Saulsby Wood
“So you won’t come to Moydrum again?” said Laurence Fitzgibbon to his
friend.
“Not this autumn, Laurence. Your father would think that I want to
live there.”
“Bedad, it’s my father would be glad to see you,--and the oftener the
better.”
“The fact is, my time is filled up.”
“You’re not going to be one of the party at Loughlinter?”
“I believe I am. Kennedy asked me, and people seem to think that
everybody is to do what he bids them.”
“I should think so too. I wish he had asked me. I should have thought
it as good as a promise of an under-secretaryship. All the Cabinet
are to be there. I don’t suppose he ever had an Irishman in his house
before. When do you start?”
“Well;--on the 12th or 13th. I believe I shall go to Saulsby on my
way.”
“The devil you will. Upon my word, Phineas, my boy, you’re the
luckiest fellow I know. This is your first year, and you’re asked to
the two most difficult houses in England. You have only to look out
for an heiress now. There is little Vi Effingham;--she is sure to be
at Saulsby. Good-bye, old fellow. Don’t you be in the least unhappy
about the bill. I’ll see to making that all right.”
Phineas was rather unhappy about the bill; but there was so much that
was pleasant in his cup at the present moment, that he resolved, as
far as possible, to ignore the bitter of that one ingredient. He was
a little in the dark as to two or three matters respecting these
coming visits. He would have liked to have taken a servant with him;
but he had no servant, and felt ashamed to hire one for the occasion.
And then he was in trouble about a gun, and the paraphernalia of
shooting. He was not a bad shot at snipe in the bogs of county Clare,
but he had never even seen a gun used in England. However, he bought
himself a gun,--with other paraphernalia, and took a license for
himself, and then groaned over the expense to which he found that his
journey would subject him. And at last he hired a servant for the
occasion. He was intensely ashamed of himself when he had done so,
hating himself, and telling himself that he was going to the devil
headlong. And why had he done it? Not that Lady Laura would like him
the better, or that she would care whether he had a servant or not.
She probably would know nothing of his servant. But the people about
her would know, and he was foolishly anxious that the people about
her should think that he was worthy of her.
Then he called on Mr. Low before he started. “I did not like to leave
London without seeing you,” he said; “but I know you will have
nothing pleasant to say to me.”
“I shall say nothing unpleasant certainly. I see your name in the
divisions, and I feel a sort of envy myself.”
“Any fool could go into a lobby,” said Phineas.
“To tell you the truth, I have been gratified to see that you have
had the patience to abstain from speaking till you had looked about
you. It was more than I expected from your hot Irish blood. Going
to meet Mr. Gresham and Mr. Monk,--are you? Well, I hope you may
meet them in the Cabinet some day. Mind you come and see me when
Parliament meets in February.”
Mrs. Bunce was delighted when she found that Phineas had hired a
servant; but Mr. Bunce predicted nothing but evil from so vain an
expense. “Don’t tell me; where is it to come from? He ain’t no
richer because he’s in Parliament. There ain’t no wages. M.P. and
M.T.,”--whereby Mr. Bunce, I fear, meant empty,--“are pretty much
alike when a man hasn’t a fortune at his back.” “But he’s going to
stay with all the lords in the Cabinet,” said Mrs. Bunce, to whom
Phineas, in his pride, had confided perhaps more than was necessary.
“Cabinet, indeed,” said Bunce; “if he’d stick to chambers, and let
alone cabinets, he’d do a deal better. Given up his rooms, has
he,--till February? He don’t expect we’re going to keep them empty
for him!”
Phineas found that the house was full at Saulsby, although the
sojourn of the visitors would necessarily be so short. There
were three or four there on their way on to Loughlinter, like
himself,--Mr. Bonteen and Mr. Ratler, with Mr. Palliser, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his wife,--and there was Violet
Effingham, who, however, was not going to Loughlinter. “No, indeed,”
she said to our hero, who on the first evening had the pleasure
of taking her in to dinner, “unfortunately I haven’t a seat in
Parliament, and therefore I am not asked.”
“Lady Laura is going.”
“Yes;--but Lady Laura has a Cabinet Minister in her keeping. I’ve
only one comfort;--you’ll be awfully dull.”
“I daresay it would be very much nicer to stay here,” said Phineas.
“If you want to know my real mind,” said Violet, “I would give one of
my little fingers to go. There will be four Cabinet Ministers in the
house, and four un-Cabinet Ministers, and half a dozen other members
of Parliament, and there will be Lady Glencora Palliser, who is the
best fun in the world; and, in point of fact, it’s the thing of the
year. But I am not asked. You see I belong to the Baldock faction,
and we don’t sit on your side of the House. Mr. Kennedy thinks that I
should tell secrets.”
Why on earth had Mr. Kennedy invited him, Phineas Finn, to meet four
Cabinet Ministers and Lady Glencora Palliser? He could only have done
so at the instance of Lady Laura Standish. It was delightful for
Phineas to think that Lady Laura cared for him so deeply; but it was
not equally delightful when he remembered how very close must be
the alliance between Mr. Kennedy and Lady Laura, when she was thus
powerful with him.
At Saulsby Phineas did not see much of his hostess. When they were
making their plans for the one entire day of this visit, she said a
soft word of apology to him. “I am so busy with all these people,
that I hardly know what I am doing. But we shall be able to find a
quiet minute or two at Loughlinter,--unless, indeed, you intend to
be on the mountains all day. I suppose you have brought a gun like
everybody else?”
“Yes;--I have brought a gun. I do shoot; but I am not an inveterate
sportsman.”
On that one day there was a great riding party made up, and Phineas
found himself mounted, after luncheon, with some dozen other
equestrians. Among them were Miss Effingham and Lady Glencora, Mr.
Ratler and the Earl of Brentford himself. Lady Glencora, whose
husband was, as has been said, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and who
was still a young woman, and a very pretty woman, had taken lately
very strongly to politics, which she discussed among men and women
of both parties with something more than ordinary audacity. “What a
nice, happy, lazy time you’ve had of it since you’ve been in,” said
she to the Earl.
“I hope we have been more happy than lazy,” said the Earl.
“But you’ve done nothing. Mr. Palliser has twenty schemes of reform,
all mature; but among you you’ve not let him bring in one of them.
The Duke and Mr. Mildmay and you will break his heart among you.”
“Poor Mr. Palliser!”
“The truth is, if you don’t take care he and Mr. Monk and Mr. Gresham
will arise and shake themselves, and turn you all out.”
“We must look to ourselves, Lady Glencora.”
“Indeed, yes;--or you will be known to all posterity as the fainéant
government.”
“Let me tell you, Lady Glencora, that a fainéant government is not
the worst government that England can have. It has been the great
fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.”
“Mr. Mildmay is at any rate innocent of that charge,” said Lady
Glencora.
They were now riding through a vast wood, and Phineas found himself
delightfully established by the side of Violet Effingham. “Mr. Ratler
has been explaining to me that he must have nineteen next session.
Now, if I were you, Mr. Finn, I would decline to be counted up in
that way as one of Mr. Ratler’s sheep.”
“But what am I to do?”
“Do something on your own hook. You men in Parliament are so much
like sheep! If one jumps at a gap, all go after him,--and then you
are penned into lobbies, and then you are fed, and then you are
fleeced. I wish I were in Parliament. I’d get up in the middle and
make such a speech. You all seem to me to be so much afraid of one
another that you don’t quite dare to speak out. Do you see that
cottage there?”
“What a pretty cottage it is!”
“Yes;--is it not? Twelve years ago I took off my shoes and stockings
and had them dried in that cottage, and when I got back to the house
I was put to bed for having been out all day in the wood.”
“Were you wandering about alone?”
“No, I wasn’t alone. Oswald Standish was with me. We were children
then. Do you know him?”
“Lord Chiltern;--yes, I know him. He and I have been rather friends
this year.”
“He is very good;--is he not?”
“Good,--in what way?”
“Honest and generous!”
“I know no man whom I believe to be more so.”
“And he is clever?” asked Miss Effingham.
“Very clever. That is, he talks very well if you will let him talk
after his own fashion. You would always fancy that he was going to
eat you;--but that is his way.”
“And you like him?”
“Very much.”
“I am so glad to hear you say so.”
“Is he a favourite of yours, Miss Effingham?”
“Not now,--not particularly. I hardly ever see him. But his sister is
the best friend I have, and I used to like him so much when he was a
boy! I have not seen that cottage since that day, and I remember it
as though it were yesterday. Lord Chiltern is quite changed, is he
not?”
“Changed,--in what way?”
“They used to say that he was--unsteady you know.”
“I think he is changed. But Chiltern is at heart a Bohemian. It is
impossible not to see that at once. He hates the decencies of life.”
“I suppose he does,” said Violet. “He ought to marry. If he were
married, that would all be cured;--don’t you think so?”
“I cannot fancy him with a wife,” said Phineas, “There is a savagery
about him which would make him an uncomfortable companion for a
woman.”
“But he would love his wife?”
“Yes, as he does his horses. And he would treat her well,--as he does
his horses. But he expects every horse he has to do anything that any
horse can do; and he would expect the same of his wife.”
Phineas had no idea how deep an injury he might be doing his friend
by this description, nor did it once occur to him that his companion
was thinking of herself as the possible wife of this Red Indian. Miss
Effingham rode on in silence for some distance, and then she said
but one word more about Lord Chiltern. “He was so good to me in that
cottage.”
On the following day the party at Saulsby was broken up, and there
was a regular pilgrimage towards Loughlinter. Phineas resolved upon
sleeping a night at Edinburgh on his way, and he found himself joined
in the bands of close companionship with Mr. Ratler for the occasion.
The evening was by no means thrown away, for he learned much of his
trade from Mr. Ratler. And Mr. Ratler was heard to declare afterwards
at Loughlinter that Mr. Finn was a pleasant young man.
It soon came to be admitted by all who knew Phineas Finn that he had
a peculiar power of making himself agreeable which no one knew how to
analyse or define. “I think it is because he listens so well,” said
one man. “But the women would not like him for that,” said another.
“He has studied when to listen and when to talk,” said a third. The
truth, however, was, that Phineas Finn had made no study in the
matter at all. It was simply his nature to be pleasant.