PHINEAS FINN RETURNS TO HIS DUTIES.
The election at Tankerville took place during the last week in July;
and as Parliament was doomed to sit that year as late as the 10th
of August, there was ample time for Phineas to present himself and
take the oaths before the Session was finished. He had calculated
that this could hardly be so when the matter of re-election was
first proposed to him, and had hoped that his reappearance might be
deferred till the following year. But there he was, once more member
for Tankerville, while yet there was nearly a fortnight's work to be
done, pressed by his friends, and told by one or two of those whom he
most trusted, that he would neglect his duty and show himself to be
a coward, if he abstained from taking his place. "Coward is a hard
word," he said to Mr. Low, who had used it.
"So men think when this or that other man is accused of running away
in battle or the like. Nobody will charge you with cowardice of that
kind. But there is moral cowardice as well as physical."
"As when a man lies. I am telling no lie."
"But you are afraid to meet the eyes of your fellow-creatures."
"Yes, I am. You may call me a coward if you like. What matters the
name, if the charge be true? I have been so treated that I am afraid
to meet the eyes of my fellow-creatures. I am like a man who has had
his knees broken, or his arms cut off. Of course I cannot be the same
afterwards as I was before." Mr. Low said a great deal more to him on
the subject, and all that Mr. Low said was true; but he was somewhat
rough, and did not succeed. Barrington Erle and Lord Cantrip also
tried their eloquence upon him; but it was Mr. Monk who at last drew
from him a promise that he would go down to the House and be sworn
in early on a certain Tuesday afternoon. "I am quite sure of this,"
Mr. Monk had said, "that the sooner you do it the less will be the
annoyance. Indeed there will be no trouble in the doing of it. The
trouble is all in the anticipation, and is therefore only increased
and prolonged by delay." "Of course it is your duty to go at once,"
Mr. Monk had said again, when his friend argued that he had never
undertaken to sit before the expiration of Parliament. "You did
consent to be put in nomination, and you owe your immediate services
just as does any other member."
"If a man's grandmother dies he is held to be exempted."
"But your grandmother has not died, and your sorrow is not of the
kind that requires or is supposed to require retirement." He gave way
at last, and on the Tuesday afternoon Mr. Monk called for him at Mrs.
Bunce's house, and went down with him to Westminster. They reached
their destination somewhat too soon, and walked the length of
Westminster Hall two or three times while Phineas tried to justify
himself. "I don't think," said he, "that Low quite understands my
position when he calls me a coward."
"I am sure, Phineas, he did not mean to do that."
"Do not suppose that I am angry with him. I owe him a great deal too
much for that. He is one of the few friends I have who are entitled
to say to me just what they please. But I think he mistakes the
matter. When a man becomes crooked from age it is no good telling him
to be straight. He'd be straight if he could. A man can't eat his
dinner with a diseased liver as he could when he was well."
"But he may follow advice as to getting his liver in order again."
"And so am I following advice. But Low seems to think the disease
shouldn't be there. The disease is there, and I can't banish it by
simply saying that it is not there. If they had hung me outright it
would be almost as reasonable to come and tell me afterwards to shake
myself and be again alive. I don't think that Low realises what it is
to stand in the dock for a week together, with the eyes of all men
fixed on you, and a conviction at your heart that every one there
believes you to have been guilty of an abominable crime of which you
know yourself to have been innocent. For weeks I lived under the
belief that I was to be made away by the hangman, and to leave behind
me a name that would make every one who has known me shudder."
"God in His mercy has delivered you from that."
"He has;--and I am thankful. But my back is not strong enough to bear
the weight without bending under it. Did you see Ratler going in?
There is a man I dread. He is intimate enough with me to congratulate
me, but not friend enough to abstain, and he will be sure to say
something about his murdered colleague. Very well;--I'll follow you.
Go up rather quick, and I'll come close after you." Whereupon Mr.
Monk entered between the two lamp-posts in the hall, and, hurrying
along the passages, soon found himself at the door of the House.
Phineas, with an effort at composure, and a smile that was almost
ghastly at the door-keeper, who greeted him with some muttered word
of recognition, held on his way close behind his friend, and walked
up the House hardly conscious that the benches on each side were
empty. There were not a dozen members present, and the Speaker had
not as yet taken the chair. Mr. Monk stood by him while he took the
oath, and in two minutes he was on a back seat below the gangway,
with his friend by him, while the members, in slowly increasing
numbers, took their seats. Then there were prayers, and as yet not a
single man had spoken to him. As soon as the doors were again open
gentlemen streamed in, and some few whom Phineas knew well came and
sat near him. One or two shook hands with him, but no one said a word
to him of the trial. No one at least did so in this early stage of
the day's proceedings; and after half an hour he almost ceased to be
afraid.
Then came up an irregular debate on the great Church question of the
day, as to which there had been no cessation of the badgering with
which Mr. Gresham had been attacked since he came into office. He
had thrown out Mr. Daubeny by opposing that gentleman's stupendous
measure for disestablishing the Church of England altogether,
although,--as was almost daily asserted by Mr. Daubeny and his
friends,--he was himself in favour of such total disestablishment.
Over and over again Mr. Gresham had acknowledged that he was in
favour of disestablishment, protesting that he had opposed Mr.
Daubeny's Bill without any reference to its merits,--solely on
the ground that such a measure should not be accepted from such a
quarter. He had been stout enough, and, as his enemies had said,
insolent enough, in making these assurances. But still he was accused
of keeping his own hand dark, and of omitting to say what bill he
would himself propose to bring in respecting the Church in the next
Session. It was essentially necessary,--so said Mr. Daubeny and his
friends,--that the country should know and discuss the proposed
measure during the vacation. There was, of course, a good deal of
retaliation. Mr. Daubeny had not given the country, or even his own
party, much time to discuss his Church Bill. Mr. Gresham assured Mr.
Daubeny that he would not feel himself equal to producing a measure
that should change the religious position of every individual in the
country, and annihilate the traditions and systems of centuries,
altogether complete out of his own unaided brain; and he went on
to say that were he to do so, he did not think that he should find
himself supported in such an effort by the friends with whom he
usually worked. On this occasion he declared that the magnitude of
the subject and the immense importance of the interests concerned
forbade him to anticipate the passing of any measure of general
Church reform in the next Session. He was undoubtedly in favour of
Church reform, but was by no means sure that the question was one
which required immediate settlement. Of this he was sure,--that
nothing in the way of legislative indiscretion could be so injurious
to the country, as any attempt at a hasty and ill-considered measure
on this most momentous of all questions.
The debate was irregular, as it originated with a question asked by
one of Mr. Daubeny's supporters,--but it was allowed to proceed for a
while. In answer to Mr. Gresham, Mr. Daubeny himself spoke, accusing
Mr. Gresham of almost every known Parliamentary vice in having talked
of a measure coming, like Minerva, from his, Mr. Daubeny's, own
brain. The plain and simple words by which such an accusation might
naturally be refuted would be unparliamentary; but it would not be
unparliamentary to say that it was reckless, unfounded, absurd,
monstrous, and incredible. Then there were various very spirited
references to Church matters, which concern us chiefly because
Mr. Daubeny congratulated the House upon seeing a Roman Catholic
gentleman with whom they were all well acquainted, and whose presence
in the House was desired by each side alike, again take his seat for
an English borough. And he hoped that he might at the same time take
the liberty of congratulating that gentleman on the courage and manly
dignity with which he had endured the unexampled hardships of the
cruel position in which he had been placed by an untoward combination
of circumstances. It was thought that Mr. Daubeny did the thing very
well, and that he was right in doing it;--but during the doing of
it poor Phineas winced in agony. Of course every member was looking
at him, and every stranger in the galleries. He did not know at
the moment whether it behoved him to rise and make some gesture to
the House, or to say a word, or to keep his seat and make no sign.
There was a general hum of approval, and the Prime Minister turned
round and bowed graciously to the newly-sworn member. As he said
afterwards, it was just this which he had feared. But there must
surely have been something of consolation in the general respect
with which he was treated. At the moment he behaved with natural
instinctive dignity, though himself doubting the propriety of his own
conduct. He said not a word, and made no sign, but sat with his eyes
fixed upon the member from whom the compliment had come. Mr. Daubeny
went on with his tirade, and was called violently to order. The
Speaker declared that the whole debate had been irregular, but had
been allowed by him in deference to what seemed to be the general
will of the House. Then the two leaders of the two parties composed
themselves, throwing off their indignation while they covered
themselves well up with their hats,--and, in accordance with the
order of the day, an honourable member rose to propose a pet measure
of his own for preventing the adulteration of beer by the publicans.
He had made a calculation that the annual average mortality of
England would be reduced one and a half per cent., or in other words
that every English subject born would live seven months longer if the
action of the Legislature could provide that the publicans should
sell the beer as it came from the brewers. Immediately there was
such a rush of members to the door that not a word said by the
philanthropic would-be purifier of the national beverage could be
heard. The quarrels of rival Ministers were dear to the House, and as
long as they could be continued the benches were crowded by gentlemen
enthralled by the interest of the occasion. But to sink from that
to private legislation about beer was to fall into a bathos which
gentlemen could not endure; and so the House was emptied, and at
about half-past seven there was a count-out. That gentleman whose
statistics had been procured with so much care, and who had been at
work for the last twelve months on his effort to prolong the lives
of his fellow-countrymen, was almost broken-hearted. But he knew the
world too well to complain. He would try again next year, if by dint
of energetic perseverance he could procure a day.
Mr. Monk and Phineas Finn, behaving no better than the others,
slipped out in the crowd. It had indeed been arranged that they
should leave the House early, so that they might dine together at
Mr. Monk's house. Though Phineas had been released from his prison
now for nearly a month, he had not as yet once dined out of his own
rooms. He had not been inside a club, and hardly ventured during the
day into the streets about Pall Mall and Piccadilly. He had been
frequently to Portman Square, but had not even seen Madame Goesler.
Now he was to dine out for the first time; but there was to be no
guest but himself.
"It wasn't so bad after all," said Mr. Monk, when they were seated
together.
"At any rate it has been done."
"Yes;--and there will be no doing of it over again. I don't like Mr.
Daubeny, as you know; but he is happy at that kind of thing."
"I hate men who are what you call happy, but who are never in
earnest," said Phineas.
"He was earnest enough, I thought."
"I don't mean about myself, Mr. Monk. I suppose he thought that it
was suitable to the occasion that he should say something, and he
said it neatly. But I hate men who can make capital out of occasions,
who can be neat and appropriate at the spur of the moment,--having,
however, probably had the benefit of some forethought,--but whose
words never savour of truth. If I had happened to have been hung at
this time,--as was so probable,--Mr. Daubeny would have devoted one
of his half hours to the composition of a dozen tragic words which
also would have been neat and appropriate. I can hear him say them
now, warning young members around him to abstain from embittered
words against each other, and I feel sure that the funereal grace
of such an occasion would have become him even better than the
generosity of his congratulations."
"It is rather grim matter for joking, Phineas."
"Grim enough; but the grimness and the jokes are always running
through my mind together. I used to spend hours in thinking what my
dear friends would say about it when they found that I had been hung
in mistake;--how Sir Gregory Grogram would like it, and whether men
would think about it as they went home from The Universe at night.
I had various questions to ask and answer for myself,--whether they
would pull up my poor body, for instance, from what unhallowed ground
is used for gallows corpses, and give it decent burial, placing 'M.P.
for Tankerville' after my name on some more or less explicit tablet."
"Mr. Daubeny's speech was, perhaps, preferable on the whole."
"Perhaps it was;--though I used to feel assured that the explicit
tablet would be as clear to my eyes in purgatory as Mr. Daubeny's
words have been to my ears this afternoon. I never for a moment
doubted that the truth would be known before long,--but did doubt so
very much whether it would be known in time. I'll go home now, Mr.
Monk, and endeavour to get the matter off my mind. I will resolve,
at any rate, that nothing shall make me talk about it any more."