On the Wednesday in Easter week Lord Brentford and Lady Laura Kennedy reached Portman Square from Dresden, and Phineas, who had remained in town, was summoned thither¹ by a note written at Dover. “We arrived here today, and shall be in town tomorrow afternoon, between four and five. Papa wants to see you especially. Can you manage to be with us in the Square at about eight? I know it will be inconvenient², but you will put up with inconvenience. I don’t like to keep Papa up late; and if he is tired he won’t speak to you as he would if you came early. — L. K.” Phineas was engaged to dine with Lord Cantrip; but he wrote to excuse himself — telling the simple truth. He had been asked to see Lord Brentford on business, and must obey the summons.

He was shown into a sitting-room³ on the ground floor, which he had always known as the Earl’s own room, and there he found Lord Brentford alone. The last time he had been there he had come to plead with the Earl on behalf of Lord Chiltern, and the Earl had then been a stern self-willed man, vigorous from a sense of power, and very able to maintain and to express his own feelings. Now he was a broken-down old man — whose mind had been, as it were, unbooted and put into moral slippers⁴ for the remainder of its term of existence upon earth. He half shuffled⁵ up out of his chair as Phineas came up to him, and spoke⁶ as though every calamity⁷ in the world were oppressing him. “Such a passage! Oh, very bad, indeed! I thought it would have been the death of me. Laura thought it better to come on.” The fact, however, had been that the Earl had so many objections to staying at Calais, that his daughter had felt herself obliged to yield to him.

“You must be glad at any rate to have got home,” said Phineas.

“Home! I don’t know what you call home. I don’t suppose I shall ever feel any place to be home again.”

分享到：