[Sidenote: The division.]
At last the division is nearing its close, and the excitement--perhaps,
because it is so painfully repressed--has grown until it has almost
become unbearable. Whenever there is a close division like this, several
things happen which never happen on other occasions. Members gather
round the doors of the division lobbies, listening to the tellers as
they count one, two, three, four, and so on, in the mechanical voice of
the croupiers, bidding the gamblers to play with the dice of death. The
Whips also are narrowly watched to see which return first to the House,
for the first return means which lobby has been sooner exhausted, and
the lobby sooner exhausted is necessarily the smaller lobby, and,
therefore, the lobby of the minority. Mr. Marjoribanks, who has told for
the Government at the door of the Tory lobby, has returned to the House
first. That's a good sign. But still, if there be a majority, what is it
going to be?--disastrously near defeat, or near enough to moral strength
as to mean nothing? A few minutes more have to pass before this fateful
question is settled. Mr. Thomas Ellis--light, brisk--walks up the floor
to the clerk in front of the table.
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