SEVENTY-TWO.
On the next morning Phineas, with his speech before him, was obliged
for a while to forget, or at least to postpone, Mr. Bonteen and his
injuries. He could not now go to Lord Cantrip, as the hours were
too precious to him, and, as he felt, too short. Though he had been
thinking what he would say ever since the debate had become imminent,
and knew accurately the line which he would take, he had not as yet
prepared a word of his speech. But he had resolved that he would
not prepare a word otherwise than he might do by arranging certain
phrases in his memory. There should be nothing written; he had tried
that before in old days, and had broken down with the effort. He
would load himself with no burden of words in itself so heavy that
the carrying of it would incapacitate him for any other effort.
After a late breakfast he walked out far away, into the Regent's
Park, and there, wandering among the uninteresting paths, he devised
triumphs of oratory for himself. Let him resolve as he would to
forget Mr. Bonteen, and that charge of having been untrue to his
companions, he could not restrain himself from efforts to fit the
matter after some fashion into his speech. Dim ideas of a definition
of political honesty crossed his brain, bringing with him, however,
a conviction that his thought must be much more clearly worked out
than it could be on that day before he might venture to give it birth
in the House of Commons. He knew that he had been honest two years
ago in separating himself from his colleagues. He knew that he would
be honest now in voting with them, apparently in opposition to the
pledges he had given at Tankerville. But he knew also that it would
behove him to abstain from speaking of himself unless he could do so
in close reference to some point specially in dispute between the two
parties. When he returned to eat a mutton chop at Great Marlborough
Street at three o'clock he was painfully conscious that all his
morning had been wasted. He had allowed his mind to run revel,
instead of tying it down to the formation of sentences and
construction of arguments.
He entered the House with the Speaker at four o'clock, and took his
seat without uttering a word to any man. He seemed to be more than
ever disjoined from his party. Hitherto, since he had been seated
by the Judge's order, the former companions of his Parliamentary
life,--the old men whom he had used to know,--had to a certain degree
admitted him among them. Many of them sat on the front Opposition
bench, whereas he, as a matter of course, had seated himself behind.
But he had very frequently found himself next to some man who had
held office and was living in the hope of holding it again, and
had felt himself to be in some sort recognised as an aspirant. Now
it seemed to him that it was otherwise. He did not doubt but that
Bonteen had shown the correspondence to his friends, and that the
Ratlers and Erles had conceded that he, Phineas, was put out of
court by it. He sat doggedly still, at the end of a bench behind
Mr. Gresham, and close to the gangway. When Mr. Gresham entered the
House he was received with much cheering; but Phineas did not join in
the cheer. He was studious to avoid any personal recognition of the
future giver-away of places, though they two were close together; and
he then fancied that Mr. Gresham had specially and most ungraciously
abstained from any recognition of him. Mr. Monk, who sat near him,
spoke a kind word to him. "I shan't be very long," said Phineas; "not
above twenty minutes, I should think." He was able to assume an air
of indifference, and yet at the moment he heartily wished himself
back in Dublin. It was not now that he feared the task immediately
before him, but that he was overcome by the feeling of general
failure which had come upon him. Of what use was it to him or to any
one else that he should be there in that assembly, with the privilege
of making a speech that would influence no human being, unless his
being there could be made a step to something beyond? While the usual
preliminary work was being done, he looked round the House, and saw
Lord Cantrip in the Peers' gallery. Alas! of what avail was that? He
had always been able to bind to him individuals with whom he had been
brought into close contact; but more than that was wanted in this
most precarious of professions, in which now, for a second time, he
was attempting to earn his bread.
At half-past four he was on his legs in the midst of a crowded House.
The chance,--perhaps the hope,--of some such encounter as that of the
former day, brought members into their seats, and filled the gallery
with strangers. We may say, perhaps, that the highest duty imposed
upon us as a nation is the management of India; and we may also
say that in a great national assembly personal squabbling among
its members is the least dignified work in which it can employ
itself. But the prospect of an explanation,--or otherwise of a
fight,--between two leading politicians will fill the House; and any
allusion to our Eastern Empire will certainly empty it. An aptitude
for such encounters is almost a necessary qualification for a popular
leader in Parliament, as is a capacity for speaking for three
hours to the reporters, and to the reporters only,--a necessary
qualification for an Under-Secretary of State for India.
Phineas had the advantage of the temper of the moment in a House
thoroughly crowded, and he enjoyed it. Let a man doubt ever so much
his own capacity for some public exhibition which he has undertaken;
yet he will always prefer to fail,--if fail he must,--before a large
audience. But on this occasion there was no failure. That sense of
awe from the surrounding circumstances of the moment, which had once
been heavy on him, and which he still well remembered, had been
overcome, and had never returned to him. He felt now that he should
not lack words to pour out his own individual grievances were it not
that he was prevented by a sense of the indiscretion of doing so. As
it was, he did succeed in alluding to his own condition in a manner
that brought upon him no reproach. He began by saying that he should
not have added to the difficulty of the debate,--which was one simply
of length,--were it not that he had been accused in advance of voting
against a measure as to which he had pledged himself at the hustings
to do all that he could to further it. No man was more anxious than
he, an Irish Roman Catholic, to abolish that which he thought to be
the anomaly of a State Church, and he did not in the least doubt that
he should now be doing the best in his power with that object in
voting against the second reading of the present bill. That such a
measure should be carried by the gentlemen opposite, in their own
teeth, at the bidding of the right honourable gentleman who led
them, he thought to be impossible. Upon this he was hooted at from
the other side with many gestures of indignant denial, and was, of
course, equally cheered by those around him. Such interruptions are
new breath to the nostrils of all orators, and Phineas enjoyed the
noise. He repeated his assertion that it would be an evil thing for
the country that the measure should be carried by men who in their
hearts condemned it, and was vehemently called to order for this
assertion about the hearts of gentlemen. But a speaker who can
certainly be made amenable to authority for vilipending in debate
the heart of any specified opponent, may with safety attribute all
manner of ill to the agglomerated hearts of a party. To have told any
individual Conservative,--Sir Orlando Drought for instance,--that
he was abandoning all the convictions of his life, because he was a
creature at the command of Mr. Daubeny, would have been an insult
that would have moved even the Speaker from his serenity; but you can
hardly be personal to a whole bench of Conservatives,--to bench above
bench of Conservatives. The charge had been made and repeated over
and over again, till all the Orlando Droughts were ready to cut some
man's throat,--whether their own, or Mr. Daubeny's, or Mr. Gresham's,
they hardly knew. It might probably have been Mr. Daubeny's for
choice, had any real cutting of a throat been possible. It was now
made again by Phineas Finn,--with the ostensible object of defending
himself,--and he for the moment became the target for Conservative
wrath. Some one asked him in fury by what right he took upon himself
to judge of the motives of gentlemen on that side of the House of
whom personally he knew nothing. Phineas replied that he did not
at all doubt the motives of the honourable gentleman who asked
the question, which he was sure were noble and patriotic. But
unfortunately the whole country was convinced that the Conservative
party as a body was supporting this measure, unwillingly, and at the
bidding of one man;--and, for himself, he was bound to say that he
agreed with the country. And so the row was renewed and prolonged,
and the gentlemen assembled, members and strangers together, passed a
pleasant evening.
Before he sat down, Phineas made one allusion to that former
scuttling of the ship,--an accusation as to which had been made
against him so injuriously by Mr. Bonteen. He himself, he said, had
been called impractical, and perhaps he might allude to a vote which
he had given in that House when last he had the honour of sitting
there, and on giving which he resigned the office which he had then
held. He had the gratification of knowing that he had been so far
practical as to have then foreseen the necessity of a measure which
had since been passed. And he did not doubt that he would hereafter
be found to have been equally practical in the view that he had
expressed on the hustings at Tankerville, for he was convinced that
before long the anomaly of which he had spoken would cease to exist
under the influence of a Government that would really believe in the
work it was doing.
There was no doubt as to the success of his speech. The vehemence
with which his insolence was abused by one after another of those who
spoke later from the other side was ample evidence of its success.
But nothing occurred then or at the conclusion of the debate to make
him think that he had won his way back to Elysium. During the whole
evening he exchanged not a syllable with Mr. Gresham,--who indeed
was not much given to converse with those around him in the House.
Erle said a few good-natured words to him, and Mr. Monk praised him
highly. But in reading the general barometer of the party as regarded
himself, he did not find that the mercury went up. He was wretchedly
anxious, and angry with himself for his own anxiety. He scorned to
say a word that should sound like an entreaty; and yet he had placed
his whole heart on a thing which seemed to be slipping from him
for the want of asking. In a day or two it would be known whether
the present Ministry would or would not go out. That they must be
out of office before a month was over seemed to him the opinion
of everybody. His fate,--and what a fate it was!--would then be
absolutely in the hands of Mr. Gresham. Yet he could not speak a
word of his hopes and fears even to Mr. Gresham. He had given up
everything in the world with the view of getting into office; and now
that the opportunity had come,--an opportunity which if allowed to
slip could hardly return again in time to be of service to him,--the
prize was to elude his grasp!
But yet he did not say a word to any one on the subject that was
so near his heart, although in the course of the night he spoke to
Lord Cantrip in the gallery of the House. He told his friend that a
correspondence had taken place between himself and Mr. Bonteen, in
which he thought that he had been ill-used, and as to which he was
quite anxious to ask His Lordship's advice. "I heard that you and he
had been tilting at each other," said Lord Cantrip, smiling.
"Have you seen the letters?"
"No;--but I was told of them by Lord Fawn, who has seen them."
"I knew he would show them to every newsmonger about the clubs," said
Phineas angrily.
"You can't quarrel with Bonteen for showing them to Fawn, if you
intend to show them to me."
"He may publish them at Charing Cross if he likes."
"Exactly. I am sure that there will have been nothing in them
prejudicial to you. What I mean is that if you think it necessary,
with a view to your own character, to show them to me or to another
friend, you cannot complain that he should do the same."
An appointment was made at Lord Cantrip's house for the next morning,
and Phineas could but acknowledge to himself that the man's manner to
himself had been kind and constant. Nevertheless, the whole affair
was going against him. Lord Cantrip had not said a word prejudicial
to that wretch Bonteen; much less had he hinted at any future
arrangements which would be comfortable to poor Phineas. They two,
Lord Cantrip and Phineas, had at one period been on most intimate
terms together;--had worked in the same office, and had thoroughly
trusted each other. The elder of the two,--for Lord Cantrip was about
ten years senior to Phineas,--had frequently expressed the most
lively interest in the prospects of the other; and Phineas had felt
that in any emergency he could tell his friend all his hopes and
fears. But now he did not say a word of his position, nor did Lord
Cantrip allude to it. They were to meet on the morrow in order that
Lord Cantrip might read the correspondence;--but Phineas was sure
that no word would be said about the Government.
At five o'clock in the morning the division took place, and the
Government was beaten by a majority of 72. This was much higher
than any man had expected. When the parties were marshalled in the
opposite lobbies it was found that in the last moment the number of
those Conservatives who dared to rebel against their Conservative
leaders was swelled by the course which the debate had taken. There
were certain men who could not endure to be twitted with having
deserted the principles of their lives, when it was clear that
nothing was to be gained by the party by such desertion.