CHAPTER VI

Lord Brentford’s Dinner

No;—­in such case as that,—­should he resolve upon taking the advice of his old friend Mr. Low, Phineas Finn must make up his mind never to see Lady Laura Standish again!  And he was in love with Lady Laura Standish;—­and, for aught he knew, Lady Laura Standish might be in love with him.  As he walked home from Mr. Low’s house in Bedford Square, he was by no means a triumphant man.  There had been much more said between him and Mr. Low than could be laid before the reader in the last chapter.  Mr. Low had urged him again and again, and had prevailed so far that Phineas, before he left the house, had promised to consider that suicidal expedient of the Chiltern Hundreds.  What a by-word he would become if he were to give up Parliament, having sat there for about a week!  But such immediate giving up was one of the necessities of Mr. Low’s programme.  According to Mr. Low’s teaching, a single year passed amidst the miasma of the House of Commons would be altogether fatal to any chance of professional success.  And Mr. Low had at any rate succeeded in making Phineas believe that he was right in this lesson.  There was his profession, as to which Mr. Low assured him that success was within his reach; and there was Parliament on the other side, as to which he knew that the chances were all against him, in spite of his advantage of a seat.  That he could not combine the two, beginning with Parliament, he did believe.  Which should it be?  That was the question which he tried to decide as he walked home from Bedford Square to Great Marlborough Street.  He could not answer the question satisfactorily, and went to bed an unhappy man.

He must at any rate go to Lord Brentford’s dinner on Wednesday, and, to enable him to join in the conversation there, must attend the debates on Monday and Tuesday.  The reader may perhaps be best made to understand how terrible was our hero’s state of doubt by being told that for awhile he thought of absenting himself from these debates, as being likely to weaken his purpose of withdrawing altogether from the House.  It is not very often that so strong a fury rages between party and party at the commencement of the session that a division is taken upon the Address.  It is customary for the leader of the opposition on such occasions to express his opinion in the most courteous language, that his right honourable friend, sitting opposite to him on the Treasury bench, has been, is, and will be wrong in everything that he thinks, says, or does in public life; but that, as anything like factious opposition is never adopted on that side of the House, the Address to the Queen, in answer to that most fatuous speech which has been put into her Majesty’s gracious mouth, shall be allowed to pass unquestioned.  Then the leader of the House thanks his adversary for his consideration, explains to all men how happy the country ought to be that