It was custom with Mrs Finn almost every autumn to go off to Vienna, where she possessed considerable property, and there to inspect the circumstances of her estate. Sometimes her husband would accompany her, and he did so in this year of which we are now speaking. One morning in September they were together at an hotel at Ischi, whither they had come from Vienna, when as they went through the hall into the courtyard, they came, in the very doorway, upon the Duke of Omnium and his daughter. The Duke and Lady Mary had just arrived, having passed through the mountains from the salt-mine district, and were about to take up their residence in the hotel for a few days. They had travelled very slowly, for Lady Mary had been ill, and the Duke had expressed his determination to see a doctor at Ischi.
There is no greater mistake than in supposing that only the young blush. But the blushes of middle-life are luckily not seen through the tan which has come from the sun and the gas and the work and wiles of the world. Both the Duke and Phineas blushed; and though their blushes were hidden, that peculiar glance of the eye which always accompanies a blush was visible enough from the one to the other. The elder lady kept her countenance admirably, and the younger one had no occasion for blushing. She at once ran forward and kissed her friend. The Duke stood with his hat off waiting to give his hand to the lady, and then took that of his late colleague. 'How odd that we should meet here,' he said, turning to Mrs Finn.
'Odd enough to us that your Grace should be here,' she said, 'because we had heard nothing of your intended coming.'
'It is so nice to find you,' said Lady Mary. 'We are this moment come. Don't say that you are this moment going.'
'At this moment we are only going as far as Halstadt.'
'And are coming back to dinner? Of course they will dine with us.
Will they not, papa?' The Duke said that he hoped they would. To declare that you are engaged at an hotel, unless there be some real engagement is almost an impossibility. There was no escape, and before they were allowed to get into their carriage they had promised that they would dine with the Duke and his daughter.
'I don't know that it is especially a bore,' Mrs Finn said to her husband in the carriage. 'You may be quite sure that of whatever trouble there may be in it, he has much more than his share.'
'His share would be the whole,' said the husband. 'No one else has done anything wrong.'
When the Duke's apology had reached her, so that there was no longer any ground for absolute hostility, then she had told the whole story to her husband. He at first was very indignant. What right had the Duke to expect that any ordinary friend should act duenna over his daughter in accordance with his caprices? This was said and much more of this kind. But any humour towards quarrelling which Phineas Finn might have felt for a day or so was quieted by his wife's prudence. 'A man,' she said, 'can do no more than apologise. After that there is not room for reproach.'
At dinner the conversation turned at first on British politics, in which Mrs Finn was quite able to take her part. Phineas was decidedly of the opinion that Sir Timothy Beeswax and Lord Drummond could not live another session. And on this subject a good deal was said. Later in the evening the Duke found himself sitting with Mrs Finn in the broad verandah over the hotel garden, while Lady Mary was playing to Phineas within. 'How do you think she is looking?' asked the father.
'Of course I see that she has been ill. She tells me that she was far from well at Salzburg.'
'Yes;--indeed for three or four days she frightened me much. She suffered terribly from headaches.'
'Nervous headache?'
'So they said there. I feel quite angry with myself because I did not bring a doctor with us. The trouble and ceremony of such an accompaniment is no doubt disagreeable.'
'And I suppose seemed when you started to be unnecessary.'
'Quite unnecessary.'
'Does she complain again now?'
'She did today;--a little.'
The next morning Lady Mary could not leave her bed, and the Duke in his sorrow was obliged to apply to Mrs Finn. After what had passed on the previous day Mrs Finn of course called, and was shown at once up to her young friend's room. There she found the girl in great pain, lying with her two thin hands up to her head, and hardly able to utter more than a word. Shortly after that Mrs Finn was alone with the Duke, and then there took place a conversation between them which the lady thought to be very remarkable.
'Had I better send for a doctor from England?' he asked. In answer to this Mrs Finn expressed her opinion that such a measure was hardly necessary, that the gentleman from the town who had been called in seemed to know what he was about, and that the illness, lamentable as it was, did not seem to be in any way dangerous.
'One cannot tell what it comes from,' said the Duke dubiously.
'Young people, I fancy, are often subject to such maladies.'
'It must come from something wrong.'
'That may be said of all sickness.'
'And therefore one tries to find out the cause. She says that she is unhappy.' These last words he spoke slowly and in a low voice.
To this Mrs Finn could make no reply. She did not doubt but that the girl was unhappy, and she knew well why; but the source of Lady Mary's misery was one to which she could not very well allude. 'You know all the misery about that young man.'
'That is a trouble that requires time to cure it,' she said,--not meaning to imply that time would cure it by enabling the girl to forget her lover; but because in truth she had not known what else to say.
'If time will cure it.'
'Time, they say, cures all sorrows.'
'But what should I do to help time? There is no sacrifice I would not make,--no sacrifice! Of myself I mean. I would devote myself to her,--leave everything else on one side. We purpose being back in England in October; but I would remain here if I thought it better for her comfort.'
'I cannot tell, Duke.'