Phineas Fletcher

“ And though he himself, and his father before him, had both been working men, still, I think, Abel Fletcher never forgot that we originally came of a good stock, and that it pleased him to call me, his only son, after one of our forefathers, not unknown—Phineas Fletcher, who wrote the "Purple Island." ”

“ On their way home a downpour of rain had drawn Mr. Fletcher and his son Phineas to shelter in the covered alley that led to Sally's house. Mr. Fletcher pushed the little hand-carriage in which his weak and ailing son was seated into the alley. The ragged boy, who had also been sheltering there, lent a hand in bringing Phineas out of the rain, Mr. Fletcher saying to him kindly, after Sally's outburst, "Thee need not go into the wet. Keep close to the wall, and there will be shelter enough both for us and thee."
Mr. Fletcher was a wealthy tanner in Norton Bury. ”

“ John's voice grew firmer—prouder—no hesitation now.
"My calling is, as you will soon hear at Norton Bury, that of a tanner. I am apprentice to Abel Fletcher—Phineas's father."
"Mr. Fletcher!" She looked up at me—a mingled look of kindliness and pain.
"Ay, Phineas is a little less beneath your notice than I am. He is rich—he has been well educated; I have had to educate myself. I came to Norton Bury six years ago—a beggar-boy. No, not quite that—for I never begged! I either worked or starved."
The earnestness, the passion of his tone, made Miss March lift her eyes, but they fell again. ”

“ Madame Max had remembered this, and had prepared herself, but Phineas was taken aback when he found how close was his neighbourhood to the lady. "Get in, Phineas," said his lordship. Gerard Maule had already seated himself next to Miss Palliser, and Phineas had no alternative but to take the place next to Madame Max.
"I didn't know that you rode to hounds?" said Phineas.
"Oh, yes; I have done so for years. When we met it was always in London, Mr. Finn; and people there never know what other people do. Have you heard of this terrible affair about the Duke?" ”

“ I wish I could be something, if it were only a stick in waiting, or a door-keeper. It is so good to be something." Was it some such teaching as this that had jarred against Lord Chiltern's susceptibilities, and had seemed to him to be a repetition of his father's sermons?
"A man should try to be something," said Phineas.
"And a woman must be content to be nothing,—unless Mr. Mill can pull us through! And now, tell me,—have you seen Lady Laura?"
"Not lately."
"Nor Mr. Kennedy?" ”

“ And if he were shot, what matter was that to any one but himself? Why should the world be so thin-skinned,—so foolishly chary of human life?
Laurence Fitzgibbon did not come to the House, and Phineas looked for him at both the clubs which he frequented,—leaving a note at each as he did not find him. He also left a note for him at his lodgings in Duke Street. "I must see you this evening. I shall dine at the Reform Club,—pray come there." After that, Phineas went up to Portman Square, in accordance with the instructions received from Lady Laura. ”

“ But then Lady Laura had been in love with him,—was perhaps almost in love with him still. "I'm afraid he is a mule," said Lady Cantrip to her husband. "He's a good mule up a hill with a load on his back," said his lordship. "But with a mule there always comes a time when you can't manage him," said Lady Cantrip. But Lady Cantrip had never been in love with Phineas.
Phineas found a moment, before he left Lord Brentford's house, to say a word to Lady Laura as to the commission that had been given to him. "It can never be," said Lady Laura, shuddering;—"never, never, never!" ”

“ Otherwise he would hardly have been asked to a semi-political dinner at Lady Glencora Palliser's, even though he might have been invited to make one of the five hundred guests who were crowded into her saloons and staircases after the dinner was over. To have been one of the five hundred was nothing; but to be one of the sixteen was a great deal,—was indeed so much that Phineas, not understanding as yet the advantage of his own comeliness, was at a loss to conceive why so pleasant an honour was conferred upon him. ”

“ Old dandies, she thought, were preferable to old men who did not care how they looked;—and as for the padding, that was his affair, not hers. She did not know why a man should not have a pad in his coat, as well as a woman one at the back of her head. But Phineas had known that this was her gentle raillery, and now he was delighted to find that she continued it, after a still more gentle fashion, before the man's face. Mr. Maule's manner was certainly peculiar. He was more than ordinarily polite,—and was afterwards declared by the Duchess to have made love like an old gander. ”

“ Fitzgibbon," said Madame Max Goesler, as she welcomed Phineas. "He is always late."
"What a blow for me!" said Phineas.
"No,—you are always in good time. But there is a limit beyond which good time ends, and being shamefully late at once begins. But here he is." And then, as Laurence Fitzgibbon entered the room, Madame Goesler rang the bell for dinner.
Phineas found himself placed between his hostess and Mr. Bonteen, and Lord Fawn was on the other side of Madame Goesler. They were hardly seated at the table before some one stated it as a fact that Lord Brentford and his son were reconciled. ”

“ When that day came, and he was taken back to Newgate on his last journey there from Bow Street, Lord Chiltern had returned for a while to Harrington Hall, having promised that he would be back in London as soon as his business would permit; but Mr. Low came to him almost immediately to his prison room. "This is a pleasant state of things," said Phineas, with a forced laugh. But as he laughed he also sobbed, with a low, irrepressible, convulsive movement in his throat.
"Phineas, the time has come in which you must show yourself to be a man."
"A man! Oh, yes, I can be a man. A murderer you mean. ”

“ I should have kept myself free till that time when we met on the braes of Loughlinter, and then all would have been well with us."
"I do not know how that might have been," said Phineas, hoarsely.
"You do not know! But I know. Of course you have stabbed me with a thousand daggers when you have told me from time to time of your love for Violet. You have been very cruel,—needlessly cruel. Men are so cruel! But for all that I have known that I could have kept you,—had it not been too late when you spoke to me. Will you not own as much as that?" ”

“ The two Dukes were there, and men no bigger than Laurence Fitzgibbon were forced to subject themselves to the benevolence of the Under-Sheriff.
Phineas himself was pale and haggard. It was observed that he leaned forward on the rail of the dock all the day, not standing upright as he had done before; and they who watched him closely said that he never once raised his eyes on this day to meet those of the men opposite to him on the bench, although heretofore throughout the trial he had stood with his face raised so as to look directly at those who were there seated. ”

“ Kennedy was beginning to describe in a long whisper what the doctor did think about it, when Lady Laura came into the room.
Of course they began at first to talk about Mr. Kennedy. It would not have been kind to him not to have done so. And Lady Laura made much of the injury, as it behoves a wife to do in such circumstances for the sake both of the sufferer and of the hero. She declared her conviction that had Phineas been a moment later her husband's neck would have been irredeemably broken.
"I don't think they ever do kill the people," said Phineas. "At any rate they don't mean to do so." ”

“ When Phineas got down he found that Lord Chiltern was wedged in between the horse and the bank, which was better, at any rate, than being under the horse in the water. "All right, old fellow," he said, with a smile, when he saw Phineas. "You go on; it's too good to lose." ”

“ Phineas said that he would not, and then there was no further discourse about money. It need hardly be said that he told his father nothing of that bill which he had endorsed for Laurence Fitzgibbon.
At last came the time which called him again to London and the glories of London life,—to lobbies, and the clubs, and the gossip of men in office, and the chance of promotion for himself; to the glare of the gas-lamps, the mock anger of rival debaters, and the prospect of the Speaker's wig. ”

“ Father is old and childish, Phineas. In the last few months he has grown much more so. He is breaking down. I can see it, for I have a loving daughter’s eyes. I wish he did not care for the office. It is only a little one, I know. But the Willards have been treasurers of the town for many years, and he seems to have set his heart on holding it. It is a small favour for an old man to ask, Phineas, and you know that there is no honour that father thinks as much of as he does an honour from his own people. ”

“ Flathers. Can't you see that you are killing your baby?”
He looked at her in amazed horror.
“Yes, you are!” went on Miss Lady fiercely, “you are selling her food to another baby; you are letting her mother work so hard that she can scarcely nourish herself. Just look at Mrs. Flathers! Anybody can see that if she had better food and less to do she'd be a different person.”
“Oh, Maria was real pretty onct,” Phineas said somewhat resentfully, “but when a man marries one of them slim little blondes he never knows what he's gittin'. They sort of shrink up on yer an' git faded an' stringy.” ”

“ And there might be other men with that peculiarly energetic step. And the man who hurried by him might not have been the man who murdered Mr. Bonteen. Of all that Lord Fawn could say nothing. But what he did say,—of that he was sure. And all those who knew him were well aware that in his own mind he was convinced of the guilt of Phineas Finn. And there was another man equally convinced. Mr. Maule, Senior, remembered well the manner in which Madame Goesler spoke of Phineas Finn in reference to the murder, and was quite sure that Phineas was the murderer. ”

“ Miss Lady said gravely; “she looks very sick to me.”
“She does? Then I'd better git the doctor,” Phineas rose hurriedly, then sat down again. “But he never done the others no good. Maria always contended it was him that killed 'em. Ain't there somethin' we kin do? ”

“ He and Laura live at Dresden now, and a very sad time they must have."
"Does she write?"
"Yes; and keeps up all her interest about politics. I have already told her that you are to stand for Tankerville. No one,—no other human being in the world will be so interested for you as she is. If any friend ever felt an interest almost selfish for a friend's welfare, she will feel such an interest for you. If you were to succeed it would give her a hope in life." Phineas sat silent, drinking in the words that were said to him. ”

“ But he has become quite an old man,—not in health so much as in manner. But he will be very glad to see you." So saying she led him into a room, in which he found the Earl seated near the fireplace, and wrapped in furs. He got up to receive his guest, and Phineas saw at once that during the two years of his exile from England Lord Brentford had passed from manhood to senility. He almost tottered as he came forward, and he wrapped his coat around him with that air of studious self-preservation which belongs only to the infirm. ”

“ Monk," said Ratler. "I will grant that Turnbull may be an exception. It is his business to go in for everything in the way of agitation, and he at any rate is consistent. But when a man has once been in office,—why then—"
"When he has taken the shilling?" said Phineas. "Just so. I confess I do not like a deserter."
"Phineas will be all right," said Barrington Erle. ”

“ Kennedy.
"That is the same thing," said Phineas, roughly.
"Not exactly," said Lady Laura. "Should there be any difficulty about Mr. Mildmay, he might, at the Queen's request, make another attempt."
"With a majority of nineteen against him!" said Phineas. "Surely Mr. Mildmay is not the only man in the country. There is the Duke, and there is Mr. Gresham,—and there is Mr. Monk." Phineas had at his tongue's end all the lesson that he had been able to learn at the Reform Club.
"I should hardly think the Duke would venture," said Mr. Kennedy. ”

“ As a matter of fact, he had only once got home with the bayonet and the memory was unpleasant.
“But you’ve just thought of it,” said Phineas.
“It was you, not me,” said Mo. “That makes all the difference.”
“It’s astonishing,” Phineas remarked sententiously, “how many people not only refuse to catch pleasure as it flies, but spurn it when it sits up and begs at them. Laddie,” he turned to Doggie, “the more one wallows in hedonism, the more one realizes its unplumbed depths.” ”

“ And then, in the presence of Violet, Phineas gave the message. He thought it better that it should be given; and were he to decline to deliver it now, it would never be given. "Whether there be law in the land to protect me or whether there be none, I will never live with him," said Lady Laura. "Is a woman like a head of cattle, that she can be fastened in her crib by force? I will never live with him though all the judges of the land should decide that I must do so."
Phineas thought much of all this as he went to his solitary lodgings. ”

“ Kennedy has just said a word about it to papa, and a word from him always means so much! Well;—good-night; and mind you come up on Friday. You are going to the club, now, of course. I envy you men your clubs more than I do the House;—though I feel that a woman's life is only half a life, as she cannot have a seat in Parliament."
Then Phineas went away, and walked down to Pall Mall with Laurence Fitzgibbon. He would have preferred to take his walk alone, but he could not get rid of his affectionate countryman. ”