“But I cannot say it in English,” she
said. Then in French, blushing and laughing as
she spoke,—almost stammering in spite of
her usual self-confidence,—she told him
that accident had made her rich, full of money.
Money was a drug with her. Money she knew was
wanted, even for householders. Would he not understand
her, and come to her, and learn from her how faithful
a woman could be?
He still was holding her by the hand, and he now raised
it to his lips and kissed it. “The offer
from you,” he said, “is as high-minded,
as generous, and as honourable as its acceptance by
me would be mean-spirited, vile, and ignoble.
But whether I fail or whether I succeed, you shall
see me before the winter is over.”
Again Successful
Phineas also said a word of farewell to Violet before
he left Matching, but there was nothing peculiar in
her little speech to him, or in his to her. “Of
course we shall see each other in London. Don’t
talk of not being in the House. Of course you
will be in the House.” Then Phineas had
shaken his head and smiled. Where was he to find
a requisite number of householders prepared to return
him? But as he went up to London he told himself
that the air of the House of Commons was now the very
breath of his nostrils. Life to him without it
would be no life. To have come within the reach
of the good things of political life, to have made
his mark so as to have almost insured future success,
to have been the petted young official aspirant of
the day,—and then to sink down into the
miserable platitudes of private life, to undergo daily
attendance in law-courts without a brief, to listen
to men who had come to be much below him in estimation
and social intercourse, to sit in a wretched chamber
up three pairs of stairs at Lincoln’s Inn, whereas
he was now at this moment provided with a gorgeous
apartment looking out into the Park from the Colonial
Office in Downing Street, to be attended by a mongrel
between a clerk and an errand boy at 17s. 6d. a week
instead of by a private secretary who was the son
of an earl’s sister, and was petted by countesses’
daughters innumerable,—all this would surely
break his heart. He could have done it, so he
told himself, and could have taken glory in doing
it, had not these other things come in his way.
But the other things had come. He had run the
risk, and had thrown the dice. And now when the
game was so nearly won, must it be that everything
should be lost at last?
He knew that nothing was to be gained by melancholy
looks at his club, or by show of wretchedness at his
office. London was very empty; but the approaching
elections still kept some there who otherwise would
have been looking after the first flush of pheasants.
Barrington Erle was there, and was not long in asking
Phineas what were his views.
“Ah;—that is so hard to say.
Ratler told me that he would be looking about.”
