Conclusion
We are told that it is a bitter moment with the Lord Mayor when he
leaves the Mansion House and becomes once more Alderman Jones, of No.
75, Bucklersbury. Lord Chancellors going out of office have a great
fall though they take pensions with them for their consolation. And
the President of the United States when he leaves the glory of the
White House and once more becomes a simple citizen must feel the
change severely. But our hero, Phineas Finn, as he turned his back
upon the scene of his many successes, and prepared himself for
permanent residence in his own country, was, I think, in a worse
plight than any of the reduced divinities to whom I have alluded.
They at any rate had known that their fall would come. He, like
Icarus, had flown up towards the sun, hoping that his wings of wax
would bear him steadily aloft among the gods. Seeing that his wings
were wings of wax, we must acknowledge that they were very good. But
the celestial lights had been too strong for them, and now, having
lived for five years with lords and countesses, with Ministers and
orators, with beautiful women and men of fashion, he must start again
in a little lodging in Dublin, and hope that the attorneys of that
litigious city might be good to him. On his journey home he made but
one resolution. He would make the change, or attempt to make it,
with manly strength. During his last month in London he had allowed
himself to be sad, depressed, and melancholy. There should be an end
of all that now. Nobody at home should see that he was depressed.
And Mary, his own Mary, should at any rate have no cause to think
that her love and his own engagement had ever been the cause to him
of depression. Did he not value her love more than anything in the
world? A thousand times he told himself that he did.
She was there in the old house at Killaloe to greet him. Her
engagement was an affair known to all the county, and she had no
idea that it would become her to be coy in her love. She was in his
arms before he had spoken to his father and mother, and had made her
little speech to him,--very inaudibly indeed,--while he was covering
her sweet face with kisses. “Oh, Phineas, I am so proud of you; and
I think you are so right, and I am so glad you have done it.” Again
he covered her face with kisses. Could he ever have had such
satisfaction as this had he allowed Madame Goesler’s hand to remain
in his?
On the first night of his arrival he sat for an hour downstairs
with his father talking over his plans. He felt,--he could not but
feel,--that he was not the hero now that he had been when he was last
at Killaloe,--when he had come thither with a Cabinet Minister under
his wing. And yet his father did his best to prevent the growth of
any such feeling. The old doctor was not quite as well off as he had
been when Phineas first started with his high hopes for London. Since
that day he had abandoned his profession and was now living on the
fruits of his life’s labour. For the last two years he had been
absolved from the necessity of providing an income for his son, and
had probably allowed himself to feel that no such demand upon him
would again be made. Now, however, it was necessary that he should do
so. Could his son manage to live on two hundred a-year? There would
then be four hundred a-year left for the wants of the family at home.
Phineas swore that he could fight his battle on a hundred and fifty,
and they ended the argument by splitting the difference. He had been
paying exactly the same sum of money for the rooms he had just left
in London; but then, while he held those rooms, his income had been
two thousand a-year. Tenant-right was a very fine thing, but could it
be worth such a fall as this?
“And about dear Mary?” said the father.
“I hope it may not be very long,” said Phineas.
“I have not spoken to her about it, but your mother says that Mrs.
Flood Jones is very averse to a long engagement.”
“What can I do? She would not wish me to marry her daughter with no
other income than an allowance made by you.”
“Your mother says that she has some idea that you and she might live
together;--that if they let Floodborough you might take a small house
in Dublin. Remember, Phineas, I am not proposing it myself.”
Then Phineas bethought himself that he was not even yet so low in the
world that he need submit himself to terms dictated to him by Mrs.
Flood Jones. “I am glad that you do not propose it, sir.”
“Why so, Phineas?”
“Because I should have been obliged to oppose the plan even if it had
come from you. Mothers-in-law are never a comfort in a house.”
“I never tried it myself,” said the doctor.
“And I never will try it. I am quite sure that Mary does not expect
any such thing, and that she is willing to wait. If I can shorten the
term of waiting by hard work, I will do so.” The decision to which
Phineas had come on this matter was probably made known to Mrs. Flood
Jones after some mild fashion by old Mrs. Finn. Nothing more was
said to Phineas about a joint household; but he was quite able to
perceive from the manner of the lady towards him that his proposed
mother-in-law wished him to understand that he was treating her
daughter very badly. What did it signify? None of them knew the story
of Madame Goesler, and of course none of them would know it. None of
them would ever hear how well he had behaved to his little Mary.
But Mary did know it all before he left her to go up to Dublin. The
two lovers allowed themselves,--or were allowed by their elders, one
week of exquisite bliss together; and during this week, Phineas told
her, I think, everything. He told her everything as far as he could
do so without seeming to boast of his own successes. How is a man
not to tell such tales when he has on his arm, close to him, a girl
who tells him her little everything of life, and only asks for his
confidence in return? And then his secrets are so precious to her and
so sacred, that he feels as sure of her fidelity as though she were
a very goddess of faith and trust. And the temptation to tell is so
great. For all that he has to tell she loves him the better and still
the better. A man desires to win a virgin heart, and is happy to
know,--or at least to believe,--that he has won it. With a woman
every former rival is an added victim to the wheels of the triumphant
chariot in which she is sitting. “All these has he known and loved,
culling sweets from each of them. But now he has come to me, and I am
the sweetest of them all.” And so Mary was taught to believe of Laura
and of Violet and of Madame Goesler,--that though they had had charms
to please, her lover had never been so charmed as he was now while
she was hanging to his breast. And I think that she was right in her
belief. During those lovely summer evening walks along the shores of
Lough Derg, Phineas was as happy as he had ever been at any moment of
his life.
“I shall never be impatient,--never,” she said to him on the last
evening. “All I want is that you should write to me.”
“I shall want more than that, Mary.”
“Then you must come down and see me. When you do come they will be
happy, happy days for me. But of course we cannot be married for the
next twenty years.”
“Say forty, Mary.”
“I will say anything that you like;--you will know what I mean just
as well. And, Phineas, I must tell you one thing,--though it makes me
sad to think of it, and will make me sad to speak of it.”
“I will not have you sad on our last night, Mary.”
“I must say it. I am beginning to understand how much you have given
up for me.”
“I have given up nothing for you.”
“If I had not been at Killaloe when Mr. Monk was here, and if we had
not,--had not,--oh dear, if I had not loved you so very much, you
might have remained in London, and that lady would have been your
wife.”
“Never!” said Phineas stoutly.
“Would she not? She must not be your wife now, Phineas. I am not
going to pretend that I will give you up.”
“That is unkind, Mary.”
“Oh, well; you may say what you please. If that is unkind, I am
unkind. It would kill me to lose you.”
Had he done right? How could there be a doubt about it? How could
there be a question about it? Which of them had loved him, or was
capable of loving him as Mary loved him? What girl was ever so sweet,
so gracious, so angelic, as his own Mary? He swore to her that he was
prouder of winning her than of anything he had ever done in all his
life, and that of all the treasures that had ever come in his way she
was the most precious. She went to bed that night the happiest girl
in all Connaught, although when she parted from him she understood
that she was not to see him again till Christmas-Eve.
But she did see him again before the summer was over, and the manner
of their meeting was in this wise. Immediately after the passing of
that scrambled Irish Reform Bill, Parliament, as the reader knows,
was dissolved. This was in the early days of June, and before the end
of July the new members were again assembled at Westminster. This
session, late in summer, was very terrible; but it was not very long,
and then it was essentially necessary. There was something of the
year’s business which must yet be done, and the country would require
to know who were to be the Ministers of the Government. It is not
needed that the reader should be troubled any further with the
strategy of one political leader or of another, or that more should
be said of Mr. Monk and his tenant-right. The House of Commons had
offended Mr. Gresham by voting in a majority against him, and Mr.
Gresham had punished the House of Commons by subjecting it to the
expense and nuisance of a new election. All this is constitutional,
and rational enough to Englishmen, though it may be unintelligible to
strangers. The upshot on the present occasion was that the Ministers
remained in their places and that Mr. Monk’s bill, though it had
received the substantial honour of a second reading, passed away for
the present into the limbo of abortive legislation.
All this would not concern us at all, nor our poor hero much, were
it not that the great men with whom he had been for two years so
pleasant a colleague, remembered him with something of affectionate
regret. Whether it began with Mr. Gresham or with Lord Cantrip, I
will not say;--or whether Mr. Monk, though now a political enemy,
may have said a word that brought about the good deed. Be that as it
may, just before the summer session was brought to a close Phineas
received the following letter from Lord Cantrip:--
Downing Street, August 4, 186--.
MY DEAR MR. FINN,--
Mr. Gresham has been talking to me, and we both think
that possibly a permanent Government appointment may be
acceptable to you. We have no doubt, that should this be
the case, your services would be very valuable to the
country. There is a vacancy for a poor-law inspector at
present in Ireland, whose residence I believe should be
in Cork. The salary is a thousand a-year. Should the
appointment suit you, Mr. Gresham will be most happy to
nominate you to the office. Let me have a line at your
early convenience.
Believe me,
Most sincerely yours,
CANTRIP.
He received the letter one morning in Dublin, and within three hours
he was on his route to Killaloe. Of course he would accept the
appointment, but he would not even do that without telling Mary of
his new prospect. Of course he would accept the appointment. Though
he had been as yet barely two months in Dublin, though he had hardly
been long enough settled to his work to have hoped to be able to see
in which way there might be a vista open leading to success, still he
had fancied that he had seen that success was impossible. He did not
know how to begin,--and men were afraid of him, thinking that he was
unsteady, arrogant, and prone to failure. He had not seen his way to
the possibility of a guinea.
“A thousand a-year!” said Mary Flood Jones, opening her eyes wide
with wonder at the golden future before them.
“It is nothing very great for a perpetuity,” said Phineas.
“Oh, Phineas; surely a thousand a-year will be very nice.”
“It will be certain,” said Phineas, “and then we can be married
to-morrow.”
“But I have been making up my mind to wait ever so long,” said Mary.
“Then your mind must be unmade,” said Phineas.
What was the nature of the reply to Lord Cantrip the reader may
imagine, and thus we will leave our hero an Inspector of Poor Houses
in the County of Cork.