Sketches in the House Part 14

Mr. Gladstone is a curious mixture of splendour and carelessness. He nearly always wears a small, narrow black tie, which brings into greater relief the Alpine heights and the measureless width of his big s.h.i.+rt-collars, and the broad expanse of his s.h.i.+rt-front. But this tie--though it marks a pleasant and becoming individuality of dress--loses half its effect by nearly always getting out of its place; when night is advanced, the knot is always about half across Mr.

Gladstone's neck. On the other hand, he is nearly always very carefully dressed; his black frock-coat--a little ancient in make, and always of the smooth black, which has given way with younger men to the diagonals--is a well-known feature of every great debate, and adds grace to his appearance and delivery. When summer comes, however, he bursts into an almost dazzling glory of white waistcoats, grey cashmere coats, and hats of creamy-yellow whiteness, ethereal and almost aggressively summery. The younger men are not slow to follow so excellent an example--though generally there is the tendency to the dark grey, which is a compromise between the black of winter and the fiery white tweed which the man in the street is wont to wear. Sir Charles Russell--who, returning from Paris on the same day as Mr. s.e.xton, received a very warm welcome--is also a child of his age in his clothes. Time was when a great legal luminary--especially if he were on the bench--was supposed to be violating every canon of good taste if he did not wear garments which might be described as a cross between the garb of a bishop, an undertaker, and a hangman. The judge on the bench, in fact, was always supposed to be putting on the black cap figuratively, and, therefore, was obliged to bear with him the outward sign of his d.a.m.nable trade. The late Lord Cairns was the first to break through this tradition, and affect the style of the prosperous stockbroker. Sir Charles Russell is different, for he dresses in thorough taste; but when one saw him in the House of Commons in a grey suit and a deep-cut waistcoat, one might have taken him for a gentleman squire with a taste for study, varied by an occasional visit to Newmarket.

[Sidenote: Mr. Morley's tweed suit.]

All these observations have been suggested by the portentous fact that on June 15th Mr. John Morley startled the world of Parliament by appearing in a very neat, a very well cut, and a very light tweed suit.

If Mr. Morley figures in many Tory imaginations as a modern St. Just, longing for the music of the guillotine and the daily splash of Tory and orthodox blood, it is much more due to his clothes than to his writings; for ordinarily he is dressed after the fas.h.i.+on which one can well suppose reigned in the days when the men of the Terror were inaugurating a reign of universal love, brotherhood, and peace through the narrow opening between the upper and the lower knife of the guillotine. His coat is blue: so is his waistcoat; and his nether garments are of a severe drab brown. It is impossible to imagine that any man who a.s.sumes such garments could be otherwise than a severe and sanguinary doctrinaire, anxious for his neighbours' blood. The genial smile with which the House of Commons has become familiar has invalidated the Tory estimate of Mr. Morley, but it was that memorable Thursday that completed the transformation of judgment. No man could be a lover of the guillotine who could wear so airy, so gay, and, above all, so juvenile and well-cut a suit of clothes. Mr. Morley himself was overwhelmed with the amount of attention which his new suit attracted. He, poor man, did not see the portentous political significance of the transaction, and almost sank under the mult.i.tude and variety of congratulations which he received from watchful friends. He has done many great and successful things in the course of his brilliant career--but he never achieved a triumph so complete and so prompt as he did when he put on his light tweed suit, and steered under its illuminating rays the Home Rule Bill through the rocks and shoals, the eddies and the cross-currents of the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: A brilliant pas de deux.]

On the following afternoon there was another scene in which clothes had their share. At about three o'clock there entered the House together two slight, alert figures--in both cases a little above the middle height, and both clothed in a suit of clothes the exact counterpart of each other in make, shape, and colour. There was a dominant and almost monotonous grey in their appearance; but there was little of grey in their looks. When at once there burst from the Tory and Unionists Benches a loud, wild, prolonged huzzah, it was seen that this theatrical little entrance at one and the same time of Joe and Mr. Balfour, was their method of accentuating the Tory triumph in Linlithgow. The two gentlemen seen entering together separated as they walked up the floor--the Tory going to his place on the front Opposition Bench, the Unionist to his corner seat on the Liberal side. It was a very skilfully arranged bit of business, though there were critics who thought its histrionic element a little out of place in the sombre and solemn realities of public life, and a great national controversy. In the midst of it all I looked at Mr. Gladstone. It is in such moments that you are able to get a glimpse into all the great depths of this extraordinary nature. And I have written more than once in these columns that the greatest of all his characteristics is composure. This mighty, restless, fiery fighter against wrong--this stalwart and unconquerable wrestler for right, this t.i.tan--I might even say this Don Quixote--who has gone out with spear and sword to a.s.sault the most strongly-entrenched citadels of human wrongs--who has faced a world in arms--this man has, after all, at the centre of his existence, and in the depths of his nature, a gospel which sustains him in the hours of defeat and gloom, and makes him one of the most restless of combatants, and the most tranquil.

[Sidenote: The grand old philosopher.]

Devotional, almost pietistic, introspective, accustomed, I have no doubt, from that early training of domestic piety and sacerdotal surroundings, to see all this gay, vast phantasmagoria of life the antechamber to a greater, more enduring, and better world beyond those voices, Mr. Gladstone--at least that is my reading of his character--looks at everything in human existence with the power of self-detachment from its garish moments and its transient interests.

Behind this constant warfare, underneath all this public pa.s.sion and sweeping resolves, there is a nether and unseen world of thought, emotion, hope, and in that world there is ever calm. It is a tabernacle in his soul where only holy thoughts may enter. Outside its impenetrable and echoless walls are left behind the shouts of faction, the noise of battle, the rise and fall of the good and ever-enduring fight between wrong and right. Within that tabernacle Mr. Gladstone has the power of withdrawing himself at will, just as in the Agora of Athens, and on the last great day when he discoursed on immortality, and drank the mortal hemlock, Socrates could withdraw himself, and listen to the inner whisper of his daemon. All this, I say, you could see in the abstracted, resigned and composed look of Mr. Gladstone at the moment when his triumphant enemies, in their summer garb, with their smiling faces, and strutting walk, entered the House of Commons. If you wanted to see at once the contrast, not only of the temper of the hour, but the still greater and more momentous contrast of temperaments, you had only to look from the face of Mr. Gladstone to that of Mr. Chamberlain. The contrast of their years--the deeper contrast of their natures--above all, the profounder contrast of their worlds of thought, training and environment--all were brought out. In that perky, retrousse-nosed, self-complacent, confidently smiling man you saw all the flippancy--so-called realism--the petty commercialism of the end of the middle of the nineteenth century. The mysticism, the poetry, the rich devotion, the lofty and large ideals of the beginning of the century--of the time that remembered Byron and produced Newman--all these things were to be seen in the rapt look of that n.o.ble, beautiful and refined face on the Treasury Bench. And yet there was something more. The brilliant light of the early days of our century has become dim and cold in those hearts and minds which have not had the power to grow and expand with their ages. But with that splendid sanity of body as well as mind which belongs to him, Mr. Gladstone is the creature of the ending of the nineteenth as of the beginning of the twentieth century. Like the man of Arctic climes, he stands almost at the same moment in the sunset of one great century and the heralding light of the sunrise of another.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE BURSTING OF THE STORM.

[Sidenote: An Indian summer.]

There is a striking description in one of Mr. Rudyard Kipling's stories of a night in an Indian city when the dog star rages. Luridly, but vigorously, the author brings home to you the odious discomfort, the awful suffering, and, finally, the morose anger and almost homicidal fury, which the sweltering light produces in the waking soldiers. This would have been something like the temper of the House of Commons on June 18th, if that a.s.sembly had not recently discovered methods of saving its temper and pleasantly spending its vacant hours. For the dog star--raging, merciless, sweltering--ruled everywhere within Westminster Palace. On the floor of the House itself, men sweltered and mopped their foreheads; in even the recesses of the still library they groaned aloud; then down on the Terrace, and with the river sweeping by, there was not a particle of air; and the heat of all the day had made even the stony floor of that beautiful walk almost like the tiles of a red-hot oven. In short, it was a day when one felt one's own poor tenement of clay a misery, a nuisance, and a burden; and the mind, morose, black, and despondent, had distracting visions of distant mirages by the seash.o.r.e or under green trees. It was natural, under such circ.u.mstances, that everybody who could should desert the House of Commons. And this sudden desertion of the House will be always remembered as one of the many peculiarities of the Annus Mirabilis through which we are pa.s.sing. It has not been unusual for some years for members to take a turn on the Terrace now and then. I have paced its floor at every hour of the night and the day--from the still midnight to the delightful moments before breaking day; and I still remember the beautiful summery morning when, after a hard night's fight, an Irish member rushed down to the Terrace to tell Mr. s.e.xton and myself that we were just being suspended--an operation not yet grown customary. But this Session the majority of the House of Commons is always on the Terrace; and woman--that sleuth-hound of every new pleasure--has discovered this great fact, and utilised it accordingly.

[Sidenote: Tea on the Terrace.]

The afternoon tea--the strawberries and cream which make a coolness and delight in the midst of the raging day--has been erected by woman into one of London's daily social events; and though the novelist has not discovered the fact up to this moment--Mr. McCarthy has made a very pretty love scene on the Terrace, but it is at the witching hour of night--though this discovery has yet to come, the respite is brief, and in a short time we shall have the hero and the heroine pa.s.sing through all the agonies of three-volume suffering, to the accompaniment of the division bell and the small tea-table of the Terrace. But though woman has many slaves she has her watchful enemies. The great order of curmudgeon is wide and vigilant and crusty, and the curmudgeon has found that the vast crowds of ladies who have invaded the Terrace have at last begun to interfere with that daily const.i.tutional along its stretching length, which is the only exercise most members of Parliament are able to take in these fierce days. Accordingly, there appeared an ominous notice-board with the words, "For members only," at a particular point in the Terrace. Within the s.p.a.ce, before which this notice stood as a fiery sword, woman was not allowed to intrude; and from out its sacred enclosure--guarded by nothing but the line of the notice and the Speaker's wrath--the confirmed bachelor, the married cynic, smoked his cigarette, and looked lazily through at the chattering, tea-drinking, bright-coloured crowd immediately beyond.

[Sidenote: Demos and dinner.]

I regret to say that the great Demos had an opportunity of seeing the legislator at work and play, and that the remarks of that extremely irreverent person were not complimentary. Reading, doubtless, in the papers something of the fatiguing labours--of the stern attention to business--of the long and dreary hours which the patriots of the House of Commons were devoting to the work of the country, Demos was shocked and scandalised to behold this giddy, fas.h.i.+onable, and modish crowd.

Demos, sweltering on the pa.s.sing steamboat--able to see, and, at the same time, free from interference on his watery kingdom--jeered aloud as he pa.s.sed close to the Terrace, and mocked with loud laughter that betokened not only the vacant but the insulting mind. The skippers of the steamboats--hardened c.o.c.kneys with an eye to business--knew what a delight this baiting of the august a.s.sembly would be to the most democratic and most sarcastic crowd in Europe; and accordingly it became the "mot d'ordre" with the steamboat skipper, when the tide was full, to bring his vessel almost to the very walls of the Terrace, and thus to give the tripper the opportunity of gazing from very near at the lions at food and play. If Demos could have come and seen as plainly at night in those days as during the afternoon, his shocked feelings would have been even more poignant and his language more irreverent. Tea is, after all, a simple drink that makes the whole world akin; and even strawberries in this great year were within reach of the most modest purse. But at night, entertainment is more costly. Along the Terrace there is now, as everybody knows, a series of small dining-rooms; and here every night you might have listened to the pleasant music of woman's laughter, punctuated by the pop of the champagne bottle. Time was--I remember it well--when a member of Parliament who knew that there was any place where a lady could get something to eat was pointed to as a Parliamentary marvel, who knew his way about in an uncanny fas.h.i.+on; when the room in which a lady could dine had been seen by but few eyes and, indeed, was little better than a coalhole, low-roofed, dimly lit, buried in dark and deep recesses of an underworld of the House of Commons, as little known to the general member as the sewage catacombs of London to the ordinary citizen. But all this has been changed; and now the dinner to ladies at the House of Commons has become, like the afternoon tea, one of the best recognized of London's social festivities. And so great is the run on these dinners that it takes a week's--or even two weeks'--notice to secure a table. Mr.

Cobbe--a stern and unbending Radical, with a hot temper and unsparing tongue--might have been seen one of those June days with a menacing frown upon his rugged Radical forehead, and by-and-bye in serious converse with the Speaker. And the cause of his anger was that he had found all the dining-tables ordered for two weeks ahead.

[Sidenote: A wild scene.]

Speaking on the Freemasons, on June 22nd, Mr. Gladstone related the interesting autobiographical fact that he himself was not a Freemason, and never had been; and, indeed, having been fully occupied otherwise--this delicate allusion to that vast life of never-ending work--of gigantic enterprises--of solemn and sublime responsibilities, was much relished--he never had had sufficient curiosity to make any particular inquiries as to what Freemasonry really was. I don't know what came over Mr. Balfour--some people thought it was because he expected to detach some Freemason votes from the Liberal side; but he was guilty of what I admit is an unusual thing with him--an intentional, a gross, an almost shameful misrepresentation of Mr. Gladstone's words.

Making the same interesting personal statement as Mr. Gladstone, that he was not himself a Freemason, he went on to suggest that Mr. Gladstone had made a comparison between a fraudulent Liberator Society and the Freemasons. At this thrust there was a terrible hubbub in the House, and that fanaticism with which the Mason holds to his inst.i.tution was aroused; indeed, for a little while, the scene was Bedlam-like in its pa.s.sion and anarchy. In the midst of it all, facing the violent howls of the excited Tories, pale, disturbed, hotly angry underneath all the composure of language and tone, Mr. Gladstone exposed the shameful and entirely groundless misrepresentation. Mr. Balfour's better angel intervened; he got ashamed of himself, and at once apologized. But the hurricane of pa.s.sion which had been let loose was not to be so easily appeased; and when, presently, Mr. John Morley put an end to the ridiculous and irrelevant discussion which threatened to land the House of Commons into the consideration of the arcana of a Freemason's Lodge, there burst from the Tory benches one of the fiercest little storms of remonstrance I have ever heard. When the closure is proposed, there is but one way of expressing emotion. Under the rules of the House, the motion must be put without debate. So when the word of doom is p.r.o.nounced by the Minister, all that remains is for the Speaker or Chairman to refuse or accept the motion; and if he accept the motion, he simply rises, and, uttering the fateful words, "The question is that the motion be now put," guillotines all further speech. But then he has to put the question, and in the answering words of "Aye" or "No," there can be put an immense fund of pa.s.sion. So it was that night. The answering "Noes" reached the proportions of a cyclone; you could see men shrieking out the word again and again, almost beside themselves with rage, and with faces positively distorted by the intensity of their feelings. And the tempest did not end in a moment; again and again the Tories shouted their hoa.r.s.e and tempestuous, and angry "No, no!"--the word sometimes repeated like a volley: "No, no-o-o, no-o-o-o-o!"--this was the noise that rose on the Parliamentary air, and that gave vent to all the pa.s.sion which had been excited. And then came the division and a restoration of calm.

[Sidenote: Charwomen and ratcatchers.]

The Whip is a cunning dog, especially if he be the Whip of the party in power; and you have to be a long time in Parliament before you know all his wiles, and fully appreciate their meaning. For instance, few innocent outsiders would understand why it is that the Whip always puts down Estimates for a day immediately after the end of a vacation. The reasons are two. First, because Estimates give more time and opportunity for the mere bore and obstructive than any other part of Parliamentary business. On the Estimates, as I have often explained, every single penny spent in the public service has to be entered. Whether that sum be large or small makes no difference. For instance, there is a charwoman at the Foreign Office; the charwoman's salary appears in the accounts just as bold and just as plain as the five thousand a year which the country has to pay for Lord Rosebery--who is cheap at the money, I must say, lest I be misunderstood. There is a.s.sociated with Buckingham Palace a most worthy and useful individual called the ratcatcher. Everybody can see why in such a vast and generally untenanted barrack, there should be a ratcatcher. Well, Master Ratcatcher appears on the Estimates for Buckingham Palace just as regularly, as plainly, in as much detail, as my Lord High Chamberlain, Lord Carrington. There is no reason whatever why a whole evening should not be spent in the discussion of the ratcatcher's salary. Perhaps the reader may have heard that, in common with many sobered and middle-aged gentlemen, I have had a pre-historic period when I was accused--of course, unjustly--of interfering with the progress of public business. In that period, I remember very well, the ratcatcher of Buckingham Palace loomed largely, as well as many other strange and portentous figures now vanished into the void and the immensities. I don't know whether we were able to keep the Ministry going for a whole night on the subject or not; but still we managed to get some excellent change out of the business.

[Sidenote: The wistful Whip.]

This brief explanation will make the reader understand what it is you can do on the Estimates, and therefore bring home to your mind the wile of the Ministerial Whip. For his second reason for putting down the Estimates until after vacation is, that he knows there will be a very small attendance of members, and that thus he will be able to sneak through his Estimates more quickly than usual. When, therefore, you hear of a vacation in the House of Commons, you will always find that the members ask with peculiar anxiety what is to be the first business on the day on which the vacation concludes; and you will hear the audible sigh of relief which will rise from hundreds of oppressed bosoms when the Leader of the House for the time being announces that it will be Estimates. Members then know that they need be in no violent hurry to get back, and that things will go right, even though they should tarry that additional day, or even two days, longer by the sad sea waves or amid the tall gra.s.s.

[Sidenote: To thy orisons.]

It is one of the peculiarities of the House of Commons that the men who are most in want of spiritual a.s.sistance and providential guidance, never seek the a.s.sistance of prayer. However terrible the crisis, however crowded every other inch of s.p.a.ce in the House of Commons may be, though the unG.o.dliest member may be in his place listening to the rich resonance of Archdeacon Farrar's voice, the Treasury Bench is always empty. To an outsider the explanation may be here revealed; which is, that if you attend prayers you are ent.i.tled to a seat for the remainder of the evening, whereas if you are absent, you are liable at any moment to be turned out by your more pious brother. But Ministers are exempt from this general law, for their places are fixed for them on the Treasury Bench, whatever may happen, and, accordingly, they invariably--I had almost said religiously--keep away from prayers. Lest I should appear to do injustice, I may say that the leaders of the Opposition are just as unG.o.dly, and for precisely the same reason; their seats also are secured to them by standing order; and, accordingly, they also never enter the House until its devotions for the day are over.

There was just one exception to this. For some reason best known to himself, Sir John Gorst (he is usually at variance with his friends) had come down early on June 28th, and was in his place with edifying aspect to listen to the solemn exhortation and the soft responses.

[Sidenote: The shout of battle.]

At twenty minutes past twelve there is a roar in the House; the Old Man has arrived; and there ascends that bracing cheer with which in our still barbarous times we welcome our champions on the eve of a big fight. The Old Man has hurried, for he is out of breath; and the deadly pallor of his cheek is almost affrighting to see. But he soon recovers himself, though when he rises to speak the breathlessness is still very apparent, and he has to gasp almost now and then for more voice.

Fortunately on this occasion we have not long to wait for the big announcement which everybody is so anxiously expecting. It is usually the fate of the House of Commons, whenever something very momentous is under weigh, to have a thousand trivialities in its path before it gets on to the real business. I have heard something like a hundred questions asked, most of them very trivial, on more than one night, when the whole of the civilized world was waiting for the Minister to develop some great plan of Governmental policy. The bore, the faddist, the empty self-advertiser, is as inevitable on such occasions as the reportorial dog that always rushes along the Derby course at that dread moment when you can hear the beating of the gamblers' hearts.

[Sidenote: To business.]

But on this fateful Wednesday there is no such ridiculous intervention.

There are only two questions altogether on the paper; and both of those refer to the great issue of how obstruction is to be put down. Mr.

Gladstone answers the questions very briefly; but there is hidden and fateful meaning in every syllable he utters; and the House of Commons, looking on, shows itself in one of those moments which bring out all its picturesqueness--its latent pa.s.sions--its very human characteristics.

There is the eager strain of curiosity. Every face is turned to that of the single pale white solitary figure that stands out from the Treasury Bench, dressed, I may add, in the sober but light grey suit of the summer season, in spite of his being a messenger of such doom to Tory obstruction. There is a hush, but a hush never lasts long in the House of Commons when a great party blow is going to be struck. The nerves of the House, raised to expectancy--tension, almost hysteria, by the joy of the one side, the anger and dread of the other, have a preternatural readiness in catching points, in producing outbursts of feeling. And so it is to-day. The Prime Minister has scarcely uttered the words which reveal the determination of the Government to resort to the most extreme measures, when there burst simultaneously from the Irish and the Tory Benches cheers and counter cheers--the cheer of pride, joy, and delirium almost, in the one case; the answering cheer and counter cheer of haughty and angered defiance in the other.

[Sidenote: Balfour the unready.]

The Old Man bears himself splendidly amidst all this. He is very excited and very resolute--you can see that by the very deadliness of tranquillity which he seeks to put in his voice, by the gentleness of his tone, by the almost deprecatory smile. All the same, the prevalent note of his voice and manner is composure. For the moment, either from surprise, relief, the joy they can badly conceal--whatever the reason, the Tories seem to be nonplussed. The audacious ally who is always ready to rush rashly into the breach on such occasions is away in Birmingham; and with all his excellent qualities, Mr. Balfour is not remarkable for readiness. Accordingly there is an awkward pause, and no one rises from the Opposition Benches. This is serious, for first blood tells in Parliamentary as in other prize fights. The Old Man, however, is all alive. He pa.s.ses on from this mighty announcement as though he had said nothing in particular, and taking a bundle of notes--put together with characteristic care and neatness even in the very centre of all this storm--he proceeds to tell Mr. Goschen something about the currency question, and the state of the silver market in India. The currency--who cares about the currency now? Even the hardiest bimetallist cannot be got to think of his hobby in the face of the dread news just heard. By the time Mr. Gladstone has given his answers, Mr. Balfour has managed to slightly recover himself, and has framed a question to the Old Man.

[Sidenote: The precedent of 1887.]

When at last the question does come, it is of a very innocent character.

The Old Man has declared that he had not the terms of the resolution ready, but that they would be announced to the House before its rising in the evening. All Mr. Balfour wishes to know is, what time it will be when these terms are given. Such is the simple question; but the reply is of a very different character. It was delivered in studiously moderate terms; the voice of Mr. Gladstone never rises above a sweet coo; but there is fire, defiance, inflexible determination in every syllable, and the first blow is struck when the wily Old Man announces--as though it were the merest business affair--that the closure resolution which the Government will introduce, is founded upon the principle of the resolution of 1887. He can go no further for several seconds. The Irish, with their ready wits--their fierce and keen memories--have caught the point at once; and they burst into a cheer--loud, fierce, and prolonged. What it means is this: In 1887, the Tories had carried a closure resolution for the purpose of forcing through the Coercion Bill of that year; and it was under the working of that closure resolution that the Bill had finally pa.s.sed the House of Commons, with several of its clauses undebated. What, then, this fierce Irish cheer meant was that the chickens were coming home to roost; and that the Tories were now reaping the harvest of their own sowing. With grave face the Old Man waited until the storm had spent itself, and then he went on to make a little slip, which for the moment gave his enemies an excellent opening.

[Sidenote: Revolution or resolution.]

He spoke not of the resolution, but of the revolution. He corrected the slip with great rapidity, but he was not quick enough for his watchful enemies, and loudly--discordantly--triumphantly--they repeated the word after him--Revolution--Revolution. However, Mr. Gladstone, after his Socratic fas.h.i.+on, lowered his eyes for a moment and went off into one of those abstract reveries whither he always allows his fancy to wend its way whenever his opponents are particularly rancorous. Then he described the resolution--not the revolution--as in the interest of the convenience and liberty of the House. But he immediately added--with the sweetest smile--that Mr. Balfour would doubtless form his own judgment on that point; and then, still calm, sweet, with the tendency to the reverie of the good man grossly misjudged by sinful opponents, he sat him down.

[Sidenote: An awkward moment.]

In the midst of the exultation which the announcement of the Government had produced in the Liberal ranks, there came a difficulty and a humiliation. An amendment had been proposed, Mr. Gladstone had twice opposed it, everything pointed to its ignominious rejection, and, in view of the coming closure, everybody seemed to want rapid despatch. And thus a division was immediately called. The House was cleared; members rushed in, and, indeed, had already begun to pa.s.s through the lobby; when suddenly there was a complete change of tactics; Mr. Marjoribanks, rus.h.i.+ng to the Treasury Bench, called upon the Government to capitulate.

The fact got out; the Government were in a minority--their forces had not come in time, and the Tories would have beaten us if they had been allowed to go to a division. It was one of the narrowest shaves--one of the most uncomfortable quarters of a minute--we have had in the House of Commons for many a long day.

[Sidenote: The fateful moment.]

But half-past five comes at last; then the discussion on the Home Rule Bill has to come to an end, and the Speaker takes the chair. Members think there is a look of unusual excitement on his face, that its air is angry; and the Unionists take comfort from the idea that this step is against his judgment. But, then, it is a matter for the House itself and not for the decision of the chair, and so we go ahead. Mr. Morley is put up by Mr. Gladstone to read the words of the resolution. The Old Man himself is composedly writing that letter to the Queen which it is still his duty daily to indite. Mr. Morley's face betrays under all its studied calm, the excitement of the hour, and he reads every separate announcement with a certain dramatic emphasis that brings out all the hidden meaning; and the doc.u.ment is one, the reading of which lends itself to dramatic effect and to dramatic manifestations. For each clause winds up with the same words, at "ten of the clock," until these words come to sound something like the burden of a song--the refrain of a lament--the iteration of an Athanasian curse against sinners and heretics. The House sees all this; and each side manifests emotion according to its fas.h.i.+on. The Irish cheer themselves hoa.r.s.e in triumph; the Tories answer back as defiantly and loudly; and so we enter, with clang of battle, with shouts and cheers, and hoa.r.s.e cries of joy or of rage, into the second great pitched battle on Home Rule.

CHAPTER XV.

MR. DILLON'S FORGETFULNESS.

[Sidenote: Mr. Dillon.]