Loughlinter
Phineas Finn reached Loughlinter together with Mr. Ratler in a
post-chaise from the neighbouring town. Mr. Ratler, who had done this
kind of thing very often before, travelled without impediments, but
the new servant of our hero’s was stuck outside with the driver, and
was in the way. “I never bring a man with me,” said Mr. Ratler to his
young friend. “The servants of the house like it much better, because
they get fee’d; you are just as well waited on, and it don’t cost
half as much.” Phineas blushed as he heard all this; but there was
the impediment, not to be got rid of for the nonce, and Phineas made
the best of his attendant. “It’s one of those points,” said he, “as
to which a man never quite makes up his mind. If you bring a fellow,
you wish you hadn’t brought him; and if you don’t, you wish you had.”
“I’m a great deal more decided in my ways that that,” said Mr.
Ratler.
Loughlinter, as they approached it, seemed to Phineas to be a much
finer place than Saulsby. And so it was, except that Loughlinter
wanted that graceful beauty of age which Saulsby possessed.
Loughlinter was all of cut stone, but the stones had been cut only
yesterday. It stood on a gentle slope, with a greensward falling from
the front entrance down to a mountain lake. And on the other side of
the Lough there rose a mighty mountain to the skies, Ben Linter. At
the foot of it, and all round to the left, there ran the woods of
Linter, stretching for miles through crags and bogs and mountain
lands. No better ground for deer than the side of Ben Linter was
there in all those highlands. And the Linter, rushing down into the
Lough through rocks which, in some places, almost met together above
its waters, ran so near to the house that the pleasant noise of its
cataracts could be heard from the hall door. Behind the house the
expanse of drained park land seemed to be interminable; and then,
again, came the mountains. There were Ben Linn and Ben Lody;--and
the whole territory belonging to Mr. Kennedy. He was laird of Linn
and laird of Linter, as his people used to say. And yet his father
had walked into Glasgow as a little boy,--no doubt with the normal
half-crown in his breeches pocket.
“Magnificent;--is it not?” said Phineas to the Treasury Secretary,
as they were being driven up to the door.
“Very grand;--but the young trees show the new man. A new man may buy
a forest; but he can’t get park trees.”
Phineas, at the moment, was thinking how far all these things which
he saw, the mountains stretching everywhere around him, the castle,
the lake, the river, the wealth of it all, and, more than the wealth,
the nobility of the beauty, might act as temptations to Lady Laura
Standish. If a woman were asked to have the half of all this, would
it be possible that she should prefer to take the half of his
nothing? He thought it might be possible for a girl who would
confess, or seem to confess, that love should be everything. But it
could hardly be possible for a woman who looked at the world almost
as a man looked at it,--as an oyster to be opened with such weapon
as she could find ready to her hand. Lady Laura professed to have a
care for all the affairs of the world. She loved politics, and could
talk of social science, and had broad ideas about religion, and was
devoted to certain educational views. Such a woman would feel that
wealth was necessary to her, and would be willing, for the sake of
wealth, to put up with a husband without romance. Nay; might it not
be that she would prefer a husband without romance? Thus Phineas was
arguing to himself as he was driven up to the door of Loughlinter
Castle, while Mr. Ratler was eloquent on the beauty of old park
trees. “After all, a Scotch forest is a very scrubby sort of thing,”
said Mr. Ratler.
There was nobody in the house,--at least, they found nobody; and
within half an hour Phineas was walking about the grounds by himself.
Mr. Ratler had declared himself to be delighted at having an
opportunity of writing letters,--and no doubt was writing them by
the dozen, all dated from Loughlinter, and all detailing the facts
that Mr. Gresham, and Mr. Monk, and Plantagenet Palliser, and Lord
Brentford were in the same house with him. Phineas had no letters to
write, and therefore rushed down across the broad lawn to the river,
of which he heard the noisy tumbling waters. There was something in
the air which immediately filled him with high spirits; and, in his
desire to investigate the glories of the place, he forgot that he was
going to dine with four Cabinet Ministers in a row. He soon reached
the stream, and began to make his way up it through the ravine. There
was waterfall over waterfall, and there were little bridges here and
there which looked to be half natural and half artificial, and a path
which required that you should climb, but which was yet a path, and
all was so arranged that not a pleasant splashing rush of the waters
was lost to the visitor. He went on and on, up the stream, till there
was a sharp turn in the ravine, and then, looking upwards, he saw
above his head a man and a woman standing together on one of the
little half-made wooden bridges. His eyes were sharp, and he saw at a
glance that the woman was Lady Laura Standish. He had not recognised
the man, but he had very little doubt that it was Mr. Kennedy. Of
course it was Mr. Kennedy, because he would prefer that it should be
any other man under the sun. He would have turned back at once if he
had thought that he could have done so without being observed; but he
felt sure that, standing as they were, they must have observed him.
He did not like to join them. He would not intrude himself. So he
remained still, and began to throw stones into the river. But he had
not thrown above a stone or two when he was called from above. He
looked up, and then he perceived that the man who called him was his
host. Of course it was Mr. Kennedy. Thereupon he ceased to throw
stones, and went up the path, and joined them upon the bridge. Mr.
Kennedy stepped forward, and bade him welcome to Loughlinter. His
manner was less cold, and he seemed to have more words at command
than was usual with him. “You have not been long,” he said, “in
finding out the most beautiful spot about the place.”
“Is it not lovely?” said Laura. “We have not been here an hour yet,
and Mr. Kennedy insisted on bringing me here.”
“It is wonderfully beautiful,” said Phineas.
“It is this very spot where we now stand that made me build the house
where it is,” said Mr. Kennedy, “and I was only eighteen when I stood
here and made up my mind. That is just twenty-five years ago.” “So he
is forty-three,” said Phineas to himself, thinking how glorious it
was to be only twenty-five. “And within twelve months,” continued Mr.
Kennedy, “the foundations were being dug and the stone-cutters were
at work.”
“What a good-natured man your father must have been,” said Lady
Laura.
“He had nothing else to do with his money but to pour it over my
head, as it were. I don’t think he had any other enjoyment of it
himself. Will you go a little higher, Lady Laura? We shall get a fine
view over to Ben Linn just now.” Lady Laura declared that she would
go as much higher as he chose to take her, and Phineas was rather in
doubt as to what it would become him to do. He would stay where he
was, or go down, or make himself to vanish after any most acceptable
fashion; but if he were to do so abruptly it would seem as though he
were attributing something special to the companionship of the other
two. Mr. Kennedy saw his doubt, and asked him to join them. “You may
as well come on, Mr. Finn. We don’t dine till eight, and it is not
much past six yet. The men of business are all writing letters, and
the ladies who have been travelling are in bed, I believe.”
“Not all of them, Mr. Kennedy,” said Lady Laura. Then they went
on with their walk very pleasantly, and the lord of all that they
surveyed took them from one point of vantage to another, till they
both swore that of all spots upon the earth Loughlinter was surely
the most lovely. “I do delight in it, I own,” said the lord. “When
I come up here alone, and feel that in the midst of this little bit
of a crowded island I have all this to myself,--all this with which
no other man’s wealth can interfere,--I grow proud of my own, till
I become thoroughly ashamed of myself. After all, I believe it is
better to dwell in cities than in the country,--better, at any rate,
for a rich man.” Mr. Kennedy had now spoken more words than Phineas
had heard to fall from his lips during the whole time that they had
been acquainted with each other.
“I believe so too,” said Laura, “if one were obliged to choose
between the two. For myself, I think that a little of both is good
for man and woman.”
“There is no doubt about that,” said Phineas.
“No doubt as far as enjoyment goes,” said Mr. Kennedy.
He took them up out of the ravine on to the side of the mountain, and
then down by another path through the woods to the back of the house.
As they went he relapsed into his usual silence, and the conversation
was kept up between the other two. At a point not very far from the
castle,--just so far that one could see by the break of the ground
where the castle stood, Kennedy left them. “Mr. Finn will take you
back in safety, I am sure,” said he, “and, as I am here, I’ll go up
to the farm for a moment. If I don’t show myself now and again when I
am here, they think I’m indifferent about the ‘bestials’.”
“Now, Mr. Kennedy,” said Lady Laura, “you are going to pretend to
understand all about sheep and oxen.” Mr. Kennedy, owning that it
was so, went away to his farm, and Phineas with Lady Laura returned
towards the house. “I think, upon the whole,” said Lady Laura, “that
that is as good a man as I know.”
“I should think he is an idle one,” said Phineas.
“I doubt that. He is, perhaps, neither zealous nor active. But he is
thoughtful and high-principled, and has a method and a purpose in the
use which he makes of his money. And you see that he has poetry in
his nature too, if you get him upon the right string. How fond he is
of the scenery of this place!”
“Any man would be fond of that. I’m ashamed to say that it almost
makes me envy him. I certainly never have wished to be Mr. Robert
Kennedy in London, but I should like to be the Laird of Loughlinter.”
“‘Laird of Linn and Laird of Linter,--Here in summer, gone in
winter.’ There is some ballad about the old lairds; but that belongs
to a time when Mr. Kennedy had not been heard of, when some branch of
the Mackenzies lived down at that wretched old tower which you see as
you first come upon the lake. When old Mr. Kennedy bought it there
were hardly a hundred acres on the property under cultivation.”
“And it belonged to the Mackenzies.”
“Yes;--to the Mackenzie of Linn, as he was called. It was Mr.
Kennedy, the old man, who was first called Loughlinter. That is
Linn Castle, and they lived there for hundreds of years. But these
Highlanders, with all that is said of their family pride, have
forgotten the Mackenzies already, and are quite proud of their rich
landlord.”
“That is unpoetical,” said Phineas.
“Yes;--but then poetry is so usually false. I doubt whether Scotland
would not have been as prosaic a country as any under the sun but for
Walter Scott;--and I have no doubt that Henry V owes the romance of
his character altogether to Shakspeare.”
“I sometimes think you despise poetry,” said Phineas.
“When it is false I do. The difficulty is to know when it is false
and when it is true. Tom Moore was always false.”
“Not so false as Byron,” said Phineas with energy.
“Much more so, my friend. But we will not discuss that now. Have you
seen Mr. Monk since you have been here?”
“I have seen no one. I came with Mr. Ratler.”
“Why with Mr. Ratler? You cannot find Mr. Ratler a companion much to
your taste.”
“Chance brought us together. But Mr. Ratler is a man of sense, Lady
Laura, and is not to be despised.”
“It always seems to me,” said Lady Laura, “that nothing is to be
gained in politics by sitting at the feet of the little Gamaliels.”
“But the great Gamaliels will not have a novice on their footstools.”
“Then sit at no man’s feet. Is it not astonishing that the price
generally put upon any article by the world is that which the owner
puts on it?--and that this is specially true of a man’s own self? If
you herd with Ratler, men will take it for granted that you are a
Ratlerite, and no more. If you consort with Greshams and Pallisers,
you will equally be supposed to know your own place.”
“I never knew a Mentor,” said Phineas, “so apt as you are to fill his
Telemachus with pride.”
“It is because I do not think your fault lies that way. If it did,
or if I thought so, my Telemachus, you may be sure that I should
resign my position as Mentor. Here are Mr. Kennedy and Lady Glencora
and Mrs. Gresham on the steps.” Then they went up through the Ionic
columns on to the broad stone terrace before the door, and there they
found a crowd of men and women. For the legislators and statesmen had
written their letters, and the ladies had taken their necessary rest.
Phineas, as he was dressing, considered deeply all that Lady Laura
had said to him,--not so much with reference to the advice which she
had given him, though that also was of importance, as to the fact
that it had been given by her. She had first called herself his
Mentor; but he had accepted the name and had addressed her as her
Telemachus. And yet he believed himself to be older than she,--if,
indeed, there was any difference in their ages. And was it possible
that a female Mentor should love her Telemachus,--should love him as
Phineas desired to be loved by Lady Laura? He would not say that it
was impossible. Perhaps there had been mistakes between them;--a
mistake in his manner of addressing her, and another in hers of
addressing him. Perhaps the old bachelor of forty-three was not
thinking of a wife. Had this old bachelor of forty-three been really
in love with Lady Laura, would he have allowed her to walk home alone
with Phineas, leaving her with some flimsy pretext of having to look
at his sheep? Phineas resolved that he must at any rate play out his
game,--whether he were to lose it or to win it; and in playing it he
must, if possible, drop something of that Mentor and Telemachus style
of conversation. As to the advice given him of herding with Greshams
and Pallisers, instead of with Ratlers and Fitzgibbons,--he must use
that as circumstances might direct. To him, himself, as he thought
of it all, it was sufficiently astonishing that even the Ratlers and
Fitzgibbons should admit him among them as one of themselves. “When
I think of my father and of the old house at Killaloe, and remember
that hitherto I have done nothing myself, I cannot understand how
it is that I should be at Loughlinter.” There was only one way of
understanding it. If Lady Laura really loved him, the riddle might
be read.
The rooms at Loughlinter were splendid, much larger and very much
more richly furnished than those at Saulsby. But there was a certain
stiffness in the movement of things, and perhaps in the manner of
some of those present, which was not felt at Saulsby. Phineas at
once missed the grace and prettiness and cheery audacity of Violet
Effingham, and felt at the same time that Violet Effingham would be
out of her element at Loughlinter. At Loughlinter they were met for
business. It was at least a semi-political, or perhaps rather a
semi-official gathering, and he became aware that he ought not to
look simply for amusement. When he entered the drawing-room before
dinner, Mr. Monk and Mr. Palliser, and Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Gresham,
with sundry others, were standing in a wide group before the
fireplace, and among them were Lady Glencora Palliser and Lady Laura
and Mrs. Bonteen. As he approached them it seemed as though a sort
of opening was made for himself; but he could see, though others did
not, that the movement came from Lady Laura.
“I believe, Mr. Monk,” said Lady Glencora, “that you and I are the
only two in the whole party who really know what we would be at.”
“If I must be divided from so many of my friends,” said Mr. Monk, “I
am happy to go astray in the company of Lady Glencora Palliser.”
“And might I ask,” said Mr. Gresham, with a peculiar smile for which
he was famous, “what it is that you and Mr. Monk are really at?”
“Making men and women all equal,” said Lady Glencora. “That I take to
be the gist of our political theory.”
“Lady Glencora, I must cry off,” said Mr. Monk.
“Yes;--no doubt. If I were in the Cabinet myself I should not admit
so much. There are reticences,--of course. And there is an official
discretion.”
“But you don’t mean to say, Lady Glencora, that you would really
advocate equality?” said Mrs. Bonteen.
“I do mean to say so, Mrs. Bonteen. And I mean to go further, and to
tell you that you are no Liberal at heart unless you do so likewise;
unless that is the basis of your political aspirations.”
“Pray let me speak for myself, Lady Glencora.”
“By no means,--not when you are criticising me and my politics. Do
you not wish to make the lower orders comfortable?”
“Certainly,” said Mrs. Bonteen.
“And educated, and happy and good?”
“Undoubtedly.”
“To make them as comfortable and as good as yourself?”
“Better if possible.”
“And I’m sure you wish to make yourself as good and as comfortable as
anybody else,--as those above you, if anybody is above you? You will
admit that?”
“Yes;--if I understand you.”
“Then you have admitted everything, and are an advocate for general
equality,--just as Mr. Monk is, and as I am. There is no getting out
of it;--is there, Mr. Kennedy?” Then dinner was announced, and Mr.
Kennedy walked off with the French Republican on his arm. As she
went, she whispered into Mr. Kennedy’s ear, “You will understand
me. I am not saying that people are equal; but that the tendency
of all law-making and of all governing should be to reduce the
inequalities.” In answer to which Mr. Kennedy said not a word. Lady
Glencora’s politics were too fast and furious for his nature.
A week passed by at Loughlinter, at the end of which Phineas found
himself on terms of friendly intercourse with all the political
magnates assembled in the house, but especially with Mr. Monk. He had
determined that he would not follow Lady Laura’s advice as to his
selection of companions, if in doing so he should be driven even to
a seeming of intrusion. He made no attempt to sit at the feet of
anybody, and would stand aloof when bigger men than himself were
talking, and was content to be less,--as indeed he was less,--than
Mr. Bonteen or Mr. Ratler. But at the end of a week he found that,
without any effort on his part,--almost in opposition to efforts on
his part,--he had fallen into an easy pleasant way with these men
which was very delightful to him. He had killed a stag in company
with Mr. Palliser, and had stopped beneath a crag to discuss with him
a question as to the duty on Irish malt. He had played chess with Mr.
Gresham, and had been told that gentleman’s opinion on the trial of
Mr. Jefferson Davis. Lord Brentford had--at last--called him Finn,
and had proved to him that nothing was known in Ireland about sheep.
But with Mr. Monk he had had long discussions on abstract questions
in politics,--and before the week was over was almost disposed to
call himself a disciple, or, at least, a follower of Mr. Monk. Why
not of Mr. Monk as well as of any one else? Mr. Monk was in the
Cabinet, and of all the members of the Cabinet was the most advanced
Liberal. “Lady Glencora was not so far wrong the other night,” Mr.
Monk said to him. “Equality is an ugly word and shouldn’t be used. It
misleads, and frightens, and is a bugbear. And she, in using it, had
not perhaps a clearly defined meaning for it in her own mind. But
the wish of every honest man should be to assist in lifting up those
below him, till they be something nearer his own level than he finds
them.” To this Phineas assented,--and by degrees he found himself
assenting to a great many things that Mr. Monk said to him.
Mr. Monk was a thin, tall, gaunt man, who had devoted his whole life
to politics, hitherto without any personal reward beyond that which
came to him from the reputation of his name, and from the honour of
a seat in Parliament. He was one of four or five brothers,--and all
besides him were in trade. They had prospered in trade, whereas he
had prospered solely in politics; and men said that he was dependent
altogether on what his relatives supplied for his support. He had now
been in Parliament for more than twenty years, and had been known not
only as a Radical but as a Democrat. Ten years since, when he had
risen to fame, but not to repute, among the men who then governed
England, nobody dreamed that Joshua Monk would ever be a paid servant
of the Crown. He had inveighed against one minister after another
as though they all deserved impeachment. He had advocated political
doctrines which at that time seemed to be altogether at variance
with any possibility of governing according to English rules of
government. He had been regarded as a pestilent thorn in the sides of
all ministers. But now he was a member of the Cabinet, and those whom
he had terrified in the old days began to find that he was not so
much unlike other men. There are but few horses which you cannot put
into harness, and those of the highest spirit will generally do your
work the best.
Phineas, who had his eyes about him, thought that he could perceive
that Mr. Palliser did not shoot a deer with Mr. Ratler, and that Mr.
Gresham played no chess with Mr. Bonteen. Bonteen, indeed, was a
noisy pushing man whom nobody seemed to like, and Phineas wondered
why he should be at Loughlinter, and why he should be in office. His
friend Laurence Fitzgibbon had indeed once endeavoured to explain
this. “A man who can vote hard, as I call it; and who will speak a
few words now and then as they’re wanted, without any ambition that
way, may always have his price. And if he has a pretty wife into the
bargain, he ought to have a pleasant time of it.” Mr. Ratler no doubt
was a very useful man, who thoroughly knew his business; but yet,
as it seemed to Phineas, no very great distinction was shown to
Mr. Ratler at Loughlinter. “If I got as high as that,” he said to
himself, “I should think myself a miracle of luck. And yet nobody
seems to think anything of Ratler. It is all nothing unless one can
go to the very top.”
“I believe I did right to accept office,” Mr. Monk said to him one
day, as they sat together on a rock close by one of the little
bridges over the Linter. “Indeed, unless a man does so when the bonds
of the office tendered to him are made compatible with his own views,
he declines to proceed on the open path towards the prosecution of
those views. A man who is combating one ministry after another, and
striving to imbue those ministers with his convictions, can hardly
decline to become a minister himself when he finds that those
convictions of his own are henceforth,--or at least for some time to
come,--to be the ministerial convictions of the day. Do you follow
me?”
“Very clearly,” said Phineas. “You would have denied your own
children had you refused.”
“Unless indeed a man were to feel that he was in some way unfitted
for office work. I very nearly provided for myself an escape on that
plea;--but when I came to sift it, I thought that it would be false.
But let me tell you that the delight of political life is altogether
in opposition. Why, it is freedom against slavery, fire against clay,
movement against stagnation! The very inaccuracy which is permitted
to opposition is in itself a charm worth more than all the patronage
and all the prestige of ministerial power. You’ll try them both, and
then say if you do not agree with me. Give me the full swing of the
benches below the gangway, where I needed to care for no one, and
could always enjoy myself on my legs as long as I felt that I was
true to those who sent me there! That is all over now. They have got
me into harness, and my shoulders are sore. The oats, however, are of
the best, and the hay is unexceptionable.”