LXXVII
Phineas Finn’s Success
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. Gresham’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 upon 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
