“I shall never be impatient—never,” she said to him on the last evening. “All I want is that you should write to me.”
“I shall want more than that, Mary.”
“Then you must come down and see me. When you do come they will be happy, happy days for me. But of course we cannot be married for the next twenty years.”
“Say forty, Mary.”
“I will say anything that you like;—you will know what I mean just as well. And, Phineas, I must tell you one thing—though it makes me sad to think of it, and will make me sad to speak of it.”
“I will not have you sad on our last night, Mary.”
“I must say it. I am beginning to understand how much you have given up for me.”
“I have given up nothing for you.”
“If I had not been at Killaloe when Mr. Monk was here, and if we had not—had not—oh dear, if I had not loved you so very much, you might have remained in London, and that lady would have been your wife.”
“Never!” said Phineas stoutly.
“Would she not? She must not be your wife now, Phineas. I am not going to pretend that I will give you up.”
“That is unkind, Mary.”
“Oh, well; you may say what you please. If that is unkind, I am unkind. It would kill me to lose you.”
Had he done right? How could there be a doubt about it? How could there be a question about it? Which of them had loved him, or was capable of loving him as Mary loved him? What girl was ever so sweet, so gracious, so angelic, as his own Mary? He swore to her that he was prouder of winning her than of anything he had ever done in all his life, and that of all the treasures that had ever come in his way she was the most precious. She went to bed that night the happiest girl in all Connaught, although when she parted from him she understood that she was not to see him again till Christmas-Eve.
But she did see him again before the summer was over, and the manner of their meeting was in this wise. Immediately after the passing of that scrambled Irish Reform Bill, Parliament, as the reader knows, was dissolved. This was in the early days of June, and before the end of July the new members were again assembled at Westminster. This session, late in summer, was very terrible; but it was not very long, and then it was essentially necessary. There was something of the year’s business which must yet be done, and the country would require to know who were to be the Ministers of the Government. It is not needed that the reader should be troubled any further with the strategy of one political leader or of another, or that more should be said of Mr. Monk and his tenant-right. The House of Commons had offended Mr. Gresham by voting in a majority against him, and Mr. Gresham had punished the House of Commons by subjecting it to the expense and nuisance of a new election. All this is constitutional, and rational enough to Englishmen, though it may be unintelligible to strangers. The upshot on the present occasion was that the Ministers remained in their places and that Mr. Monk’s bill, though it had received the substantial honour of a second reading, passed away for the present into the limbo of abortive legislation.
All this would not concern us at all, nor our poor hero much, were it not that the great men with whom he had been for two years so pleasant a colleague, remembered him with something of affectionate regret. Whether it began with Mr. Gresham or with Lord Cantrip, I will not say;—or whether Mr. Monk, though now a political enemy, may have said a word that brought about the good deed. Be that as it may, just before the summer session was brought to a close Phineas received the following letter from Lord Cantrip:—
Downing Street, August 4, 186‒.
My dear Mr. Finn—
Mr. Gresham has been talking to me, and we both think that possibly a permanent Government appointment may be acceptable to you. We have no doubt, that should this be the case, your services would be very valuable to the country. There is a vacancy for a poor-law inspector at present in Ireland, whose residence I believe should be in Cork. The salary is a thousand a-year. Should the appointment suit you, Mr. Gresham will be most happy to nominate you to the office. Let me have a line at your early convenience.
He received the letter one morning in Dublin, and within three hours he was on his route to Killaloe. Of course he would accept the appointment, but he would not even do that without telling Mary of his new prospect. Of course he would accept the appointment. Though he had been as yet barely two months in Dublin, though he had hardly been long enough settled to his work to have hoped to be able to see in which way there might be a vista open leading to success, still he had fancied that he had seen that success was impossible. He did not know how to begin—and men were afraid of him, thinking that he was unsteady, arrogant, and prone to failure. He had not seen his way to the possibility of a guinea.
“A thousand a-year!” said Mary Flood Jones, opening her eyes wide with wonder at the golden future before them.
“It is nothing very great for a perpetuity,” said Phineas.
“Oh, Phineas; surely a thousand a-year will be very nice.”
“It will be certain,” said Phineas, “and then we can be married tomorrow.”
“But I have been making up my mind to wait ever so long,” said Mary.
“Then your mind must be unmade,” said Phineas.
What was the nature of the reply to Lord Cantrip the reader may imagine, and thus
