“You are quite right, Robert; he can do nothing.”
“It is a malady you must cure for yourself, Laura;—and which is to be cured by perseverance. If you can bring yourself to try—”
“But I cannot bring myself to try at all,” she said.
“Do you mean to tell me, Laura, that you will make no effort to do your duty as my wife?”
“I mean to tell you that I will not try to cure a headache by doing sums. That is all that I mean to say at this moment. If you will leave me for awhile, so that I may lie down, perhaps I shall be able to come to dinner.” He still hesitated, standing with the door in his hand. “But if you go on scolding me,” she continued, “what I shall do is to go to bed directly you go away.” He hesitated for a moment longer, and then left the room without another word.
XXXIII
Mr. Slide’s Grievance
Our hero was elected member for Loughton without any trouble to him or, as far as he could see, to anyone else. He made one speech from a small raised booth that was called a platform, and that was all that he was called upon to do. Mr. Grating made a speech in proposing him, and Mr. Shortribs another in seconding him; and these were all the speeches that were required. The thing seemed to be so very easy that he was afterwards almost offended when he was told that the bill for so insignificant a piece of work came to £247 13s. 9d. He had seen no occasion for spending even the odd forty-seven pounds. But then he was member for Loughton; and as he passed the evening alone at the inn, having dined in company with Messrs. Grating, Shortribs, and sundry other influential electors, he began to reflect that, after all, it was not so very great a thing to be a member of Parliament. It almost seemed that that which had come to him so easily could not be of much value.
On the following day he went to the castle, and was there when the Earl arrived. They two were alone together, and the Earl was very kind to him. “So you had no opponent after all,” said the great man of Loughton, with a slight smile.
“Not the ghost of another candidate.”
“I did not think there would be. They have tried it once or twice and have always failed. There are only one or two in the place who like to go one way just because their neighbours go the other. But, in truth, there is no conservative feeling in the place!”
Phineas, although he was at the present moment the member for Loughton himself, could not but enjoy the joke of this. Could there be any liberal feeling in such a place, or, indeed, any political feeling whatsoever? Would not Messrs. Grating and Shortribs have done just the same had it happened that Lord Brentford had been a Tory peer? “They all seemed to be very obliging,” said Phineas, in answer to the Earl.
“Yes, they are. There isn’t a house in the town, you know, let for longer than seven years, and most of them merely from year to year. And, do you know, I haven’t a farmer on the property with a lease—not one; and they don’t want leases. They know they’re safe. But I do like the people round me to be of the same way of thinking as myself about politics.”
On the second day after dinner—the last evening of Finn’s visit to Saulsby—the Earl fell suddenly into a confidential conversation about his daughter and his son, and about Violet Effingham. So sudden, indeed, and so confidential was the conversation, that Phineas was almost silenced for awhile. A word or two had been said about Loughlinter, of the beauty of the place and of the vastness of the property. “I am almost afraid,” said Lord Brentford, “that Laura is not happy there.”
“I hope she is,” said Phineas.
“He is so hard and dry, and what I call exacting. That is just the word for it. Now Laura has never been used to that. With me she always had her own way in everything, and I always found her fit to have it. I do not understand why her husband should treat her differently.”
“Perhaps it is the temper of the man.”
“Temper, yes; but what a bad prospect is that for her! And she, too, has a temper, and so he will find if he tries her too far. I cannot stand Loughlinter. I told Laura so fairly. It is one of those houses in which a man cannot call his hours his own. I told Laura that I could not undertake to remain there for above a day or two.”
“It is very sad,” said Phineas.
“Yes, indeed; it is sad for her, poor girl; and very sad for me too. I have no one else but Laura—literally no one; and now I am divided from her! It seems that she has been taken as much away from me as though her husband lived in China. I have lost them both now!”
“I hope not, my lord.”
“I say I have. As to Chiltern, I can perceive that he becomes more and more indifferent to me every day. He thinks of me only as a man in his way who must die some day and may die soon.”
“You wrong him, Lord Brentford.”
“I do not wrong him at all. Why has he answered every offer I have made him with so much insolence as to make it impossible for me to put myself into further communion with him?”
“He thinks that you have wronged him.”
“Yes;—because I have been unable to shut my eyes to his
