Phineas Redux

“There is very little left for which I care at all;⁠—but I do care for his prosperity. He was once in love with me and told me so⁠—but I had chosen to give my hand to Mr. Kennedy. He is not in love with me now⁠—nor I with him; but I choose to regard him as my friend.” He assured her over and over again that Phineas Finn would certainly refuse to touch her money;⁠—but this she declined to believe. At any rate the trial might be made. He would not refuse money left to him by will, and why should he not now enjoy that which was intended for him? Then she explained how certain it was that he must speedily vanish out of the world altogether, unless some assurance of an income were made to him. So Lord Chiltern went on his mission, hardly meaning to make the offer, and confident that it would be refused if made. We know the nature of the new trouble in which he found Phineas Finn enveloped. It was such that Lord Chiltern did not open his mouth about money, and now, having witnessed the scene at the police-office, he had come back to tell his tale to his sister. She was sitting with his wife when he entered the room.

“Have you heard anything?” he asked at once.

“Heard what?” said his wife.

“Then you have not heard it. A man has been murdered.”

“What man?” said Lady Laura, jumping suddenly from her seat. “Not Robert!” Lord Chiltern shook his head. “You do not mean that Mr. Finn has been⁠—killed!” Again he shook his head; and then she sat down as though the asking of the two questions had exhausted her.

“Speak, Oswald,” said his wife. “Why do you not tell us? Is it one whom we knew?”

“I think that Laura used to know him. Mr. Bonteen was murdered last night in the streets.”

“Mr. Bonteen! The man who was Mr. Finn’s enemy,” said Lady Chiltern.

“Mr. Bonteen!” said Lady Laura, as though the murder of twenty Mr. Bonteens were nothing to her.

“Yes;⁠—the man whom you talk of as Finn’s enemy. It would be better if there were no such talk.”

“And who killed him?” said Lady Laura, again getting up and coming close to her brother.

“Who was it, Oswald?” asked his wife; and she also was now too deeply interested to keep her seat.

“They have arrested two men,” said Lord Chiltern;⁠—“that Jew who married Lady Eustace, and⁠—” But there he paused. He had determined beforehand that he would tell his sister the double arrest that the doubt this implied might lessen the weight of the blow; but now he found it almost impossible to mention the name.

“Who is the other, Oswald?” said his wife.

“Not Phineas,” screamed Lady Laura.

“Yes, indeed; they have arrested him, and I have just come from the court.” He had no time to go on, for his sister was crouching prostrate on the floor before him. She had not fainted. Women do not faint under such shocks. But in her agony she had crouched down rather than fallen, as though it were vain to attempt to stand upright with so crushing a weight of sorrow on her back. She uttered one loud shriek, and then covering her face with her hands burst out into a wail of sobs. Lady Chiltern and her brother both tried to raise her, but she would not be lifted. “Why will you not hear me through, Laura?” said he.

“You do not think he did it?” said his wife.

“I’m sure he did not,” replied Lord Chiltern.

The poor woman, half-lying, half-seated, on the floor, still hiding her face with her hands, still bursting with half suppressed sobs, heard and understood both the question and the answer. But the fact was not altered to her⁠—nor the condition of the man she loved. She had not yet begun to think whether it were possible that he should have been guilty of such a crime. She had heard none of the circumstances, and knew nothing of the manner of the man’s death. It might be that Phineas had killed the man, bringing himself within the reach of the law, and that yet he should have done nothing to merit her reproaches;⁠—hardly even her reprobation! Hitherto she felt only the sorrow, the annihilation of the blow;⁠—but not the shame with which it would overwhelm the man for whom she so much coveted the good opinion of the world.

“You hear what he says, Laura.”

“They are determined to destroy him,” she sobbed out, through her tears.

“They are not determined to destroy him at all,” said Lord Chiltern. “It will have to go by evidence. You had better sit up and let me tell you all. I will tell you nothing till you are seated again. You disgrace yourself by sprawling there.”

“Do not be hard to her, Oswald.”

“I am disgraced,” said Lady Laura, slowly rising and placing herself again on the sofa. “If there is anything more to tell, you can tell it. I do not care what happens to me now, or who knows it. They cannot make my life worse than it is.”

Then he told all the story⁠—of the quarrel, and the position of the streets, of the coat, and the bludgeon, and the three blows, each on the head, by which the man had been killed. And he told them also how the Jew was said never to have been out of his bed, and how the Jew’s coat was not the coat Lord Fawn had seen, and how no stain of blood had been found about the raiment of either of the men. “It was the Jew who did it, Oswald, surely,” said Lady Chiltern.

“It was not Phineas Finn who did it,” he replied.

“And they will let him go again?”

“They will let him go when they find out the truth, I suppose. But those fellows blunder so, I would never trust them. He will get some sharp lawyer to look into it; and then perhaps