“Singular enough, is it not,” said Mr. Turnbull, “that the thing should have been so close?”
“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 passed.
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 passed by the tellers, near him in the lobby, and near him again as they all passed 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’ passage, 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 moneylender 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 friendship 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 tonight,” 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.
XXIX
A Cabinet Meeting
And now will the Muses assist 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
