On the last day of the debate, at a few moments before four o'clock, Phineas encountered another terrible misfortune. He had been at the potted peas since twelve, and had on this occasion targed two or three commissariat officers very tightly with questions respecting cabbages and potatoes, and had asked whether the officers on board a certain ship did not always eat preserved asparagus while the men had not even a bean. I fear that he had been put up to this business by Mr Quintus Slide, and that he made himself nasty. There was, however, so much nastiness of the kind going, that his little effort made no great difference. The conservative members of the Committee, on whose side of the House the inquiry had originated, did not scruple to lay all manner of charges to officers whom, were they themselves in power, they would be bound to support and would support with all their energies. About a quarter before four the members of the Committee had dismissed their last witness for the day, being desirous of not losing their chance of seats on so important an occasion, and hurried down into the lobby, – so that they might enter the House before prayers. Phineas here was button-holed by Barrington Erle, who said something to him as to the approaching division. They were standing in front of the door of the House, almost in the middle of the lobby, with a crowd of members around them, – on a spot which, as frequenters know, is hallowed ground, and must not be trodden by strangers. He was in the act of answering Erle, when he was touched on the arm, and on turning round, saw Mr Clarkson. ‘About that little bill, Mr Finn,’ said the horrible man, turning his chin round over his white cravat. ‘They always tell me at your lodgings that you ain't at home.’ By this time a policeman was explaining to Mr Clarkson with gentle violence that he must not stand there, – that he must go aside into one of the corners. ‘I know all that,’ said Mr Clarkson, retreating. ‘Of course I do. But what is a man to do when a gent won't see him at home?’ Mr Clarkson stood aside in his corner quietly, giving the policeman no occasion for further action against him; but in retreating he spoke loud, and there was a lull of voices around, and twenty members at least had heard what had been said. Phineas Finn no doubt had his privilege, but Mr Clarkson was determined that the privilege should avail him as little as possible.
It was very hard. The real offender, the Lord of the Treasury, the peer's son, with a thousand a year paid by the country, was not treated with this cruel persecution. Phineas had in truth never taken a farthing from any one but his father; and though doubtless he owed something at this moment, he had no creditor of his own that was even angry with him. As the world goes he was a clear man, – but for this debt of his friend Fitzgibbon. He left Barrington Erle in the lobby, and hurried into the House, blushing up to the eyes. He looked for Fitzgibbon in his place, but the Lord of the Treasury was not as yet there. Doubtless he would be there for the division, and Phineas resolved that he would speak a bit of his mind before he let his friend out of his sight.
There were some great speeches made on that evening. Mr Gresham delivered an oration of which men said that it would be known in England as long as there were any words remaining of English eloquence. In it he taunted Mr Turnbull with being a recreant to the people, of whom he called himself so often the champion. But Mr Turnbull was not in the least moved. Mr Gresham knew well enough that Mr Turnbull was not to be moved by any words; – but the words were not the less telling to the House and to the country. Men, who heard it, said that Mr Gresham forgot himself in that speech, forgot his party, forgot his strategy, forgot his long-drawn schemes, – even his love of applause, and thought only of his cause. Mr Daubeny replied to him with equal genius, and with equal skill, – if not with equal heart. Mr Gresham had asked for the approbation of all present and of all future reformers. Mr Daubeny denied him both, – the one because he would not succeed, and the other because he would not have deserved success. Then Mr Mildmay made his reply, getting up at about three o'clock, and uttered a prayer, – a futile prayer, – that this his last work on behalf of his countrymen might be successful. His bill was read a second time, as I have said before, in obedience to the casting vote of the Speaker, – but a majority such as that was tantamount to a defeat.
There was, of course, on that night no declaration as to what ministers would do. Without a meeting of the Cabinet, and without some further consideration, though each might know that the bill would be withdrawn, they could not say in what way they would act. But late as was the hour, there were many words on the subject before members were in their beds. Mr Turnbull and Mr Monk left the House together, and perhaps no two gentlemen in it had in former sessions been more in the habit of walking home arm-in-arm and discussing what each had heard and what each had said in that assembly. Latterly these two men had gone strangely asunder in their paths, – very strangely for men who had for years walked so closely together. And this separation had been marked by violent words spoken against each other, – by violent words, at least, spoken against him in office by the one who had never contaminated his hands by the Queen's shilling. And yet, on such an occasion as this, they were able to walk away from the House arm-in-arm, and did not fly at each other's throat by the way.
‘Singular enough, is it not,’ said Mr Turnbull, ‘that the thing should have been so close?’
‘Very odd,’ said Mr Monk; ‘but men have said that it would be so all the week.’
‘Gresham was very fine,’ said Turnbull.
‘Very fine, indeed. I never have heard anything like it before.’
‘Daubeny was very powerful too,’ said Mr Turnbull.
‘Yes; – no doubt. The occasion was great, and he answered to the spur. But Gresham's was the speech of the debate.’
‘Well; – yes; perhaps it was,’ said Mr Turnbull, who was thinking of his own flight the other night, and who among his special friends had been much praised for what he had then done. But of course he made no allusion to his own doings, – or to those of Mr Monk. In this way they conversed for some twenty minutes, till they parted; but neither of them interrogated the other as to what either might be called upon to do in consequence of the division which had just been effected. They might still be intimate friends, but the days of confidence between them were passed.
Phineas had seen Laurence Fitzgibbon enter the House, – which he did quite late in the night, so as to be in time for the division. No doubt he had dined in the House, and had been all the evening in the library, – or in the smoking-room. When Mr Mildmay was on his legs making his reply, Fitzgibbon had sauntered in, not choosing to wait till he might be rung up by the bell at the last moment. Phineas was near him as they passed by the tellers, near him in the lobby, and near him again as they all passed back into the House. But at the last moment he thought that he would miss his prey. In the crowd as they left the House he failed to get his hand upon his friend's shoulder. But he hurried down the members’ passage, and just at the gate leading out into Westminster Hall he overtook Fitzgibbon walking arm-in-arm with Barrington Erle.
‘Laurence,’ he said, taking hold of his countryman with a decided grasp, ‘I want to speak to you for a moment, if you please.’
‘Speak away,’ said Laurence. Then Phineas. looking up into his face, knew very well that he had been – what the world calls, dining.
Phineas remembered at the moment that Barrington Erle had been close to him when the odious money-lender had touched his arm and made his inquiry about that ‘little bill.’ He much wished to make Erle understand that the debt was not his own, – that he was not in the hands of usurers in reference to his own concerns. But there was a feeling within him that he still, – even still, – owed something to his friendship to Fitzgibbon. ‘Just give me your arm, and come on with me for a minute,’ said Phineas. ‘Erle will excuse us.’
‘Oh, blazes!’ said Laurence, ‘what is it you're after? I ain't good at private conferences at three in the morning. We're all out, and isn't that enough for ye?’
‘I have been dreadfully annoyed to-night,’ said Phineas, ‘and I wished to speak to
you about it.’
‘Bedad, Finn, my boy, and there are a good many of us are annoyed; – eh, Barrington?’
Phineas perceived clearly that though Fitzgibbon had been dining, there was as much of cunning in all this as of wine, and he was determined not to submit to such unlimited ill-usage. ‘My annoyance comes from your friend, Mr Clarkson, who had the impudence to address me in the lobby of the House.’
‘And serve you right, too, Finn, my boy. Why the devil did you sport your oak to him? He has told me all about it. There ain't such a patient little fellow as Clarkson anywhere, if you'll only let him have his own way. He'll look in, as he calls it, three times a week for a whole season, and do nothing further. Of course he don't like to be locked out.’
‘Is that the gentleman with whom the police interfered in the lobby?’ Erle inquired.
‘A counfounded bill discounter to whom our friend here has introduced me, – for his own purposes,’ said Phineas.
‘A very gentleman-like fellow,’ said Laurence. ‘Barrington knows him, I daresay. Look here, Finn, my boy, take my advice. Ask him to breakfast, and let him understand that the house will always be open to him.’ After this Laurence Fitzgibbon and Barrington Erle got into a cab together, and were driven away.
CHAPTER 29
A Cabinet Meeting
AND now will the Muses assist me while I sing an altogether new song? On the Tuesday the Cabinet met at the First Lord's official residence in Downing Street, and I will attempt to describe what, according to the bewildered brain of a poor fictionist, was said or might have been said, what was done or might have been done, on so august an occasion.
The poor fictionist very frequently finds himself to have been wrong in his description of things in general, and is told so roughly by the critics, and tenderly by the friends of his bosom. He is moved to tell of things of which he omits to learn the nature before he tells of them, – as should be done by a strictly honest fictionist. He catches salmon in October; or shoots his partridges in March. His dahlias bloom in June, and his birds sing in the autumn. He opens the opera-houses before Easter, and makes Parliament sit on a Wednesday evening. And then those terrible meshes of the Law! How is a fictionist, in these excited days, to create the needed biting interest without legal difficulties; and how again is he to steer his little bark clear of so many rocks, –when the rocks and the shoals have been purposely arranged to make the taking of a pilot on board a necessity? As to those law meshes, a benevolent pilot will, indeed, now and again give a poor fictionist a helping hand, – not used, however, generally, with much discretion. But from whom is any assistance to come in the august matter of a Cabinet assembly? There can be no such assistance. No man can tell aught but they who will tell nothing. But then, again, there is this safety, that let the story be ever so mis-told, – let the fiction be ever so far removed from the truth, no critic short of a Cabinet Minister himself can convict the narrator of error.
It was a large dingy room, covered with a Turkey carpet, and containing a dark polished mahogany dinner-table, on very heavy carved legs, which an old messenger was preparing at two o'clock in the day for the use of her Majesty's Ministers. The table would have been large enough for fourteen guests, and along the side further from the fire there were placed some six heavy chairs, good comfortable chairs, stuffed at the back as well as the seat, – but on the side nearer to the fire the chairs were placed irregularly; and there were four armchairs, – two on one side and two on the other. There were four windows to the room, which looked on to St James's Park, and the curtains of the windows were dark and heavy, – as became the gravity of the purposes to which that chamber was appropriated. In old days it had been the dining-room of one Prime Minister after another. To Pitt it had been the abode of his own familiar prandial Penates, and Lord Liverpool had been dull there among his dull friends for long year after year. The Ministers of the present day find it more convenient to live in private homes, and, indeed, not unfrequently carry their Cabinets with them. But, under Mr Mildmay's rule, the meetings were generally held in the old room at the official residence. Thrice did the aged messenger move each armchair, now a little this way and now a little that, and then look at them as though something of the tendency of the coming meeting might depend on the comfort of its leading members. If Mr Mildmay should find himself to be quite comfortable, so that he could hear what was said without a struggle to his ear, and see his colleagues' faces clearly, and feel the fire without burning his shins, it might be possible that he would not insist upon resigning. If this were so, how important was the work now confided to the hands of that aged messenger! When his anxious eyes had glanced round the room some half a dozen times, when he had touched each curtain, laid his hand upon every chair, and dusted certain papers which lay upon a side-table, – and which had been lying there for two years, and at which no one ever looked or would look, – he gently crept away and ensconced himself in an easy-chair not far from the door of the chamber. For it might be necessary to stop the attempt of a rash intruder on those secret counsels.
Very shortly there was heard the ring of various voices in the passages, – the voices of men speaking pleasantly, the voices of men with whom it seemed, from their tone, that things were doing well in the world. And then a cluster of four or five gentlemen entered the room. At first sight they seemed to be as ordinary gentlemen as you shall meet anywhere about Pall Mall on an afternoon. There was nothing about their outward appearance of the august wiggery of state craft, nothing of the ponderous dignity of ministerial position. That little man in the square-cut coat, – we may almost call it a shooting-coat, – swinging an umbrella and wearing no gloves, is no less a person than the Lord Chancellor, – Lord Weazeling, – who made a hundred thousand pounds as Attorney-General, and is supposed to be the best lawyer of his age.47 He is fifty, but he looks to be hardly over forty, and one might take him to be, from his appearance, – perhaps a clerk in the War Office, well-to-do, and popular among his brother-clerks. Immediately with him is Sir Harry Coldfoot,48 also a lawyer by profession, though he has never practised. He has been in the House for nearly thirty years, and is now at the Home Office. He is a stout, healthy, grey-haired gentleman, who certainly does not wear the cares of office on his face. Perhaps, however, no minister gets more bullied than he by the press, and men say that he will be very willing to give up to some political enemy the control of the police, and the onerous duty of judging in all criminal appeals. Behind these come our friend Mr Monk, young Lord Cantrip from the colonies next door, than whom no smarter young peer now does honour to our hereditary legislature, and Sir Marmaduke Morecombe, The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Why Sir Marmaduke has always been placed in Mr Mildmay's Cabinets nobody ever knew. As Chancellor of the Duchy he has nothing to do, – and were there anything, he would not do it. He rarely speaks in the House, and then does not speak well. He is a handsome man, or would be but for an assumption of grandeur in the carriage of his eyes, giving to his face a character of pomposity which he himself well deserves. He was in the Guards when young, and has been in Parliament since he ceased to be young. It must be supposed that Mr Mildmay has found something in him, for he has been included in three successive liberal Cabinets. He has probably the virtue of being true to Mr Mildmay, and of being duly submissive to one whom he recognises as his superior.
Within two minutes afterwards the Duke followed, with Plantagenet Palliser. The Duke, as all the world knows, was the Duke of St Bungay, the very front and head of the aristocratic old Whigs of the country, – a man who has been thrice spoken of as Prime Minister, and who really might have filled the office had he not known himself to be unfit for it. The Duke has been consulted as to the making of Cabinets for the last five-and-thirty years, and is even now not an old man in appearance; – a fussy, popular, clever, conscientious man, whose digestion has been too good to make politics a burden to him, but who has thought seriously about his country, and is one who will be sure to leave memoirs
behind him. He was born in the semi-purple of ministerial influences, and men say of him that he is honester than his uncle, who was Canning's friend, but not so great a man as his grandfather, with whom Fox once quarrelled, and whom Burke loved. Plantagenet Palliser, himself the heir to a dukedom, was the young Chancellor of the Exchequer, of whom some statesmen thought much as the rising star of the age. If industry, rectitude of purpose, and a certain clearness of intellect may prevail, Planty Pall, as he is familiarly called, may become a great Minister.
Then came Viscount Thrift by himself, – the First Lord of the Admiralty, with the whole weight of a new iron-clad fleet upon his shoulders. He has undertaken the Herculean task of cleansing the dockyards,49 – and with it the lesser work of keeping afloat a navy that may be esteemed by his countrymen to be the best in the world. And he thinks that he will do both, if only Mr Mild-may will not resign; – an industrious, honest, self-denying nobleman, who works without ceasing from morn to night, and who hopes to rise in time to high things, – to the translating of Homer, perhaps, and the wearing of the Garter.
Close behind him there was a ruck of Ministers, with the much honoured grey-haired old Premier in the midst of them. There was Mr Gresham, the Foreign Minister, said to be the greatest orator in Europe, on whose shoulders it was thought that the mantle of Mr Mildmay would fall, – to be worn, however, quite otherwise than Mr Mildmay had worn it. For Mr Gresham is a man with no feelings for the past, void of historical association, hardly with memories, – living altogether for the future which he is anxious to fashion anew out of the vigour of his own brain. Whereas, with Mr Mildmay, even his love of reform is an inherited passion for an old-world Liberalism. And there was with them Mr Legge Wilson, the brother of a peer, Secretary at War, a great scholar and a polished gentleman, very proud of his position as a Cabinet Minister, but conscious that he has hardly earned it by political work. And Lord Plinlimmon is with them, the Comptroller of India, – of all working lords the most jaunty, the most pleasant, and the most popular, very good at taking chairs at dinners, and making becoming speeches at the shortest notice, a man apparently very free and open in his ways of life, – but cautious enough in truth as to every step, knowing well how hard it is to climb and how easy to fall. Mr Mildmay entered the room leaning on Lord Plinlimmon's arm, and when he made his way up among the armchairs upon the rug before the fire, the others clustered around him with cheering looks and kindly questions. Then came the Privy Seal, our old friend Lord Brentford, last, – and I would say least, but that the words of no councillor could go for less in such an assemblage than will those of Sir Marmaduke Morecombe, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.
Phineas Finn, the Irish Member Page 32
