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.
Since he had been in Parliament he had very frequently regretted
that he had left the shades of the Inns of Court for the glare of
Westminster; and he had more than once made up his mind that he would
desert the glare and return to the shade. But now, when the moment
came in which such desertion seemed to be compulsory on him, when
there would be no longer a choice, the seat in Parliament was dearer
to him than ever. If he had gone of his own free will,--so he told
himself,--there would have been something of nobility in such going.
Mr. Low would have respected him, and even Mrs. Low might have taken
him back to the friendship of her severe bosom. But he would go back
now as a cur with his tail between his legs,--kicked out, as it were,
from Parliament. Returning to Lincoln's Inn soiled with failure,
having accomplished nothing, having broken down on the only occasion
on which he had dared to show himself on his legs, not having opened
a single useful book during the two years in which he had sat in
Parliament, burdened with Laurence Fitzgibbon's debt, and not quite
free from debt of his own, how could he start himself in any way by
which he might even hope to win success? He must, he told himself,
give up all thought of practising in London and betake himself to
Dublin.
Pages:
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440