We talked on through the evening, without leaving the dining room. I caught Burns looking apprehensively at the clock. "Yes," said I, "we can catch it if we go at once. It's the last train." There was a hurried leave-taking, and we were off. We left the kind old gentleman standing in the doorway, holding a lamp which lighted us down the path and shone full upon his face. "Well?" said Burns, when we were seated in the train. "A glorious day!" I answered. "Never a better," said Burns. Surely we never went through a better day together, and we went through many. Late one afternoon in 1907, I was crossing the outer lobby of the House of Commons just as John Burns was crossing it in the opposite direction. He saw me first and called out to me. "Where have you come from now?" he asked, when we had shaken hands. "And how long is it since we met?" "America this time," said I. "I 've been there four years. But it must be seven years since I 've seen you." "Gadabout!" said he. "Did you ever have another Meredith day?" {239} "No," said I, "nor anything like it. Let's go again." "Let's," was his response. But we did not go again, for, as it turned out, another ten days called me back to America. Burns, of course, was already in the Cabinet, but he wore a blue serge suit, just as of yore. In 1913 when again I came to England, I did not see him. I had several months in the country but only ten days in town, when I fled with an attentive influenza which Freshwater drove away. But in 1916, having come the day before from a liner at Liverpool, I was walking in Victoria Street just as Burns turned a corner. "The oddest thing," said he. "I was just thinking of our day with Meredith. Let's talk. But don't talk politics. Which way are you going?" "Any way," I said. And we strolled into the cloisters of Westminster Abbey. {240} CHAPTER XVI PARNELL The man most talked of in '88-'90 was not Mr. Gladstone but Mr. Parnell. The Parnell Commission "had shaken the earth", as an Irish writer said in a moment of unusual restraint. And during its long-drawn life, as during the events which immediately had preceded it, "the uncrowned king of Ireland" was the foremost topic of conversation and of newspaper attention. From the ordeal of the Commission he emerged with triumph, a triumph which in its turn caused some planetary commotion, only to be met with the divorce suit of Captain O'Shea, and the subsequent storms, and snarls, and hopeless desertions of Committee Room Fifteen. Thence to heartbreak and death was but a short and rapid decline.