_ BOOK TENTH CHAPTER XV
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! _