“How many of his bones are there not broken, I wonder?” said the father. “It is useless to talk, of course. You think he is not in danger?”
“Certainly not.”
“I should fear that he would be so liable to inflammation.”
“The doctor says that there is none. He has been taking an enormous deal of exercise,” said Phineas, “and drinking no wine. All that is in his favour.”
“What does he drink, then?” asked the Earl.
“Nothing. I rather think, my lord, you are mistaken a little about his habits. I don’t fancy he ever drinks unless he is provoked to do it.”
“Provoked! Could anything provoke you to make a brute of yourself? But I am glad that he is in no danger. If you hear of him, let me know how he goes on.”
Lady Laura was of course full of concern. “I wanted to go down to him,” she said, “but Mr. Kennedy thought that there was no occasion.”
“Nor is there any;—I mean in regard to danger. He is very solitary there.”
“You must go to him again. Mr. Kennedy will not let me go unless I can say that there is danger. He seems to think that because Oswald has had accidents before, it is nothing. Of course I cannot leave London without his leave.”
“Your brother makes very little of it, you know.”
“Ah;—he would make little of anything. But if I were ill he would be in London by the first train.”
“Kennedy would let you go if you asked him.”
“But he advises me not to go. He says my duty does not require it, unless Oswald be in danger. Don’t you know, Mr. Finn, how hard it is for a wife not to take advice when it is so given?” This she said, within six months of her marriage, to the man who had been her husband’s rival!
Phineas asked her whether Violet had heard the news, and learned that she was still ignorant of it. “I got your letter only this morning, and I have not seen her,” said Lady Laura. “Indeed, I am so angry with her that I hardly wish to see her.” Thursday was Lady Baldock’s night, and Phineas went from Grosvenor Place to Berkeley Square. There he saw Violet, and found that she had heard of the accident.
“I am so glad to see you, Mr. Finn,” she said. “Do tell me;—is it much?”
“Much in inconvenience, certainly; but not much in danger.”
“I think Laura was so unkind not to send me word! I only heard it just now. Did you see it?”
“I was close to him, and helped him up. The horse jumped into a river with him, and crushed him up against the bank.”
“How lucky that you should be there! Had you jumped the river?”
“Yes;—almost unintentionally, for my horse was rushing so that I could not hold him. Chiltern was riding a brute that no one should have ridden. No one will again.”
“Did he destroy himself?”
“He had to be killed afterwards. He broke his shoulder.”
“How very lucky that you should have been near him—and, again, how lucky that you should not have been hurt yourself!”
“It was not likely that we should both come to grief at the same fence.”
“But it might have been you. And you think there is no danger?”
“None whatever—if I may believe the doctor. His hunting is done for this year, and he will be very desolate. I shall go down again to him in a few days, and try to bring him up to town.”
“Do;—do. If he is laid up in his father’s house, his father must see him.” Phineas had not looked at the matter in that light; but he thought that Miss Effingham might probably be right.
Early on the next morning he saw Mr. Bunce, and used all his eloquence to keep that respectable member of society at home;—but in vain. “What good do you expect to do, Mr. Bunce?” he said, with perhaps some little tone of authority in his voice.
“To carry my point,” said Bunce.
“And what is your point?”
“My present point is the ballot, as a part of the Government measure.”
“And you expect to carry that by going out into the streets with all the roughs of London, and putting yourself in direct opposition to the authority of the magistrates? Do you really believe that the ballot will become the law of the land any sooner because you incur this danger and inconvenience?”
“Look here, Mr. Finn; I don’t believe the sea will become any fuller because the Piddle runs into it out of the Dorsetshire fields; but I do believe that the waters from all the countries is what makes the ocean. I shall help; and it’s my duty to help.”
“It’s your duty as a respectable citizen, with a wife and family, to stay at home.”
“If everybody with a wife and family was to say so, there’d be none there but roughs, and then where should we be? What would the Government people say to us then? If every man with a wife and family was to show hisself in the streets tonight, we should have the ballot before Parliament breaks up, and if none of ’em don’t do it, we shall never have the ballot. Ain’t that so?” Phineas, who intended to be honest, was not prepared to dispute the assertion on the spur of the moment. “If that’s so,” said Bunce, triumphantly, “a man’s duty’s clear enough. He ought to go, though he’d two wives and families.” And he went.
The petition was to be presented at six o’clock, but the crowd, who collected to see it carried into Westminster Hall, began to form itself by noon. It was said afterwards that many of the houses in the neighbourhood of Palace Yard and the Bridge were filled with soldiers; but if so, the men did not show themselves. In the course of the evening three or four companies of the Guards in St. James’s Park did show themselves, and had some
