When Phineas Finn had been about a week at Matching, he received a letter, or rather a very short note, from the Prime Minister, asking him to go up to London; and on the same day the Duke of Omnium spoke to him on the subject of the letter. “You are going up to see Mr Gresham. Mr Gresham has written to me, and I hope that we shall be able to congratulate ourselves in having your assistance next Session.” Phineas declared that he had no idea whatever of Mr Greham’s object in summoning him up to London. “I have his permission to inform you that he wishes you to accept office.” Phineas felt that he was becoming very red in the face, but he did not attempt to make any reply on the spur of the moment. “Mr Gresham thinks it well that so much should be said to you before you see him, in order that you may turn the matter over in your own mind. He would have written to you probably, making the offer at once, had it not been that there must be various changes, and that one man’s place must depend on another. You will go, I suppose.”
“Yes; I shall go, certainly. I shall be in London this evening.”
“I will take care that a carriage is ready for you. I do not presume to advise, Mr Finn, but I hope that there need be no doubt as to your joining us.” Phineas was somewhat confounded, and did not know the Duke well enough to give expression to his thoughts at the moment. “Of course you will return to us, Mr Finn.” Phineas said that he would return and trespass on the Duke’s hospitality for yet a few days. He was quite resolved that something must be said to Madame Goesler before he left the roof under which she was living. In the course of the autumn she purposed, as she had told him, to go to Vienna, and to remain there almost up to Christmas. Whatever there might be to be said should be said at any rate before that.
He did speak a few words to her before his journey to London, but in those words there was no allusion made to the great subject which must be discussed between them. “I am going up to London,” he said.
“So the Duchess tells me.”
“Mr Gresham has sent for me — meaning, I suppose, to offer me the place which he would not give me while that poor man was alive.”
“And you will accept it of course, Mr Finn?”
“I am not at all so sure of that.”
“But you will. You must. You will hardly be so foolish as to let the peevish animosity of an ill-conditioned man prejudice your prospects even after his death.”
“It will not be any remembrance of Mr Bonteen that will induce me to refuse.”
“It will be the same thing — rancour against Mr Gresham because he had allowed the other man’s counsel to prevail with him. The action of no individual man should be to you of sufficient consequence to guide your conduct. If you accept office, you should not take it as a favour conferred by the Prime Minister; nor if you refuse it, should you do so from personal feelings in regard to him. If he selects you, he is presumed to do so because he finds that your services will be valuable to the country.”
“He does so because he thinks that I should be safe to vote for him.”
“That may be so, or not. You can’t read his bosom quite distinctly — but you may read your own. If you go into office you become the servant of the country — not his servant, and should assume his motive in selecting you to be the same as your own in submitting to the selection. Your foot must be on the ladder before you can get to the top of it.”
“The ladder is so crooked.”
“Is it more crooked now than it was three years ago — worse than it was six months ago, when you and all your friends looked upon it as certain that you would be employed? There is nothing, Mr Finn, that a man should fear so much as some twist in his convictions arising from a personal accident to himself. When we heard that the Devil in his sickness wanted to be a monk, we never thought that he would become a saint in glory. When a man who has been rejected by a lady expresses a generally ill opinion of the sex, we are apt to ascribe his opinions to disappointment rather than to judgment. A man falls and breaks his leg at a fence, and cannot be induced to ride again — not because he thinks the amusement to be dangerous, but because he cannot keep his mind from dwelling on the hardship that has befallen himself. In all such cases self-consciousness gets the better of the judgment.”
“You think it will be so with me?”
“I shall think so if you now refuse — because of the misfortune which befell you — that which I know you were most desirous of possessing before that accident. To tell you the truth, Mr Finn, I wish Mr Gresham had delayed his offer till the winter.”
“And why?”
“Because by that time you will have recovered your health. Your mind now is morbid, and out of tune.”
“There was something to make it so, Madame Goesler.”
“God knows there was; and the necessity which lay up on you of bearing a bold front during those long and terrible weeks of course consumed your strength. The wonder is that the fibres of your mind should have retained any of their elasticity after such an ordeal. But as you are so strong, it would be a pity that you should not be strong altogether. This thing that is now to be offered to you is what you have always desired.”
“A man may have always desired that which is worthless.”
“You tried it once, and did not find it worthless. You found yourself able to do good work when you were in office. If I remember right, you did not give it up then because it was irksome to you, or contemptible, or, as you say, worthless; but from difference of opinion on some political question. You can always do that again.”
“A man is not fit for office who is prone to do so.”
“Then do not you be prone. It means success or failure in the profession which you have chosen, and I shall greatly regret to see you damage your chance of success by yielding to scruples which have come upon you when you are hardly as yet yourself.”
She had spoken to him very plainly, and he had found it to be impossible to answer her, and yet she had hardly touched the motives by which he believed himself to be actuated. As he made his journey up to London he thought very much of her words. There had been nothing said between them about money. No allusion had been made to the salary of the office which would be offered to him, or to the terrible shortness of his own means of living. He knew well enough himself that he must take some final step in life, or very shortly return into absolute obscurity. This woman who had been so strongly advising him to take a certain course as to his future life, was very rich — and he had fully decided that he would sooner or later ask her to be his wife. He knew well that all her friends regarded their marriage as certain. The Duchess had almost told him so in as many words. Lady Chiltern, who was much more to him than the Duchess, had assured him that if he should have a wife to bring with him to Harrington, the wife would be welcome. Of what other wife could Lady Chiltern have thought? Laurence Fitzgibbon, when congratulated on his own marriage, had returned counter congratulations. Mr Low had said that it would of course come to pass. Even Mrs Bunce had hinted at it, suggesting that she would lose her lodger and be a wretched woman. All the world had heard of the journey to Prague, and all the world expected the marriage. And he had come to love the woman with excessive affection, day by day, ever since the renewal of their intimacy at Broughton Spinnies. His mind was quite made up — but he was by no means sure of her mind as the rest of the world might be. He knew of her, what nobody else in all the world knew — except himself. In that former period of his life, on which he now sometimes looked back as though it had been passed in another world, this woman had offered her hand and fortune to him. She had done so in the enthusiasm of her love, knowing his ambition and knowing his poverty, and believing that her wealth was necessary to the success of his career in life. He had refused the offer — and they had parted without a word. Now they had come together again, and she was certainly among the dearest of his friends. Had she not taken that wondrous journey to Prague in his behalf, and been the first among those who had striven — and had striven at last successfully — to save his neck from the halter? Dear to her! He knew well as he sat with his eyes closed in the railway carriage that he must be dear to her! But might it not well be that she had resolved that friendship should take the place of love? And was it not compatible with her nature — with all human nature — that in spite of her regard for him she should choose to be revenged for the evil which had befallen her, when she offered her hand in vain? She must know by this time that he intended to throw himself at her feet; and would hardly have advised him as she had done as to the necessity of following up that success which had hitherto been so essential to him, had she intended to give him all that she had once offered him before. It might well be that Lady Chiltern, and even the Duchess, should be mistaken. Marie Goesler was not a woman, he thought, to reveal the deeper purposes of her life to any such friend as the Duchess of Omnium.
Of his own feelings in regard to the offer which was about to be made to him he had hardly succeeded in making her understand anything. That a change had come upon himself was certain, but he did not at all believe that it had sprung from any weakness caused by his sufferings in regard to the murder. He rather believed that he had become stronger than weaker from all that he had endured. He had learned when he was younger — some years back — to regard the political service of his country as a profession in which a man possessed of certain gifts might earn his bread with more gratification to himself than in any other. The work would be hard, and the emolument only intermittent; but the service would in itself be pleasant; and the rewards of that service — should he be so successful as to obtain reward — would be dearer to him than anything which could accrue to him from other labours. To sit in the Cabinet for one Session would, he then thought, be more to him than to preside over the Court of Queen’s Bench as long as did Lord Mansfield. But during the last few months a change had crept across his dream — which he recognized but could hardly analyse. He had seen a man whom he despised promoted, and the place to which the man had been exalted had at once become contemptible in his eyes. And there had been quarrels and jangling, and the speaking of evil words between men who should have been quiet and dignified. No doubt Madame Goesler was right in attributing the revulsion in his hopes to Mr Bonteen and Mr Bonteen’s enmity; but Phineas Finn himself did not know that it was so.
He arrived in town in the evening, and his appointment with Mr Gresham was for the following morning. He breakfasted at his club, and there he received the following letter from Lady Laura Kennedy:
Saulsby, 28th August 18 — MY DEAR PHINEAS
I have just received a letter from Barrington in which he tells me that Mr Gresham is going to offer you your old place at the Colonies. He says that Lord Fawn has been so upset by this affair of Lady Eustace’s husband, that he is obliged to resign and go abroad. [This was the first intimation that Phineas had heard of the nature of the office to be offered to him.] But Barrington goes on to say that he thinks you won’t accept Mr Gresham’s offer, and he asks me to write to you. Can this possibly be true? Barrington writes most kindly — with true friendship — and is ............