The Palliser Novels (120 page)

Phineas, knowing that he could gain nothing by sparring with Miss Fitzgibbon, raised his hat and took his leave. Going out of a narrow gate he found himself again brought into contact with Mr. Kennedy. “What a crowd there is here,” he said, finding himself bound to say something. Mr. Kennedy, who was behind him, answered him not a word. Then Phineas made up his mind that Mr. Kennedy was insolent with the insolence of riches, and that he would hate Mr. Kennedy.

He was engaged to dine on this Sunday with Mr. Low, the barrister, with whom he had been reading for the last three years. Mr. Low had taken a strong liking to Phineas, as had also Mrs. Low, and the tutor had more than once told his pupil that success in his profession was certainly open to him if he would only stick to his work. Mr. Low was himself an ambitious man, looking forward to entering Parliament at some future time, when the exigencies of his life of labour might enable him to do so; but he was prudent, given to close calculation, and resolved to make the ground sure beneath his feet in every step that he took forward. When he first heard that Finn intended to stand for Loughshane he was stricken with dismay, and strongly dissuaded him. “The electors may probably reject him. That’s his only chance now,” Mr. Low had said to his wife, when he found that Phineas was, as he thought, foolhardy. But the electors of Loughshane had not rejected Mr. Low’s pupil, and Mr. Low was now called upon to advise what Phineas should do in his present circumstances. There is nothing to prevent the work of a Chancery barrister being done by a member of Parliament. Indeed, the most successful barristers are members of Parliament. But Phineas Finn was beginning at the wrong end, and Mr. Low knew that no good would come of it.

“Only think of your being in Parliament, Mr. Finn,” said Mrs. Low.

“It is wonderful, isn’t it?” said Phineas.

“It took us so much by surprise!” said Mrs. Low. “As a rule one never hears of a barrister going into Parliament till after he’s forty.”

“And I’m only twenty-five. I do feel that I’ve disgraced myself. I do, indeed, Mrs. Low.”

“No; — you’ve not disgraced yourself, Mr. Finn. The only question is, whether it’s prudent. I hope it will all turn out for the best, most heartily.” Mrs. Low was a very matter-of-fact lady, four or five years older than her husband, who had had a little money of her own, and was possessed of every virtue under the sun. Nevertheless she did not quite like the idea of her husband’s pupil having got into Parliament. If her husband and Phineas Finn were dining anywhere together, Phineas, who had come to them quite a boy, would walk out of the room before her husband. This could hardly be right! Nevertheless she helped Phineas to the nicest bit of fish she could find, and had he been ill, would have nursed him with the greatest care.

After dinner, when Mrs. Low had gone up-stairs, there came the great discussion between the tutor and the pupil, for the sake of which this little dinner had been given. When Phineas had last been with Mr. Low, — on the occasion of his showing himself at his tutor’s chambers after his return from Ireland, — he had not made up his mind so thoroughly on certain points as he had done since he had seen Lady Laura. The discussion could hardly be of any avail now, — but it could not be avoided.

“Well, Phineas, and what do you mean to do?” said Mr. Low. Everybody who knew our hero, or nearly everybody, called him by his Christian name. There are men who seem to be so treated by general consent in all societies. Even Mrs. Low, who was very prosaic, and unlikely to be familiar in her mode of address, had fallen into the way of doing it before the election. But she had dropped it, when the Phineas whom she used to know became a member of Parliament.

“That’s the question; — isn’t it?” said Phineas.

“Of course you’ll stick to your work?”

“What; — to the Bar?”

“Yes; — to the Bar.”

“I am not thinking of giving it up permanently.”

“Giving it up,” said Mr. Low, raising his hands in surprise. “If you give it up, how do you intend to live? Men are not paid for being members of Parliament.”

“Not exactly. But, as I said before, I am not thinking of giving it up, — permanently.”

“You mustn’t give it up at all, — not for a day; that is, if you ever mean to do any good.”

“There I think that perhaps you may be wrong, Low!”

“How can I be wrong? Did a period of idleness ever help a man in any profession? And is it not acknowledged by all who know anything about it, that continuous labour is more necessary in our profession than in any other?”

“I do not mean to be idle.”

“What is it you do mean, Phineas?”

“Why simply this. Here I am in Parliament. We must take that as a fact.”

“I don’t doubt the fact.”

“And if it be a misfortune, we must make the best of it. Even you wouldn’t advise me to apply for the Chiltern Hundreds at once.”

“I would; — to-morrow. My dear fellow, though I do not like to give you pain, if you come to me I can only tell you what I think. My advice to you is to give it up to-morrow. Men would laugh at you for a few weeks, but that is better than being ruined for life.”

“I can’t do that,” said Phineas, sadly.

“Very well; — then let us go on,” said Mr. Low. “If you won’t give up your seat, the next best thing will be to take care that it shall interfere as little as possible with your work. I suppose you must sit upon some Committees.”

“My idea is this, — that I will give up one year to learning the practices of the House.”

“And do nothing?”

“Nothing but that. Why, the thing is a study in itself. As for learning it in a year, that is out of the question. But I am convinced that if a man intends to be a useful member of Parliament, he should make a study of it.”

“And how do you mean to live in the meantime?” Mr. Low, who was an energetic man, had assumed almost an angry tone of voice. Phineas for awhile sat silent; — not that he felt himself to be without words for a reply, but that he was thinking in what fewest words he might best convey his ideas. “You have a very modest allowance from your father, on which you have never been able to keep yourself free from debt,” continued Mr. Low.

“He has increased it.”

“And will it satisfy you to live here, in what will turn out to be parliamentary club idleness, on the savings of his industrious life? I think you will find yourself unhappy if you do that. Phineas, my dear fellow, as far as I have as yet been able to see the world, men don’t begin either very good or very bad. They have generally good aspirations with infirm purposes; — or, as we may say, strong bodies with weak legs to carry them. Then, because their legs are weak, they drift into idleness and ruin. During all this drifting they are wretched, and when they have thoroughly drifted they are still wretched. The agony of their old disappointment still clings to them. In nine cases out of ten it is some one small unfortunate event that puts a man astray at first. He sees some woman and loses himself with her; — or he is taken to a racecourse and unluckily wins money; — or some devil in the shape of a friend lures him to tobacco and brandy. Your temptation has come in the shape of this accursed seat in Parliament.” Mr. Low had never said a soft word in his life to any woman but the wife of his bosom, had never seen a racehorse, always confined himself to two glasses of port after dinner, and looked upon smoking as the darkest of all the vices.

“You have made up your mind, then, that I mean to be idle?”

“I have made up my mind that your time will be wholly unprofitable, — if you do as you say you intend to do.”

“But you do not know my plan; — just listen to me.” Then Mr. Low did listen, and Phineas explained his plan, — saying, of course, nothing of his love for Lady Laura, but giving Mr. Low to understand that he intended to assist in turning out the existing Government and to mount up to some seat, — a humble seat at first, — on the Treasury bench, by the help of his exalted friends and by the use of his own gifts of eloquence. Mr. Low heard him without a word. “Of course,” said Phineas, “after the first year my time will not be fully employed, unless I succeed. And if I fail totally, — for, of course, I may fail altogether — “

“It is possible,” said Mr. Low.

“If you are resolved to turn yourself against me, I must not say another word,” said Phineas, with anger.

“Turn myself against you! I would turn myself any way so that I might save you from the sort of life which you are preparing for yourself. I see nothing in it that can satisfy any manly heart. Even if you are successful, what are you to become? You will be the creature of some minister, not his colleague. You are to make your way up the ladder by pretending to agree whenever agreement is demanded from you, and by voting whether you agree or do not. And what is to be your reward? Some few precarious hundreds a year, lasting just so long as a party may remain in power and you can retain a seat in Parliament! It is at the best slavery and degradation, — even if you are lucky enough to achieve the slavery.”

“You yourself hope to go into Parliament and join a ministry some day,” said Phineas.

Mr. Low was not quick to answer, but he did answer at last. “That is true, though I have never told you so. Indeed, it is hardly true to say that I hope it. I have my dreams, and sometimes dare to tell myself that they may possibly become waking facts. But if ever I sit on a Treasury bench I shall sit there by special invitation, having been summoned to take a high place because of my professional success. It is but a dream after all, and I would not have you repeat what I have said to any one. I had no intention to talk about myself.”

“I am sure that you will succeed,” said Phineas.

“Yes; — I shall succeed. I am succeeding. I live upon what I earn, like a gentleman, and can already afford to be indifferent to work that I dislike. After all, the other part of it, — that of which I dream, — is but an unnecessary adjunct; the gilding on the gingerbread. I am inclined to think that the cake is more wholesome without it.”

Phineas did not go up-stairs into Mrs. Low’s drawing-room on that evening, nor did he stay very late with Mr. Low. He had heard enough of counsel to make him very unhappy, — to shake from him much of the audacity which he had acquired for himself during his morning’s walk, — and to make him almost doubt whether, after all, the Chiltern Hundreds would not be for him the safest escape from his difficulties. But in that case he must never venture to see Lady Laura Standish again.

No; — in such case as that, — should he resolve upon taking the advice of his old friend Mr. Low, Phineas Finn must make up his mind never to see Lady Laura Standish again! And he was in love with Lady Laura Standish; — and, for aught he knew, Lady Laura Standish might be in love with him. As he walked home from Mr. Low’s house in Bedford Square, he was by no means a triumphant man. There had been much more said between him and Mr. Low than could be laid before the reader in the last chapter. Mr. Low had urged him again and again, and had prevailed so far that Phineas, before he left the house, had promised to consider that suicidal expedient of the Chiltern Hundreds. What a by-word he would become if he were to give up Parliament, having sat there for about a week! But such immediate giving up was one of the necessities of Mr. Low’s programme. According to Mr. Low’s teaching, a single year passed amidst the miasma of the House of Commons would be altogether fatal to any chance of professional success. And Mr. Low had at any rate succeeded in making Phineas believe that he was right in this lesson. There was his profession, as to which Mr. Low assured him that success was within his reach; and there was Parliament on the other side, as to which he knew that the chances were all against him, in spite of his advantage of a seat. That he could not combine the two, beginning with Parliament, he did believe. Which should it be? That was the question which he tried to decide as he walked home from Bedford Square to Great Marlborough Street. He could not answer the question satisfactorily, and went to bed an unhappy man.

He must at any rate go to Lord Brentford’s dinner on Wednesday, and, to enable him to join in the conversation there, must attend the debates on Monday and Tuesday. The reader may perhaps be best made to understand how terrible was our hero’s state of doubt by being told that for awhile he thought of absenting himself from these debates, as being likely to weaken his purpose of withdrawing altogether from the House. It is not very often that so strong a fury rages between party and party at the commencement of the session that a division is taken upon the Address. It is customary for the leader of the opposition on such occasions to express his opinion in the most courteous language, that his right honourable friend, sitting opposite to him on the Treasury bench, has been, is, and will be wrong in everything that he thinks, says, or does in public life; but that, as anything like factious opposition is never adopted on that side of the House, the Address to the Queen, in answer to that most fatuous speech which has been put into her Majesty’s gracious mouth, shall be allowed to pass unquestioned. Then the leader of the House thanks his adversary for his consideration, explains to all men how happy the country ought to be that the Government has not fallen into the disgracefully incapable hands of his right honourable friend opposite; and after that the Address is carried amidst universal serenity. But such was not the order of the day on the present occasion. Mr. Mildmay, the veteran leader of the liberal side of the House, had moved an amendment to the Address, and had urged upon the House, in very strong language, the expediency of showing, at the very commencement of the session, that the country had returned to Parliament a strong majority determined not to put up with Conservative inactivity. “I conceive it to be my duty,” Mr. Mildmay had said, “at once to assume that the country is unwilling that the right honourable gentlemen opposite should keep their seats on the bench upon which they sit, and in the performance of that duty I am called upon to divide the House upon the Address to her Majesty.” And if Mr. Mildmay used strong language, the reader may be sure that Mr. Mildmay’s followers used language much stronger. And Mr. Daubeny, who was the present leader of the House, and representative there of the Ministry, — Lord de Terrier, the Premier, sitting in the House of Lords, — was not the man to allow these amenities to pass by without adequate replies. He and his friends were very strong in sarcasm, if they failed in argument, and lacked nothing for words, though it might perhaps be proved that they were short in numbers. It was considered that the speech in which Mr. Daubeny reviewed the long political life of Mr. Mildmay, and showed that Mr. Mildmay had been at one time a bugbear, and then a nightmare, and latterly simply a fungus, was one of the severest attacks, if not the most severe, that had been heard in that House since the Reform Bill. Mr. Mildmay, the while, was sitting with his hat low down over his eyes, and many men said that he did not like it. But this speech was not made till after that dinner at Lord Brentford’s, of which a short account must be given.