Questions of a thousandfold more importance thronged upon me now, as I entered the House, under convoy of the Member for Chimneystacks, who whispered to me, that the Dust-pan Bill was mainly of his own suggestion.
Having been introduced already, at the end of the Autumnal sitting, I did not require his services in that way, but found a quiet corner for my hat, and thought of the time when I put down my trencher some five years ago in the chapel of Corpus.
Then we rushed to hear the Royal Speech, rather like a mob of workmen, when the bell rings; and Sir Roland, whose strength lay in hurrying others more than himself, appeared quite at his leisure, and laughed, as he shook my hand, to find it trembling.
"You'll soon get over that;" he said, as if he had been some fifty years in Parliament. "But who is your friend with the dark complexion?"
I told him the story; but he did not laugh at all heartily, as I had expected.
"An exceedingly dangerous fellow," he exclaimed. "To be sure, I know all about him now. One of the cleverest of all the Clasts, with the true pass-word for the Cabinet. An anarchist, a socialist, a communist, and everything else that rhymes with fist, which is the only tool to meet them with. Chumps is the man for such fellows; but we shall not have him here for a fortnight. There now, Faithful Commons, go home. But they will have no homes to go to, except a common, if all this comes to pass. And yet, how well it has been made to sound, for people who do not care for sense!"
I was not of his opinion, upon that point. To my simple mind, plain English words, mainly of English birth, and showing (one after other) what they mean, without any tangles or knots in them, are the right words to move the English heart. Whoever speaks thus, wins all my ears, and goes a long way towards winning my heart; because he is my brother Englishman. And even for sound, what power is there, whatever the scowl of the cloud may be, in long foreign thunder, below the horizon, and perhaps meaning something, in Italy, or Greece? But the Royal Speech, as usual, meant nothing anywhere; any more than the poor man, who foretells the weather.
"A greenhorn like you, Tommy," said Sir Roland, as if he had served at least through the Long Parliament, "would expect a great fight, and a smash-up, at once, to follow up that palaver. But Thong, who knows everything, tells me that nothing, except little Irish rows, will be on for a fortnight. And we can do a heap more good, he says, by going down to Silverside, and making Chumps safe, than by hanging about for any trumpery divisions. It is jolly to see a fellow in his troubles. Suppose we start to-morrow?"
"With all my heart;" I answered. And in saying this, I had used the right words, at the right moment. Not that I cared to see Bill in the straw so much, although it is a pleasant spectacle; but that I did long, with all my heart, to hear Laura's opinion on politics, with the whole of Her Majesty's speech cut out, and pasted up—as I had told her to do it—in the corner of my little room, where I meditated, and had left a woolly outline of my head against the wall.