Phineas Finn Is Elected for Loughshane
One great difficulty about the borough vanished in a very wonderful
way at the first touch. Dr. Finn, who was a man stout at heart,
and by no means afraid of his great friends, drove himself over to
Castlemorris to tell his news to the Earl, as soon as he got a second
letter from his son declaring his intention of proceeding with the
business, let the results be what they might. Lord Tulla was a
passionate old man, and the doctor expected that there would be a
quarrel;--but he was prepared to face that. He was under no special
debt of gratitude to the lord, having given as much as he had taken
in the long intercourse which had existed between them;--and he
agreed with his son in thinking that if there was to be a Liberal
candidate at Loughshane, no consideration of old pill-boxes and
gallipots should deter his son Phineas from standing. Other
considerations might very probably deter him, but not that. The Earl
probably would be of a different opinion, and the doctor felt it to
be incumbent on him to break the news to Lord Tulla.
“The devil he is!” said the Earl, when the doctor had told his story.
“Then I’ll tell you what, Finn, I’ll support him.”
“You support him, Lord Tulla!”
“Yes;--why shouldn’t I support him? I suppose it’s not so bad with me
in the country that my support will rob him of his chance! I’ll tell
you one thing for certain, I won’t support George Morris.”
“But, my lord--”
“Well; go on.”
“I’ve never taken much part in politics myself, as you know; but my
boy Phineas is on the other side.”
“I don’t care a ---- for sides. What has my party done for me?
Look at my cousin, Dick Morris. There’s not a clergyman in Ireland
stauncher to them than he has been, and now they’ve given the deanery
of Kilfenora to a man that never had a father, though I condescended
to ask for it for my cousin. Let them wait till I ask for anything
again.” Dr. Finn, who knew all about Dick Morris’s debts, and who had
heard of his modes of preaching, was not surprised at the decision
of the Conservative bestower of Irish Church patronage; but on this
subject he said nothing. “And as for George,” continued the Earl, “I
will never lift my hand again for him. His standing for Loughshane
would be quite out of the question. My own tenants wouldn’t vote for
him if I were to ask them myself. Peter Blake”--Mr. Peter Blake was
the lord’s agent--“told me only a week ago that it would be useless.
The whole thing is gone, and for my part I wish they’d disenfranchise
the borough. I wish they’d disenfranchise the whole country, and send
us a military governor. What’s the use of such members as we send?
There isn’t one gentleman among ten of them. Your son is welcome for
me. What support I can give him he shall have, but it isn’t much. I
suppose he had better come and see me.”
The doctor promised that his son should ride over to Castlemorris,
and then took his leave,--not specially flattered, as he felt that
were his son to be returned, the Earl would not regard him as the
one gentleman among ten whom the county might send to leaven the
remainder of its members,--but aware that the greatest impediment
in his son’s way was already removed. He certainly had not gone to
Castlemorris with any idea of canvassing for his son, and yet he had
canvassed for him most satisfactorily. When he got home he did not
know how to speak of the matter otherwise than triumphantly to his
wife and daughters. Though he desired to curse, his mouth would speak
blessings. Before that evening was over the prospects of Phineas at
Loughshane were spoken of with open enthusiasm before the doctor,
and by the next day’s post a letter was written to him by Matilda,
informing him that the Earl was prepared to receive him with open
arms. “Papa has been over there and managed it all,” said Matilda.
“I’m told George Morris isn’t going to stand,” said Barrington Erle
to Phineas the night before his departure.
“His brother won’t support him. His brother means to support me,”
said Phineas.
“That can hardly be so.”
“But I tell you it is. My father has known the Earl these twenty
years, and has managed it.”
“I say, Finn, you’re not going to play us a trick, are you?” said Mr.
Erle, with something like dismay in his voice.
“What sort of trick?”
“You’re not coming out on the other side?”
“Not if I know it,” said Phineas, proudly. “Let me assure you I
wouldn’t change my views in politics either for you or for the Earl,
though each of you carried seats in your breeches pockets. If I go
into Parliament, I shall go there as a sound Liberal,--not to support
a party, but to do the best I can for the country. I tell you so, and
I shall tell the Earl the same.”
Barrington Erle turned away in disgust. Such language was to him
simply disgusting. It fell upon his ears as false maudlin sentiment
falls on the ears of the ordinary honest man of the world. Barrington
Erle was a man ordinarily honest. He would not have been untrue to
his mother’s brother, William Mildmay, the great Whig Minister of the
day, for any earthly consideration. He was ready to work with wages
or without wages. He was really zealous in the cause, not asking
very much for himself. He had some undefined belief that it was much
better for the country that Mr. Mildmay should be in power than
that Lord de Terrier should be there. He was convinced that Liberal
politics were good for Englishmen, and that Liberal politics and the
Mildmay party were one and the same thing. It would be unfair to
Barrington Erle to deny to him some praise for patriotism. But he
hated the very name of independence in Parliament, and when he was
told of any man, that that man intended to look to measures and not
to men, he regarded that man as being both unstable as water and
dishonest as the wind. No good could possibly come from such a one,
and much evil might and probably would come. Such a politician was a
Greek to Barrington Erle, from whose hands he feared to accept even
the gift of a vote. Parliamentary hermits were distasteful to him,
and dwellers in political caves were regarded by him with aversion
as being either knavish or impractical. With a good Conservative
opponent he could shake hands almost as readily as with a good Whig
ally; but the man who was neither flesh nor fowl was odious to him.
According to his theory of parliamentary government, the House of
Commons should be divided by a marked line, and every member should
be required to stand on one side of it or on the other. “If not
with me, at any rate be against me,” he would have said to every
representative of the people in the name of the great leader whom he
followed. He thought that debates were good, because of the people
outside,--because they served to create that public opinion which was
hereafter to be used in creating some future House of Commons; but he
did not think it possible that any vote should be given on a great
question, either this way or that, as the result of a debate; and he
was certainly assured in his own opinion that any such changing of
votes would be dangerous, revolutionary, and almost unparliamentary.
A member’s vote,--except on some small crotchety open question thrown
out for the amusement of crotchety members,--was due to the leader of
that member’s party. Such was Mr. Erle’s idea of the English system
of Parliament, and, lending semi-official assistance as he did
frequently to the introduction of candidates into the House, he was
naturally anxious that his candidates should be candidates after his
own heart. When, therefore, Phineas Finn talked of measures and not
men, Barrington Erle turned away in open disgust. But he remembered
the youth and extreme rawness of the lad, and he remembered also the
careers of other men.
Barrington Erle was forty, and experience had taught him something.
After a few seconds, he brought himself to think mildly of the young
man’s vanity,--as of the vanity of a plunging colt who resents the
liberty even of a touch. “By the end of the first session the thong
will be cracked over his head, as he patiently assists in pulling the
coach up hill, without producing from him even a flick of his tail,”
said Barrington Erle to an old parliamentary friend.
“If he were to come out after all on the wrong side,” said the
parliamentary friend.
Erle admitted that such a trick as that would be unpleasant, but
he thought that old Lord Tulla was hardly equal to so clever a
stratagem.
Phineas went to Ireland, and walked over the course at Loughshane.
He called upon Lord Tulla, and heard that venerable nobleman talk a
great deal of nonsense. To tell the truth of Phineas, I must confess
that he wished to talk the nonsense himself; but the Earl would not
hear him, and put him down very quickly. “We won’t discuss politics,
if you please, Mr. Finn; because, as I have already said, I am
throwing aside all political considerations.” Phineas, therefore, was
not allowed to express his views on the government of the country in
the Earl’s sitting-room at Castlemorris. There was, however, a good
time coming; and so, for the present, he allowed the Earl to ramble
on about the sins of his brother George, and the want of all proper
pedigree on the part of the new Dean of Kilfenora. The conference
ended with an assurance on the part of Lord Tulla that if the
Loughshaners chose to elect Mr. Phineas Finn he would not be in the
least offended. The electors did elect Mr. Phineas Finn,--perhaps
for the reason given by one of the Dublin Conservative papers, which
declared that it was all the fault of the Carlton Club in not sending
a proper candidate. There was a great deal said about the matter,
both in London and Dublin, and the blame was supposed to fall on
the joint shoulders of George Morris and his elder brother. In the
meantime, our hero, Phineas Finn, had been duly elected member of
Parliament for the borough of Loughshane.
The Finn family could not restrain their triumphings at Killaloe, and
I do not know that it would have been natural had they done so. A
gosling from such a flock does become something of a real swan by
getting into Parliament. The doctor had his misgivings,--had great
misgivings, fearful forebodings; but there was the young man elected,
and he could not help it. He could not refuse his right hand to his
son or withdraw his paternal assistance because that son had been
specially honoured among the young men of his country. So he pulled
out of his hoard what sufficed to pay off outstanding debts,--they
were not heavy,--and undertook to allow Phineas two hundred and fifty
pounds a year as long as the session should last.
There was a widow lady living at Killaloe who was named Mrs. Flood
Jones, and she had a daughter. She had a son also, born to inherit
the property of the late Floscabel Flood Jones of Floodborough, as
soon as that property should have disembarrassed itself; but with
him, now serving with his regiment in India, we shall have no
concern. Mrs. Flood Jones was living modestly at Killaloe on her
widow’s jointure,--Floodborough having, to tell the truth, pretty
nearly fallen into absolute ruin,--and with her one daughter, Mary.
Now on the evening before the return of Phineas Finn, Esq., M.P., to
London, Mrs. and Miss Flood Jones drank tea at the doctor’s house.
“It won’t make a bit of change in him,” Barbara Finn said to her
friend Mary, up in some bedroom privacy before the tea-drinking
ceremonies had altogether commenced.
“Oh, it must,” said Mary.
“I tell you it won’t, my dear; he is so good and so true.”
“I know he is good, Barbara; and as for truth, there is no question
about it, because he has never said a word to me that he might not
say to any girl.”
“That’s nonsense, Mary.”
“He never has, then, as sure as the blessed Virgin watches over
us;--only you don’t believe she does.”
“Never mind about the Virgin now, Mary.”
“But he never has. Your brother is nothing to me, Barbara.”
“Then I hope he will be before the evening is over. He was walking
with you all yesterday and the day before.”
“Why shouldn’t he,--and we that have known each other all our lives?
But, Barbara, pray, pray never say a word of this to any one!”
“Is it I? Wouldn’t I cut out my tongue first?”
“I don’t know why I let you talk to me in this way. There has never
been anything between me and Phineas,--your brother I mean.”
“I know whom you mean very well.”
“And I feel quite sure that there never will be. Why should there?
He’ll go out among great people and be a great man; and I’ve already
found out that there’s a certain Lady Laura Standish whom he admires
very much.”
“Lady Laura Fiddlestick!”
“A man in Parliament, you know, may look up to anybody,” said Miss
Mary Flood Jones.
“I want Phin to look up to you, my dear.”
“That wouldn’t be looking up. Placed as he is now, that would be
looking down; and he is so proud that he’ll never do that. But come
down, dear, else they’ll wonder where we are.”
Mary Flood Jones was a little girl about twenty years of age, with
the softest hair in the world, of a colour varying between brown and
auburn,--for sometimes you would swear it was the one and sometimes
the other; and she was as pretty as ever she could be. She was one
of those girls, so common in Ireland, whom men, with tastes that way
given, feel inclined to take up and devour on the spur of the moment;
and when she liked her lion, she had a look about her which seemed to
ask to be devoured. There are girls so cold-looking,--pretty girls,
too, ladylike, discreet, and armed with all accomplishments,--whom to
attack seems to require the same sort of courage, and the same sort
of preparation, as a journey in quest of the north-west passage. One
thinks of a pedestal near the Athenaeum as the most appropriate and
most honourable reward of such courage. But, again, there are other
girls to abstain from attacking whom is, to a man of any warmth
of temperament, quite impossible. They are like water when one is
athirst, like plovers’ eggs in March, like cigars when one is out
in the autumn. No one ever dreams of denying himself when such
temptation comes in the way. It often happens, however, that in spite
of appearances, the water will not come from the well, nor the egg
from its shell, nor will the cigar allow itself to be lit. A girl of
such appearance, so charming, was Mary Flood Jones of Killaloe, and
our hero Phineas was not allowed to thirst in vain for a drop from
the cool spring.
When the girls went down into the drawing-room Mary was careful to
go to a part of the room quite remote from Phineas, so as to seat
herself between Mrs. Finn and Dr. Finn’s young partner, Mr. Elias
Bodkin, from Ballinasloe. But Mrs. Finn and the Miss Finns and all
Killaloe knew that Mary had no love for Mr. Bodkin, and when Mr.
Bodkin handed her the hot cake she hardly so much as smiled at him.
But in two minutes Phineas was behind her chair, and then she smiled;
and in five minutes more she had got herself so twisted round that
she was sitting in a corner with Phineas and his sister Barbara; and
in two more minutes Barbara had returned to Mr. Elias Bodkin, so that
Phineas and Mary were uninterrupted. They manage these things very
quickly and very cleverly in Killaloe.
“I shall be off to-morrow morning by the early train,” said Phineas.
“So soon;--and when will you have to begin,--in Parliament, I mean?”
“I shall have to take my seat on Friday. I’m going back just in
time.”
“But when shall we hear of your saying something?”
“Never, probably. Not one in ten who go into Parliament ever do say
anything.”
“But you will; won’t you? I hope you will. I do so hope you will
distinguish yourself;--because of your sister, and for the sake of
the town, you know.”
“And is that all, Mary?”
“Isn’t that enough?”
“You don’t care a bit about myself, then?”
“You know that I do. Haven’t we been friends ever since we were
children? Of course it will be a great pride to me that a person whom
I have known so intimately should come to be talked about as a great
man.”
“I shall never be talked about as a great man.”
“You’re a great man to me already, being in Parliament. Only
think;--I never saw a member of Parliament in my life before.”
“You’ve seen the bishop scores of times.”
“Is he in Parliament? Ah, but not like you. He couldn’t come to be
a Cabinet Minister, and one never reads anything about him in the
newspapers. I shall expect to see your name, very often, and I shall
always look for it. ‘Mr. Phineas Finn paired off with Mr. Mildmay.’
What is the meaning of pairing off?”
“I’ll explain it all to you when I come back, after learning my
lesson.”
“Mind you do come back. But I don’t suppose you ever will. You will
be going somewhere to see Lady Laura Standish when you are not wanted
in Parliament.”
“Lady Laura Standish!”
“And why shouldn’t you? Of course, with your prospects, you should
go as much as possible among people of that sort. Is Lady Laura very
pretty?”
“She’s about six feet high.”
“Nonsense. I don’t believe that.”
“She would look as though she were, standing by you.”
“Because I am so insignificant and small.”
“Because your figure is perfect, and because she is straggling. She
is as unlike you as possible in everything. She has thick lumpy red
hair, while yours is all silk and softness. She has large hands and
feet, and--”
“Why, Phineas, you are making her out to be an ogress, and yet I know
that you admire her.”
“So I do, because she possesses such an appearance of power. And
after all, in spite of the lumpy hair, and in spite of large hands
and straggling figure, she is handsome. One can’t tell what it is.
One can see that she is quite contented with herself, and intends to
make others contented with her. And so she does.”
“I see you are in love with her, Phineas.”
“No; not in love,--not with her at least. Of all men in the world, I
suppose that I am the last that has a right to be in love. I daresay
I shall marry some day.”
“I’m sure I hope you will.”
“But not till I’m forty or perhaps fifty years old. If I was not fool
enough to have what men call a high ambition I might venture to be in
love now.”
“I’m sure I’m very glad that you’ve got a high ambition. It is what
every man ought to have; and I’ve no doubt that we shall hear of your
marriage soon,--very soon. And then,--if she can help you in your
ambition, we--shall--all--be so--glad.”
Phineas did not say a word further then. Perhaps some commotion among
the party broke up the little private conversation in the corner. And
he was not alone with Mary again till there came a moment for him
to put her cloak over her shoulders in the back parlour, while Mrs.
Flood Jones was finishing some important narrative to his mother. It
was Barbara, I think, who stood in some doorway, and prevented people
from passing, and so gave him the opportunity which he abused.
“Mary,” said he, taking her in his arms, without a single word of
love-making beyond what the reader has heard,--“one kiss before we
part.”
“No, Phineas, no!” But the kiss had been taken and given before she
had even answered him. “Oh, Phineas, you shouldn’t!”
“I should. Why shouldn’t I? And, Mary, I will have one morsel of your
hair.”
“You shall not; indeed you shall not!” But the scissors were at hand,
and the ringlet was cut and in his pocket before she was ready with
her resistance. There was nothing further;--not a word more, and Mary
went away with her veil down, under her mother’s wing, weeping sweet
silent tears which no one saw.
“You do love her; don’t you, Phineas?” asked Barbara.
“Bother! Do you go to bed, and don’t trouble yourself about such
trifles. But mind you’re up, old girl, to see me off in the morning.”
Everybody was up to see him off in the morning, to give him coffee
and good advice, and kisses, and to throw all manner of old shoes
after him as he started on his great expedition to Parliament. His
father gave him an extra twenty-pound note, and begged him for God’s
sake to be careful about his money. His mother told him always to
have an orange in his pocket when he intended to speak longer than
usual. And Barbara in a last whisper begged him never to forget dear
Mary Flood Jones.