He could not tell her of all this, so he fell back for his defence on words which had passed between them since the day when they had met on the braes. “Lady Laura,” he said, “it is only a month or two since you spoke to me as though you wished that Violet Effingham might be my wife.”
“I never wished it. I never said that I wished it. There are moments in which we try to give a child any brick on the chimney top for which it may whimper.” Then there was another silence which she was the first to break. “You had better go,” she said. “I know that I have committed myself, and of course I would rather be alone.”
“And what would you wish that I should do?”
“Do?” she said. “What you do can be nothing to me.”
“Must we be strangers, you and I, because there was a time in which we were almost more than friends?”
“I have spoken nothing about myself, sir—only as I have been drawn to do so by your pretence of being lovesick. You can do nothing for me—nothing—nothing. What is it possible that you should do for me? You are not my father, or my brother.” It is not to be supposed that she wanted him to fall at her feet. It is to be supposed that had he done so her reproaches would have been hot and heavy on him; but yet it almost seemed to him as though he had no other alternative. No!—He was not her father or her brother;—nor could he be her husband. And at this very moment, as she knew, his heart was sore with love for another woman. And yet he hardly knew how not to throw himself at her feet, and swear, that he would return now and forever to his old passion, hopeless, sinful, degraded as it would be.
“I wish it were possible for me to do something,” he said, drawing near to her.
“There is nothing to be done,” she said, clasping her hands together. “For me nothing. I have before me no escape, no hope, no prospect of relief, no place of consolation. You have everything before you. You complain of a wound! You have at least shown that such wounds with you are capable of cure. You cannot but feel that when I hear your wailings, I must be impatient. You had better leave me now, if you please.”
“And are we to be no longer friends?” he asked.
“As far as friendship can go without intercourse, I shall always be your friend.”
Then he went, and as he walked down to his office, so intent was he on that which had just passed that he hardly saw the people as he met them, or was aware of the streets through which his way led him. There had been something in the later words which Lady Laura had spoken that had made him feel almost unconsciously that the injustice of her reproaches was not so great as he had at first felt it to be, and that she had some cause for her scorn. If her case was such as she had so plainly described it, what was his plight as compared with hers? He had lost his Violet, and was in pain. There must be much of suffering before him. But though Violet were lost, the world was not all blank before his eyes. He had not told himself, even in his dreariest moments, that there was before him “no escape, no hope, no prospect of relief, no place of consolation.” And then he began to think whether this must in truth be the case with Lady Laura. What if Mr. Kennedy were to die? What in such case as that would he do? In ten or perhaps in five years time might it not be possible for him to go through the ceremony of falling upon his knees, with stiffened joints indeed, but still with something left of the ardour of his old love, of his oldest love of all?
As he was thinking of this he was brought up short in his walk as he was entering the Green Park beneath the Duke’s figure, by Laurence Fitzgibbon. “How dare you not be in your office at such an hour as this, Finn, me boy—or, at least, not in the House—or serving your masters after some fashion?” said the late Undersecretary.
“So I am. I’ve been on a message to Marylebone, to find what the people there think about the Canadas.”
“And what do they think about the Canadas in Marylebone?”
“Not one man in a thousand cares whether the Canadians prosper or fail to prosper. They care that Canada should not go to the States, because—though they don’t love the Canadians, they do hate the Americans. That’s about the feeling in Marylebone—and it’s astonishing how like the Maryleboners are to the rest of the world.”
“Dear me, what a fellow you are for an Undersecretary! You’ve heard the news about little Violet.”
“What news?”
“She has quarrelled with Chiltern, you know.”
“Who says so?”
“Never mind who says so, but they tell me it’s true. Take an old friend’s advice, and strike while the iron’s hot.”
Phineas did not believe what he had heard, but though he did not believe it, still the tidings set his heart beating. He would have believed it less perhaps had he known that Laurence had just received the news from Mrs. Bonteen.
LVII
The Top Brick of the Chimney
Madame Max Goesler was a lady who knew that in fighting the battles which fell to her lot, in arranging the social difficulties which she found in her way, in doing the work of the world which came to her share, very much more care was necessary—and care too about things apparently trifling—than was demanded by the affairs of people in general. And
