It was a Wednesday evening and there was no House — and at seven o’clock Phineas was at Mr Monk’s hall door. He was the first of the guests, and he found Mr Monk alone in the dining-room. “I am doing butler,” said Mr Monk, who had a brace of decanters in his hands, which he proceeded to put down in the neighbourhood of the fire. “But I have finished, and now we will go upstairs to receive the two great men properly.”
“I beg your pardon for coming too early,” said Finn.
“Not a minute too early. Seven is seven, and it is I who am too late. But, Lord bless you, you don’t think I’m ashamed of being found in the act of decanting my own wine! I remember Lord Palmerston saying before some committee about salaries, five or six years ago now, I daresay, that it wouldn’t do for an English Minister to have his hall door opened by a maidservant. Now, I’m an English Minister, and I’ve got nobody but a maidservant to open my hall door, and I’m obliged to look after my own wine. I wonder whether it’s improper? I shouldn’t like to be the means of injuring the British Constitution.”
“Perhaps if you resign soon, and if nobody follows your example, grave evil results may be avoided.”
“I sincerely hope so, for I do love the British Constitution; and I love also the respect in which members of the English Cabinet are held. Now Turnbull, who will be here in a moment, hates it all; but he is a rich man, and has more powdered footmen hanging about his house than ever Lord Palmerston had himself.”
“He is still in business.”
“Oh yes — and makes his thirty thousand a year. Here he is. How are you, Turnbull? We were talking about my maidservant. I hope she opened the door for you properly.”
“Certainly — as far as I perceived,” said Mr Turnbull, who was better at a speech than a joke. “A very respectable young woman I should say.”
“There is not one more so in all London,” said Mr Monk; “but Finn seems to think that I ought to have a man in livery.”
“It is a matter of perfect indifference to me,” said Mr Turnbull. “I am one of those who never think of such things.”
“Nor I either,” said Mr Monk. Then the laird of Loughlinter was announced, and they all went down to dinner.
Mr Turnbull was a good-looking robust man about sixty, with long grey hair and a red complexion, with hard eyes, a well-cut nose, and full lips. He was nearly six feet high, stood quite upright, and always wore a black swallow-tail coat, black trousers, and a black silk waistcoat. In the House, at least, he was always so dressed, and at dinner tables. What difference there might be in his costume when at home at Staleybridge few of those who saw him in London had the means of knowing. There was nothing in his face to indicate special talent. No one looking at him would take him to be a fool; but there was none of the fire of genius in his eye, nor was there in the lines of his mouth any of that play of thought or fancy which is generally to be found in the faces of men and women who have made themselves great. Mr Turnbull had certainly made himself great, and could hardly have done so without force of intellect. He was one of the most popular, if not the most popular politician in the country. Poor men believed in him, thinking that he was their most honest public friend; and men who were not poor believed in his power, thinking that his counsels must surely prevail. He had obtained the ear of the House and the favour of the reporters, and opened his voice at no public dinner, on no public platform, without a conviction that the words spoken by him would be read by thousands. The first necessity for good speaking is a large audience; and of this advantage Mr Turnbull had made himself sure. And yet it could hardly be said that he was a great orator. He was gifted with a powerful voice, with strong, and I may, perhaps, call them broad convictions, with perfect self-reliance, with almost unlimited powers of endurance, with hot ambition, with no keen scruples, and with a moral skin of great thickness. Nothing said against him pained him, no attacks wounded him, no raillery touched him in the least. There was not a sore spot about him, and probably his first thoughts on waking every morning told him that he, at least, was totus teres atque rotundus. He was, of course, a thorough Radical — and so was Mr Monk. But Mr Monk’s first waking thoughts were probably exactly the reverse of those of his friend. Mr Monk was a much hotter man in debate than Mr Turnbull — but Mr Monk was ever doubting of himself, and never doubted of himself so much as when he had been most violent, and also most effective, in debate. When Mr Monk jeered at himself for being a Cabinet Minister and keeping no attendant grander than a parlour-maid, there was a substratum of self-doubt under the joke.
Mr Turnbull was certainly a great Radical, and as such enjoyed a great reputation. I do not think that high office in the State had ever been offered to him; but things had been said which justified him, or seemed to himself to justify him, in declaring that in no possible circumstances would he serve the Crown. “I serve the people,” he had said, “and much as I respect the servants of the Crown, I think that my own office is the higher.” He had been greatly called to task for this speech; and Mr Mildmay, the present Premier, had asked him whether he did not recognise the so-called servants of the Crown as the most hard-worked and truest servants of the people. The House and the press had supported Mr Mildmay, but to all that Mr Turnbull was quite indifferent; and when an assertion made by him before three or four thousand persons at Manchester, to the effect that he — he specially — was the friend and servant of the people, was received with acclamation, he felt quite satisfied that he had gained his point. Progressive reform in the franchise, of which manhood suffrage should be the acknowledged and not far distant end, equal electoral districts, ballot, tenant right for England as well as Ireland, reduction of the standing army till there should be no standing army to reduce, utter disregard of all political movements in Europe, an almost idolatrous admiration for all political movements in America, free trade in everything except malt, and an absolute extinction of a State Church — these were among the principal articles in Mr Turnbull’s political catalogue. And I think that when once he had learned the art of arranging his words as he stood upon his legs, and had so mastered his voice as to have obtained the ear of the House, the work of his life was not difficult. Having nothing to construct, he could always deal with generalities. Being free from responsibility, he was not called upon either to study details or to master even great facts. It was his business to inveigh against existing evils, and perhaps there is no easier business when once the privilege of an audience has been attained. It was his work to cut down forest-trees, and he had nothing to do with the subsequent cultivation of the land. Mr Monk had once told Phineas Finn how great were the charms of that inaccuracy which was permitted to the opposition. Mr Turnbull no doubt enjoyed these charms to the full, though he would sooner have put a padlock on his mouth for a month than have owned as much. Upo............