Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 6).djvu/198

 ostracism. It was a view in which to a certain extent he appeared to acquiesce. For a considerable period approaching the term of the last Parliament he was content to take a back seat in politics. Occasionally he appeared at a public meeting in the country. In the House of Commons he was not often seen, and still more rarely heard. He came down for the questions, went off in good time for dinner, and was seen no more through the sitting. If a division were pending, or any interesting speech expected, he broke through the rule, coming down in evening dress, dined and debonair.

It is apparently a small matter, really of profound significance, that, during the present Session, Mr. Chamberlain, whilst in nightly attendance, has not half-a-dozen times been seen in dinner dress. He must needs dine; but he performs the incidental duty as the Israelites fed at Passover time, with loins girded and staff in hand. He has been the backbone of the opposition to the Home Rule Bill, tireless, unfaltering, and ruthless. It is probable that but for him the Conservative gentry, weary of the monotony of constant attendance and incessant divisions, would have retired from the fight, content to leave the final destruction of the Bill to the House of Lords. Mr. Chamberlain has been pitiless. No point has been too minute for his criticism, none too large for his virile grasp. Through it all he has never swerved from the urbane, deferential manner with which he has turned to discuss successive points with his "right hon. friend" on the Treasury Bench.

Now and then a quick ear might detect metallic notes in the ordinarily soft voice, or a watchful eye might observe a gesture that mocked the friendly phrase and the almost reverential attitude. These were idle fancies, possibly born of meditation on what may never have taken place in those far-off May days, when Mr. Forster was fighting forlornly at his last outpost.

M. P. writes: As I read month by month through the Session I come to the conclusion that you must have either a marvellous memory or a priceless note-book. I remember very well O'Connor Power's prematurely reported speech in the House of Commons, but thought others had forgotten it. It was published, not, as you suggest, in a local paper, but in Freeman's Journal, then in the plenitude of its power and the full tide of its circulation. May I add to the details you give that the speech, evidently elaborately prepared, finished up by way of peroration with the not unfamiliar lines from Tennyson about "Freedom broadening slowly down from precedent to precedent"? In the too-previous report it was stated that this passage was received with "enthusiastic cheering."

O'Connor Power actually got off the speech on the following night. As, at the hour when he caught the Speaker's eye, no copy of Freeman's Journal had reached London, he was presumably safe from immediate consequences of the accident. But some of his compatriots, learning by telegraph what had happened, gave him away, and when he arose to deliver the cherished oration, he was met by hilarious cries of "Spoke! Spoke!"