But not on the threatened question was that eventful campaign of Party
decided. The Government fell less in battle than skirmish. It was one
fatal Monday--a dull question of finance and figures. Prosy and few were
the speakers,--all the Government silent, save the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and another business-like personage connected with the Board
of Trade, whom the House would hardly condescend to hear. The House was
in no mood to think of facts and figures. Early in the evening, between
nine and ten, the Speaker’s sonorous voice sounded, “Strangers must
withdraw!” And Randal, anxious and foreboding, descended from his seat
and went out of the fatal doors. He turned to take a last glance
at Audley Egerton. The whipper-in was whispering to Audley; and the
minister pushed back his hat from his brows, and glanced round the
House, and up into the galleries, as if to calculate rapidly the
relative numbers of the two armies in the field; then he smiled
bitterly, and threw himself back into his seat. That smile long haunted
Leslie.
Amongst the strangers thus banished with Randal, while the division
was being taken, were many young men, like himself, connected with the
administration,--some by blood, some by place. Hearts beat loud in the
swarming lobbies. Ominous mournful whispers were exchanged. “They say
the Government will have a majority of ten.” “No; I hear they will
certainly be beaten.” “H--says by fifty.” “I don’t believe it,” said
a Lord of the Bedchamber; “it is impossible. I left five Government
members dining at The Travellers.” “No one thought the division would be
so early.” “A trick of the Whigs-shameful!” “Wonder some one was not
set up to talk for time; very odd P--did not speak; however, he is so
cursedly rich, he does not care whether he is out or in.” “Yes; and
Audley Egerton too, just such another: glad, no doubt, to be set free
to look after his property; very different tactics if we had men to whom
office was as necessary as it is--to me!” said a candid young placeman.
Suddenly the silent Leslie felt a friendly grasp on his arm. He turned
and saw Levy.
“Did I not tell you?” said the baron, with an exulting smile.
“You are sure, then, that the Government will be outvoted?”
“I spent the morning in going over the list of members with a
parliamentary client of mine, who knows them all as a shepherd does his
sheep. Majority for the Opposition at least twenty-five.”
“And in that case must the Government resign, sir?” asked the candid
young placeman, who had been listening to the smart, well-dressed baron,
“his soul planted in his ears.”
“Of course, sir,” replied the baron, blandly, and offering his snuff-box
(true Louis Quinze, with a miniature of Madame de Pompadour, set in
pearls). “You are a friend to the present ministers? You could not wish
them to be mean enough to stay in?” Randal drew aside the baron.
“If Audley’s affairs are as you state, what can he do?”
“I shall ask him that question to-morrow,” answered the baron, with a
look of visible hate; “and I have come here just to see how he bears the
prospect before him.”
“You will not discover that in his face. And those absurd scruples of
his! If he had but gone out in time--to come in again with the New Men!”
“Oh, of course, our Right Honourable is too punctilious for that!”
answered the baron, sneering.
Suddenly the doors opened, in rushed the breathless expectants. “What
are the numbers? What is the division?”
“Majority against ministers,” said a member of Opposition, peeling an
orange, “twenty-nine.”
The baron, too, had a Speaker’s order; and he came into the House with
Randal, and sat by his side. But, to their disgust, some member was
talking about the other motions before the House.
“What! has nothing been said as to the division?” asked the baron of a
young county member, who was talking to some non-parliamentary friend
in the bench before Levy. The county member was one of the baron’s pet
eldest sons, had dined often with Levy, was under “obligations” to him.
The young legislator looked very much ashamed of Levy’s friendly pat on
his shoulder, and answered hurriedly, “Oh, yes; H------ asked if, after
such an expression of the House, it was the intention of ministers to
retain their places, and carry on the business of the Government.”
“Just like H-------! Very inquisitive mind! And what was the answer he
got?”
“None,” said the county member; and returned in haste to his proper seat
in the body of the House.
“There comes Egerton,” said the baron. And, indeed, as most of the
members were now leaving the House, to talk over affairs at clubs or
in saloons, and spread through town the great tidings, Audley Egerton’s
tall head was seen towering above the rest. And Levy turned away
disappointed. For not only was the minister’s handsome face, though
pale, serene and cheerful, but there was an obvious courtesy, a marked
respect, in the mode in which that assembly--heated though it was--made
way for the fallen minister as he passed through the jostling crowd. And
the frank urbane nobleman, who afterwards, from the force, not of talent
but of character, became the leader in that House, pressed the hand of
his old opponent, as they met in the throng near the doors, and said
aloud, “I shall not be a proud man if ever I live to have office; but I
shall be proud if ever I leave it with as little to be said against me
as your bitterest opponents can say against you, Egerton.”
“I wonder,” exclaimed the baron, aloud, and leaning over the partition
that divided him from the throng below, so that his voice reached
Egerton--and there was a cry from formal, indignant members, “Order in
the strangers’ gallery I wonder what Lord L’Estrange will say?”
Audley lifted his dark brows, surveyed the baron for an instant with
flashing eyes, then walked down the narrow defile between the last
benches, and vanished from the scene, in which, alas! so few of the most
admired performers leave more than an actor’s short-lived name!