Phineas Redux

  CHAPTER XXXVI.

  SEVENTY-TWO.

  On the next morning Phineas, with his speech before him, was obligedfor a while to forget, or at least to postpone, Mr. Bonteen and hisinjuries. He could not now go to Lord Cantrip, as the hours weretoo precious to him, and, as he felt, too short. Though he had beenthinking what he would say ever since the debate had become imminent,and knew accurately the line which he would take, he had not as yetprepared a word of his speech. But he had resolved that he wouldnot prepare a word otherwise than he might do by arranging certainphrases in his memory. There should be nothing written; he had triedthat before in old days, and had broken down with the effort. Hewould load himself with no burden of words in itself so heavy thatthe carrying of it would incapacitate him for any other effort.

  After a late breakfast he walked out far away, into the Regent'sPark, and there, wandering among the uninteresting paths, he devisedtriumphs of oratory for himself. Let him resolve as he would toforget Mr. Bonteen, and that charge of having been untrue to hiscompanions, he could not restrain himself from efforts to fit thematter after some fashion into his speech. Dim ideas of a definitionof political honesty crossed his brain, bringing with him, however,a conviction that his thought must be much more clearly worked outthan it could be on that day before he might venture to give it birthin the House of Commons. He knew that he had been honest two yearsago in separating himself from his colleagues. He knew that he wouldbe honest now in voting with them, apparently in opposition to thepledges he had given at Tankerville. But he knew also that it wouldbehove him to abstain from speaking of himself unless he could do soin close reference to some point specially in dispute between the twoparties. When he returned to eat a mutton chop at Great MarlboroughStreet at three o'clock he was painfully conscious that all hismorning had been wasted. He had allowed his mind to run revel,instead of tying it down to the formation of sentences andconstruction of arguments.

  He entered the House with the Speaker at four o'clock, and took hisseat without uttering a word to any man. He seemed to be more thanever disjoined from his party. Hitherto, since he had been seatedby the Judge's order, the former companions of his Parliamentarylife,--the old men whom he had used to know,--had to a certain degreeadmitted him among them. Many of them sat on the front Oppositionbench, whereas he, as a matter of course, had seated himself behind.But he had very frequently found himself next to some man who hadheld office and was living in the hope of holding it again, andhad felt himself to be in some sort recognised as an aspirant. Nowit seemed to him that it was otherwise. He did not doubt but thatBonteen had shown the correspondence to his friends, and that theRatlers and Erles had conceded that he, Phineas, was put out ofcourt by it. He sat doggedly still, at the end of a bench behindMr. Gresham, and close to the gangway. When Mr. Gresham entered theHouse he was received with much cheering; but Phineas did not join inthe cheer. He was studious to avoid any personal recognition of thefuture giver-away of places, though they two were close together; andhe then fancied that Mr. Gresham had specially and most ungraciouslyabstained 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; "notabove twenty minutes, I should think." He was able to assume an airof indifference, and yet at the moment he heartily wished himselfback in Dublin. It was not now that he feared the task immediatelybefore him, but that he was overcome by the feeling of generalfailure which had come upon him. Of what use was it to him or to anyone else that he should be there in that assembly, with the privilegeof making a speech that would influence no human being, unless hisbeing there could be made a step to something beyond? While the usualpreliminary work was being done, he looked round the House, and sawLord Cantrip in the Peers' gallery. Alas! of what avail was that? Hehad always been able to bind to him individuals with whom he had beenbrought into close contact; but more than that was wanted in thismost precarious of professions, in which now, for a second time, hewas 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 theformer day, brought members into their seats, and filled the gallerywith strangers. We may say, perhaps, that the highest duty imposedupon us as a nation is the management of India; and we may alsosay that in a great national assembly personal squabbling amongits members is the least dignified work in which it can employitself. But the prospect of an explanation,--or otherwise of afight,--between two leading politicians will fill the House; and anyallusion to our Eastern Empire will certainly empty it. An aptitudefor such encounters is almost a necessary qualification for a popularleader in Parliament, as is a capacity for speaking for threehours to the reporters, and to the reporters only,--a necessaryqualification for an Under-Secretary of State for India.

  Phineas had the advantage of the temper of the moment in a Housethoroughly crowded, and he enjoyed it. Let a man doubt ever so muchhis own capacity for some public exhibition which he has undertaken;yet he will always prefer to fail,--if fail he must,--before a largeaudience. But on this occasion there was no failure. That sense ofawe from the surrounding circumstances of the moment, which had oncebeen heavy on him, and which he still well remembered, had beenovercome, and had never returned to him. He felt now that he shouldnot lack words to pour out his own individual grievances were it notthat he was prevented by a sense of the indiscretion of doing so. Asit was, he did succeed in alluding to his own condition in a mannerthat brought upon him no reproach. He began by saying that he shouldnot have added to the difficulty of the debate,--which was one simplyof length,--were it not that he had been accused in advance of votingagainst a measure as to which he had pledged himself at the hustingsto do all that he could to further it. No man was more anxious thanhe, an Irish Roman Catholic, to abolish that which he thought to bethe anomaly of a State Church, and he did not in the least doubt thathe should now be doing the best in his power with that object invoting against the second reading of the present bill. That such ameasure should be carried by the gentlemen opposite, in their ownteeth, at the bidding of the right honourable gentleman who ledthem, he thought to be impossible. Upon this he was hooted at fromthe other side with many gestures of indignant denial, and was, ofcourse, equally cheered by those around him. Such interruptions arenew breath to the nostrils of all orators, and Phineas enjoyed thenoise. He repeated his assertion that it would be an evil thing forthe country that the measure should be carried by men who in theirhearts condemned it, and was vehemently called to order for thisassertion about the hearts of gentlemen. But a speaker who cancertainly be made amenable to authority for vilipending in debatethe heart of any specified opponent, may with safety attribute allmanner of ill to the agglomerated hearts of a party. To have told anyindividual Conservative,--Sir Orlando Drought for instance,--thathe was abandoning all the convictions of his life, because he was acreature at the command of Mr. Daubeny, would have been an insultthat would have moved even the Speaker from his serenity; but you canhardly be personal to a whole bench of Conservatives,--to bench abovebench of Conservatives. The charge had been made and repeated overand over again, till all the Orlando Droughts were ready to cut someman's throat,--whether their own, or Mr. Daubeny's, or Mr. Gresham's,they hardly knew. It might probably have been Mr. Daubeny's forchoice, had any real cutting of a throat been possible. It was nowmade again by Phineas Finn,--with the ostensible object of defendinghimself,--and he for the moment became the target for Conservativewrath. Some one asked him in fury by what right he took upon himselfto judge of the motives of gentlemen on that side of the House ofwhom personally he knew nothing. Phineas replied that he did notat all doubt the motives of the honourable gentleman who askedthe question, which he was sure were noble and patriotic. Butunfortunately the whole country was convinced that the Conservativeparty as a body was supporting this measure, unwillingly, and at thebidding of one man;--and, for himself, he was bound to say that heagreed with the country. And so the row was renewed and
prolonged,and the gentlemen assembled, members and strangers together, passed apleasant evening.

  Before he sat down, Phineas made one allusion to that formerscuttling of the ship,--an accusation as to which had been madeagainst him so injuriously by Mr. Bonteen. He himself, he said, hadbeen called impractical, and perhaps he might allude to a vote whichhe had given in that House when last he had the honour of sittingthere, and on giving which he resigned the office which he had thenheld. He had the gratification of knowing that he had been so farpractical as to have then foreseen the necessity of a measure whichhad since been passed. And he did not doubt that he would hereafterbe found to have been equally practical in the view that he hadexpressed on the hustings at Tankerville, for he was convinced thatbefore long the anomaly of which he had spoken would cease to existunder the influence of a Government that would really believe in thework it was doing.

  There was no doubt as to the success of his speech. The vehemencewith which his insolence was abused by one after another of those whospoke later from the other side was ample evidence of its success.But nothing occurred then or at the conclusion of the debate to makehim think that he had won his way back to Elysium. During the wholeevening he exchanged not a syllable with Mr. Gresham,--who indeedwas 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 himhighly. But in reading the general barometer of the party as regardedhimself, he did not find that the mercury went up. He was wretchedlyanxious, and angry with himself for his own anxiety. He scorned tosay a word that should sound like an entreaty; and yet he had placedhis whole heart on a thing which seemed to be slipping from himfor the want of asking. In a day or two it would be known whetherthe present Ministry would or would not go out. That they must beout of office before a month was over seemed to him the opinionof everybody. His fate,--and what a fate it was!--would then beabsolutely in the hands of Mr. Gresham. Yet he could not speak aword of his hopes and fears even to Mr. Gresham. He had given upeverything in the world with the view of getting into office; and nowthat the opportunity had come,--an opportunity which if allowed toslip could hardly return again in time to be of service to him,--theprize was to elude his grasp!

  But yet he did not say a word to any one on the subject that wasso near his heart, although in the course of the night he spoke toLord Cantrip in the gallery of the House. He told his friend that acorrespondence had taken place between himself and Mr. Bonteen, inwhich he thought that he had been ill-used, and as to which he wasquite anxious to ask His Lordship's advice. "I heard that you and hehad 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," saidPhineas angrily.

  "You can't quarrel with Bonteen for showing them to Fawn, if youintend 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 themprejudicial 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 anotherfriend, 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 tohimself had been kind and constant. Nevertheless, the whole affairwas going against him. Lord Cantrip had not said a word prejudicialto that wretch Bonteen; much less had he hinted at any futurearrangements which would be comfortable to poor Phineas. They two,Lord Cantrip and Phineas, had at one period been on most intimateterms together;--had worked in the same office, and had thoroughlytrusted each other. The elder of the two,--for Lord Cantrip was aboutten years senior to Phineas,--had frequently expressed the mostlively interest in the prospects of the other; and Phineas had feltthat in any emergency he could tell his friend all his hopes andfears. But now he did not say a word of his position, nor did LordCantrip allude to it. They were to meet on the morrow in order thatLord Cantrip might read the correspondence;--but Phineas was surethat no word would be said about the Government.

  At five o'clock in the morning the division took place, and theGovernment was beaten by a majority of 72. This was much higherthan any man had expected. When the parties were marshalled in theopposite lobbies it was found that in the last moment the number ofthose Conservatives who dared to rebel against their Conservativeleaders was swelled by the course which the debate had taken. Therewere certain men who could not endure to be twitted with havingdeserted the principles of their lives, when it was clear thatnothing was to be gained by the party by such desertion.