues defended the steps they were about to take. The thing was to be done in the cause of religion. The whole line of defence was indicated by the gentleman who moved and seconded the address. An active, well-supported church was the chief need of a prosperous and intelligent people. As to the endowments, there was some confusion of ideas, but nothing was to be done with them inappropriate to religion. Education would receive the bulk of what was left after existing interests had been amply guaranteed. There would be no doubt, so said these gentlemen, that ample funds for the support of an episcopal church would come from those wealthy members of the body to whom such a church was dear. There seemed to be a conviction that clergymen under the new order of things would be much better off than under the old. As to the connection with the state, the time for it had clearly gone by. The church, as a church, would own increased power when it could appoint its own bishops and be wholly deservet from state patronage. It seemed to be almost a matter of surprise that really good churchmen should have ended so long to be shackled by subservience to the stage. Some of these gentlemen pleaded their cause so well that they almost made it appear that episcopalist candidacy would be restored in England by the deserverance of the church and stage. Mr Turnbull, who was himself a dissenter, was at last upon his lax, and then the redless knew that the game was lost. It would be lost as far as it could be lost by a majority in that house on that motion, and it was by that majority or minority that Mr Doverney would be maintained in his high office or ejected from it. Mr Turnbull began by declaring that he did not at all like Mr Doverney as a minister of the crown. He was not in the habit of attaching himself specially to any minister of the crown. Experience had taught him to doubt them all. Of all possible ministers of the crown at this period, Mr Doverney was he thought perhaps the worst and the most dangerous. But the thing now offered was too good to be rejected, let it come from what quarter it would. Indeed, might it not be said of all the good things obtained for the people of all really serviceable reforms that they were gathered and garnered home in consequence of the squabbles of ministers? When men wanted power either to grasp at it or to retain it, then they offered bribes to the people. But in the taking of such bribes there was no dishonesty, and he should willingly take this bribe. Mr Monk spoke also. He would not, he said, feel himself justified in refusing the address to the crown proposed by ministers, simply because that address was founded on the proposition of a future reform as to the expediency of which he had not for many years entertained doubt. He could not allow it to be said of him that he had voted for the permanent of the Church establishment, and he must therefore support the government. Then Redler whispered a few words to his neighbour. I knew the way he'd run when Gresham insisted on poor old Milmay's taking him into the cabinet. The whole thing has gone to the docks, said Monty. On the fourth night the house was divided, and Mr Durbany was the owner of a majority of fifteen. Very many of the Liberal Party expressed an opinion that the battle had been lost through the wand of judgement, evinced by Mr Gresham. There was certainly no longer that sturdy adherence to that chief, which is necessary for the solidarity of a party. Perhaps no leader of the house was ever more devoutly worshiped by a small number of adherents than was Mr Gresham now. But such worship will not support power. Within the three days following the division the Redlers had all put their heads together and had resolved that the Duke of St. Banger was now the only man who could keep the party together. But who should lead our house? asked Bontain. Redler sighed instead of answering. Things had come to that pass that Mr Gresham was the only possible leader. And the leader of the House of Commons, on behalf of the Government, must be the chief man in the Government. Let the so-called Prime Minister be who he may. Please visit LibriVox.org. Phineas Finn had been in the gallery of the House throughout the debate, and was greatly grieved at Mr Dobby's success, though he himself had so strongly advocated the disestablishment of the Church in canvassing the electors of Tancreville. No doubt he had advocated the cause, but he had done so as an advanced member of the Liberal Party, and he regarded the proposition when coming from Mr Dobby as a horrible and abnormal birth. He, however, was only a looker on. Could be no more than a looker on for the existing short session. It had already been decided that the judge who was to try the case at Tancreville should visit that town early in January, and should it be decided on a scrutiny that the seat belonged to our hero, then he would enter upon his privilege in the following session without any further trouble to himself at Tancreville. Should this not be the case, then the abyss of absolute vacuity would be open before him. He would have to make some disposition of himself, but he would be absolutely without an idea as to the how or where. He was in possession of funds to support himself for a year or two, but after that, and even during that time, all would be dark. If he should get his seat, then again the power of making an effort would at last be within his hands. He had made up his mind to spend the Christmas with Lord Brentford and Lady Laura Kennedy at Dresden, and had already fixed the day of his arrival there. But this had been postponed by another invitation which had surprised him much, but which it had been impossible for him not to accept. It had come as follows. Dear Sir, I am informed by letter from Dresden that you are in London on your way to that city with the view of spending some days with the Earl of Brentford. You will, of course, be once more thrown into the society of my wife, Lady Laura Kennedy. I have never understood and certainly have never sanctioned that breach of my wife's marriage vow which has led to her withdrawal from my roof. I never bade her go, and I have bidden her return. Whatever may be her feelings or mine, her duty demands her presence here, and my duty calls upon me to receive her. This I am and always have been ready to do. Where the laws of Europe sufficiently explicit and intelligible, I should force her to return to my house. Because she sins while she remains away, and I should sin where I to admit to use any means which the law might place in my hands for the due control of my own wife. I am very explicit to you, although we have of late been strangers, because in former days you were closely acquainted with the condition of my family affairs. Since my wife left me I have had no means of communicating with her by the assistance of any common friend. Having heard that you are about to visit her at Dresden I feel a great desire to see you that I may be enabled to sin by you a personal message. My health, which is now feeble, and the altered habits of my life rendered it almost impossible that I should proceed to London with this object, and I therefore ask it of your Christian charity that you should visit me here at Lough Linter. You, as a Roman Catholic, cannot but hold the bond of matrimony to be irrefragable. You cannot at least think that it should be set aside at the caprice of an excitable woman who is not able and never has been able to assign any reason for leaving the protection of her husband. I shall have much to say to you and I trust you will come. I will not ask you to prolong your visit as I have nothing to offer you in the way of amusement. My mother is with me but otherwise I am alone. Since my wife left me I have not thought it even decent to entertain guests or to enjoy society. I have lived a widowed life. I cannot even offer you shooting as I have no keepers on the mountains. There are fish in the river doubtless for the gifts of God are given let men be ever so unworthy, but this I believe is not the month for fishermen. I ask you to come to me not as a pleasure, but as a Christian duty. Yours truly, Robert Kennedy. Phineas Finn Esquire. As soon as he had read the letter Phineas felt that he had no alternative but to go. The visit would be very disagreeable, but it must be made. So he sent a line to Robert Kennedy naming a day and wrote another to Lady Laura postponing his time at Dresden by a week and explaining the cause of its postponement. As soon as the debate on the address was over he started for Lough Lenter. A thousand memories crowded on his brain as he made the journey. Various circumstances had in his early life, in that period of his life which had lately seemed to be cut off from the remainder of his days by so clear a line, thrown him into close connection with this man and with the man's wife. He had first gone to Lough Lenter, not as Lady Laura's guest, for Lady Laura had not then been married or even engaged to be married. But on her persuasion rather than on that of Mr. Kennedy, when there he had asked Lady Laura to be his own wife and she had then told him that she was to become the wife of the owner of that domain. He remembered the blow as though it had been struck but yesterday, and the pain of the blow had not been long enduring. But though then rejected he had always been the chosen friend of the woman, a friend chosen after and a special fashion. When he had loved another woman this friend had resented his defection with all a woman's jealousy. He had saved the husband's life and had then become also the husband's friend after that cold fashion which an obligation will create. Then the husband had been jealous and ascension had come, and the ill-matched pair had been divided, with absolute ruin to both of them, as far as the material comforts and well-being of life were concerned. Then he too had been ejected, as it were, out of the world, and it had seemed to him as though Laura Standish and Robert Kennedy had been the inhabitants of another hemisphere. Now he was about to see them both again, both separately, and to become the medium of some communication between them. He knew, or thought that he knew, that no communication could avail anything. It was dark night when he was driven up to the door of Laughlinter House in a fly from the town of Callander. When he first made the journey, now some six or seven years since, he had done so with Mr. Rattler, and he remembered well that circumstance. He remembered also that on his arrival Lady Laura had scolded him for having traveled in such company. She had desired him to seek other friends, friends higher in general estimation and nobler in purpose. He had done so partly at her instance, and with success. But Mr. Rattler was now somebody in the world, and he was nobody, and he remembered also how on that occasion he had been troubled in his mind in regard to a servant, not as yet knowing whether the usages of the world did or did not require that he should go so accompanied. He had taken the man and had been thoroughly ashamed of himself for doing so. He had no servant now, no grandly developed luggage, no gun, no elaborate dress for the mountains. On that former occasion his heart had been very full when he reached Laughlinter, and his heart was full now. Then he had resolved to say a few words to Lady Laura, and he had hardly known how best to say them. Now he would be called upon to say a few to Lady Laura's husband, and the task would be almost as difficult. The door was opened for him by an old servant in black who proposed at once to show him to his room. He looked round the vast hall, which, when he had before known it, was ever filled with signs of life, and felt at once that it was empty and deserted. It struck him as intolerably cold, and he saw that the huge fireplace was without a spark of fire. Dinner, the servant said, was prepared for half past seven. Would Mr. Finn wish to dress? Of course he wished to dress, and as it was already past seven he hurried upstairs to his room. Here again everything was cold and wretched. There was no fire, and the man had left him with a single candle. There were candlesticks on the dressing table, but they were empty. The man had suggested hot water, but the hot water did not come. In his poorest days he had never known discomfort such as this, and yet Mr. Kennedy was one of the richest commoners of Great Britain. But he dressed and made his way downstairs, not knowing where he should find his host or his host's He recognized the different doors and knew the rooms within them, but they seemed inhospitably closed against him, and he went and stood in the cold hall. But the man was watching for him, and led him into a small parlor. Then it was explained to him that Mr. Kennedy's state of health did not admit of late dinners. He was to dine alone, and Mr. Kennedy would receive him after dinner. In a moment his cheeks became red, and a flash of wrath crossed his heart. Was he to be treated in this way by a man on whose behalf, with no thought of his own comfort or pleasure, he had made this long and abominable journey? Might it not be well for him to leave the house without seeing Mr. Kennedy at all? Then he remembered that he had heard it whispered that the man had become bewildered in his mind. He relented therefore, and condescended to eat his dinner. A very poor dinner it was. There was a morsel of flabby white fish, as to the nature of which Phineas was altogether in doubt. A beef steak, as to the nature of which he was not at all in doubt. And a little crumpled up tart, which he thought the driver of the fly must have brought with him from the pastry-cooks at Callender. There was some very hot sherry, but not much of it. And there was a bottle of claret, as to which Phineas, who was not usually particular in the matter of wine, persisted in declining to have anything to do with it after the first attempt. The gloomy old servant, who stuck to him during the repast, persisted in offering it, as though the credit of the hospitality of Laugh-Linter depended on it. There are so many men by whom the tenuous ratio-supporum has not been achieved, that the Caleb Balder stones of those houses in which Plenty does not flow are almost justified in hoping that goblets of Gladstone may pass current. Phineas's fin was not a martyr to eating or drinking. He played with this fish without thinking much about it. He worked manfully at the steak. He gave another crumple to the tart and left it without a pang. But when the old man urged him for the third time to take that pernicious draft with his cheese, he angrily demanded a glass of beer. The old man toddled out of the room, and on his return he proffered to him a diminutive glass of white spirit, which he called a squabble. Phineas, happy to get a little whiskey, said nothing more about the beer, and so the dinner was over. He rose so suddenly from his chair that the man did not dare to ask him whether he would not sit over his wine. A suggestion that way was indeed made. Would he visit the Laird out of hand, or would he buy to we? Phineas decided on visiting the Laird out of hand, and was at once led across the hall, down a back passage which he had never before traversed, and introduced to the chamber which had ever been known as the Laird's Ayn Room. Here Robert Kennedy rose to receive him. Phineas knew the man's age well. He was still under fifty, but he looked as though he were seventy. He had always been thin, but he was thinner now than ever. He was very gray and stooped so much that though he came forward a step or two to greet his guest, it seemed as though he had not taken the trouble to raise himself to his proper height. "'You find me a much altered man,' he said. The change had been so great that it was impossible to deny it, and Phineas muttered something of regret that his host's health should be so bad. It is trouble of the mind, not of the body, Mr. Phine. It is her doing, her doing. Life is not to me a light thing, nor are the obligations of life light. When I married a wife, she became bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. Can I lose my bones and my flesh, knowing that they are not with God, but still subject elsewhere to the snares of the devil, and live as though I were a sound man? Had she died, I could have borne it. I hope they have made you comfortable, Mr. Phine. "'Oh, yes,' said Phineas. Not that Love-Linter can be comfortable now to anyone. How can a man, whose wife has deserted him, entertain his guests? I am ashamed even to look a friend in the face, Mr. Phine. As he said this, he stretched forth his open hand as though to hide his countenance, and Phineas hardly knew whether the absurdity of the movement or the tragedy of the feeling struck him the more forcibly. "'What did I do that she should leave me? Did I strike her? Was I faithless? Had she not the half of all that was mine? Did I frighten her by hard words or exact hard tasks? Did I not commune with her, telling her all my most inward purposes? And things of this world and of that better world that is coming? Was she not all and all to me? Did I not make her my very wife? Mr. Phine, do you know what made her go away?' He had asked perhaps a dozen questions. As to the eleven which came first it was evident that no answer was required, and they had been put with that pathetic dignity with which it is so easy to invest the interrogatory form of address. But to the last question it was intended that Phineas should give an answer, as Phineas presumed at once, and then it was asked with a wink of the eye, a low eager voice, and a slight twist of the face that were frightfully ludicrous. "'I suppose you do know,' said Mr. Kennedy, again working his eye and thrusting his chin forward. I imagine that she was not happy. "'Happy? What right had she to expect to be happy? Are we to believe that we should be happy here? Are we not told that we are to look for happiness there and to hope for none below?' As he said this he stretched his left hand to the ceiling. "'But why shouldn't she have been happy? What did she want? Did she ever say anything against me, Mr. Phine? Nothing but this, that your temper and hers were incompatible. I thought at one time that you advised her to go away? Never. She told you about it? Not if I remember, till she had made up her mind, and her father had consented to receive her. I had known, of course, that things were unpleasant. How were they unpleasant? Why were they unpleasant? She wouldn't let you come and dine with me in London. I never knew why that was. When she did what was wrong, of course I had to tell her. Who else should tell her but her husband? If you had been her husband and I only an acquaintance, then I might have said what I pleased. They rebel against the yoke because it is a yoke, and yet they accept the yoke, knowing it to be a yoke. When it comes of the devil, you think a priest can put everything right. "'No, I don't,' said Phineus. Nothing can put you right but the fear of God, and when a woman is too proud to ask for that, evils like these are sure to come. She would not go to church on Sunday afternoon, but had meetings of Belial at her father's house instead. Phineus well remembered those meetings of Belial, in which he with others had been want to discuss the political prospects of the day. When she persisted in breaking the Lord's commandment and defiling the Lord's day, I knew well what would come of it. I am not sure, Mr. Kennedy, that a husband is justified in demanding that a wife shall think just as he thinks on matters of religion. If he is particular about it, he should find all that out before." particular? God's word is to be obeyed, I suppose? But people doubt about God's word. Then people will be damned, said Mr. Kennedy, rising from his chair, and they will be damned. A woman doesn't like to be told so. I never told her so. I never said anything of the kind. I never spoke a hard word to her in my life. If her head did but ache, I hung over her with the tenderest solicitude. I refused her nothing. When I found that she was impatient, I chose the shortest sermon for our Sunday evening's worship to the great discomfort of my mother. Phineus wondered whether this assertion as to the discomfort of old Mrs. Kennedy could possibly be true. Could it be that any human being really preferred a long sermon to a short one, except the being who preached it or read it aloud? There was nothing that I did not do for her. I suppose you really do know why she went away, Mr. Phine? I know nothing more than I have said. I did think once that she was—there was nothing more that I have said, assertive Phineus sternly, fearing that the poor insane man was about to make some suggestion that would be terribly painful. She felt that she did not make you happy. I did not want her to make me happy. I do not expect to be made happy. I wanted her to do her duty. You were in love with her once, Mr. Phine? Yes, I was. I was in love with Lady Laura Standish. Ah, yes. There was no harm in that, of course. Only when anything of that kind happens people had better keep out of each other's way afterwards. Not that I was ever jealous, you know. I should hope not. But I don't see why you should go all the way to Dresden to pay her a visit. What good can that do? I think you had much better stay where you are, Mr. Phine. I do indeed. It isn't a decent thing for a young unmarried man to go half across Europe to see a lady who was separated from her husband and who was once in love with him. I mean he was once in love with her. It's a very wicked thing, Mr. Phine, and I have to beg that you will not do it. Phineus felt that he had been grossly taken in. He had been asked to come to Laugh-Lenture in order that he might take a message from the husband to the wife. And now the husband made use of his compliance to forbid the visit on some grotesque score of jealousy. He knew that the man was mad and that therefore he ought not to be angry, but the man was not too mad to require a rational answer, and had some method in his madness. Lady Laura Kennedy is living with her father, said Phineus. Pasha, dotered. Lady Laura Kennedy is living with her father, repeated Phineus, and I am going to the house of the Earl of Brentford. Who was it wrote and asked you? The letter was from Lady Laura. Yes, from my wife. What right had my wife to write to you when she will not even answer my appeals? She is my wife, my wife. In the presence of God she and I have been made one, and even man's ordinances have not dared to separate us. Mr. Phine, as the husband of Lady Laura Kennedy, I desire that you abstain from seeking her presence. As he said this he rose from his chair and took the poker in his hand. The chair in which he was sitting was placed upon the rug, and it might be that the fire required his attention. As he stood bending down with the poker in his right hand, with his eyes still fixed on his guest's face, his purpose was doubtful. The motion might be a threat or simply have a useful domestic tendency. But Phineus, believing that the man was mad, rose from his seat and stood upon his guard. The point of the poker had undoubtedly been raised, but as Phineus stretched himself to his height, it fell gradually towards the fire, and at last was buried very gently among the coals. But he was never convinced that Mr. Kennedy had carried out the purpose with which he rose from his chair. After what is past you will no doubt abandon your purpose, said Mr. Kennedy. I shall certainly go to Dresden, said Phineus. If you have a message to send, I will take it. Then you will be accursed among adulterers, said the Laird of Loflenter. By such a one I will send no message. From the first moment that I saw you I knew you for a child of Apollyon. But the sin was my own. Why did I ask to my house an idolater, one who pretends to believe that a crumb of bread is my God, of papest, untrue alike to his country and to his Saviour? When she desired it of me I knew that I was wrong to yield. Yes, it is you who have done it all, you, you, you, and if she be a castaway the weight of her soul will be doubly heavy on your own. To get out of the room and then at the earliest possible hour of the morning out of the house were now the objects to be attained. That his presence had had a peculiarly evil influence on Mr. Kennedy, Phineus could not doubt. As assuredly the unfortunate man would not have been left with mastery over his own actions had as usual condition been such as that which he now displayed. He had been told that poor Kennedy was mad, as we are often told the madness of our friends when they cease for a while to run in the common grooves of life. But the mad man had now gone a long way out of the grooves, so far that he seemed to Phineus to be decidedly dangerous. I think I had better wish you good night, he said. Look here, Mr. Phine! Well, I hope you won't go and make more mischief. I shall not do that, certainly. You won't tell her what I have said. I shall tell her nothing to make her think that your opinion of her is less high than it ought to be. Good night. Good night, said Phineus again, and then he left the room. It was as yet but nine o'clock, and he had no alternative but to go to bed. He found his way back into the hall and from thence up to his own chamber. But there was no fire there and the night was cold. He went to the window and raised it for a moment, that he might hear the well-remembered sound of the fall of Lentor. Though the night was dark and wintry, a dismal damp November night, he would have crept out of the house and made his way up to the top of the bray for the sake of all Langzine, had he not feared that the inhospitable mansion would be permanently closed against him on his return. He rang the bell once or twice, and after a while the old serving man came to him. Could he have a cup of tea? The man shook his head and feared that no boiling water could be procured at that late hour of the night. Could he have his breakfast the next morning at seven, and a conveyance to Calendar at half past seven? When the old man again shook his head, seeming to be dazed at the enormity of the demand, Phineus insisted that his request should be conveyed to the master of the house. As to the breakfast he said he did not care about it, but the conveyance he must have. He did in fact obtain both, and left the house early on the following morning without again seeing Mr. Kennedy, and without having spoken a single word to Mr. Kennedy's mother. And so great was his hurry to get away from the place which had been so disagreeable to him, in which he thought might possibly become more so, that he did not even run across this ward that divided the gravel sweep from the foot of the waterfall. CHAPTER X. CHAPTER XI. He has become eccentric, gloomy, and very strange, said Phineus. I do not believe that he is really mad, but his condition is such that I think no friend should recommend Lady Laura to return to him. He seems to have devoted himself to a gloomy religion, and to the saving of money. I had but one interview with him, and that was essentially disagreeable. Having remained two days in London, and having participated as far as those two days would allow him, and the general horror occasioned by the wickedness and success of Mr. Dabony, he started for Dresden. He found Lord Brentford living in a spacious house with a huge garden round it, close upon the northern confines of the town. Dresden, taken altogether, is a clean, cheerful city, and strikes the stranger on his first entrance as a place in which men are gregarious, busy, full of merriment, and preeminently social. Such is the happy appearance of but few towns either in the old or the new world, and is hardly more common in Germany than elsewhere. Leipzig is decidedly busy, but does not look to be social. Vienna is sufficiently gregarious, but its streets are melancholy. Munich is social, but lacks the hum of business. Frankfurt is both practical and picturesque, but it is dirty, and apparently averse to mirth. Dresden has much to recommend it, and had Lord Brentford with his daughter come a broad inquest of comfortable, easy social life, his choice would have been well made. But as it was, any of the towns above named would have suited him as well as Dresden, for he saw no society and cared nothing for the outward things of the world around him. He found Dresden to be very cold in the winter and very hot in the summer, and he liked neither heat nor cold. But he had made up his mind that all places, and indeed all things, are nearly equally disagreeable, and therefore he remained at Dresden, grumbling almost daily as to the climate and manners of the people. Phineas, when he arrived at the hall door, almost doubted whether he had not been as wrong in visiting Lord Brentford as he had in going to Luff-Linter. His friendship with the old Earl had been very fitful, and there had been quarrels quite as pronounced as the friendship. He had often been happy in the Earl's house, but the happiness had not sprung from any love for the man himself. How would it be with him if he found the Earl hardly more civil to him than the Earl's son-in-law had been? In former days the Earl had been a man quite capable of making himself disagreeable, and probably had not yet lost the power of doing so. Of all our capabilities this is the one which clings longest to us. He was thinking of all this when he found himself at the door of the Earl's house. He had traveled all night and was very cold. At Leapsick there had been a nominal twenty minutes for refreshment, which the circumstances of the station had reduced to five. This had occurred very early in the morning, and had sufficed only to give him a bowl of coffee. It was now nearly ten, and breakfast had become a serious consideration with him. He almost doubted whether it would not have been better for him to have gone to an hotel in the first instance. He soon found himself in the hall amidst a cluster of servants, among whom he recognized the face of a man from Salisby. He had, however, little time allowed him for looking about. He was hardly in the house before Lady Laura Kennedy was in his arms. She had run forward, and before he could look into her face she had put her cheek to his lips and had taken both his hands. Oh, my friend! she said. Oh, my friend! how good you are to come to me! how good you are to come! And then she led him into a large room in which a table-headner prepared for breakfast, close to an English-looking open fire. How cold you must be and how hungry! Shall I have breakfast for you at once, or will you dress first? You are to be quiet at home, you know, exactly as though we were brother and sister. You are not to stand on any ceremonies. And again she took him by the hand. He had hardly looked her yet in the face, and he could not do so now because he knew that she was crying. Then I will show you to your room, she said, when he had decided for a tub of water before breakfast. Yes, I will, my own self, and I'd fetch the water for you, only I know it is there already. How long will you be, half an hour? Very well. And you would like tea best, wouldn't you? Certainly, I should like tea best. I will make it for you. Papa never comes down till near two, and we shall have all the morning for talking. Oh, Phineas, it is such a pleasure to hear your voice again. You have been at Love-Linter. Yes, I have been there. How very good of you. But I won't ask a question now. You must put up with a stove here, as we have not opened fires in the bedrooms. I hope you will be comfortable. Don't be more than half an hour as I shall be impatient. Though he was thus instigated to haste, he stood a few minutes with his back to the warm stove that he might be unable to think of at all. It was two years since he had seen this woman, and when they had parted there had been more between them of the remembrance as of old friendship than of present affection. During the last few weeks of their intimacy she had made a point of telling him that she intended to separate herself from her husband. But she had done so as though it were a duty and an arranged part of her own defense of her own conduct. And in the latter incidents of her London life, that life with which he had been conversant, she had generally been opposed to him, or at any rate had chosen to be divided from him. She had said severe things to him, telling him that he was cold, heartless and uninterested, never trying even to please him with that sort of praise which had once been so common with her in her intercourse with him, in which all men loved to hear from the mouths of women. She had then been cold to him, though she would make wretched allusions to the time when he at any rate had not been cold to her. She had reproached him and had at the same time turned away from him. She had repudiated him, first as a lover, then as a friend, and he had hitherto never been able to gauge the depth of the affection for him which had underlaid all her conduct. As he stood there thinking of it all, he began to understand it. How natural had been her conduct in his arrival, and how like that of a genuine true-hearted honest woman, all her first thoughts had been for his little personal wants, that he should be warmed and fed and made outwardly comfortable. Let sorrow be ever so deep and love ever so true, a man will be cold who travels by winter and hungry who has traveled by night. And a woman who is a true genuine woman always takes delight in ministering to the natural wants of her friend. To see a man eat and drink and wear his slippers and sit at ease in his chair is delightful to the feminine heart that loves. When I heard the other day that a girl had herself visited the room prepared for a man in her mother's house, then I knew that she loved him, though I had never before believed it. Phineas, as he stood there, was aware that this woman loved him dearly. She had embraced him and given her face to him to kiss. She had clasped his hands and clung to him, and had shown him plainly that in the midst of all her sorrow she could be made happy by his coming. But he was a man far too generous to take all this as meaning ought that it did not mean. Too generous and intrinsically too manly. In his character there was much of weakness, much of vacillation, perhaps some deficiency of strength and purpose, but there was no touch of vanity. Women had loved him and had told him so, and he had been made happy and also wretched by their love. But he had never taken pride personally to himself because they had loved him. It had been the accident of his life. Now he remembered chiefly that this woman had called herself his sister and he was grateful. Then he thought of her personal appearance. As yet he had hardly looked at her, but he felt that she had become old and worn, angular and hard visaged. All this had no effect upon his feelings towards her, but filled him with ineffable regret. When he had first known her she had been a woman with a noble presence, not soft and feminine as had been violent Effingham, but handsome and lustrous with a healthy youth. In regard to age he and she were of the same standing, that he knew well. She had passed her thirty-second birthday, but that was all. He felt himself to be still a young man, but he could not think of her as of a young woman. When he went down she had been listening for his footsteps and met him at the door of the room. Now sit down, she said, and be comfortable, if you can, with German surroundings. They are almost always late and never give one any time. Everybody says so. The station at Leipzig is dreadful, I know. Good coffee is very well, but what is the use of good coffee if you have no time to drink it? You must eat our omelette. If there is one thing we can do better than you it is to make an omelette. Yes, that is genuine German sausage. There is always some placed upon the table, but the Germans who come here never touch it themselves. You will have a cutlet, won't you? I breakfasted an hour ago and more. I would not wait because then I thought I could talk to you a better and wait upon you. I did not think that anything would ever please me so much again as your coming has done. Oh, how much we shall have to say! Do you remember when we last parted, when you were going back to Ireland? I remember it well. Ah, me, as I look back upon it all, how strange it seems. I dare say you do not remember the first day I met you at Mr. Mildmay's, when I asked you to come to Portman Square because Barrington had said that you were clever. I remember well going to Portman Square. That was the beginning of it all. Oh, dear, oh, dear, when I think of it I find it so hard to see where I have been right and where I have been wrong, if I had not been very wrong all this evil could not have come upon me. Miss Fortune has not always been deserved. I am sure it has been so with me. You can smoke here if you like. This Phineas persistently refused to do. You may, if you please. Papa never comes in here and I don't mind it. You'll settle down in a day or two and understand the extent of your liberties. Tell me first about Violet. She is happy. Quite happy, I think. I knew he would be good to her. But does she like the kind of life? Oh, yes. She has a baby and therefore, of course, she is happy. She says he is the finest fellow in the world. I dare say he is. They all seem to be contented with him, but they don't talk much about him. No, they wouldn't. Had you a child you would have talked about him, Phineas. I should have loved my baby better than all the world, but I should have been silent about him. With Violet, of course, her husband is the first object. It would certainly be so from her nature. And so Oswald is quite tame. I don't know that he is very tame out hunting. But to her? I should think always. She, you know, is very clever. So clever. And would be sure to steer clear of all offence, said Phineas enthusiastically. While I could never for an hour avoid it, did they say anything about the journey to Flanders? Children did, frequently. He made me strip my shoulder to show him the place where he hit me. How like Oswald? And he told me that he would have given one of his eyes to kill me, only cold pepper wouldn't let him go on. He half quarreled with his second, but the man told him that I had not fired at him and the thing must drop. It's better as it is, you know, he said, and I agreed with him. And how did Violet receive you? Like an angel, as she is. Well, yes, I'll grant she is an angel now. I was angry with her once, you know. You men find so many angels in your travels. You have been honester than some. You have generally been off with the old angel before you were on with the new, as far at least as I knew. Is that meant for rebuke, Lady Laura? No, my friend, no. That is all over. I said to myself when you told me that you would come that I would not utter one ill-natured word, and I told myself more than that. What more? That you had never deserved it, at least from me, but surely you were the most simple of men. I dare say. Men, when they are true, are simple. They are often false as hell, and then they are crafty as Lucifer. But the man who is true judges others by himself, almost without reflection. A woman can be true as steel and cunning at the same time. How cunning was Violet, and yet she never deceived one of her lovers, even by a look, did she? She never deceived me, if you mean that. She never cared a straw about me, and told me so to my face very plainly. She did care. Many straws. But I think she always loved Oswald. She refused him again and again, because she thought it wrong to run a great risk. But I knew she would never marry anyone else. How little Lady Baldock understood her. Fancy you're meeting Lady Baldock at Oswald's house. Fancy Augusta Borum turning none. How exquisitely grotesque it must have been when she made her complaint to you. I pitied her with all my heart. Of course you did, because you are so soft. And now, Phineas, we will put it off no longer. Tell me all that you have to tell me about him. End of Chapter 11. Recording by Leanne Howlett.