“Who are they, Phineas?”
“Madame Goesler, and the Duchess of Omnium.”
“Have they been here?” she asked, with jealous eagerness.
“Oh, no. But I hear that it is so—and I know it. One learns to feel even from hearsay what is in the minds of people.”
“And what do I believe, Phineas? Can you read my thoughts?”
“I know them of old, without reading them now.” Then he put forth his hand and took hers. “Had I murdered him in real truth, you would not have believed it.”
“Because I love you, Phineas.”
Then the key was again heard in the door, and Barrington Erle appeared with the gaolers. The time was up, he said, and he had come to redeem his promise. He spoke cordially to his old friend, and grasped the prisoner’s hand cordially—but not the less did he believe that there was blood on it, and Phineas knew that such was his belief. It appeared on his arrival that Lady Laura had not at all accomplished the chief object of her visit. She had brought with her various cheques, all drawn by Barrington Erle on his banker—amounting altogether to many hundreds of pounds—which it was intended that Phineas should use from time to time for the necessities of his trial. Barrington Erle explained that the money was in fact to be a loan from Lady Laura’s father, and was simply passed through his banker’s account. But Phineas knew that the loan must come from Lady Laura, and he positively refused to touch it. His friend, Mr. Low, was managing all that for him, and he would not embarrass the matter by a fresh account. He was very obstinate, and at last the cheques were taken away in Barrington Erle’s pocket.
“Good night, old fellow,” said Erle, affectionately. “I’ll see you again before long. May God send you through it all.”
“Good night, Barrington. It was kind of you to come to me.” Then Lady Laura, watching to see whether her cousin would leave her alone for a moment with the object of her idolatry, paused before she gave him her hand. “Good night, Lady Laura,” he said.
“Good night!” Barrington Erle was now just outside the door.
“I shall not forget your coming here to me.”
“How should we, either of us, forget it?”
“Come, Laura,” said Barrington Erle, “we had better make an end of it.”
“But if I should never see him again!”
“Of course you will see him again.”
“When! and where! Oh, God—if they should murder him!” Then she threw herself into his arms, and covered him with kisses, though her cousin had returned into the room and stood over her as she embraced him.
“Laura,” said he, “you are doing him an injury. How should he support himself if you behave like this! Come away.”
“Oh, my God, if they should kill him!” she exclaimed. But she allowed her cousin to take her in his arms, and Phineas Finn was left alone without having spoken another word to either of them.
LVI
The Meager Family
On the day after the committal a lady, who had got out of a cab at the corner of Northumberland Street, in the Marylebone Road, walked up that very uninviting street, and knocked at a door just opposite to the deadest part of the dead wall of the Marylebone Workhouse. Here lived Mrs. and Miss Meager—and also on occasions Mr. Meager, who, however, was simply a trouble and annoyance in the world, going about to racecourses, and occasionally, perhaps, to worse places, and being of no slightest use to the two poor hard-worked women—mother and daughter—who endeavoured to get their living by letting lodgings. The task was difficult, for it is not everybody who likes to look out upon the dead wall of a workhouse, and they who do are disposed to think that their willingness that way should be considered in the rent. But Mr. Emilius, when the cruelty of his wife’s friends deprived him of the short-lived luxury of his mansion in Lowndes Square, had found in Northumberland Street a congenial retreat, and had for a while trusted to Mrs. and Miss Meager for all his domestic comforts. Mr. Emilius was always a favourite with new friends, and had not as yet had his Northumberland Street gloss rubbed altogether off him when Mr. Bonteen was murdered. As it happened, on that night—or rather early in the day, for Meager had returned to the bosom of his family after a somewhat prolonged absence in the provinces, and therefore the date had become specially remarkable in the Meager family from the double event—Mr. Meager had declared that unless his wife could supply him with a five-pound note he must cut his throat instantly. His wife and daughter had regretted the necessity, but had declared the alternative to be out of the question. Whereupon Mr. Meager had endeavoured to force the lock of an old bureau with a carving-knife, and there had been some slight personal encounter—after which he had had some gin and had gone to bed. Mrs. Meager remembered the day very well indeed, and Miss Meager, when the police came the next morning, had accounted for her black eye by a tragical account of a fall she had had against the bedpost in the dark. Up to that period Mr. Emilius had been everything that was sweet and good—an excellent, eloquent clergyman, who was being ill-treated by his wife’s wealthy relations, who was soft in his manners and civil in his words, and never gave more trouble than was necessary. The period, too, would have been one of comparative prosperity to the Meager ladies—but for that inopportune return of the head of the family—as two other lodgers had been inclined to look out upon the dead wall, or else into the cheerful backyard; which circumstance came to have some bearing upon our
