“I am so glad to see you, Mary,” he said, coming and taking a chair by her side. He had been specially warned not to single Mary out for his attention, and yet there was the chair left vacant as though it were expected that he would fall into it.
“Thank you. We did not happen to meet last year, did we—Mr. Finn?”
“Do not call me Mr. Finn, Mary.”
“You are such a great man now!”
“Not at all a great man. If you only knew what little men we understrappers are in London you would hardly speak to me.”
“But you are something—of State now;—are you not?”
“Well;—yes. That’s the name they give me. It simply means that if any member wants to badger someone in the House about the Colonies, I am the man to be badgered. But if there is any credit to be had, I am not the man who is to have it.”
“But it is a great thing to be in Parliament and in the Government too.”
“It is a great thing for me, Mary, to have a salary, though it may only be for a year or two. However, I will not deny that it is pleasant to have been successful.”
“It has been very pleasant to us, Phineas. Mamma has been so much rejoiced.”
“I am so sorry not to see her. She is at Floodborough, I suppose.”
“Oh, yes;—she is at home. She does not like coming out at night in winter. I have been staying here you know for two days, but I go home tomorrow.”
“I will ride over and call on your mother.” Then there was a pause in the conversation for a moment. “Does it not seem odd, Mary, that we should see so little of each other?”
“You are so much away, of course.”
“Yes;—that is the reason. But still it seems almost unnatural. I often wonder when the time will come that I shall be quietly at home again. I have to be back in my office in London this day week, and yet I have not had a single hour to myself since I have been at Killaloe. But I will certainly ride over and see your mother. You will be at home on Wednesday I suppose.”
“Yes—I shall be at home.”
Upon that he got up and went away, but again in the evening he found himself near her. Perhaps there is no position more perilous to a man’s honesty than that in which Phineas now found himself;—that, namely, of knowing himself to be quite loved by a girl whom he almost loves himself. Of course he loved Violet Effingham; and they who talk best of love protest that no man or woman can be in love with two persons at once. Phineas was not in love with Mary Flood Jones; but he would have liked to take her in his arms and kiss her;—he would have liked to gratify her by swearing that she was dearer to him than all the world; he would have liked to have an episode—and did, at the moment, think that it might be possible to have one life in London and another life altogether different at Killaloe. “Dear Mary,” he said as he pressed her hand that night, “things will get themselves settled at last, I suppose.” He was behaving very ill to her, but he did not mean to behave ill.
He rode over to Floodborough, and saw Mrs. Flood Jones. Mrs. Flood Jones, however, received him very coldly; and Mary did not appear. Mary had communicated to her mother her resolutions as to her future life. “The fact is, mamma, I love him. I cannot help it. If he ever chooses to come for me, here I am. If he does not, I will bear it as well as I can. It may be very mean of me, but it’s true.”
LI
Troubles at Loughlinter
There was a dull house at Loughlinter during the greater part of this autumn. A few men went down for the grouse shooting late in the season; but they stayed but a short time, and when they went Lady Laura was left alone with her husband. Mr. Kennedy had explained to his wife, more than once, that though he understood the duties of hospitality and enjoyed the performance of them, he had not married with the intention of living in a whirlwind. He was disposed to think that the whirlwind had hitherto been too predominant, and had said so very plainly with a good deal of marital authority. This autumn and winter were to be devoted to the cultivation of proper relations between him and his wife. “Does that mean Darby and Joan?” his wife had asked him, when the proposition was made to her. “It means mutual regard and esteem,” replied Mr. Kennedy in his most solemn tone, “and I trust that such mutual regard and esteem between us may yet be possible.” When Lady Laura showed him a letter from her brother, received some weeks after this conversation, in which Lord Chiltern expressed his intention of coming to Loughlinter for Christmas, he returned the note to his wife without a word. He suspected that she had made the arrangement without asking him, and was angry; but he would not tell her that her brother would not be welcome at his house. “It is not my doing,” she said, when she saw the frown on his brow.
“I said nothing about anybody’s doing,” he replied.
“I will write to Oswald and bid him not come, if you wish it. Of course you can understand why he is coming.”
“Not to see me, I am sure,”
