To
this last class belongs our Alpheus Cleophas. He played his part of
comic relief with a certain air of knowing what was expected of him--you
see this demoralizing House of Commons makes everybody self-conscious,
and one could see that he himself anticipated the roar of laughter with
which the House received his statement, "I have now a majority"--by
which, for the moment, Alpheus appeared as the leader of the Government,
and a party which controlled the destinies of the House of Commons.
[Sidenote: Mere comic relief.]
Still, as I have said, this was only comic relief--the jokes, ofttimes
mechanical, by which the young men and women downstairs prepare to pass
the time which is required for the preparation of the great scene, in
which their principals have to enact their great situation. Still, the
_denouement_ of the drama was uncertain. Mr. Marjoribanks rushed from
lobby to Mr. Gladstone, from Mr. Gladstone to lobby--and still there
hung in the air the fatal question: "Was the Government going out?" Ah!
think of it. Was Gladstone going to end his days in baffled purpose, in
melancholy retirement, with the great last solemn issue of his life
ended in puerile fiasco and farcical anarchy, instead of in the picture
of two nations reconciled, an empire strengthened and ennobled, all
humanity lifted to higher possibilities of brotherhood and concord, by
the peaceful close of the bloody and hideous struggle of centuries?
Think of it all, I say, and then go also in imagination to the door of
the House of Commons, and see a Scotch Liberal fighting for dear life to
bring into the Tory lobby the necessary number of misguided and ignorant
neophytes to bring down this disastrous catastrophe.
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