The Palliser Novels (126 page)

“I suppose it was made simply because of his money,” he said to Fitzgibbon.

“I don’t believe that,” said Fitzgibbon. “People seem to think that he has got a head on his shoulders, though he has got no tongue in it. I wonder at his refusing it because of the Right Honourable.”

“I am so glad that Mr. Kennedy refused,” said Lady Laura to him.

“And why? He would have been the Right Hon. Robert Kennedy for ever and ever.” Phineas when he said this did not as yet know exactly how it would have come to pass that such honour, — the honour of the enduring prefix to his name, — would have come in the way of Mr. Kennedy had Mr. Kennedy accepted the office in question; but he was very quick to learn all these things, and, in the meantime, he rarely made any mistake about them.

“What would that have been to him, — with his wealth?” said Lady Laura. “He has a position of his own and need not care for such things. There are men who should not attempt what is called independence in Parliament. By doing so they simply decline to make themselves useful. But there are a few whose special walk in life it is to be independent, and, as it were, unmoved by parties.”

“Great Akinetoses! You know Orion,” said Phineas.

“Mr. Kennedy is not an Akinetos,” said Lady Laura.

“He holds a very proud position,” said Phineas, ironically.

“A very proud position indeed,” said Lady Laura, in sober earnest.

The dinner at Moroni’s had been eaten, and Phineas had given an account of the entertainment to Lord Chiltern’s sister. There had been only two other guests, and both of them had been men on the turf. “I was the first there,” said Phineas, “and he surprised me ever so much by telling me that you had spoken to him of me before.”

“Yes; I did so. I wish him to know you. I want him to know some men who think of something besides horses. He is very well educated, you know, and would certainly have taken honours if he had not quarrelled with the people at Christ Church.”

“Did he take a degree?”

“No; — they sent him down. It is best always to have the truth among friends. Of course you will hear it some day. They expelled him because he was drunk.” Then Lady Laura burst out into tears, and Phineas sat near her, and consoled her, and swore that if in any way he could befriend her brother he would do so.

Mr. Fitzgibbon at this time claimed a promise which he said that Phineas had made to him, — that Phineas would go over with him to Mayo to assist at his re-election. And Phineas did go. The whole affair occupied but a week, and was chiefly memorable as being the means of cementing the friendship which existed between the two Irish members.

“A thousand a year!” said Laurence Fitzgibbon, speaking of the salary of his office. “It isn’t much; is it? And every fellow to whom I owe a shilling will be down upon me. If I had studied my own comfort, I should have done the same as Kennedy.”

It was now the middle of May, and a month had elapsed since the terrible difficulty about the Queen’s Government had been solved. A month had elapsed, and things had shaken themselves into their places with more of ease and apparent fitness than men had given them credit for possessing. Mr. Mildmay, Mr. Gresham, and Mr. Monk were the best friends in the world, swearing by each other in their own house, and supported in the other by as gallant a phalanx of Whig peers as ever were got together to fight against the instincts of their own order in compliance with the instincts of those below them. Lady Laura’s father was in the Cabinet, to Lady Laura’s infinite delight. It was her ambition to be brought as near to political action as was possible for a woman without surrendering any of the privileges of feminine inaction. That women should even wish to have votes at parliamentary elections was to her abominable, and the cause of the Rights of Women generally was odious to her; but, nevertheless, for herself, she delighted in hoping that she too might be useful, — in thinking that she too was perhaps, in some degree, politically powerful; and she had received considerable increase to such hopes when her father accepted the Privy Seal. The Earl himself was not an ambitious man, and, but for his daughter, would have severed himself altogether from political life before this time. He was an unhappy man; — being an obstinate man, and having in his obstinacy quarrelled with his only son. In his unhappiness he would have kept himself alone, living in the country, brooding over his wretchedness, were it not for his daughter. On her behalf, and in obedience to her requirements, he came yearly up to London, and, perhaps in compliance with her persuasion, had taken some part in the debates of the House of Lords. It is easy for a peer to be a statesman, if the trouble of the life be not too much for him. Lord Brentford was now a statesman, if a seat in the Cabinet be proof of statesmanship.

At this time, in May, there was staying with Lady Laura in Portman Square a very dear friend of hers, by name Violet Effingham. Violet Effingham was an orphan, an heiress, and a beauty; with a terrible aunt, one Lady Baldock, who was supposed to be the dragon who had Violet, as a captive maiden, in charge. But as Miss Effingham was of age, and was mistress of her own fortune, Lady Baldock was, in truth, not omnipotent as a dragon should be. The dragon, at any rate, was not now staying in Portman Square, and the captivity of the maiden was therefore not severe at the present moment. Violet Effingham was very pretty, but could hardly be said to be beautiful. She was small, with light crispy hair, which seemed to be ever on the flutter round her brows, and which yet was never a hair astray. She had sweet, soft grey eyes, which never looked at you long, hardly for a moment, — but which yet, in that half moment, nearly killed you by the power of their sweetness. Her cheek was the softest thing in nature, and the colour of it, when its colour was fixed enough to be told, was a shade of pink so faint and creamy that you would hardly dare to call it by its name. Her mouth was perfect, not small enough to give that expression of silliness which is so common, but almost divine, with the temptation of its full, rich, ruby lips. Her teeth, which she but seldom showed, were very even and very white, and there rested on her chin the dearest dimple that ever acted as a loadstar to mens’s eyes. The fault of her face, if it had a fault, was in her nose, — which was a little too sharp, and perhaps too small. A woman who wanted to depreciate Violet Effingham had once called her a pug-nosed puppet; but I, as her chronicler, deny that she was pug-nosed, — and all the world who knew her soon came to understand that she was no puppet. In figure she was small, but not so small as she looked to be. Her feet and hands were delicately fine, and there was a softness about her whole person, an apparent compressibility, which seemed to indicate that she might go into very small compass. Into what compass and how compressed, there were very many men who held very different opinions. Violet Effingham was certainly no puppet. She was great at dancing, — as perhaps might be a puppet, — but she was great also at archery, great at skating, — and great, too, at hunting. With reference to that last accomplishment, she and Lady Baldock had had more than one terrible tussle, not always with advantage to the dragon. “My dear aunt,” she had said once during the last winter, “I am going to the meet with George,” — George was her cousin, Lord Baldock, and was the dragon’s son, — “and there, let there be an end of it.” “And you will promise me that you will not go further,” said the dragon. “I will promise nothing to-day to any man or to any woman,” said Violet. What was to be said to a young lady who spoke in this way, and who had become of age only a fortnight since? She rode that day the famous run from Bagnall’s Gorse to Foulsham Common, and was in at the death.

Violet Effingham was now sitting in conference with her friend Lady Laura, and they were discussing matters of high import, — of very high import, indeed, — to the interests of both of them. “I do not ask you to accept him,” said Lady Laura.

“That is lucky,” said the other, “as he has never asked me.”

“He has done much the same. You know that he loves you.”

“I know, — or fancy that I know, — that so many men love me! But, after all, what sort of love is it? It is just as when you and I, when we see something nice in a shop, call it a dear duck of a thing, and tell somebody to go and buy it, let the price be ever so extravagant. I know my own position, Laura. I’m a dear duck of a thing.”

“You are a very dear thing to Oswald.”

“But you, Laura, will some day inspire a grand passion, — or I daresay have already, for you are a great deal too close to tell; — and then there will be cutting of throats, and a mighty hubbub, and a real tragedy. I shall never go beyond genteel comedy, — unless I run away with somebody beneath me, or do something awfully improper.”

“Don’t do that, dear.”

“I should like to, because of my aunt. I should indeed. If it were possible, without compromising myself, I should like her to be told some morning that I had gone off with the curate.”

“How can you be so wicked, Violet!”

“It would serve her right, and her countenance would be so awfully comic. Mind, if it is ever to come off, I must be there to see it. I know what she would say as well as possible. She would turn to poor Gussy. ‘Augusta,’ she would say, ‘I always expected it. I always did.’ Then I should come out and curtsey to her, and say so prettily, ‘Dear aunt, it was only our little joke.’ That’s my line. But for you, — you, if you planned it, would go off to-morrow with Lucifer himself if you liked him.”

“But failing Lucifer, I shall probably be very humdrum.”

“You don’t mean that there is anything settled, Laura?”

“There is nothing settled, — or any beginning of anything that ever can be settled, But I am not talking about myself. He has told me that if you will accept him, he will do anything that you and I may ask him.”

“Yes; — he will promise.”

“Did you ever know him to break his word?”

“I know nothing about him, my dear. How should I?”

“Do not pretend to be ignorant and meek, Violet. You do know him, — much better than most girls know the men they marry. You have known him, more or less intimately, all your life.”

“But am I bound to marry him because of that accident?”

“No; you are not bound to marry him, — unless you love him.”

“I do not love him,” said Violet, with slow, emphatic words, and a little forward motion of her face, as though she were specially eager to convince her friend that she was quite in earnest in what she said.

“I fancy, Violet, that you are nearer to loving him than any other man.”

“I am not at all near to loving any man. I doubt whether I ever shall be. It does not seem to me to be possible to myself to be what girls call in love. I can like a man. I do like, perhaps, half a dozen. I like them so much that if I go to a house or to a party it is quite a matter of importance to me whether this man or that will or will not be there. And then I suppose I flirt with them. At least Augusta tells me that my aunt says that I do. But as for caring about any one of them in the way of loving him, — wanting to marry him, and have him all to myself, and that sort of thing, — I don’t know what it means.”

“But you intend to be married some day,” said Lady Laura.

“Certainly I do. And I don’t intend to wait very much longer. I am heartily tired of Lady Baldock, and though I can generally escape among my friends, that is not sufficient. I am beginning to think that it would be pleasant to have a house of my own. A girl becomes such a Bohemian when she is always going about, and doesn’t quite know where any of her things are.”

Then there was a silence between them for a few minutes. Violet Effingham was doubled up in a corner of a sofa, with her feet tucked under her, and her face reclining upon one of her shoulders. And as she talked she was playing with a little toy which was constructed to take various shapes as it was flung this way or that. A bystander looking at her would have thought that the toy was much more to her than the conversation. Lady Laura was sitting upright, in a common chair, at a table not far from her companion, and was manifestly devoting herself altogether to the subject that was being discussed between them. She had taken no lounging, easy attitude, she had found no employment for her fingers, and she looked steadily at Violet as she talked, — whereas Violet was looking only at the little manikin which she tossed. And now Laura got up and came to the sofa, and sat close to her friend. Violet, though she somewhat moved one foot, so as to seem to make room for the other, still went on with her play.

“If you do marry, Violet, you must choose some one man out of the lot.”

“That’s quite true, my dear, I certainly can’t marry them all.”

“And how do you mean to make the choice?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I shall toss up.”

“I wish you would be in earnest with me.”

“Well; — I will be in earnest. I shall take the first that comes after I have quite made up my mind. You’ll think it very horrible, but that is really what I shall do. After all, a husband is very much like a house or a horse. You don’t take your house because it’s the best house in the world, but because just then you want a house. You go and see a house, and if it’s very nasty you don’t take it. But if you think it will suit pretty well, and if you are tired of looking about for houses, you do take it. That’s the way one buys one’s horses, — and one’s husbands.”

“And you have not made up your mind yet?”

“Not quite. Lady Baldock was a little more decent than usual just before I left Baddingham. When I told her that I meant to have a pair of ponies, she merely threw up her hands and grunted. She didn’t gnash her teeth, and curse and swear, and declare to me that I was a child of perdition.”

“What do you mean by cursing and swearing?”

“She told me once that if I bought a certain little dog, it would lead to my being everlastingly — you know what. She isn’t so squeamish as I am, and said it out.”

“What did you do?”

“I bought the little dog, and it bit my aunt’s heel. I was very sorry then, and gave the creature to Mary Rivers. He was such a beauty! I hope the perdition has gone with him, for I don’t like Mary Rivers at all. I had to give the poor beasty to somebody, and Mary Rivers happened to be there. I told her that Puck was connected with Apollyon, but she didn’t mind that. Puck was worth twenty guineas, and I daresay she has sold him.”