“I only came yesterday. I have been, you know, at Rome with the Effinghams; and since that I have been—; but, indeed, I have been such a vagrant that I cannot tell you of all my comings and goings. And you—you are hard at work!”
“Oh yes;—always.”
“That is right. I wish I could be something, if it were only a stick in waiting, or a doorkeeper. It is so good to be something.” Was it some such teaching as this that had jarred against Lord Chiltern’s susceptibilities, and had seemed to him to be a repetition of his father’s sermons?
“A man should try to be something,” said Phineas.
“And a woman must be content to be nothing—unless Mr. Mill can pull us through! And now, tell me—have you seen Lady Laura?”
“Not lately.”
“Nor Mr. Kennedy?”
“I sometimes see him in the House.” The visit to the Colonial Office of which the reader has been made aware had not at that time as yet been made.
“I am sorry for all that,” she said. Upon which Phineas smiled and shook his head. “I am very sorry that there should be a quarrel between you two.”
“There is no quarrel.”
“I used to think that you and he might do so much for each other—that is, of course, if you could make a friend of him.”
“He is a man of whom it is very hard to make a friend,” said Phineas, feeling that he was dishonest to Mr. Kennedy in saying so, but thinking that such dishonesty was justified by what he owed to Lady Laura.
“Yes;—he is hard, and what I call ungenial. We won’t say anything about him—will we? Have you seen much of the Earl?” This she asked as though such a question had no reference whatever to Lord Chiltern.
“Oh dear—alas, alas!”
“You have not quarrelled with him too?”
“He has quarrelled with me. He has heard, Miss Effingham, of what happened last year, and he thinks that I was wrong.”
“Of course you were wrong, Mr. Finn.”
“Very likely. To him I chose to defend myself, but I certainly shall not do so to you. At any rate, you did not think it necessary to quarrel with me.”
“I ought to have done so. I wonder why my aunt does not come.” Then she rang the bell.
“Now I have told you all about myself,” said he; “you should tell me something of yourself.”
“About me? I am like the knife-grinder, who had no story to tell—none at least to be told. We have all, no doubt, got our little stories, interesting enough to ourselves.”
“But your story, Miss Effingham,” he said, “is of such intense interest to me.” At that moment, luckily, Lady Baldock came into the room, and Phineas was saved from the necessity of making a declaration at a moment which would have been most inopportune.
Lady Baldock was exceedingly gracious to him, bidding Violet use her influence to persuade him to come to the gathering. “Persuade him to desert his work to come and hear some fiddlers!” said Miss Effingham. “Indeed I shall not, aunt. Who can tell but what the colonies might suffer from it through centuries, and that such a lapse of duty might drive a province or two into the arms of our mortal enemies?”
“Herr Moll is coming,” said Lady Baldock, “and so is Signor Scrubi, and Pjinskt, who, they say, is the greatest man living on the flageolet. Have you ever heard Pjinskt, Mr. Finn?” Phineas never had heard Pjinskt. “And as for Herr Moll, there is nothing equal to him, this year, at least.” Lady Baldock had taken up music this season, but all her enthusiasm was unable to shake the conscientious zeal of the young Undersecretary of State. At such a gathering he would have been unable to say a word in private to Violet Effingham.
LX
Madame Goesler’s Politics
It may be remembered that when Lady Glencora Palliser was shown into Madame Goesler’s room, Madame Goesler had just explained somewhat forcibly to the Duke of Omnium her reasons for refusing the loan of his Grace’s villa at Como. She had told the Duke in so many words that she did not mean to give the world an opportunity of maligning her, and it would then have been left to the Duke to decide whether any other arrangements might have been made for taking Madame Goesler to Como, had he not been interrupted. That he was very anxious to take her was certain. The green brougham had already been often enough at the door in Park Lane to make his Grace feel that Madame Goesler’s company was very desirable—was, perhaps, of all things left for his enjoyment, the one thing the most desirable. Lady Glencora had spoken to her husband of children crying for the top brick of the chimney. Now it had come to this, that in the eyes of the Duke of Omnium Marie Max Goesler was the top brick of the chimney. She had more wit for him than other women—more of that sort of wit which he was capable of enjoying. She had a beauty which he had learned to think more alluring than other beauty. He was sick of fair faces, and fat arms, and free necks. Madame Goesler’s eyes sparkled as other eyes did not sparkle, and there was something of the vagueness of mystery in the very blackness and gloss and abundance of her hair—as though her beauty was the beauty of some world which he had not yet known. And there was a quickness and yet a grace of motion about her which was quite new to him. The ladies upon whom the Duke had of late most often smiled had been somewhat slow—perhaps almost heavy—though, no doubt, graceful withal. In his early youth he remembered to have seen, somewhere in
