Part 42 (1/2)
”May G.o.d bless you,” said Lady Laura.
”Amen,” said the Cabinet Minister.
”I think he was born to be my friend,” said Lady Laura.
The Cabinet Minister said nothing more that night. He was never given to much talking, and the little accident which had just occurred to him did not tend to make words easy to him. But he pressed our hero's hand, and Lady Laura said that of course Phineas would come to them on the morrow. Phineas remarked that his first business must be to go to the police-office, but he promised that he would come down to Grosvenor Place immediately afterwards. Then Lady Laura also pressed his hand, and looked--; she looked, I think, as though she thought that Phineas would only have done right had he repeated the offence which he had committed under the waterfall of Loughlinter.
”Garrotted!” said Lord Chiltern, when Phineas told him the story before they went to bed that night. He had been smoking, sipping brandy-and-water, and waiting for Finn's return. ”Robert Kennedy garrotted!”
”The fellow was in the act of doing it.”
”And you stopped him?”
”Yes;--I got there just in time. Wasn't it lucky?”
”You ought to be garrotted yourself. I should have lent the man a hand had I been there.”
”How can you say anything so horrible? But you are drinking too much, old fellow, and I shall lock the bottle up.”
”If there were no one in London drank more than I do, the wine merchants would have a bad time of it. And so the new Cabinet Minister has been garrotted in the street. Of course I'm sorry for poor Laura's sake.”
”Luckily he's not much the worse for it;--only a little bruised.”
”I wonder whether it's on the cards he should be improved by it;--worse, except in the way of being strangled, he could not be.
However, as he's my brother-in-law, I'm obliged to you for rescuing him. Come, I'll go to bed. I must say, if he was to be garrotted I should like to have been there to see it.” That was the manner in which Lord Chiltern received the tidings of the terrible accident which had occurred to his near relative.
CHAPTER x.x.xI
Finn for Loughton
By three o'clock in the day after the little accident which was told in the last chapter, all the world knew that Mr. Kennedy, the new Cabinet Minister, had been garrotted, or half garrotted, and that that child of fortune, Phineas Finn, had dropped upon the scene out of heaven at the exact moment of time, had taken the two garrotters prisoners, and saved the Cabinet Minister's neck and valuables,--if not his life. ”Bedad,” said Laurence Fitzgibbon, when he came to hear this, ”that fellow'll marry an heiress, and be Secretary for Oireland yet.” A good deal was said about it to Phineas at the clubs, but a word or two that was said to him by Violet Effingham was worth all the rest. ”Why, what a Paladin you are! But you succour men in distress instead of maidens.” ”That's my bad luck,” said Phineas.
”The other will come no doubt in time,” Violet replied; ”and then you'll get your reward.” He knew that such words from a girl mean nothing,--especially from such a girl as Violet Effingham; but nevertheless they were very pleasant to him.
”Of course you will come to us at Loughlinter when Parliament is up?”
Lady Laura said the same day.
”I don't know really. You see I must go over to Ireland about my re-election.”
”What has that to do with it? You are only making out excuses. We go down on the first of July, and the English elections won't begin till the middle of the month. It will be August before the men of Loughshane are ready for you.”
”To tell you the truth, Lady Laura,” said Phineas, ”I doubt whether the men of Loughshane,--or rather the man of Loughshane, will have anything more to say to me.”
”What man do you mean?”
”Lord Tulla. He was in a pa.s.sion with his brother before, and I got the advantage of it. Since that he has paid his brother's debts for the fifteenth time, and of course is ready to fight any battle for the forgiven prodigal. Things are not as they were, and my father tells me that he thinks I shall be beaten.”
”That is bad news.”
”It is what I have a right to expect.”
Every word of information that had come to Phineas about Loughshane since Mr. Mildmay had decided upon a dissolution, had gone towards making him feel at first that there was a great doubt as to his re-election, and at last that there was almost a certainty against him. And as these tidings reached him they made him very unhappy.