Phineas Finn, the Irish Member

by Anthony Trollope

  There were brooks in those parts. The river Eye forms itself thereabouts, or some of its tributaries do so; and these tributaries, though small as rivers, are considerable to men on one side who are called by the exigencies of the occasion to place themselves quickly on the other. Phineas knew nothing of these brooks; but Bonebreaker had gone gallantly over two, and now that there came a third in the way, it was to be hoped that he might go gallantly over that also. Phineas, at any rate, had no power to decide otherwise. As long as the brute would go straight with him he could sit him; but he had long given up the idea of having a will of his own. Indeed, till he was within twenty yards of the brook, he did not see that it was larger than the others. He looked round, and there was Chiltern close to him, still fighting with his horse; – but the farmer had turned away. He thought that Chiltern nodded to him, as much as to tell him to go on. On he went at any rate. The brook, when he came to it, seemed to be a huge black hole, yawning beneath him. The banks were quite steep, and just where he was to take off there was an ugly stump. It was too late to think of anything. He stuck his knees against his saddle, – and in a moment was on the other side. The brute, who had taken off a yard before the stump, knowing well the danger of striking it with his foot, came down with a grunt, and did, I think, begin to feel the weight of that extra stone. Phineas, as soon as he was safe, looked back, and there was Lord Chiltern's horse in the very act of his spring, – higher up the rivulet, where it was even broader. At that distance Phineas could see that Lord Chiltern was wild with rage against the beast. But whether he wished to take the leap or wished to avoid it, there was no choice left to him. The animal rushed at the brook, and in a moment the horse and horseman were lost to sight. It was well then that the extra stone should tell, as it enabled Phineas to arrest his horse and to come back to his friend.

  The Lincolnshire horse had chested the further bank, and of course had fallen back into the stream. When Phineas got down he found that Lord Chiltern was wedged in between the horse and the bank, which was better, at any rate, than being under the horse in the water. ‘All right, old fellow,’ he said, with a smile, when he saw Phineas. ‘You go on; it's too good to lose.’ But he was very pale, and seemed to be quite helpless where he lay. The horse did not move, – and never did move again. He had smashed his shoulder to pieces against a stump on the bank, and was afterwards shot on that very spot.

  When Phineas got down he found that there was but little water where the horse lay. The depth of the stream had been on the side from which they had taken off, and the thick black mud lay within a foot of the surface, close to the bank against which Lord Chiltern was propped. ‘That's the worst one I ever was on,’ said Lord Chiltern; ‘but I think he's gruelled now.’

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Well; – I fancy there is something amiss. I can't move my arms, and I catch my breath. My legs are all right if I could get away from this accursed brute.’

  ‘I told you so,’ said the farmer, coming and looking down upon them from the bank. ‘I told you, but you wouldn't be said.’ Then he too got down, and between them both they extricated Lord Chiltern from his position, and got him on to the bank.

  ‘That un's a dead un,’ said the farmer, pointing to the horse.

  ‘So much the better,’ said his lordship. ‘Give us a drop of sherry, Finn.’

  He had broken his collar-bone and three of his ribs. They got a farmer's trap from Wissindine and took him into Oakham. When there, he insisted on being taken on through Stamford to the Willingford Bull before he would have his bones set, – picking up, however, a surgeon at Stamford. Phineas remained with him for a couple of days, losing his run with the Fitzwilliams and a day at the potted peas, and became very fond of his patient as he sat by his bedside.

  ‘That was a good run though, wasn't it?’ said Lord Chiltern as Phineas took his leave. ‘And, by George, Phineas, you rode Bonebreaker so well, that you shall have him as often as you'll come down. I don't know how it is, but you Irish fellows always ride.’

  CHAPTER 25

  Mr Turnbull's Carriage Stops the Way

  WHEN Phineas got back to London, a day after his time, he found that there was already a great political commotion in the metropolis. He had known that on Easter Monday and Tuesday there was to be a gathering of the people in favour of the ballot, and that on Wednesday there was to be a procession with a petition which Mr Turnbull was to receive from the hands of the people on Primrose Hill. It had been at first intended that Mr Turnbull should receive the petition at the door of Westminster Hall on the Thursday; but he had been requested by the Home Secretary to put aside this intention, and he had complied with the request made to him. Mr Mildmay was to move the second reading of his Reform Bill on that day, the preliminary steps having been taken without any special notice; but the bill of course included no clause in favour of the ballot; and this petition was the consequence of that omission. Mr Turnbull had predicted evil consequences, both in the House and out of it, and was now doing the best in his power to bring about the verification of his own prophecies. Phineas, who reached his lodgings late on the Thursday, found that the town had been in a state of ferment for three days, that on the Wednesday forty or fifty thousand persons had been collected at Primrose Hill, and that the police had been forced to interfere, – and that worse was expected on the Friday. Though Mr Turnbull had yielded to the Government as to receiving the petition, the crowd was resolved that they would see the petition carried into the House. It was argued that the Government would have done better to have refrained from interfering as to the previously intended arrangement. It would have been easier to deal with a procession than with a mob of men gathered together without any semblage of form. Mr Mild-may had been asked to postpone the second reading of his bill; but the request had come from his opponents, and he would not yield to it. He said that it would be a bad expedient to close Parliament from fear of the people. Phineas found at the Reform Club on the Thursday evening that members of the House of Commons were requested to enter on the Friday by the door usually used by the peers, and to make their way thence to their own House. He found that his landlord, Mr Bunce, had been out with the people during the entire three days; – and Mrs Bunce, with a flood of tears, begged Phineas to interfere as to the Friday. ‘He's that headstrong that he'll be took if anybody's took; and they say that all Westminister is to be lined with soldiers.’ Phineas on the Friday morning did have some conversation with his landlord; but his first work on reaching London was to see Lord Chiltern's friends, and tell them of the accident.

  The potted peas Committee sat on the Thursday, and he ought to have been there. His absence, however, was unavoidable, as he could not have left his friend's bedside so soon after the accident. On the Wednesday he had written to Lady Laura, and on the Thursday evening he went first to Portman Square and then to Grosvenor Place.

  ‘Of course he will kill himself some day,’ said the Earl, – with a tear, however, in each eye.

  ‘I hope not, my Lord. He is a magnificent horseman; but accidents of course will happen.’

  ‘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 to-night, 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 rough work to do, for many of the people took themselves away from Westminster by that route. The police, who were very numerous in Palace Yard, had a hard time of it all the afternoon, and it was said afterwards that it would have been much better to have allowed the petition to have been brought up by the procession on Wednesday. A procession, let it be who it will that proceeds, has in it, of its own nature, something of order. But now there was no order. The petition, which was said to fill fifteen cabs, – though the absolute sheets of signatures were carried into the House by four men, – was being dragged about half the day, and it certainly would have been impossible for a member to have made his way into the House through Westminster Hall between the hours of four and six. To effect an entrance at all they were obliged to go round at the back of the Abbey, as all the spaces round St Margaret's Church and Canning's monument were filled with the crowd. Parliament Street was quite impassable at five o'clock, and there was no traffic across the bridge from that hour till after eight. As the evening went on, the mob extended itself to Downing Street and the front of the Treasury Chambers, and before the night was over all the hoardings around the new Government offices had been pulled down. The windows also of certain obnoxious members of Parliament were broken, when those obnoxious members lived within reach. One gentleman who unfortunately held a house in Richmond Terrace, and who was said to have said that the ballot was the resort of cowards, fared very badly; – for his windows were not only broken, but his furniture and mirrors were destroyed by the stones that were thrown.43 Mr Mildmay, I say, was much blamed. But after all, it may be a doubt whether the procession on Wednesday might not have ended worse. Mr Turnbull was heard to say afterwards that the number of people collected would have been much greater.

  Mr Mildmay moved the second reading of his bill, and made his speech. He made his speech with the knowledge that the Houses of Parliament were surrounded by a mob, and I think that the fact added to its efficacy. It certainly gave him an appropriate opportunity for a display which was not difficult. His voice faltered on two or three occasions, and faltered through real feeling; but this sort of feeling, though it be real, is at the command of orators on certain occasions, and does them yeoman's service. Mr Mildmay was an old man, nearly worn out in the service of his country, who was known to have been true and honest, and to have loved his country well, – though there were of course they who declared that his hand had been too weak for power, and that his services had been naught; – and on this evening his virtues were remembered. Once when his voice failed him the whole House got up and cheered. The nature of a Whig Prime Minister's speech on such an occasion will be understood by most of my readers without further indication. The bill itself had been read before, and it was understood that no objection would be made to the extent of the changes provided in it by the liberal side of the House. The opposition coming from liberal members was to be confined to the subject of the ballot. And even as yet it was not known whether Mr Turnbull and his followers would vote against the second reading, or whether they would take what was given, and declare their intention of obtaining the remainder on a separate motion. The opposition of a large party of Conservatives was a matter of certainty; but to this party Mr Mildmay did not conceive himself bound to offer so large an amount of argument as he would have given had there b
een at the moment no crowd in Palace Yard. And he probably felt that the crowd would assist him with his old Tory enemies. When, in the last words of his speech, he declared that under no circumstances would he disfigure the close of his political career by voting for the ballot, – not though the people, on whose behalf he had been fighting battles all his life, should be there in any number to coerce him, – there came another round of applause from the opposition benches, and Mr Daubeny began to fear that some young horses in his team might get loose from their traces. With great dignity Mr Daubeny had kept aloof from Mr Turnbull and from Mr Turnbull's tactics; but he was not the less alive to the fact that Mr Turnbull, with his mob and his big petition, might be of considerable assistance to him in this present duel between himself and Mr Mildmay. I think Mr Daubeny was in the habit of looking at these contests as duels between himself and the leader on the other side of the House, – in which assistance from any quarter might be accepted if offered.