Part 40 (1/2)

”Very odd,” said Mr. Monk; ”but men have said that it would be so all the week.”

”Gresham was very fine,” said Mr. Turnbull.

”Very fine, indeed. I never have heard anything like it before.”

”Daubeny was very powerful too,” said Mr. Turnbull.

”Yes;--no doubt. The occasion was great, and he answered to the spur.

But Gresham's was the speech of the debate.”

”Well;--yes; perhaps it was,” said Mr. Turnbull, who was thinking of his own flight the other night, and who among his special friends had been much praised for what he had then done. But of course he made no allusion to his own doings,--or to those of Mr. Monk. In this way they conversed for some twenty minutes, till they parted; but neither of them interrogated the other as to what either might be called upon to do in consequence of the division which had just been effected.

They might still be intimate friends, but the days of confidence between them were pa.s.sed.

Phineas had seen Laurence Fitzgibbon enter the House,--which he did quite late in the night, so as to be in time for the division. No doubt he had dined in the House, and had been all the evening in the library,--or in the smoking-room. When Mr. Mildmay was on his legs making his reply, Fitzgibbon had sauntered in, not choosing to wait till he might be rung up by the bell at the last moment. Phineas was near him as they pa.s.sed by the tellers, near him in the lobby, and near him again as they all pa.s.sed back into the House. But at the last moment he thought that he would miss his prey. In the crowd as they left the House he failed to get his hand upon his friend's shoulder. But he hurried down the members' pa.s.sage, and just at the gate leading out into Westminster Hall he overtook Fitzgibbon walking arm-in-arm with Barrington Erle.

”Laurence,” he said, taking hold of his countryman's arm with a decided grasp, ”I want to speak to you for a moment, if you please.”

”Speak away,” said Laurence. Then Phineas, looking up into his face, knew very well that he had been--what the world calls, dining.

Phineas remembered at the moment that Barrington Erle had been close to him when the odious money-lender had touched his arm and made his inquiry about that ”little bill.” He much wished to make Erle understand that the debt was not his own,--that he was not in the hands of usurers in reference to his own concerns. But there was a feeling within him that he still,--even still,--owed something to his friends.h.i.+p to Fitzgibbon. ”Just give me your arm, and come on with me for a minute,” said Phineas. ”Erle will excuse us.”

”Oh, blazes!” said Laurence, ”what is it you're after? I ain't good at private conferences at three in the morning. We're all out, and isn't that enough for ye?”

”I have been dreadfully annoyed to-night,” said Phineas, ”and I wished to speak to you about it.”

”Bedad, Finn, my boy, and there are a good many of us are annoyed;--eh, Barrington?”

Phineas perceived clearly that though Fitzgibbon had been dining, there was as much of cunning in all this as of wine, and he was determined not to submit to such unlimited ill-usage. ”My annoyance comes from your friend, Mr. Clarkson, who had the impudence to address me in the lobby of the House.”

”And serve you right, too, Finn, my boy. Why the devil did you sport your oak to him? He has told me all about it. There ain't such a patient little fellow as Clarkson anywhere, if you'll only let him have his own way. He'll look in, as he calls it, three times a week for a whole season, and do nothing further. Of course he don't like to be locked out.”

”Is that the gentleman with whom the police interfered in the lobby?”

Erle inquired.

”A confounded bill discounter to whom our friend here has introduced me,--for his own purposes,” said Phineas.

”A very gentleman-like fellow,” said Laurence. ”Barrington knows him, I daresay. Look here, Finn, my boy, take my advice. Ask him to breakfast, and let him understand that the house will always be open to him.” After this Laurence Fitzgibbon and Barrington Erle got into a cab together, and were driven away.

CHAPTER XXIX

A Cabinet Meeting

And now will the Muses a.s.sist me while I sing an altogether new song?

On the Tuesday the Cabinet met at the First Lord's official residence in Downing Street, and I will attempt to describe what, according to the bewildered brain of a poor fictionist, was said or might have been said, what was done or might have been done, on so august an occasion.

The poor fictionist very frequently finds himself to have been wrong in his description of things in general, and is told so, roughly by the critics, and tenderly by the friends of his bosom. He is moved to tell of things of which he omits to learn the nature before he tells of them--as should be done by a strictly honest fictionist. He catches salmon in October; or shoots his partridges in March. His dahlias bloom in June, and his birds sing in the autumn. He opens the opera-houses before Easter, and makes Parliament sit on a Wednesday evening. And then those terrible meshes of the Law! How is a fictionist, in these excited days, to create the needed biting interest without legal difficulties; and how again is he to steer his little bark clear of so many rocks,--when the rocks and the shoals have been purposely arranged to make the taking of a pilot on board a necessity? As to those law meshes, a benevolent pilot will, indeed, now and again give a poor fictionist a helping hand,--not used, however, generally, with much discretion. But from whom is any a.s.sistance to come in the august matter of a Cabinet a.s.sembly? There can be no such a.s.sistance. No man can tell aught but they who will tell nothing. But then, again, there is this safety, that let the story be ever so mistold,--let the fiction be ever so far removed from the truth, no critic short of a Cabinet Minister himself can convict the narrator of error.

It was a large dingy room, covered with a Turkey carpet, and containing a dark polished mahogany dinner-table, on very heavy carved legs, which an old messenger was preparing at two o'clock in the day for the use of her Majesty's Ministers. The table would have been large enough for fourteen guests, and along the side further from the fire, there were placed some six heavy chairs, good comfortable chairs, stuffed at the back as well as the seat,--but on the side nearer to the fire the chairs were placed irregularly; and there were four armchairs,--two on one side and two on the other.

There were four windows to the room, which looked on to St. James's Park, and the curtains of the windows were dark and heavy,--as became the gravity of the purposes to which that chamber was appropriated.

In old days it had been the dining-room of one Prime Minister after another. To Pitt it had been the abode of his own familiar prandial Penates, and Lord Liverpool had been dull there among his dull friends for long year after year. The Ministers of the present day find it more convenient to live in private homes, and, indeed, not unfrequently carry their Cabinets with them. But, under Mr. Mildmay's rule, the meetings were generally held in the old room at the official residence. Thrice did the aged messenger move each armchair, now a little this way and now a little that, and then look at them as though something of the tendency of the coming meeting might depend on the comfort of its leading members. If Mr. Mildmay should find himself to be quite comfortable, so that he could hear what was said without a struggle to his ear, and see his colleagues' faces clearly, and feel the fire without burning his s.h.i.+ns, it might be possible that he would not insist upon resigning. If this were so, how important was the work now confided to the hands of that aged messenger! When his anxious eyes had glanced round the room some half a dozen times, when he had touched each curtain, laid his hand upon every chair, and dusted certain papers which lay upon a side-table,--and which had been lying there for two years, and at which no one ever looked or would look,--he gently crept away and ensconced himself in an easy chair not far from the door of the chamber. For it might be necessary to stop the attempt of a rash intruder on those secret counsels.