CHAPTER LIV

Consolation

On the day following Madame Goesler’s dinner party, Phineas, though he was early at his office, was not able to do much work, still feeling that as regarded the realities of the world, his back was broken.  He might no doubt go on learning, and, after a time, might be able to exert himself in a perhaps useful, but altogether uninteresting kind of way, doing his work simply because it was there to be done,—­as the carter or the tailor does his;—­and from the same cause, knowing that a man must have bread to live.  But as for ambition, and the idea of doing good, and the love of work for work’s sake,—­as for the elastic springs of delicious and beneficent labour,—­all that was over for him.  He would have worked from day till night, and from night till day, and from month till month throughout the year to have secured for Violet Effingham the assurance that her husband’s position was worthy of her own.  But now he had no motive for such work as this.  As long as he took the public pay, he would earn it; and that was all.

On the next day things were a little better with him.  He received a note in the morning from Lord Cantrip saying that they two were to see the Prime Minister that evening, in order that the whole question of the railway to the Rocky Mountains might be understood, and Phineas was driven to his work.  Before the time of the meeting came he had once more lost his own identity in great ideas of colonial welfare, and had planned and peopled a mighty region on the Red River, which should have no sympathy with American democracy.  When he waited upon Mr. Gresham in the afternoon he said nothing about the mighty region; indeed, he left it to Lord Cantrip to explain most of the proposed arrangements,—­speaking only a word or two here and there as occasion required.  But he was aware that he had so far recovered as to be able to save himself from losing ground during the interview.

“He’s about the first Irishman we’ve had that has been worth his salt,” said Mr. Gresham to his colleague afterwards.

“That other Irishman was a terrible fellow,” said Lord Cantrip, shaking his head.

On the fourth day after his sorrow had befallen him, Phineas went again to the cottage in Park Lane.  And in order that he might not be balked in his search for sympathy he wrote a line to Madame Goesler to ask if she would be at home.  “I will be at home from five to six,—­and alone.—­M.  M. G.”  That was the answer from Marie Max Goesler, and Phineas was of course at the cottage a few minutes after five.  It is not, I think, surprising that a man when he wants sympathy in such a calamity as that which had now befallen Phineas Finn, should seek it from a woman.  Women sympathise most effectually with men, as men do with women.  But it is, perhaps, a little odd that a man when he wants consolation because his heart has been broken, always likes to