Anthony Trollope - Phineas Redux

"So you're at the old game, Mr. Finn?" said his landlord.

"Yes; at the old game. I suppose it's the same with you?" Now Mr. Bunce had been a very violent politician, and used to rejoice in calling himself a Democrat.

"Pretty much the same, Mr. Finn. I don't see that things are much better than they used to be. They tell me at the People's Banner office that the lords have had as much to do with this election as with any that ever went before it."

"Perhaps they don't know much about it at the People's Banner office. I thought Mr. Slide and the People's Banner had gone over to the other side, Bunce?"

"Mr. Slide is pretty wide-awake whatever side he's on. Not but what he's disgraced himself by what he's been and done now." Mr. Slide in former days had been the editor of the People's Banner, and circumstances had arisen in consequence of which there had been some acquaintance between him and our hero. "I see you was hammering away at the Church down at Tankerville."

"I just said a word or two."

"You was all right, there, Mr. Finn. I can't say as I ever saw very much in your religion; but what a man keeps in the way of religion for his own use is never nothing to me;—as what I keeps is nothing to him."

"I'm afraid you don't keep much, Mr. Bunce."

"And that's nothing to you, neither, is it, sir?"

"No, indeed."

"But when we read of Churches as is called State Churches,—Churches as have bishops you and I have to pay for, as never goes into them—"

"But we don't pay the bishops, Mr. Bunce."

"Oh yes, we do; because, if they wasn't paid, the money would come to us to do as we pleased with it. We proved all that when we pared them down a bit. What's an Ecclesiastical Commission? Only another name for a box to put the money into till you want to take it out again. When we hear of Churches such as these, as is not kept up by the people who uses them,—just as the theatres are, Mr. Finn, or the gin shops,—then I know there's a deal more to be done before honest men can come by their own. You're right enough, Mr. Finn, you are, as far as churches go, and you was right, too, when you cut and run off the Treasury Bench. I hope you ain't going to sit on that stool again."

Mr. Bunce was a privileged person, and Mrs. Bunce made up for his apparent rudeness by her own affectionate cordiality. "Deary me, and isn't it a thing for sore eyes to have you back again! I never expected this. But I'll do for you, Mr. Finn, just as I ever did in the old days; and it was I that was sorry when I heard of the poor young lady's death; so I was, Mr. Finn; well, then, I won't mention her name never again. But after all there's been betwixt you and us it wouldn't be natural to pass it by without one word; would it, Mr. Finn? Well, yes; he's just the same man as ever, without a ha'porth of difference. He's gone on paying that shilling to the Union every week of his life, just as he used to do; and never got so much out of it, not as a junketing into the country. That he didn't. It makes me that sick sometimes when I think of where it's gone to, that I don't know how to bear it. Well, yes; that is true, Mr. Finn. There never was a man better at bringing home his money to his wife than Bunce, barring that shilling. If he'd drink it, which he never does, I think I'd bear it better than give it to that nasty Union. And young Jack writes as well as his father, pretty nigh, Mr. Finn, which is a comfort,"—Mr. Bunce was a journeyman scrivener at a law stationer's,—"and keeps his self; but he don't bring home his money, nor yet it can't be expected, Mr. Finn. I know what the young 'uns will do, and what they won't. And Mary Jane is quite handy about the house now,—only she do break things, which is an aggravation; and the hot water shall be always up at eight o'clock to a minute, if I bring it with my own hand, Mr. Finn."

And so he was established once more in his old rooms in Great Marlborough Street; and as he sat back in the arm-chair, which he used to know so well, a hundred memories of former days crowded back upon him.

Lord Chiltern for a few months had lived with him; and then there had arisen a quarrel, which he had for a time thought would dissolve his old life into ruin. Now Lord Chiltern was again his very intimate friend. And there had used to sit a needy money-lender whom he had been unable to banish. Alas! alas! how soon might he now require that money-lender's services! And then he recollected how he had left these rooms to go into others, grander and more appropriate to his life when he had filled high office under the State. Would there ever again come to him such cause for migration? And would he again be able to load the frame of the looking-glass over the fire with countless cards from Countesses and Ministers' wives? He had opened the oyster for himself once, though it had closed again with so sharp a snap when the point of his knife had been withdrawn. Would he be able to insert the point again between those two difficult shells? Would the Countesses once more be kind to him? Would drawing-rooms be opened to him, and sometimes opened to him and to no other? Then he thought of certain special drawing-rooms in which wonderful things had been said to him. Since that he had been a married man, and those special drawing-rooms and those wonderful words had in no degree actuated him in his choice of a wife. He had left all those things of his own free will, as though telling himself that there was a better life than they offered to him. But was he sure that he had found it to be better? He had certainly sighed for the gauds which he had left. While his young wife was living he had kept his sighs down, so that she should not hear them; but he had been forced to acknowledge that his new life had been vapid and flavourless. Now he had been tempted back again to the old haunts. Would the Countesses' cards be showered upon him again?

One card, or rather note, had reached him while he was yet at Tankerville, reminding him of old days. It was from Mrs. Low, the wife of the barrister with whom he had worked when he had been a law student in London. She had asked him to come and dine with them after the old fashion in Baker Street, naming a day as to which she presumed that he would by that time have finished his affairs at Tankerville, intimating also that Mr. Low would then have finished his at North Broughton. Now Mr. Low had sat for North Broughton before Phineas left London, and his wife spoke of the seat as a certainty. Phineas could not keep himself from feeling that Mrs. Low intended to triumph over him; but, nevertheless, he accepted the invitation. They were very glad to see him, explaining that, as nobody was supposed to be in town, nobody had been asked to meet him. In former days he had been very intimate in that house, having received from both of them much kindness, mingled, perhaps, with some touch of severity on the part of the lady. But the ground for that was gone, and Mrs. Low was no longer painfully severe. A few words were said as to his great loss. Mrs. Low once raised her eyebrows in pretended surprise when Phineas explained that he had thrown up his place, and then they settled down on the question of the day. "And so," said Mrs. Low, "you've begun to attack the Church?" It must be remembered that at this moment Mr. Daubeny had not as yet electrified the minds of East Barsetshire, and that, therefore, Mrs. Low was not disturbed. To Mrs. Low, Church and State was the very breath of her nostrils; and if her husband could not be said to live by means of the same atmosphere it was because the breath of his nostrils had been drawn chiefly in the Vice-Chancellor's Court in Lincoln's Inn. But he, no doubt, would be very much disturbed indeed should he ever be told that he was required, as an expectant member of Mr. Daubeny's party, to vote for the Disestablishment of the Church of England.