Mrs. Bunce was delighted when she found that Phineas had hired a servant; but Mr. Bunce predicted nothing but evil from so vain an expense. “Don’t tell me; where is it to come from? He ain’t no richer because he’s in Parliament. There ain’t no wages. M.P. and M.T.,” — whereby Mr. Bunce, I fear, meant empty, — “are pretty much alike when a man hasn’t a fortune at his back.” “But he’s going to stay with all the lords in the Cabinet,” said Mrs. Bunce, to whom Phineas, in his pride, had confided perhaps more than was necessary. “Cabinet, indeed,” said Bunce; “if he’d stick to chambers, and let alone cabinets, he’d do a deal better. Given up his rooms, has he, — till February? He don’t expect we’re going to keep them empty for him!”
Phineas found that the house was full at Saulsby, although the sojourn of the visitors would necessarily be so short. There were three or four there on their way on to Loughlinter, like himself, — Mr. Bonteen and Mr. Ratler, with Mr. Palliser, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and his wife, — and there was Violet Effingham, who, however, was not going to Loughlinter. “No, indeed,” she said to our hero, who on the first evening had the pleasure of taking her in to dinner, “unfortunately I haven’t a seat in Parliament, and therefore I am not asked.”
“Lady Laura is going.”
“Yes; — but Lady Laura has a Cabinet Minister in her keeping. I’ve only one comfort; — you’ll be awfully dull.”
“I daresay it would be very much nicer to stay here,” said Phineas.
“If you want to know my real mind,” said Violet, “I would give one of my little fingers to go. There will be four Cabinet Ministers in the house, and four un-Cabinet Ministers, and half a dozen other members of Parliament, and there will be Lady Glencora Palliser, who is the best fun in the world; and, in point of fact, it’s the thing of the year. But I am not asked. You see I belong to the Baldock faction, and we don’t sit on your side of the House. Mr. Kennedy thinks that I should tell secrets.”
Why on earth had Mr. Kennedy invited him, Phineas Finn, to meet four Cabinet Ministers and Lady Glencora Palliser? He could only have done so at the instance of Lady Laura Standish. It was delightful for Phineas to think that Lady Laura cared for him so deeply; but it was not equally delightful when he remembered how very close must be the alliance between Mr. Kennedy and Lady Laura, when she was thus powerful with him.
At Saulsby Phineas did not see much of his hostess. When they were making their plans for the one entire day of this visit, she said a soft word of apology to him. “I am so busy with all these people, that I hardly know what I am doing. But we shall be able to find a quiet minute or two at Loughlinter, — unless, indeed, you intend to be on the mountains all day. I suppose you have brought a gun like everybody else?”
“Yes; — I have brought a gun. I do shoot; but I am not an inveterate sportsman.”
On that one day there was a great riding party made up, and Phineas found himself mounted, after luncheon, with some dozen other equestrians. Among them were Miss Effingham and Lady Glencora, Mr. Ratler and the Earl of Brentford himself. Lady Glencora, whose husband was, as has been said, Chancellor of the Exchequer, and who was still a young woman, and a very pretty woman, had taken lately very strongly to politics, which she discussed among men and women of both parties with something more than ordinary audacity. “What a nice, happy, lazy time you’ve had of it since you’ve been in,” said she to the Earl.
“I hope we have been more happy than lazy,” said the Earl.
“But you’ve done nothing. Mr. Palliser has twenty schemes of reform, all mature; but among you you’ve not let him bring in one of them. The Duke and Mr. Mildmay and you will break his heart among you.”
“Poor Mr. Palliser!”
“The truth is, if you don’t take care he and Mr. Monk and Mr. Gresham will arise and shake themselves, and turn you all out.”
“We must look to ourselves, Lady Glencora.”
“Indeed, yes; — or you will be known to all posterity as the fainéant government.”
“Let me tell you, Lady Glencora, that a fainéant government is not the worst government that England can have. It has been the great fault of our politicians that they have all wanted to do something.”
“Mr. Mildmay is at any rate innocent of that charge,” said Lady Glencora.
They were now riding through a vast wood, and Phineas found himself delightfully established by the side of Violet Effingham. “Mr. Ratler has been explaining to me that he must have nineteen next session. Now, if I were you, Mr. Finn, I would decline to be counted up in that way as one of Mr. Ratler’s sheep.”
“But what am I to do?”
“Do something on your own hook. You men in Parliament are so much like sheep! If one jumps at a gap, all go after him, — and then you are penned into lobbies, and then you are fed, and then you are fleeced. I wish I were in Parliament. I’d get up in the middle and make such a speech. You all seem to me to be so much afraid of one another that you don’t quite dare to speak out. Do you see that cottage there?”
“What a pretty cottage it is!”
“Yes; — is it not? Twelve years ago I took off my shoes and stockings and had them dried in that cottage, and when I got back to the house I was put to bed for having been out all day in the wood.”
“Were you wandering about alone?”
“No, I wasn’t alone. Oswald Standish was with me. We were children then. Do you know him?”
“Lord Chiltern; — yes, I know him. He and I have been rather friends this year.”
“He is very good; — is he not?”
“Good, — in what way?”
“Honest and generous!”
“I know no man whom I believe to be more so.”
“And he is clever?” asked Miss Effingham.
“Very clever. That is, he talks very well if you will let him talk after his own fashion. You would always fancy that he was going to eat you; — but that is his way.”
“And you like him?”
“Very much.”
“I am so glad to hear you say so.”
“Is he a favourite of yours, Miss Effingham?”
“Not now, — not particularly. I hardly ever see him. But his sister is the best friend I have, and I used to like him so much when he was a boy! I have not seen that cottage since that day, and I remember it as though it were yesterday. Lord Chiltern is quite changed, is he not?”
“Changed, — in what way?”
“They used to say that he was — unsteady you know.”
“I think he is changed. But Chiltern is at heart a Bohemian. It is impossible not to see that at once. He hates the decencies of life.”
“I suppose he does,” said Violet. “He ought to marry. If he were married, that would all be cured; — don’t you think so?”
“I cannot fancy him with a wife,” said Phineas, “There is a savagery about him which would make him an uncomfortable companion for a woman.”
“But he would love his wife?”
“Yes, as he does his horses. And he would treat her well, — as he does his horses. But he expects every horse he has to do anything that any horse can do; and he would expect the same of his wife.”
Phineas had no idea how deep an injury he might be doing his friend by this description, nor did it once occur to him that his companion was thinking of herself as the possible wife of this Red Indian. Miss Effingham rode on in silence for some distance, and then she said but one word more about Lord Chiltern. “He was so good to me in that cottage.”
On the following day the party at Saulsby was broken up, and there was a regular pilgrimage towards Loughlinter. Phineas resolved upon sleeping a night at Edinburgh on his way, and he found himself joined in the bands of close companionship with Mr. Ratler for the occasion. The evening was by no means thrown away, for he learned much of his trade from Mr. Ratler. And Mr. Ratler was heard to declare afterwards at Loughlinter that Mr. Finn was a pleasant young man.
It soon came to be admi
tted by all who knew Phineas Finn that he had a peculiar power of making himself agreeable which no one knew how to analyse or define. “I think it is because he listens so well,” said one man. “But the women would not like him for that,” said another. “He has studied when to listen and when to talk,” said a third. The truth, however, was, that Phineas Finn had made no study in the matter at all. It was simply his nature to be pleasant.
CHAPTER XIV
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 c
ome 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!”
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