The Palliser Novels

by Anthony Trollope

  There was a great injustice in all this; at least so Phineas thought; — injustice, not only from the hands of Mr. Slide, who was unjust as a matter of course, but also from those who ought to have been his staunch friends. He had been enticed over to England almost with a promise of office, and he was sure that he had done nothing which deserved punishment, or even censure. He could not condescend to complain, — nor indeed as yet could he say that there was ground for complaint. Nothing had been done to him. Not a word had been spoken, — except those lying words in the newspapers which he was too proud to notice. On one matter, however, he was determined to be firm. When Barrington Erle had absolutely insisted that he should vote upon the Church Bill in opposition to all that he had said upon the subject at Tankerville, he had stipulated that he should have an opportunity in the great debate which would certainly take place of explaining his conduct, — or, in other words, that the privilege of making a speech should be accorded to him at a time in which very many members would no doubt attempt to speak and would attempt in vain. It may be imagined, — probably still is imagined by a great many, — that no such pledge as this could be given, that the right to speak depends simply on the Speaker’s eye, and that energy at the moment in attracting attention would alone be of account to an eager orator. But Phineas knew the House too well to trust to such a theory. That some preliminary assistance would be given to the travelling of the Speaker’s eye, in so important a debate, he knew very well; and he knew also that a promise from Barrington Erle or from Mr. Ratler would be his best security. “That will be all right, of course,” said Barrington Erle to him on the evening the day before the debate: “We have quite counted on your speaking.” There had been a certain sullenness in the tone with which Phineas had asked his question as though he had been labouring under a grievance, and he felt himself rebuked by the cordiality of the reply. “I suppose we had better fix it for Monday or Tuesday,” said the other. “We hope to get it over by Tuesday, but there is no knowing. At any rate you shan’t be thrown over.” It was almost on his tongue, — the entire story of his grievance, the expression of his feeling that he was not being treated as one of the chosen; but he restrained himself. He liked Barrington Erle well enough, but not so well as to justify him in asking for sympathy.

  Nor had it been his wont in any of the troubles of his life to ask for sympathy from a man. He had always gone to some woman; — in old days to Lady Laura, or to Violet Effingham, or to Madame Goesler. By them he could endure to be petted, praised, or upon occasion even pitied. But pity or praise from any man had been distasteful to him. On the morning of the 1st of April he again went to Park Lane, not with any formed plan of telling the lady of his wrongs, but driven by a feeling that he wanted comfort, which might perhaps be found there. The lady received him very kindly, and at once inquired as to the great political tournament which was about to be commenced. “Yes; we begin to-day,” said Phineas. “Mr. Daubeny will speak, I should say, from half-past four till seven. I wonder you don’t go and hear him.”

  “What a pleasure! To hear a man speak for two hours and a half about the Church of England. One must be very hard driven for amusement! Will you tell me that you like it?”

  “I like to hear a good speech.”

  “But you have the excitement before you of making a good speech in answer. You are in the fight. A poor woman, shut up in a cage, feels there more acutely than anywhere else how insignificant a position she fills in the world.”

  “You don’t advocate the rights of women, Madame Goesler?”

  “Oh, no. Knowing our inferiority I submit without a grumble; but I am not sure that I care to go and listen to the squabbles of my masters. You may arrange it all among you, and I will accept what you do, whether it be good or bad, — as I must; but I cannot take so much interest in the proceeding as to spend my time in listening where I cannot speak, and in looking when I cannot be seen. You will speak?”

  “Yes; I think so.”

  “I shall read your speech, which is more than I shall do for most of the others. And when it is all over, will your turn come?”

  “Not mine individually, Madame Goesler.”

  “But it will be yours individually; — will it not?” she asked with energy. Then gradually, with half-pronounced sentences, he explained to her that even in the event of the formation of a Liberal Government, he did not expect that any place would be offered to him. “And why not? We have been all speaking of it as a certainty.”

  He longed to inquire who were the all of whom she spoke, but he could not do it without an egotism which would be distasteful to him. “I can hardly tell; — but I don’t think I shall be asked to join them.”

  “You would wish it?”

  “Yes; — talking to you I do not see why I should hesitate to say so.”

  “Talking to me, why should you hesitate to say anything about yourself that is true? I can hold my tongue. I do not gossip about my friends. Whose doing is it?”

  “I do not know that it is any man’s doing.”

  “But it must be. Everybody said that you were to be one of them if you could get the other people out. Is it Mr. Bonteen?”

  “Likely enough. Not that I know anything of the kind; but as I hate him from the bottom of my heart, it is natural to suppose that he has the same feeling in regard to me.”

  “I agree with you there.”

  “But I don’t know that it comes from any feeling of that kind.”

  “What does it come from?”

  “You have heard all the calumny about Lady Laura Kennedy.”

  “You do not mean to say that a story such as that has affected your position.”

  “I fancy it has. But you must not suppose, Madame Goesler, that I mean to complain. A man must take these things as they come. No one has received more kindness from friends than I have, and few perhaps more favours from fortune. All this about Mr. Kennedy has been unlucky, — but it cannot be helped.”

  “Do you mean to say that the morals of your party will be offended?” said Madame Goesler, almost laughing.

  “Lord Fawn, you know, is very particular. In sober earnest one cannot tell how these things operate; but they do operate gradually. One’s friends are sometimes very glad of an excuse for not befriending one.”

  “Lady Laura is coming home?”

  “Yes.”

  “That will put an end to it.”

  “There is nothing to put an end to except the foul-mouthed malice of a lying newspaper. Nobody believes anything against Lady Laura.”

  “I’m not so sure of that. I believe nothing against her.”

  “I’m sure you do not, Madame Goesler. Nor do I think that anybody does. It is too absurd for belief from beginning to end. Good-bye. Perhaps I shall see you when the debate is over.”

  “Of course you will. Good-bye, and success to your oratory.” Then Madame Goesler resolved that she would say a few judicious words to her friend, the Duchess, respecting Phineas Finn.

  CHAPTER XXXIII

  The Two Gladiators

  The great debate was commenced with all the solemnities which are customary on such occasions, and which make men think for the day that no moment of greater excitement has ever blessed or cursed the country. Upon the present occasion London was full of clergymen. The specially clerical clubs, — the Oxford and Cambridge, the Old University, and the Athenaeum, — were black with them. The bishops and deans, as usual, were pleasant in their manner and happy-looking, in spite of adverse circumstances. When one sees a bishop in the hours of the distress of the Church, one always thinks of the just and firm man who will stand fearless while the ruins of the world are falling about his ears. But the parsons from the country were a sorry sight to see. They were in earnest with all their hearts, and did believe, — not that the crack of doom was coming, which they could have borne with equanimity if convinced that their influence would last to the end, — but that the Evil One was to be made welcome upon the earth by Act of Parli
ament. It is out of nature that any man should think it good that his own order should be repressed, curtailed, and deprived of its power. If we go among cab-drivers or letter-carriers, among butlers or gamekeepers, among tailors or butchers, among farmers or graziers, among doctors or attorneys, we shall find in each set of men a conviction that the welfare of the community depends upon the firmness with which they, — especially they, — hold their own. This is so manifestly true with the Bar that no barrister in practice scruples to avow that barristers in practice are the salt of the earth. The personal confidence of a judge in his own position is beautiful, being salutary to the country, though not unfrequently damaging to the character of the man. But if this be so with men who are conscious of no higher influence than that exercised over the bodies and minds of their fellow creatures, how much stronger must be the feeling when the influence affects the soul! To the outsider, or layman, who simply uses a cab, or receives a letter, or goes to law, or has to be tried, these pretensions are ridiculous or annoying, according to the ascendancy of the pretender at the moment. But as the clerical pretensions are more exacting than all others, being put forward with an assertion that no answer is possible without breach of duty and sin, so are they more galling. The fight has been going on since the idea of a mitre first entered the heart of a priest, — since dominion in this world has found itself capable of sustentation by the exercise of fear as to the world to come. We do believe, — the majority among us does so, — that if we live and die in sin we shall after some fashion come to great punishment, and we believe also that by having pastors among us who shall be men of God, we may best aid ourselves and our children in avoiding this bitter end. But then the pastors and men of God can only be human, — cannot be altogether men of God; and so they have oppressed us, and burned us, and tortured us, and hence come to love palaces, and fine linen, and purple, and, alas, sometimes, mere luxury and idleness. The torturing and the burning, as also to speak truth the luxury and the idleness, have, among us, been already conquered, but the idea of ascendancy remains. What is a thoughtful man to do who acknowledges the danger of his soul, but cannot swallow his parson whole simply because he has been sent to him from some source in which he has no special confidence, perhaps by some distant lord, perhaps by a Lord Chancellor whose political friend has had a son with a tutor? What is he to do when, in spite of some fine linen and purple left among us, the provision for the man of God in his parish or district is so poor that no man of God fitted to teach him will come and take it? In no spirit of animosity to religion he begins to tell himself that Church and State together was a monkish combination, fit perhaps for monkish days, but no longer having fitness, and not much longer capable of existence in this country. But to the parson himself, — to the honest, hardworking, conscientious priest who does in his heart of hearts believe that no diminution in the general influence of his order can be made without ruin to the souls of men, — this opinion, when it becomes dominant, is as though the world were in truth breaking to pieces over his head. The world has been broken to pieces in the same way often; — but extreme Chaos does not come. The cabman and the letter-carrier always expect that Chaos will very nearly come when they are disturbed. The barristers are sure of Chaos when the sanctity of Benchers is in question. What utter Chaos would be promised to us could any one with impunity contemn the majesty of the House of Commons! But of all these Chaoses there can be no Chaos equal to that which in the mind of a zealous Oxford-bred constitutional country parson must attend that annihilation of his special condition which will be produced by the disestablishment of the Church. Of all good fellows he is the best good fellow. He is genial, hospitable, well-educated, and always has either a pretty wife or pretty daughters. But he has so extreme a belief in himself that he cannot endure to be told that absolute Chaos will not come at once if he be disturbed. And now disturbances, — ay, and utter dislocation and ruin were to come from the hands of a friend! Was it wonderful that parsons should be seen about Westminster in flocks with “Et tu, Brute” written on their faces as plainly as the law on the brows of a Pharisee?

  The Speaker had been harassed for orders. The powers and prowess of every individual member had been put to the test. The galleries were crowded. Ladies’ places had been ballotted for with desperate enthusiasm, in spite of the sarcasm against the House which Madame Goesler had expressed. Two royal princes and a royal duke were accommodated within the House in an irregular manner. Peers swarmed in the passages, and were too happy to find standing room. Bishops jostled against lay barons with no other preference than that afforded to them by their broader shoulders. Men, and especially clergymen, came to the galleries loaded with sandwiches and flasks, prepared to hear all there was to be heard should the debate last from 4 p.m. to the same hour on the following morning. At two in the afternoon the entrances to the House were barred, and men of all ranks, — deans, prebends, peers’ sons, and baronets, — stood there patiently waiting till some powerful nobleman should let them through. The very ventilating chambers under the House were filled with courteous listeners, who had all pledged themselves that under no possible provocation would they even cough during the debate.

  A few minutes after four, in a House from which hardly more than a dozen members were absent, Mr. Daubeny took his seat with that air of affected indifference to things around him which is peculiar to him. He entered slowly, amidst cheers from his side of the House, which no doubt were loud in proportion to the dismay of the cheerers as to the matter in hand. Gentlemen lacking substantial sympathy with their leader found it to be comfortable to deceive themselves, and raise their hearts at the same time by the easy enthusiasm of noise. Mr. Daubeny having sat down and covered his head just raised his hat from his brows, and then tried to look as though he were no more than any other gentleman present. But the peculiar consciousness of the man displayed itself even in his constrained absence of motion. You could see that he felt himself to be the beheld of all beholders, and that he enjoyed the position, — with some slight inward trepidation lest the effort to be made should not equal the greatness of the occasion. Immediately after him Mr. Gresham bustled up the centre of the House amidst a roar of good-humoured welcome. We have had many Ministers who have been personally dearer to their individual adherents in the House than the present leader of the Opposition and late Premier, but none, perhaps, who has been more generally respected by his party for earnestness and sincerity. On the present occasion there was a fierceness, almost a ferocity, in his very countenance, to the fire of which friends and enemies were equally anxious to add fuel, — the friends in order that so might these recreant Tories be more thoroughly annihilated, and the enemies, that their enemy’s indiscretion might act back upon himself to his confusion. For, indeed, it never could be denied that as a Prime Minister Mr. Gresham could be very indiscreet.

  A certain small amount of ordinary business was done, to the disgust of expectant strangers, which was as trivial as possible in its nature, — so arranged, apparently, that the importance of what was to follow might be enhanced by the force of contrast. And, to make the dismay of the novice stranger more thorough, questions were asked and answers were given in so low a voice, and Mr. Speaker uttered a word or two in so quick and shambling a fashion, that he, the novice stranger, began to fear that no word of the debate would reach him up there in his crowded back seat. All this, however, occupied but a few minutes, and at twenty minutes past four Mr. Daubeny was on his legs. Then the novice stranger found that, though he could not see Mr. Daubeny without the aid of an opera glass, he could hear every word that fell from his lips.

  Mr. Daubeny began by regretting the hardness of his position, in that he must, with what thoroughness he might be able to achieve, apply himself to two great subjects, whereas the right honourable gentleman opposite had already declared, with all the formality which could be made to attach itself to a combined meeting of peers and commoners, that he would confine himself strictly to one. The subject selected b
y the right honourable gentleman opposite on the present occasion was not the question of Church Reform. The right honourable gentleman had pledged himself with an almost sacred enthusiasm to ignore that subject altogether. No doubt it was the question before the House, and he, himself, — the present speaker, — must unfortunately discuss it at some length. The right honourable gentleman opposite would not, on this great occasion, trouble himself with anything of so little moment. And it might be presumed that the political followers of the right honourable gentleman would be equally reticent, as they were understood to have accepted his tactics without a dissentient voice. He, Mr. Daubeny, was the last man in England to deny the importance of the question which the right honourable gentleman would select for discussions in preference to that of the condition of the Church. That question was a very simple one, and might be put to the House in a very few words. Coming from the mouth of the right honourable gentleman, the proposition would probably be made in this form: — “That this House does think that I ought to be Prime Minister now, and as long as I may possess a seat in this House.” It was impossible to deny the importance of that question; but perhaps he, Mr. Daubeny, might be justified in demurring to the preference given to it over every other matter, let that matter be of what importance it might be to the material welfare of the country.