Phineas Redux

the member of Parliament. Mr. Bunce was an outspoken, eager, and honest politician⁠—with very little accurate knowledge of the political conditions by which he was surrounded, but with a strong belief in the merits of his own class. He was a sober, hardworking man, and he hated all men who were not sober and hardworking. He was quite clear in his mind that all nobility should be put down, and that all property in land should be taken away from men who were enabled by such property to live in idleness. What should be done with the land when so taken away was a question which he had not yet learnt to answer. At the present moment he was accustomed to say very hard words of Mr. Slide behind his back, because of the change which had been effected in the People’s Banner, and he certainly was not the man to shrink from asserting in a person’s presence aught that he said in his absence. “Well, Mr. Conservative Slide,” he said, stepping into the little back parlour, in which the editor was left while Mrs. Bunce went up to learn whether the member of Parliament would receive his visitor.

“None of your chaff, Bunce.”

“We have enough of your chaff, anyhow; don’t we, Mr. Slide? I still sees the Banner, Mr. Slide⁠—most days; just for the joke of it.”

“As long as you take it, Bunce, I don’t care what the reason is.”

“I suppose a heditor’s about the same as a Cabinet Minister. You’ve got to keep your place;⁠—that’s about it, Mr. Slide.”

“We’ve got to tell the people who’s true to ’em. Do you believe that Gresham ’d ever have brought in a Bill for doing away with the Church? Never;⁠—not if he’d been Prime Minister till doomsday. What you want is progress.”

“That’s about it, Mr. Slide.”

“And where are you to get it? Did you ever hear that a rose by any other name ’d smell as sweet? If you can get progress from the Conservatives, and you want progress, why not go to the Conservatives for it? Who repealed the corn laws? Who gave us ’ousehold suffrage?”

“I think I’ve been told all that before, Mr. Slide; them things weren’t given by no manner of means, as I look at it. We just went in and took ’em. It was hall a haccident whether it was Cobden or Peel, Gladstone or Disraeli, as was the servants we employed to do our work. But Liberal is Liberal, and Conservative is Conservative. What are you, Mr. Slide, today?”

“If you’d talk of things, Bunce, which you understand, you would not talk quite so much nonsense.”

At this moment Mrs. Bunce entered the room, perhaps preventing a quarrel, and offered to usher Mr. Slide up to the young member’s room. Phineas had not at first been willing to receive the gentleman, remembering that when they had last met the intercourse had not been pleasant⁠—but he knew that enmities are foolish things, and that it did not become him to perpetuate a quarrel with such a man as Mr. Quintus Slide. “I remember him very well, Mrs. Bunce.”

“I know you didn’t like him, Sir.”

“Not particularly.”

“No more don’t I. No more don’t Bunce. He’s one of them as ’d say a’most anything for a plate of soup and a glass of wine. That’s what Bunce says.”

“It won’t hurt me to see him.”

“No, sir; it won’t hurt you. It would be a pity indeed if the likes of him could hurt the likes of you.” And so Mr. Quintus Slide was shown up into the room.

The first greeting was very affectionate, at any rate on the part of the editor. He grasped the young member’s hand, congratulated him on his seat, and began his work as though he had never been all but kicked out of that very same room by its present occupant. “Now you want to know what I’m come about; don’t you?”

“No doubt I shall hear in good time, Mr. Slide.”

“It’s an important matter;⁠—and so you’ll say when you do hear. And it’s one in which I don’t know whether you’ll be able to see your way quite clear.”

“I’ll do my best, if it concerns me.”

“It does.” So saying, Mr. Slide, who had seated himself in an armchair by the fireside opposite to Phineas, crossed his legs, folded his arms on his breast, put his head a little on one side, and sat for a few moments in silence, with his eyes fixed on his companion’s face. “It does concern you, or I shouldn’t be here. Do you know Mr. Kennedy⁠—the Right Honourable Robert Kennedy, of Loughlinter, in Scotland?”

“I do know Mr. Kennedy.”

“And do you know Lady Laura Kennedy, his wife?”

“Certainly I do.”

“So I supposed. And do you know the Earl of Brentford, who is, I take it, father to the lady in question?”

“Of course I do. You know that I do.” For there had been a time in which Phineas had been subjected to the severest censure which the People’s Banner could inflict upon him, because of his adherence to Lord Brentford, and the vials of wrath had been poured out by the hands of Mr. Quintus Slide himself.

“Very well. It does not signify what I know or what I don’t. Those preliminary questions I have been obliged to ask as my justification for coming to you on the present occasion. Mr. Kennedy has I believe been greatly wronged.”

“I am not prepared to talk about Mr. Kennedy’s affairs,” said Phineas gravely.

“But unfortunately he is prepared to talk about them. That’s the rub. He has been ill-used, and he has come to the People’s Banner for redress. Will you have the kindness to cast your eye down that slip?” Whereupon the editor handed to Phineas a long scrap of printed paper, amounting to about a column and a half of the People’s Banner, containing a letter to the editor dated from Loughlinter, and signed Robert Kennedy at full length.

“You don’t mean to say