The election at Tankerville took place during the last week in July; and as Parliament was doomed to sit that year as late as the 10th of August, there was ample time for Phineas to present himself and take the oaths before the Session was finished. He had calculated that this could hardly be so when the matter of re-election was first proposed to him, and had hoped that his reappearance might be deferred till the following year. But there he was, once more member for Tankerville, while yet there was nearly a fortnight’s work to be done, pressed by his friends, and told by one or two of those whom he most trusted, that he would neglect his duty and show himself to be a coward, if he abstained from taking his place. “Coward is a hard word,” he said to Mr Low, who had used it.
“So men think when this or that other man is accused of running away in battle or the like. Nobody will charge you with cowardice of that kind. But there is moral cowardice as well as physical.”
“As when a man lies. I am telling no lie.”
“But you are afraid to meet the eyes of your fellow-creatures.”
“Yes, I am. You may call me a coward if you like. What matters the name, if the charge be true? I have been so treated that I am afraid to meet the eyes of my fellow-creatures. I am like a man who has had his knees broken, or his arms cut off. Of course I cannot be the same afterwards as I was before.” Mr Low said a great deal more to him on the subject, and all that Mr Low said was true; but he was somewhat rough, and did not succeed. Barrington Erle and Lord Cantrip also tried their eloquence upon him; but it was Mr Monk who at last drew from him a promise that he would go down to the House and be sworn in early on a certain Tuesday afternoon. “I am quite sure of this,” Mr Monk had said, “that the sooner you do it the less will be the annoyance. Indeed there will be no trouble in the doing of it. The trouble is all in the anticipation, and is therefore only increased and prolonged by delay.” “Of course it is your duty to go at once,” Mr Monk had said again, when his friend argued that he had never undertaken to sit before the expiration of Parliament. “You did consent to be put in nomination, and you owe your immediate services just as does any other member.”
“If a man’s grandmother dies he is held to be exempted.”
“But your grandmother has not died, and your sorrow is not of the kind that requires or is supposed to require retirement.” He gave way at last, and on the Tuesday afternoon Mr Monk called for him at Mrs Bunce’s house, and went down with him to Westminster. They reached their destination somewhat too soon, and walked the length of Westminster Hall two or three times while Phineas tried to justify himself. “I don’t think”, said he, “that Low quite understands my position when he calls me a coward.”
“I am sure, Phineas, he did not mean to do that.”
“Do not suppose that I am angry with him. I owe him a great deal too much for that. He is one of the few friends I have who are entitled to say to me just what they please. But I think he mistakes the matter. When a man becomes crooked from age it is no good telling him to be straight. He’d be straight if he could. A man can’t eat his dinner with a diseased liver as he could when he was well.”
“But he may follow advice as to getting his liver in order again.”
“And so am I following advice. But Low seems to think the disease shouldn’t be there. The disease is there, and I can’t banish it by simply saying that it is not there. If they had hung me outright it would be almost as reasonable to come and tell me afterwards to shake myself and be again alive. I don’t think that Low realises what it is to stand in the dock for a week together, with the eyes of all men fixed on you, and a conviction at your heart that everyone there believes you to have been guilty of an abominable crime of which you know yourself to have been innocent. For weeks I lived under the belief that I was to be made away by the hangman, and to leave behind me a name that would make everyone who has known me shudder.”
“God in His mercy has delivered you from that.”
“He has — and I am thankful. But my back is not strong enough to bear the weight without bending under it. Did you see Ratler going in? There is a man I dread. He is intimate enough with me to congratulate me, but not friend enough to abstain, and he will be sure to say something about his murdered colleague. Very well — I’ll follow you. Go up rather quick, and I’ll come close after you.” Whereupon Mr Monk entered between the two lamp-posts in the hall, and, hurrying along the passages, soon found himself at the door of the House. Phineas, with an effort at composure, and a smile that was almost ghastly at the door-keeper, who greeted him with some muttered word of recognition, held on his way close behind his friend, and walked up the House hardly conscious that the benches on each side were empty. There were not a dozen members present, and the Speaker had not as yet taken the chair. Mr Monk stood by him while he took the oath, and in two minutes he was on a back seat below the gangway, with his friend by him, while the members, in slowly increasing numbers, took their seats. Then there were prayers, and as yet not a single man had spoken to him. As soon as the doors were again open gentlemen streamed in, and some few whom Phineas knew well came and sat near him. One or two shook hands with him, but no one said a word to him of the trial. No one at least did so in this early stage of the day’s proceedings; and after half an hour he almost ceased to be afraid.
Then came up an irregular debate on the great Church question of the day, as to which there had been no cessation of the badgering with which Mr Gresham had been attacked since he came into office. He had thrown out Mr Daubeny by opposing that gentleman’s stupendous measure for disestablishing the Church of England altogether, although — as was almost daily asserted by Mr Daubeny and his friends — he was himself in favour of such total disestablishment. Over and over again Mr Gresham had acknowledged that he was in favour of disestablishment, protesting that he had opposed Mr Daubeny’s Bill without any reference to its merits — solely on the ground that such a measure should not be accepted from such a quarter. He had been stout enough, and, as his enemies had said, insolent enough, in making these assurances. But still he was accused of keeping his own hand dark, and of omitting to say what bill he would himself propose to bring in respecting the Church in the next Session. It was essentially necessary — so said Mr Daubeny and his friends — that the country should know and discuss the proposed measure during the vacation. There was, of course, a good deal of retaliation. Mr Daubeny had not given the country, or even his own party, much time to discuss his Church Bill. Mr Gresham assured Mr Daubeny that he would not feel himself equal to producing a measure that should change the religious position of every individual in the country, and annihilate the traditions and systems of centuries, altogether complete out of his own unaided brain; and he went on to say that were he to do so, he did not think that he should find himself supported in such an effort by t............