He did not know that he was suffering what a man, whose mind has so far

governed his heart, must suffer when the latter rebels. In planning his

life he had ignored his heart; now he must pay the penalty. He went to

bed at last, but not to sleep. Instead he lived the scene over and over

again, now wondering what he ought to have done; now brooding on what

Flixton must think of him; now on what she, whose nature, he was sure,

was as perfect as her face, would think of him, if she knew. How she

would despise him!

The next day was Sunday, and he spent it, in accordance with a previous

promise, with Brereton, at his pleasant home at Newchurch, a mile from

the city. Though the most recent of his Bristol acquaintances, Brereton

was the most congenial; and a dozen times Vaughan was on the point of

confiding his trouble to him. He was deterred by the melancholy cast of

Brereton’s character, which gave promise of no decisive advice. And

early in the evening he took leave of his host and strolled towards the

Downs, balancing _I would_ against _I will not_; now facing the bleak

of a prudent decision, now thrilling with foolish rapture, as he

pondered another event. Lord Eldon had married young and with as little

prudence; it had not impeded his rise, nor Erskine’s. Doubtless Sir

Robert Vermuyden would say that he had disgraced himself; but he cared

little for that. What he had to combat was the more personal pride of

the man who, holding himself a little wiser than his fellows, cannot

bear to do a thing that in the eyes of the foolish may set him below

them!

Of course he came to no decision; though he wandered on Brandon Hill

until the Float at his feet ceased to mirror the lights, and Bristol

lay dark below him. And Monday found him still hesitating. Thrice he

started to take his place on the coach. And thrice he turned back,

hating himself for his weakness. If he could not overcome a foolish

fancy, how could he hope to scale the heights of the Western Circuit,

or hurl Coleridge and Follett from their pride of place? Or, still

harder task, how would he dare to confront in the House the cold eye of

Croker or of Goulburn? No, he could not hope to do either. He had been

wrong in his estimate of himself. He was a poor creature, unable to

hold his own amongst his fellows, impotent to guide his own life!

He was still contesting the matter when, a little before noon, he

espied Flixton in the act of threading his way through the busy crowd

of Broad Street. The Honourable Bob was wearing hessians, and a

high-collared green riding-coat, with an orange vest and a soft

many-folded cravat. In fine, he was so smart that suspicion entered

Vaughan’s head; and on its heels—jealousy.

In a twinkling he was on Flixton’s track. Broad Street, the heart of

Bristol, was thronged, for Hart Davies’s withdrawal was in the air and

an election crowd was abroad. Newsboys with their sheets, tipsy

ward-leaders, and gossiping merchants jostled one another. The beau’s

green coat, however, shone conspicuous,

_Glorious was his course_,

_And long the track of light he left behind him!_

and before Vaughan had asked himself if he were justified in following,

pursued and pursuer were over Bristol Bridge, and making, by way of the

Welsh Back—a maze of coal-hoys and dangling cranes—for Queen’s Square.

Vaughan doubted no longer, weighed the propriety of his course no

longer. For a cool-headed man of the world, who asked nothing better

than to master a silly fancy, he was foolishly perturbed. He made on

with a grim face; but a dray loading at a Newport coal-hulk drew across

his path, and Flixton was pacing under the pleasant elms and amid the

groups that loitered up and down the sunlit Square, before Vaughan came

within hail, and called him by name.

Flixton turned then, saw who it was, and grinned—nothing abashed.

“Well,” he said, tipping his hat a little to one side, “well, old chap!

Are you let out of school too?”

Vaughan had already discovered Mary Smith and her little troop under

the trees in the farthest corner. But he tried to smile—and did so, a

little awry. “This is not fair play, Flixton,” he said.

“That is just what I think it is,” the Honourable Bob answered

cheerfully. “Eh, old chap? Neat trick of yours the other day, but not

neat enough! Thought to bamboozle me and win a clear field! Neat! But

no go, I found you out and now it is my turn. That’s what I call fair

play.”

“Look here, Flixton,” Vaughan replied—he was fast losing his

composure—“I’m not going to have it. That’s plain.”

The Honourable Bob stared. “Oh!” he answered. “Let’s understand one

another. Are you going to marry the girl after all?”

“I’ve told you——”

“Oh, you’ve told me, yes, and you’ve told me, no. The question is,

which is it?”

Vaughan controlled himself. He could see Mary out of the corner of his

eye, and knew that she had not yet taken the alarm. But the least

violence might attract her attention. “Whichever it be,” he said

firmly, “is no business of yours.”

“If you claim the girl——”

“I do not claim her, Flixton. I have told you that. But——”

“But you mean to play the dog in the manger?”

“I mean to see,” Vaughan replied sternly, “that you don’t do her any

harm.”

Flixton hesitated. Secretly he held Vaughan in respect; and he would

have postponed his visit to Queen’s Square had he foreseen that that

gentleman would detect him. But to retreat now was another matter. The

duel was still in vogue; barely two years before the Prime Minister had

gone out with a brother peer in Battersea Fields; barely twenty years

before one Cabinet Minister had shot another on Wimbledon Common. He

could not, therefore, afford to show the white feather, and though he

hesitated, it was not for long. “You mean to see to that, do you?” he

retorted.

“I do.”

“Then come and see,” he returned flippantly. “I’m going to have a chat

with the young lady now. That’s not murder, I suppose?” And he turned

on his heel and strolled across the turf towards the group of which

Mary was the centre.

Vaughan followed with black looks; and when Mary Smith, informed of

their approach by one of the children, turned a startled face towards

them, he was at Flixton’s shoulder, and pressing before him.

But the Honourable Bob had the largest share of presence of mind, and

he was the first to speak. “Miss Smith,” he said, raising his hat with

_aplomb_, “I—you remember me, I am sure?”

Vaughan pushed before him; and before the girl could speak—for jealousy

is a fine spoiler of manners, “This gentleman,” he said, “wishes to

see——”

“To see——” said Flixton, with a lower bow.

“Miss Sibson!” Vaughan exclaimed.

The children stared; gazing up into the men’s faces with the

undisguised curiosity of childhood. Fortunately the Mary Smith who had

to confront these two was no longer the Mary Smith whom Vaughan’s

appearance had stricken with panic three days before. For one thing,

she knew Miss Sibson better, and feared her less. For another, her

fairy godmother—the gleam of whose gifts never failed to leave a hope

of change, a prospect of something other than the plodding, endless

round—had shown a fresh sign. And last, not least, a more potent fairy,

a fairy whose wand had power to turn Miss Sibson’s house into a Palace

Beautiful, and Queen’s Square, with its cawing rooks and ordered elms,

into an enchanted forest, had visited her.

True, Vaughan had left her abruptly—to cool her burning cheeks and

still her heart as she best might! But he had said what she would never

forget, and though he had left her doubting, he had left her loving.

And so the Mary who found herself addressed by two gallants was much

less abashed than she who on Friday had had to do with one.

Still she was astonished by their address; and she showed this,

modestly and quietly. “If you wish to see Miss Sibson,” she

said—instinctively she looked at Vaughan’s companion—“I will send for

her.” And she was in the act of turning, with comparative ease, to

despatch one of the children on the errand, when the Honourable Bob

interposed.

“But we don’t want Miss Sibson—now,” he said. “A man may change his

mind as well as a woman! Eh, old chap?” turning to his friend with

simulated good-humour. “I’m sure you will say so, Miss Smith.”

She wondered what their odd manner to one another meant. And, to add to

her dignity, she laid her hand on the shoulder of one of her charges

and drew her closer.

“Moreover, I’m sure,” Flixton continued—for Vaughan after his first

hasty intervention, stood sulkily silent—“I’m sure Mr. Vaughan will

agree with me——”

“I?”

“Oh, yes he will, Miss Smith, because he is the most changeable of men

himself! A weathercock, upon my honour!” And he pointed to the tower of

St. Mary, which from the high ground of Redcliffe Parade on the farther

side of the water, looks down on the Square. “Never of the same mind

two days together!”

Vaughan snubbed him savagely. “Be good enough to leave me out!” he

said.

“There!” the Honourable Bob answered, laughing, “he wants to stop my

mouth! But I’m not to be stopped. Of all men he’s the least right to

say that I mustn’t change my mind. Why, if you’ll believe me, Miss

Smith, no farther back than Saturday morning he was all for being

married! ’Pon honour! Went away from here talking of nothing else! In

the evening he was just as dead the other way! Nothing was farther from

his thoughts. Shuddered at the very idea! Come, old chap, don’t look

fierce!” And he grinned at Vaughan. “You can’t deny it!”

Vaughan could have struck him; the trick was so neat and so malicious.

Fortunately a man who had approached the group touched Vaughan’s elbow

at this critical moment, and diverted his wrath. “Express for you,

sir,” he said. “Brought by chaise, been looking for you everywhere,

sir!”

Vaughan smothered the execration which rose to his lips, snatched the

letter from the man, and waved him aside. Then, swelling with rage, he

turned upon Flixton. But before he could speak the matter was taken out

of his hands.

“Children,” said Mary Smith in a clear, steady voice, “it is time we

went in. The hour is up, collect your hoops. I think,” she continued,

looking stiffly at the Honourable Bob, “you have addressed me under a

misapprehension, sir, intending to address yourself to Miss Sibson.

Good-morning! Good-morning!” with a slight and significant bow which

included both gentlemen. And taking a child by either hand, she turned

her back on them, and with her little flock clustering about her, and

her pretty head held high, she went slowly across the road to the

school. Her lips were trembling, but the men could not see that. And

her heart was bursting, but only she knew that.

Without that knowledge Vaughan was furiously angry. It was not only

that the other had got the better of him by a sly trick; but he was

conscious that he had shown himself at his worst—stupid when

tongue-tied, and rude when he spoke. Still, he controlled himself until

Mary was out of earshot, and then he turned upon Flixton.

“What right—what right,” he snarled, “had you to say what I would do!

And what I would not do? I consider your conduct——”

“Steady, man!” Flixton, who was much the cooler of the two, said. He

was a little pale. “Think before you speak. You would interfere. What

did you expect? That I was going to play up to you?”

“I expected at least——”

“Ah, well, you can tell me another time what you expected. I have an

engagement now and must be going,” the Honourable Bob said. “See you

again!” And with a cool nod he turned on his heel, and assured that,

whatever came of the affair, he had had the best of that bout, he

strode off.

Vaughan was only too well aware of the same fact; and but that he held

himself in habitual control, he would have followed and struck his

rival. As it was, he stood a moment looking blackly after him. Then,

sobered somewhat, though still bitterly chagrined, he took his way

towards his hotel, carrying in his oblivious hand the letter which had

been given him. Once he halted, half-minded to return to Miss Sibson’s

and to see Mary and explain. He took, indeed, some steps in the

backward direction. But he reflected that if he went he must speak, and

plainly. And, angry as he was, furiously in love as he was, was he

prepared to speak?

He was not prepared. And while he stood doubting between that eternal

would, and would not, his eyes fell on the letter in his hand.

XII

A ROTTEN BOROUGH

Chippinge, Sir Robert Vermuyden’s borough, was in no worse case than

two-thirds of the small boroughs of that day. Still, of its great men

Cowley might have written:

_Nothing they but dust can show,

Or bones that hasten to be so._

And of its greatness he might have said the same. The one and the other

belonged to the past.

The town occupies a low, green hill, dividing two branches of the Avon

which join their waters a furlong below. Built on the ridge and

clinging to the slopes of this eminence the stone-tiled houses look

pleasantly over the gentle undulations of the Wiltshire pastures—no

pastures more green; and at a distance are pleasantly seen from them.

But viewed more closely—at the date of which we write—the picturesque

in the scene became mean or incongruous. Of the Mitred Abbey that

crowned the hill and had once owned these fertile slopes there remained

but the maimed hulk, patched and botched, and long degraded to the uses

of that parish church its neighbour, of which nothing but the steeple

survived. The crown-shaped market cross, once a dream of beauty in

stone, still stood, but battered and defaced; while the Abbot’s

gateway, under which sovereigns had walked, was sunk to a vile lock-up,

the due corrective of the tavern which stood cheek by jowl with it.

Still, to these relics, grouped as they were upon an open triangular

green, the hub of the town, there clung in spite of all some shadow of

greatness. The stranger whose eye fell on the doorway of the Abbey

Church, with its whorls of sculptured images, gazed and gazed again

with a sense of wondering awe. But let him turn his back on these

buildings, and his eye met, in cramped street and blind alley, a lower

depth. Everywhere were things once fine, sunk to base uses; old stone

mansions converted into tenements; the solid houses of mediæval

burghers into crazy taverns; fretted cloisters into pigsties and

hovels; a Gothic arch propped the sagging flank of a lath-and-plaster

stable. Or if anything of the beauty of a building survived, it was

masked by climbing penthouses; or, like the White Lion, the old inn

which had been the Abbot’s guesthouse, it was altered out of all

likeness to its former self. For the England of ’31, gross and

matter-of-fact, was not awake to the value of those relics of a noble

past which generations of intolerance had hurried to decay.

Doubtless in this mouldering, dusty shell was snug, warm living.

Georgian comfort had outlived the wig and the laced coat, and though

the influence of the Church was at its lowest ebb, and morals were not

much higher, inns were plenty and flourished, and in the panelled

parlours of the White Lion or the Heart and Hand was much good eating,

followed by deep drinking. The London road no longer passed through the

town; the great fair had fallen into disuse. But the cloth trade, by

which Chippinge had once thriven, had been revived, and the town was

not quite fallen. Still, of all its former glories, it retained but one

intact. It returned two members to Parliament. That which Birmingham

and Sheffield had not, this little borough of eighteen hundred souls

enjoyed. Fallen in all other points, it retained, or rather its High

Steward, Sir Robert Vermuyden, retained the right of returning, by the

votes of its Alderman and twelve capital burgesses, two members to the

Commons’ House.

And Sir Robert could not by any stretch of fancy bring himself to

believe that the town would willingly part with this privilege. Why

should it strip itself? he argued. It enjoyed the honour vicariously,

indeed. But did he not year by year pay the Alderman and eight of the

capital burgesses thirty pounds apiece for their interest, a sum which

quickly filtered through their pockets and enriched the town, besides

taking several of the voters off the rates? Did he not also at election

times set the taps running and distribute a moderate largesse among the

commonalty, and—and in fact do everything which it behoved a liberal

and enlightened patron to do? Nay, had he not, since his accession,

raised the status of the voters, long and vulgarly known as “The

Cripples,” so that they, who in his father’s time had been, almost

without exception, drunken illiterates, were now to the extent of at

least one half, men of respectable position?

No, Sir Robert wholly declined to believe that Chippinge had any wish

for a change so adverse to its interests. The most he would admit was

that there might be some slight disaffection in the place, due to that

confounded Bowood, which was for ever sapping and mining and seeking to

rob its neighbours.

But even he was presently to be convinced that there was a very odd

spirit abroad in this year ’31. The new police and the new steam

railways and this cholera of which people were beginning to talk, were

not the only new things. There were new ideas in the air; and the birds

seemed to carry them. They took possession not only of the troublesome

and discontented—poachers whom Sir Robert had gaoled, or the sons of

men whom his father had pressed—but of the most unlikely people. Backs

that had never been aught but pliant grew stiff. Men who had put up

with the old system for more years than they could remember grew

restive. Others, who had all their lives stood by while their inferiors

ruled the roost, discovered that they had rights. Nay—and this was the

strangest thing of all—some who had thriven by the old management and

could not hope to gain by a change revolted, after the fashion of Dyas

the butcher, and proved the mastery of mind over matter. Not many,

indeed, these; martyrs for ideas are rare. But their action went for

much, and when later the great mass of the voteless began to move,

there were rats in plenty of the kind that desert sinking ships. By

that time he was a bold man who in tavern or workshop spoke for the

rule of the few, to which Sir Robert fondly believed his borough to be

loyal.

His agent had never shared that belief, fortunately for him; or he had

had a rude awakening on the first Monday in May. It was customary for

the Vermuyden interest to meet the candidates on the Chippenham road,

half an hour before the dinner hour, and to attend them in procession

through the town to the White Lion. Often this was all that the

commonalty saw of an election, and a little horseplay was both expected

and allowed. In old days, when the “Cripples” had belonged to the very

lowest class, their grotesque appearance in the van of the gentlemanly

interest had given rise to many a home-jest. The crowd would follow

them, jeering and laughing, and there would be some pushing, and a

drunken man or two would fall. But all had passed in good humour; the

taps had been running in one interest, the ale was Sir Robert’s, and

the crowd envied while they laughed.

White, as he stood on the bridge reviewing the first comers, wished he

might have no worse to expect to-day. But he did not hope as much. The

town was crowded, and the streets down to the bridge were so cumbered

with moving groups that it was plain the procession would have to push

its way. For certain, too, many of the people did not belong to

Chippinge. With the townsfolk White knew he could deal. He did not

believe that there was a Chippinge man who, eye to eye with him, would

cast a stone. But here were yokels from Calne and Bowood, who knew not

Sir Robert; with Bristol lambs and men as dangerous, and not a few

Radicals from a distance, rabid with zeal and overflowing with

promises. Made up of such elements the crowd hooted from time to time,

and there was a threat in the sound that filled White with misgivings.

Nor was this the worst. The cloth factory stood close to the bridge.

The procession must pass it. And the hands employed in it, hostile to a

man, were gathered before the doorway, in their aprons and paper caps,

waiting to give the show a reception. They had much to say already,

their jeers and taunts filling the air; but White had a shrewd

suspicion that they had worse missiles in their pockets.

Still, he had secured the attendance of a score of sturdy fellows, sons

of Sir Robert’s farmers, and these, with a proportion of the tagrag and

bobtail of the town, gave a fairly solid aspect to his party. Nor was

the jeering all on one side, though that deep and unpleasant groaning

which now and again rolled down the street was wholly Whiggish.

Alas, it was when the agent came to analyse his men that he had most

need of the smile that deceives. True, the rector was there and the

curate of Eastport, and the clerk and the sexton—the two last-named

were voters. And there were also four or five squires arrayed in

support of the gentlemanly interest, and as many young bucks come to

see the fun. Then there were three other voters: the Alderman, who was

a small grocer, and Annibal the basketmaker—these two were

stalwarts—and Dewell the barber, also staunch, but a timid man. There

was no Dyas, however, Sir Robert’s burliest supporter in old days, and

his absence was marked. Nor any Thrush the pig-killer—the jaws of a

Radical gaol held him. Nor, last and heaviest blow of all—for it had

fallen without warning—was there any Pillinger of the Blue Duck.

Pillinger, his wife said, was ill. What was worse he was in the hands

of a Radical doctor capable, the agent believed, of hocussing him until

the polling was over. The truth about Pillinger—whether he lay ill or

whether he lay shamming, whether he was at the mercy of the apothecary

or under the thumb of his wife—White could not learn. He hoped to learn

it before it was too late. But for the present Pillinger was not here.

The Alderman, Annibal, Dewell, the clerk, the sexton, and Arthur

Vaughan. White totted them up again and again and made them six. The

Bowood voters he made five—four stalwarts and Dyas the butcher.

Certainly he might still poll Pillinger. But, on the other hand, Mr.

Vaughan might arrive too late. White had written to his address in

town, and receiving no answer had sent an express to Bristol on the

chance that the young gentleman was still there. Probably he would be

in time. But when things are so very close—and when there were alarm

and defeat in the air—men grow nervous. White smiled as he chatted with

the pompous Rector and the country squires, but he was very anxious. He

thought of old Sir Robert at Stapylton, and he sweated at the notion of

defeat. Cobbett had reached his mind, but Sir Robert had his heart!

“Boo!” moaned the crowd higher up the street. The sound sank and the

harsh voice of a speaker came fitfully over the heads of the people.

“Who’s that?” asked old Squire Rowley, one of the country gentlemen.

“Some spouter from Bristol, sir, I fancy,” the agent replied

contemptuously. And with his eye he whipped in a couple of hobbledehoys

who seemed inclined to stray towards the enemy.

“I suppose,” the Squire continued, lowering his voice, “you can depend

on your men, White?”

“Oh, Lord, yes, sir,” White answered; like a good election agent he

took no one into his confidence. “We’ve enough here to do the trick.

Besides, young Mr. Vaughan will be here to-morrow, and the landlord of

the Blue Duck, who is not well enough to walk to-day, will poll. He’d

break his heart, bless you,” White continued, with a brow of brass, “if

he could not vote for Sir Robert!”

“Seven to five.”

“Seven to four, sir.”

“But Dyas, I hear, the d——d rogue, will vote against you?”

White winked.

“Bad,” he said cryptically, “but not as bad as that, sir.”

“Oh! oh!” quoth the other, nodding, “I see.” And then, glancing at the

gang before the cloth works, whose taunts of “Flunkies!” and “Sell your

birthright, will you?” were constant and vicious, “You’ve no fear

there’ll be violence, White?” he asked.

“Lord, no, sir,” White answered; “you know what election rows are, all

bark and no bite!”

“Still I hear that at Bath, where I’m told Lord Brecknock stands a poor

chance, they are afraid of a riot.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” White answered indifferently, “this isn’t Bath.”

“Precisely,” the Rector struck in, in pompous tones. “I should like to

see anything of that kind here! They would soon,” he continued with an

air, “find that I am not on the commission of the peace for nothing! I

shall make, and I am sure you will make,” he went on, turning to his

brother justice, “very short work of them! I should like to see

anything of that kind tried here!”

White nodded, but in his heart he thought that his reverence was likely

to have his wish gratified. However, no more was said, for the approach

of the Stapylton carriages, with their postillions, outriders and

favours, was signalled by persons who had been placed to watch for

them, and the party on the bridge, falling into violent commotion,

raised their flags and banners and hastened to form an escort on either

side of the roadway. As the gaily-decked carriages halted on the crest

of the bridge, loud greetings were exchanged. The five voters took up a

position of honour, seats in the carriages were found for three or four

of the more important gentry, and seven or eight others got to horse.

Meanwhile those of the smaller folk, who thought that they had a claim

to the recognition of the candidates, were gratified, and stood back

blushing, or being disappointed stood back glowering; all this amid

confusion and cheering on the bridge and shrill jeers on the part of

the cloth hands. Then the flags were waved aloft, the band of five, of

which the drummer could truly say “_Pars magna fui_,” struck up “See,

the Conquering Hero Comes!” and White stood back for a last look.

Then, “Shout, lads, shout!” he cried, waving his hat. “Don’t let ’em

have it all their own way!” And with a roar of defiance, not quite so

loud or full as the gentlemanly interest had raised of old, the

procession got under way, and, led by a banner bearing “Our Ancient

Constitution!” in blue letters on a red ground, swayed spasmodically up

the street. The candidates for the suffrages of the electors of

Chippinge had passed the threshold of the borough. “Hurrah! Yah!

Hurrah! Yah! Yah! Yah! Down with the Borough-mongers. Our Ancient

Constitution! Hurrah! Boo! Boo!”

White had his eye on the clothmen, and under its spell they did not go

beyond hooting and an egg or two, spared from the polling day, and

flung at long range when the Tories had passed. No one was struck, and

the carriages moved onward, more or less triumphantly. Sergeant Wathen,

who was in the first, and whose sharp black eyes moved hither and

thither in search of friends, rose repeatedly to bow. But Mr. Cooke,

who did not forget that he was paying two thousand five hundred pounds

for his seat, and thought that it should be a soft one, scarcely

deigned to move. For as the procession advanced into the town the

clamour of the crowd which lined the narrow High Street and continually

shouted “The Bill! The Bill!” drowned the utmost efforts of Sir

Robert’s friends, and left no doubt of the popular feeling.

There was some good-humoured pushing and thrusting, the drum beating

and the church bells jangling bravely above the hubbub. And once or

twice the rabble came near to cutting the procession in two. But there

was no real attempt at mischief, and all went well until the foremost

carriage was abreast of the Cross, which stands at the head of the High

Street, where the latter debouches into the space before the Abbey.

Then some foolish person gave the word to halt before Dyas the

butcher’s. And a voice—it was not White’s—cried, “Three groans for the

Radical Rat! Rat! Rat!”

The groans were given before the crowd fully understood their meaning

or the motive for the stoppage. The drummer beat out something which he

meant for the Rogues’ March, and an unseen hand raising a large dead

rat, tied to a stick, waved it before the butcher’s first-floor

windows.

The effect was surprising—to old-fashioned folk. In a twinkling, with a

shout of “Down with the Borough-mongers!” a gang of white-aproned

clothmen rushed the rear of the procession, drove it in upon the main

body, and amid screams and uproar forced the whole line out of the

narrow street into the space before the Abbey. Fortunately the White

Lion, which faced the Abbey, stood only a score of paces to the left of

the Cross, and the carriages were able to reach it; but in disorder,

pressed on by such a fighting, swaying, shouting crowd as Chippinge had

not seen for many a year.

It was no time to stand on dignity. The candidates tumbled out as best

they could, their chief supporters followed them, and while half a

dozen single combats proceeded at their elbows, they hastened across

the pavement into the house. The Rector alone disdained to flee. Once

on the threshold of the inn, he turned and raised his hat above his

head:

“Order!” he cried, “Order! Do you hear me!”

But “Yah! Borough-monger!” the rabble answered, and before he could say

more a young farmer was hurled against him, and a whip, of which a

postillion had just been despoiled, whizzed past his head. He, too,

turned tail at that, with his face a shade paler than usual; and with

his retreat resistance ceased. The carriages were hustled somehow and

anyhow into the yard, and there the greater part of the procession also

took refuge. A few, sad to say, sneaked off and got rid of their

badges, and a few more escaped through a neighbouring alley. No one was

much hurt; a few black eyes were the worst of the mischief, nor could

it be said that any vindictive feeling was shown. But the town was

swept clear, and the victory of the Radicals was complete. Left in

possession of the open space before the Abbey, they paraded for some

time under the windows of the White Lion, waving a captured flag, and

cheering and groaning by turns.

Meantime in the hall of the inn the grandees were smoothing their

ruffled plumes, in a state of mind in which it was hard to say whether

indignation or astonishment had larger place. Oaths flew thick as hail,

unrebuked by the Church, the most outspoken perhaps being by the

landlord, who met them with a pale face.

“Good Lord, good Lord, gentlemen!” he said, “what violence! What

violence! What are we coming to next? What’s took the people,

gentlemen? Isn’t Sir Robert here?”

For to this simple person it seemed impossible that people should

behave badly in that presence.

“No, he’s not!” Mr. Cooke answered with choler. “I’d like to know why

he’s not! I wish to Heaven”—only he did not say “Heaven”—“that he were

here, and he’d see what sort of thing he has let us into!”

“Ah, well, ah, well!” returned the more discreet and philosophic

Sergeant, “shouting breaks no bones. We are all here, I hope? And after

all, this shows up the Bill in a pretty strong light, eh, Rector? If it

is to be carried by methods such as these—these—”

“D——d barefaced intimidation!” Squire Rowley growled.

“Or if it is to give votes to such persons as these——”

“D——d Jacobins! Republicans every one!” interposed the Squire.

“It will soon be plain to all,” the Sergeant concluded, in his House of

Commons manner, “that it is a most revolutionary, dangerous, and—and

unconstitutional measure, gentlemen.”

“By G—d!” Mr. Cooke cried—he was thinking that if this was the kind of

thing he was to suffer he might as well have fought Taunton or Preston,

or any other open borough, and kept his money in his pocket—“by G—d, I

wish Lord John were stifled in the mud he’s stirred up, and Gaffer Grey

with him!”

“You can add Bruffam, if you like,” Wathen answered good-humouredly—he

was not paying two thousand five hundred guineas for his seat. “And rid

me of a rival and the country of a pest, Cooke! But come, gentlemen,

now we’re here and no bones broken, shall we sit down? We are all safe,

I trust, Mr. White? And especially—my future constituents?” with a

glance of his shrewd Jewish-looking eyes.

“Yes, sir, no harm done,” White replied as cheerfully as he could;

which was not overcheerfully, for in all his experience of Chippinge he

had known nothing like this; and he was a trifle scared. “Yes, sir,” he

continued, looking round, “all here, I think! And—and by Jove,” in a

tone of relief, “one more than I expected! Mr. Vaughan! I am glad, sir,

very glad, sir,” he added heartily, “to see you. Very glad!”

The young man who had alighted from his postchaise a few minutes before

did not, in appearance at least, reciprocate the feeling. He looked

sulky and bored. But he shook the outstretched hand; he could do no

less. Then, saying scarcely a word, he stood back again. He had

hastened to Chippinge on receiving White’s belated express, but rather

because, irritated by the collision with Flixton, he welcomed any

change, than because he was sure what he would do. In the chaise he had

thought more of Mary than of politics, more of the Honourable Bob than

of his cousin. And though, as far as Sir Robert was concerned, he was

resolved to be frank and to play the man, his mind had travelled no

farther.

Now, thrown suddenly among these people, he was, in a churlish way,

taken somewhat aback. But, in a thoroughly bad temper, he told himself

it did not matter. If they did not like the line he was going to take,

that was their business. He was not responsible to them. In fine, he

was in a savage mood, with half his mind here and the other half

dwelling on the events of the morning. For the moment politics seemed

to him a poor game, and what he did or did not do of little

consequence!

White and the others were not blind to his manner, and might have

resented it in another. But Sir Robert’s heir was a great man and had a

right to moods if any man had; doubtless he was become a fine gentleman

and thought it a nuisance to vote in his own borough. They were all

politeness to him, therefore, and while his eyes passed haughtily

beyond them, seeking Sir Robert, they presented to him those whom he

did not know.

“Very kind of you to come, Mr. Vaughan,” said the Sergeant, who, like

many browbeaters, could be a sycophant at need. “Very kind indeed! I

don’t know whether you know Mr. Cooke? He, equally with me, is obliged

to you for your attendance.”

“Greatly obliged, sir,” Mr. Cooke muttered. “Certainly, certainly.”

Vaughan bowed coldly.

“Is not Sir Robert here?” he asked.

He was still looking beyond those to whom he spoke.

“No, Mr. Vaughan.”

And then, “This way to dinner,” White cried loudly. “Come, gentlemen!

Dinner, gentlemen, dinner!”

And Vaughan, heedless what he did or where he dined, but inclined in a

sardonic way to amuse himself, went in with them. What did it matter?

He was not going to vote for them. But that was his business, and Sir

Robert’s. He was not responsible to them.

Certainly he was in a very bad temper.

XIII

THE VERMUYDEN DINNER

Vaughan began to think more soberly of his position when he found

himself set down at the table. He had White, who took one end, on his

right; and the Sergeant was opposite him. At the other end the Alderman

presided, supported by Mr. Cooke and the Rector.

The young man looked down the board, at the vast tureens that smoked on

it, and at the faces, smug or jolly, hungry or expectant, that

surrounded them; and amid the flood of talk which burst forth the

moment his reverence had said a short grace, he began to feel the

situation uncomfortable. True, he had a sort of right to be there, as

the heir, and a Vermuyden. True, too, he owed nothing to anyone there;

nothing to the Sergeant, whom he secretly disliked, nothing to Mr.

Cooke, whom he despised—in his heart he was as exclusive as Sir Robert

himself—nothing to White, who would one day be his paid dependant. He

owed them no explanation. Why then should he expose himself to their

anger and surprise? He would be silent and speak only when the time

came, and he could state his views to Sir Robert with a fair chance of

a fair hearing.

Still he saw that the position in which he had placed himself was a

false one: and might become ridiculous. And it crossed his mind to

feign illness and to go out and incontinently walk over to Stapylton

and see Sir Robert. Or he might tell White quietly that he did not find

himself able to support his cousin’s nominations: and before the news

got abroad he might withdraw and let them think what they would. But he

was too proud to do the one, and in too sulky a mood to do the other.

And he sat still.

“Where is Sir Robert?” he asked.

“He left home on a sudden call, this morning, sir,” White explained;

wondering what made the young squire—who was wont to be affable—so

distant. “On unexpected business.”

“It must have been important as well as unexpected,” Wathen said, with

a smile, “to take Sir Robert away today, Mr. White.”

“It was both, sir, as I understood,” White answered, “for Sir Robert

did not make me acquainted with it. He seemed somewhat put out—more put

out than I have often seen him. But he said that whatever happened he

would be back before the nomination.” And then, turning to Vaughan,

“You must have passed him, sir?” he added.

“Well, now I think of it,” Vaughan answered, his spoon suspended, “I

did. I met a travelling carriage and four with jackets like his. But, I

thought it was empty.”

“No, sir, that was Sir Robert. He will not be best pleased,” White

continued, turning to the Sergeant, “when he hears what a reception we

had!”

“Ah, well, ah, well!” the Sergeant replied—pleasantness was his cue

to-day. “Things are worse in Bath I’ll be sworn, Mr. White.”

“No doubt, sir, no doubt! I think,” White added, forgetting his study

of Cobbett, “the nation has gone mad.”

After that Vaughan’s other neighbour, Squire Rowley, who met him

annually at Stapylton, claimed his ear. The old fellow, hearty and

good-natured, but a bigoted Tory, who would have given Orator Hunt four

dozen and thought Lord Grey’s proper reward a block on Tower Hill, was

the last person whom Vaughan would have chosen for a confidant; since

only to hear of a Vermuyden turned Whig would have gone near to giving

him a fit. Perforce, nevertheless, Vaughan had to listen to him and

answer him; he could not without rudeness cut him short. But all the

time as they talked, Vaughan’s uneasiness increased. With every minute

his eyes wandered more longingly to the door. Improved in temper by the

fare and by the politeness of his neighbours, he began to see that he

had been foolish to thrust himself among people with whom he did not

agree. Still he was there; and he must see the dinner to an end. After

all a little more or a little less would not add to Sir Robert’s anger.

He could explain that he thought it more delicate to avoid an open

scandal.

Meanwhile the collision with the crowd had loosened the guests’ tongues

and never had a Vermuyden dinner gone more freely. Even the “Cripples,”

whose wont it was to begin the evening with odious obsequiousness and

close it with a freedom as unpleasant, found speech early, and were

loudest in denunciation of a Bill which threatened to deprive them of

their annuities. By the time huge joints had taken the place of the

tureens, and bowls of potatoes and mounds of asparagus dotted the

table, the noise was incessant. There was claret for those who cared

for it, and strong ale for all. And while some discussed the effect

which a Bill that disfranchised Chippinge would have on their pockets

and interests, others driving their arguments home with blows on the

table recalled, almost with tears, the sacred name of Pitt—the pilot

who weathered the storm; or held up to execration a cabinet of Whigs

dead to every Whig principle, and alive only to the chance of power

which a revolution might afford.

“But what was to be expected? What was to be expected?” old Rowley

insisted. “We’ve only ourselves to thank! When Peel and the Duke took

up the Catholic Claims they stepped into the Whigs’ shoes—and

devilishly may they pinch them! The Whigs had to find another pair, you

see, sir, and stepped into the Radicals’! And the only people left at a

loss are the honest part of us; who are likely to end not only barefoot

but barebacked! Ay, by G—d, we are!”

And so on, and so on; even White, who was vastly relieved by Vaughan’s

arrival, which made his majority safe, talked freely, and gave Dyas and

Pillinger of the Blue Duck the rough side of his tongue. While Vaughan,

used to a freer atmosphere, listened to their one-sided arguments,

their trite prophecies, their incredible prejudices—such they seemed to

him—and now turned up his nose, now pitied them, as an effete, a

doomed, a dying race.

While he thought of this the dinner wore on, the joints vanished, and

huge steaming puddings made their appearance on the board; those who

cared not for plum puddings could have marrow-puddings. Then cheese and

spring onions, and some special old ale, light coloured, heady, and

served in tall, spare glasses, went round. At length the rector, a

trifle flushed, rose to say grace, and Vaughan saw that the cloth was

about to be removed. Bottles of strong port and tawny Madeira were at

hand. Some called already for their favourite punch, or for hot grog.

“Now,” he thought, “I can escape with a good grace. And I will!”

But as he made a movement to rise, the Sergeant rose opposite him,

lifted his glass, and fixed him with his eye. And Vaughan felt that he

could not leave at that moment without rudeness. “Gentlemen, on your

feet, if you please,” he cried blandly. “The King! The King, God bless

him! The King, gentlemen, and may he never suffer for the faults of his

servants! May the Grey mare never run away with him. May William the

Good ne’er be ruined by a—bad Bill! Gentlemen, the King, God bless him,

and deliver him from the Whigs!”

They drank the toast amid a roar of laughter and applause. And once

more as they sat down Vaughan thought that he would escape. Again he

was hindered. This time the interruption came from behind.

“Hallo, Vaughan!” someone muttered in his ear. “You’re the last person

I expected to see here!”

He turned and disgust filled him. The speaker, who had just entered,

was the son of a clergyman in the neighbourhood and had gone to the

bar. He was a shifty, flattering fellow, at once a toady and a

backbiter; who had wormed himself into society too good for him, and in

London was Vaughan’s _bête noir_. But had that been all! Alas, he was

also a member of the Academic. He had been present at Vaughan’s triumph

ten days before, and had heard him proclaim himself a Reformer of the

Reformers.

For a moment Vaughan could find not a word. He could only mutter “Oh!”

in a tone of dismay. He feared that his face betrayed the chagrin he

felt.

“I thought you were quite the other way?” Mowatt said. And he grinned.

He was a weedy, pale young man, with thin lips and a false smile.

Vaughan hesitated. “So I am!” he said curtly.

“But—but I thought——”

“Order! Order!” cried the Alderman, a trifle uplifted by wine and his

position. “Silence, if you please, gentlemen, for the Senior Candidate!

And charge your glasses!”

Vaughan turned to the table, a frown on his brow. Wathen was on his

feet, holding his wine glass before his breast with one hand, while the

other rested on the table. His attitude was that of a man confident of

his powers and pleased to exert them. Nevertheless, as he prepared to

speak, he lowered his eyes to the table as if he thought that a little

mock-modesty became him.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “it is my privilege to propose a toast, that at

this time and in this place—this time, gentlemen, when to an extent

unknown within living memory, all is at stake, and this place which has

so much to lose—it is my privilege, I say, to propose a toast that must

go straight to the heart of every man in this room, nay, of every

true-born Englishman, and every lover of his country! It is _Our

Ancient Constitution, our Chartered Rights, our Vested Interests!_

[Loud and continued applause.] Yes, gentlemen, our ancient

Constitution, the security of every man, woman, and child in this

realm! And coupled with it our Chartered Rights, our Vested Interests,

which, unassailed for generations, are to-day called in question by the

weakness of many, by the madness of some, by the wicked ambition of a

few. [Loud cheering]. Gentlemen, to one Cromwell this town owes the

destruction of your famous Abbey, once the pride of this county! To

another Cromwell it owes the destruction of the walls that in troublous

times secured the hearths of your forefathers! It lies with us—but we

must be instant and diligent—it lies with us, I say, to see that those

civil bulwarks which protect us and ours in the enjoyment of all we

have and all we hope for——”

“In this world!” the Rector murmured in a deep bass voice.

“In this world,” the Sergeant continued, accepting the amendment with a

complimentary bow, “are not laid low by a third Cromwell! I care not

whether he mask himself under the name of Grey, or of Russell, or of

Brougham, or of Lansdowne!”

He paused amid such a roar of applause as shook the room.

“For think not”—the Sergeant resumed when it died down—“think not,

gentlemen, whatever the easily led vulgar may think, that sacrilegious

hands can be laid on the Ark of the Constitution without injury to many

other interests; without the shock being felt through all the various

members of the State down to the lowest: without endangering all those

multiform rights and privileges for which the Constitution is our

guarantee! Let the advocates of this pernicious, this revolutionary

Bill say what they will, they cannot deny that its effect will be to

deprive you in Chippinge who, for nearly five centuries, have enjoyed

the privilege of returning members to Parliament—of that privilege,

with all”—here he glanced at the rich array of bottles that covered the

board—“the amenities which it brings with it! And for whose benefit?

For that of men no better qualified—nay, by practice and heredity less

qualified—than yourselves. But, gentlemen, mark me, that is not all!

That is but the beginning, and it may be the least part. That loss they

cannot hide from you. That loss they do not attempt to hide from you.

But they do hide from you,” he continued in his deepest and most tragic

tone, “a fact to which the whole course of history is witness—that a

policy of robbery once begun is rarely stayed, if it be stayed, until

the victim is bare! Bare, gentlemen! Gentlemen, the freemen of this

borough have of ancient right, conferred by an ancient sovereign——”

“God bless him!” from Annibal, now somewhat drunk. “God bless him!

Here’s his health!”

The Sergeant paused an instant and looked round the table. Then more

slowly, “Ay, God bless him!” he said. “God bless King Canute! But

what—what if those grants of land—-I care not whether you call them

chartered rights or vested interests—which you freemen enjoy of

him—what if they do not enure? You have them,” with a penetrating

glance from face to face, “but for how long, gentlemen, if this Bill

pass? You are too clear-sighted to be blind to the peril! Too shrewd to

think that you can part with one right, as old, as well vested, as

perfectly secured—and keep the others undiminished? Gentlemen, if you

are so blind, take warning! For wherever this anarchical, this

dangerous, this revolutionary Bill——”

“Hear! Hear! Hear!” from Vaughan’s neighbour, the Squire.

“Wherever, I say, this Bill finds supporters—and I can well believe

that in Birmingham and Sheffield, where they have all to gain and

nothing to lose, it will find supporters, it should find none in

Chippinge! Where we have all to lose and nothing to gain, and where no

man but a fool or a rogue can in reason support it! Gentlemen, you are

neither fools nor rogues——”

“No! No! No! No!”

“No, gentlemen, and therefore, though a few silly fellows may shout for

the Bill in the streets, I am sure that I shall have the whole of this

influential company with me when I give you the toast of ‘Our Ancient

Constitution, Our Chartered Rights, Our Vested Interests!’ May the Bill

that assails them be defeated by the good sense of a sober and united

people! May those who urge it and those who support it—rogues where

they are not fools, and fools where they are not rogues—meet with the

fate they deserve! And may we be there to see! Gentlemen,” he

continued, raising his hand for silence, “in the absence upon pressing

business of our beloved High Steward, the model of an English gentleman

and the pattern of an English landlord, I beg to couple this

toast”—here the Sergeant’s sharp black eyes fixed themselves suddenly

on his opposite neighbour—“with the name of his kinsman, Mr. Arthur

Vaughan!”

“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” The room shook with the volume of applause,

the tables trembled. And through it all Arthur Vaughan’s heart beat

hard, and he swallowed nervously. He was caught. Whether the Sergeant

knew it or not, he was trapped. From the beginning of the speech he had

had his misgivings. He had listened anxiously; and though he had lost

nothing, though one half of his mind had followed the speaker’s thread,

the other half had scanned the prospect feverishly, weighed the chances

of escape, and grown chill with the fear of what was coming. If he had

only withdrawn in time! If he had only——

“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” They were pounding the table with fist and

glass, and looking towards him—two long rows of flushed, excited, tipsy

faces. Some were drinking to him. Others were scanning him curiously.

All were waiting.

He leant forward. “I don’t wish to speak,” he said, addressing the

Sergeant in a troubled voice. “Call on some one else, if you please.”

But “Impossible, sir!” White, surprised by his evident nervousness,

answered. He had thought Vaughan anything but a shy person.

“Impossible, sir!”

“Get up! Get up!” cried the Squire, his neighbour, laying a jocund hand

on him and trying to lift him to his feet.

But Vaughan resisted; his throat was so dry that he could hardly frame

his words. “I don’t wish to speak,” he muttered. “I don’t agree——”

“Say what you like, my dear sir!” the Sergeant rejoined blandly, but

with a gleam of amusement in his eyes. He had had his doubts of Master

Vaughan ever since he had caught him on his way to the Chancellor: now

he thought that he had him pinned. He did not suppose that the young

man would dare to revolt openly.

“Yes, sir, you must get up,” said White, who had no suspicion that his

hesitation arose from any cause but shyness. “Anything will do.”

Vaughan rose—slowly, and with a beating heart. He rose perforce. For a

moment he stood, deafened by his reception. For the smaller men saw in

him one of the old family, the future landlord of two-thirds of them,

the sometime owner of the very roof under which they were gathered. And

he, while they greeted his rising and he stood waiting with an unhappy

face for silence, wondered, even at this last moment, what he would

say. And Heaven knows what he would have said—so hard was it to

disappoint those cheering men, all looking at him with worship in their

eyes—so painful was it to break old ties—if he had not caught behind

him Mowatt’s whisper, “Eat his words! He’ll have to unsay——”

No more than that, a fragment, but enough; enough to show him that he

had better, far better seem false to these men, to his blood, to the

past, than be false to himself. He straightened his shoulders, and

lifted his head.

“Gentlemen,” he said, and now his voice though low was steady, “I rise

unwillingly—unwillingly, because I feel too late that I ought not to be

here. That I have no right to be here. [No! No!] No right to be here,

for this reason,” he continued, raising his hand for silence, “for this

reason, that in much of what Sergeant Wathen has said, I cannot go with

him.”

There, it was out! But no more than a stare of perplexity passed from

the more intelligent faces about him to the duller faces lower down the

table. They did not understand; it was only clear that he could not

mean what he seemed to mean. But he was going on in a silence so

complete that a pin falling to the floor might have been heard!

“I rise unwillingly, I say again, gentlemen,” he continued, “and I beg

you to remember this, and that I did not come here of set purpose to

flaunt my opinions before you. For I, too”—here he betrayed his secret

agitation—“thus far I do go with Sergeant Wathen,—I, too, am for Our

Ancient Constitution, I give place to no man in love of it. And I, too,

am against revolution, I will stand second to none in abhorrence of

it.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried the Rector in a tone of unmistakable relief. “Hear,

hear!”

“Ay, go on,” chimed in the Squire. “Go on, lad, go on! That’s all

right!” And half aside in his neighbour’s ear, “Gad! he frightened me!”

he muttered.

“But—but to be plain,” Vaughan resumed, pronouncing every word clearly,

“I do not regard the Bill which the Sergeant has mentioned, the Bill

which is in all your minds, as assailing the one, or as being

tantamount to the other! On the contrary, I believe that it restores

the ancient balance of the Constitution, and will avert, as nothing

else will avert, a Revolution!”

As he paused on that word, the Squire, who was of a free habit, tried

to rise and speak, but choked. The Rector gasped. Only Mr. Cooke found

his voice. He sprang to his feet, purple in the face. “By G—d!” he

roared, “are we going to listen to this?”

Vaughan sat down, pale but composed. But he found all eyes on him, and

he rose again.

“It was against my will I said what I have said,” he resumed. “I did

not wish to speak. I do not wish you to listen. I rose only because I

was forced to rise. But being up, I owed it to myself to say enough to

clear myself of—of the appearance of duplicity. That is all.”

The Sergeant did not speak, but gazed darkly at him, his mind busy with

the effect which this would have on the election. White, too, did not

speak—he sat stricken dumb. The Squire swore, and five or six of the

more intelligent hissed. But again it was Cooke who found words.

“That all? But that is not all!” he shouted. “That is not all! What are

you, sir?” For still, in common with most of those at the table, he

could not believe that he heard aright. He fancied that this was some

trope, some nice distinction, which he had not followed. “You may be

Sir Robert Vermuyden’s cousin ten times over,” he continued,

vehemently, “but we’ll have it clear what we have to expect. Speak like

a man, sir! Say what you mean!”

Vaughan had taken his seat, but he rose again, a gleam of anger in his

eyes. “Have I not spoken plainly?” he said. “I thought I had. If you

have still any doubt, sir, I am for the Constitution, but I think that

it has suffered by the wear and tear of time and needs repair. I think

that the shifting of population during the last two centuries, the

decay of one place and the rise of another, call for some change in the

representation! I hold that the spread of education and the creation of

a large and wealthy class unconnected with the land, render that change

more urgent if we would avoid a revolution! I believe that the more we

enlarge the base upon which our institutions rest, the more safely, the

more steadily, and the longer will they last!”

They knew now, they understood, and the storm broke. The smaller men,

or such of them as were sober, stared. But the greater number burst

into a roar of dissent, of reprobation, of anger, led by the Squire.

“A Whig, by Heaven!” he cried violently. And he thrust his chair as far

as possible from his neighbour. “A Whig, by Heaven! And here!” While

others cried, “Renegade!” “Radical!” and “What are you doing here?” and

hissed him. But above all, in some degree stilling all, rose Cooke’s

crucial question, “Are you for the Bill? Answer me that!” And he

extended his hand for silence. “Are you for the Bill?”

“I am,” Vaughan answered. The storm steadied him.

“You are?”

“Yes.”

“Fool or rogue, then! which are you?” shrieked a voice from the lower

end of the table. “Fool or rogue? Which are you?”

Vaughan turned sharply in the direction of the voice. “That reminds

me,” he said with a vigour which seemed after a few seconds to gain him

a hearing—for the noise died down—“that reminds me, Sergeant Wathen is

against the Bill. But he has addressed himself solely and only to your

prejudices, gentlemen! I am for the Bill—I am for the Bill,” he

repeated, seeing that their attention was wandering, “I——”

He stopped, silenced and taken aback. For some were on their feet,

others were rising; the faces of nine out of ten were turned from him.

What was it? He turned to see; and he saw.

A few paces within the door stood Sir Robert himself; his fur collared

travelling cloak hanging loose about him and showing his tall spare

figure at its best. He stooped, but his high-bred face, cynically

smiling, was turned full on the speaker; it was certain that he had

heard much, if not all. And Vaughan had been brave indeed, he had been

a hero, if taken by surprise and at this disadvantage he had not shown

some discomfiture.

It is easy to smile now! Easy to say that this was but an English

gentleman, bound like others by the law! And Vaughan’s own kinsman! But

few would have smiled then. He, through whose hands passed a quarter of

the patronage of a county, who dammed or turned the stream of

promotion, who had made many there and could unmake them, whose mere

hint could have consigned, a few years back, the troublesome to the

press-gang, who belonged almost as definitely, almost as exclusively,

to a caste, as do white men in the India of to-day; who seldom showed

himself to the vulgar save in his coach and four, or riding with belted

grooms behind him—about such an one in ’31 there was, if no divinity,

at least the ægis of real power, that habit which unquestioned

authority confers, that port of Jove to which men bow! Scan the

pictured faces of the men who steered this country through the long

war—the faces of Liverpool and Castlereagh—

_Daring pilots in extremity_,

_Scorning the danger when the waves ran high_;

or of those men, heirs to their traditions, who, for nearly twenty

years, confronted the no less formidable forces of discontent and

disaffection—of Peel and Wellington, Croker and Canning, and he is

blind who does not find there the reflection of that firm rule, the

shadow of that power which still survived, though maimed and weakened

in the early thirties.

Certainly it was not easy to smile at such men then; at their pride or

their prejudices, their selfishness or their eccentricity. For behind

lay solid power. Small blame to Vaughan therefore, if in the face of

the servile attitude, the obsequious rising of the company about him,

he felt his countenance change, if he could not quite hide his dismay.

And though he told himself that his feelings were out of place, that

the man did but stand in the shoes which would one day be his, and was

but now what he would be, _vox faucibus hæsit_—he was dumb. It was Sir

Robert who broke the silence.

“I fear, Mr. Vaughan,” he said, the gleam in his eyes alone betraying

his passion—for he would as soon have walked the country lanes in his

dressing robe as given way to rage in that company—“I fear you are

saying in haste words which you will repent at leisure! Did I hear

aright that—that you are in favour of the Bill?”

“I am,” Vaughan replied a little huskily. “I——”

“Just so, just so!” Sir Robert replied with a certain lightness. And

raising his walking cane he pointed gravely and courteously to the door

a pace or two from him. “That is the door, Mr. Vaughan,” he said. “You

must be here, I am sure, under an error.”

Vaughan coloured painfully. “Sir Robert,” he said, “I owe you, I

know——”

“You will owe me very little by to-morrow evening,” Sir Robert

rejoined, interrupting him suavely. “Much less than you now think! But

that is not to the point. Will you—kindly withdraw?”

“I would like at least to say this! That I came here——”

“Will you kindly withdraw?” Sir Robert persisted. “That is all.” And he

pointed again, and still more blandly, to the door. “Any explanation

you may please to offer—and I do not deny that one may be in place—you

can give to my agent to-morrow. He, on his part, will have something to

say. For the present—Annibal,” turning with kindly condescension, “be

good enough to open the door for this gentleman. Good-evening, Mr.

Vaughan. You will not, I am sure, compel me to remove with my friends

to another room?”

And as he continued to point to the door, and would listen to

nothing—and the room was certainly his—Vaughan walked out. And Annibal

closed the door behind him.

XIV

MISS SIBSON’S MISTAKE

It was perhaps fortunate for Miss Hilhouse that she did not hazard any

remarks on that second escapade in the Square. Whether this amendment

in her manners was due to Miss Sibson’s apothegms, or to the general

desire of the school to see the new teacher’s new pelisse—which could

only be gratified by favour—or to a threatening rigidity in Mary

Smith’s bearing must remain a question. But children are keen

observers. Their senses are as sharp as their tongues are cruel. And it

is certain that Miss Smith had not read four lines of the fifth chapter

of The Fairchild Family before a certain sternness in her tone was

noted by those who had not already marked the danger signal in her

eyes. For the gentlest eyes can dart lightnings on occasion. The sheep

will turn in defence of its lamb. Nor ever walked woman who could not

fight for her secret and her pride.

So Miss Hilhouse bit her tongue and kept silence, the girls behaved

beautifully, and Mary read The Fairchild Family to them in a tone of

monotony that perfectly reflected the future as she saw it. She had

been very foolish, and very weak, but she was not without excuse. He

had saved her life, she could plead that. True, brought up as she had

been at Clapham, shielded from all dealings with the other sex, taught

to regard them as wolves, or at best as a race with which she could

have no safe parley, she should have known better. She should have

known that handsome, courteous, masterful-eyed, as they were—and with a

way with them that made poor girls’ hearts throb at one moment and

stand still at another—she should have known that they meant nothing.

That they were still men, and that she must not trust them, must not

think of them, must not expect to find them more steadfast to a point

than the weather-cock on St. Mary’s at Redcliffe.

The weather-cock? Ah!

She had no sooner framed the thought in the middle of the reading than

she was aware of a sensation; and a child, one of the youngest, raised

her hand. “Please—”

Mary paused.

“Yes?” she asked. “What is it?”

“Please, Miss Smith, did the weather-cock speak?”

Mary reddened violently.

“Speak? The weather-cock? What do you mean, child?”

“Please, Miss Smith, you said that the weather-cock told Lucy the

truth, the truth, and all the truth.”

“Impossible!” Mary stammered. “I—I should have said, the coachman.” And

Mary resumed the story, but with a hot face; a face that blushed more

painfully and more intolerably because she was conscious that every eye

was upon it, and that a score of small minds were groping for the cause

of her confusion.

She remembered, oh, how well she remembered, that the schoolmistress at

Clapham had told her that she had every good quality except strength of

will. And how thoroughly, how rapidly had she proved the truth of the

exception! Freed from control for only twenty-four hours, left for that

time to her own devices, she had listened to the first voice that

addressed her, believed the first flattering look that fell on her,

taken the most ordinary attentions—attentions at which any girl with

knowledge of the world or strength of will would have smiled—for gold,

real red gold! So that a light look without a spoken word had drawn her

heart from her. How it behoved her to despise herself, loathe herself,

discipline herself! How she ought to guard herself in the future! Above

all, how thankful should she be for the dull but safe routine that

fenced, and henceforth would fence, her life from such dangers!

True. Yet how dreary to her young eyes seemed that routine stretched

before her! How her courage fainted at the prospect of morning added to

morning, formal walk to formal walk, lesson to lesson, one generation

of pupils to another! For generation would follow generation, one

chubby face would give place to another, and still she would be there,

plodding through the stale task, listening with an aching head to the

strumming on the harpsichord, saying the same things, finding the same

faults, growing slowly into a correcting, scolding, punishing machine.

By and by she would know The Fairchild Family by heart, and she would

sicken at the “Letters on the Improvement of the Mind.” The children

would still be young, but grey hairs would come to her, she would grow

stout and dull; and those slender hands, those dainty fingers still

white and fine, still meet for love, would be seared by a million

needle-pricks and roughened by the wear and tear of ten thousand hours

of plain sewing.

She was ungrateful, oh, she was ungrateful to think such thoughts! For

in what was her lot worse than the lot of others? Or worse than it had

been a week before when, who more humble-minded or contented, more

cheerful or helpful than Mary Smith? When her only fault had been a

weakness of character which her old schoolmistress hoped would be cured

by time? When, though the shadow of an unknown Miss Sibson loomed

formidable before her, she had faced her fate bravely and hopefully,

supported not a little by the love and good wishes—won by a thousand

kind offices—which went with her into the unknown world.

What had happened in the meantime? A little thing, oh, a very little

thing. But to think of it under the childrens’ eyes made her face burn

again. She had lost her heart—to a man. To a man! The very word seemed

improper in that company. How much more improper when the man cared

nothing for her, but tossing her a smile for guerdon, had taken her

peace of mind and gone his way, with a laugh. At the best, if he had

ever dreamt seriously of her, ever done more than deem her an innocent,

easily flattered and as lightly to be won, he had changed his mind as

quickly as a weather-cock shifts in April. And he had talked—that hurt

her, that hurt her most! He had talked of her freely, boasted of her

silliness, told his companions what he would do, or what he would not

do; made her common to them!

She got away for a few minutes at tea-time. But twenty pairs of eyes

followed her from the room and seized on her as she returned. And “Miss

Smith, ain’t you well?” piped a tiny treble.

She was controlling her voice to answer—that she was quite well, when

Miss Sibson intervened. “Miss Fripp,” she said sombrely, “write ‘Are

you not,’ twenty times on your slate after tea! Miss Hilhouse, if you

stare in that fashion you will be goggle-eyed. Young ladies, elbows,

elbows! Have I not told you a score of times that the art of deportment

consists in the right use of the elbow? Now, Miss Claxton, in what does

the art of deportment consist?”

“In the right use of the elbow, Ma’am.”

“And what is the right use of the elbow?”

“To efface it, Ma’am.”

“That is better,” Miss Sibson replied, somewhat mollified. “Understood

is half done. Miss Smith,” looking about her with benevolence, “had you

occasion to commend any young lady’s needle this afternoon?”

Miss Smith looked unhappy: conscious that she had not been as attentive

to her duties as became her. “I had no occasion to find fault, Ma’am,”

she said timidly.

“Very good. Then every fourth young lady beginning at my right hand may

take a piece of currant cake. I see that Miss Burges is wearing the

silver medal for good conduct. She may take a piece, and give a piece

to a friend. When you have eaten your cake you may go to the schoolroom

and play for half an hour at Blind Man’s Buff. But—elbows! Elbows,

young ladies,” gazing austerely at them over her glasses. “In all your

frolics let deportment be your first consideration.”

The girls trooped out and Mary Smith rose to go with them. But Miss

Sibson bade her remain. “I wish to speak to you,” she said.

Poor Mary trembled. For Miss Sibson was still in some measure an

unknown quantity, a perplexing mixture of severity and benevolence,

sound sense and Mrs. Chapone.

“I wish to speak to you,” Miss Sibson continued when they were alone.

And then after a pause during which she poured herself out a third cup

of tea, “My dear,” she said soberly, “the sooner a false step is

retraced the better. I took a false step yesterday—I blame myself for

it—when I allowed you—in spite of my rule to the contrary—to see a

gentleman. I made that exception partly out of respect to the note

which the parcel contained; the affair was strange and out of the

ordinary. And partly because I liked the gentleman’s face. I thought

him a gentleman; he told me that he had an independence: I had no

reason to think him more than that. But I have heard to-day, my dear—I

thought it right to make some enquiry in view of the possibility of a

second visit—that he is a gentleman of large expectations, who will one

day be very rich and a man of standing in the country. That alters the

position,” Miss Sibson continued gravely. “Had I known it”—she rubbed

her nose thoughtfully with the handle of her teaspoon—“I should not

have permitted the interview.” And then after a few seconds of silence,

“You understand me, I think, my dear?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mary said in a low voice. She spoke with perfect composure.

“Just so, just so,” Miss Sibson answered, pleased to see that the girl

was too proud to give way before her—though she was sure that she would

cry by and by. “I am glad to think that there is no harm done. As I

have said, the sooner a false step is retraced, the better; and

therefore if he calls again I shall not permit him to see you.”

“I do not wish to see him,” Mary said with dignity.

“Very good. Then that is understood.”

But strangely enough, the words had barely fallen from Miss Sibson’s

lips when there came a knock at the house door, and the same thought

leapt to the mind of each; and to Mary’s cheek a sudden vivid blush

that, fading as quickly as it came, left her paler than before. Miss

Sibson saw the girl’s distress, and she was about to suggest, in words

equivalent to a command, that she should retire, when the door opened

and the neat maidservant announced—with poorly masked excitement—that a

gentleman wished to see Miss Smith.

Miss Sibson frowned.

“Where is he?” she asked, with majesty; as if she already scented the

fray.

“In the parlour, Ma’am.”

“Very good. Very good. I will see him.” But not until the maid had

retired did the schoolmistress rise to her feet. “You had better stay

here,” she said, looking at her companion, “until my return. It is of

course your wish that I should dismiss him?”

Mary shivered. Those dreams of something brighter, something higher,

something fuller than the daily round; of a life in the sunshine, of

eyes that looked into hers—this was their end! But she said “Yes,”

bravely.

“Good girl,” said Miss Sibson, feeling, good, honest creature, more

than she showed. “I will do so.” And she swam forth.

Poor Mary! The door was barely shut before her heart whispered that she

had only to cross the hall and she would see him; that, on the other

hand, if she did not cross the hall, she would never, never, never see

him again! She would stay here for all time, bound hand and foot to the

unchanging round of petty duties, a blind slave in the mill, no longer

a woman—though her woman’s heart hungered for love—but a dull, formal,

old maid, growing more stiff and angular with every year! No farther

away than the other side of the hall were love and freedom. And she

dared not, she dared not open the door!

And then she bethought her, that he was no weathercock, for he had come

again! He had come! And it must be for something. For what?

She heard the door open on the parlour side of the hall, and she knew

that he was going. And she stood listening, waiting with blanched

cheeks.

The door opened and Miss Sibson came in, met her look—and started.

“Oh!” the schoolmistress exclaimed; and for a moment she stood, looking

strangely at the girl, as if she did not know what to say to her. Then,

“We were mistaken,” she said, with a serious face. “It is not the

gentleman you were expecting, my dear. On the contrary, it’s a stranger

who wishes to see you on business.”

Mary tried to gain command of herself. “I had rather not,” she said

faintly. “I don’t think I can.”

“I fear—you must,” Miss Sibson rejoined, with unusual gravity. “Still,

there is no hurry. He can wait a few minutes. He can await your

leisure. Do you sit down and compose yourself. You have no reason to be

disturbed. The gentleman”—she continued, with an odd inflection in her

voice—“is old enough to be your father.”

XV

MR. PYBUS’S OFFER

“A note for you, sir.” Vaughan turned moodily to take it. It was the

morning after the Vermuyden dinner, and he had slept ill, he had risen

late, he was still sitting before his breakfast, toying with it rather

than eating it. His first feeling on leaving the dining-room had been

bitter chagrin at the ease with which Sir Robert had dealt with him.

This had given place a little later to amusement; for he had a sense of

humour. And he had laughed, though sorely, at the figure he had cut as

he beat his retreat. Still later, as he lay, excited and wakeful, he

had fallen a prey to doubt; that horrible three o’clock in the morning

doubt, which defies reason, which sees all the _cons_ in the strongest

light and reduces the _pros_ to shadows. However, one thing was

certain. He had crossed the Rubicon. He had divorced himself by public

act from the party to which his forbears—for the Vaughans as well as

the Vermuydens had been Tories—had belonged. He had joined the Whigs;

nay, he had joined the Reformers. But though he had done this

deliberately and from conviction, though his reason approved the step,

and his brain teemed with arguments in its favour, the chance that he

might be wrong haunted him.

That governing class from which he was separating himself, from which

his policy would snatch power, which in future would dub him traitor,

what had it not done for England? With how firm a hand had it not

guided the country through storm and stress, with what success shielded

it not from foreign foes only, but from disruption and revolution? He

scanned the last hundred and fifty years and saw the country, always

under the steady rule of that class which had the greatest stake in its

prosperity, advancing in strength and riches and comfort, ay, and,

though slowly in these, in knowledge also and the humanities and

decencies. And the question forced itself upon him, would that great

middle class into whose hands the sway now fell, use it better? Would

they produce statesmen more able than Walpole or Chatham, generals

braver than Wolfe or Moore, a higher heart than Nelson’s? Nay, would

the matter end there? Would not power slip into the hands of a wider

and yet a wider circle? Would Orator Hunt’s dream of Manhood Suffrage,

Annual Parliaments and the Ballot become a reality? Would government by

the majority, government by tale of heads, as if three chawbacons must

perforce be wiser than one squire, government by the ill-taught,

untrained mass, with the least to lose and the most to gain—would that

in the long run plunge the country in fatal misfortunes?

It was just possible that those who deemed the balance of power,

established in 1688, the one perfect mean between despotism and

anarchy—it was just possible that they were right. And that he was a

fool.

Then to divert his mind he had allowed himself to think of Mary Smith.

And he had tossed and tumbled, ill-satisfied with himself. He was

brave, he told himself, in the wrong place. He had the courage to break

with old associations, to defy opinion, to disregard Sir Robert—where

no more than a point of pride was concerned; for it was absurd to fancy

that the fate of England hung on his voice. But in a matter which went

to the root of his happiness—for he was sure that he loved Mary Smith

and would love no other—he had not the spirit to defy a little gossip,

a few smiles, the contempt of the worldly. He flushed from head to foot

at the thought of a life which, however modest—and modesty was not

incompatible with ambition—was shared by her, and would be pervaded by

her. And yet he dared not purchase that life at so trifling a cost! No,

he was weak where he should be strong, and strong where he should be

weak. And so he had tossed and turned, and now after two or three hours

of feverish sleep, he sat glooming over his tea cup.

Presently he broke open the note which the waiter had handed to him. He

read it, and “Who brought this?” he asked, with a perplexed face.

“Don’t know, sir,” Sam replied glibly, beginning to collect the

breakfast dishes.

“Will you enquire?”

“Found it on the hall table, sir,” the man answered, in the same tone.

“Fancy,” with a grin, “it’s a runaway knock, sir. Known a man find a

cabbage at the door and a whole year’s wages under it—at election time,

sir! Yes, sir. Find funny things in funny places—election time, sir.”

Vaughan made no reply, but a few minutes later he took his hat and

descending the stairs, strolled with an easy air into the street. He

paused as if to contemplate the Abbey Church, beautiful even in its

disfigurement. Then, but as if he were careless which way he went, he

turned to the right.

The main street, with its whitened doorsteps and gleaming knockers, lay

languid in the sunshine; perhaps, enervated by the dissipation of the

previous evening. The candidates who would presently pay formal visits

to the voters were not yet afoot: and though taverns where the tap was

running already gave forth maudlin laughter, no other sign of the

coming event declared itself. A few tradesmen stood at their doors, a

few dogs lay stretched in the sun; and only Vaughan’s common sense told

him that he was watched.

From the High Street he presently turned into a narrow alley on the

right which descended between garden walls to the lower level of the

town. A man who was lounging in the mouth of the alley muttered “second

door on the left,” as Vaughan passed, and the latter moved on counting

the doors. At the one indicated he paused, and, after making certain

that he was not observed, he knocked. The door opened a little way.

“For whom are you?” asked someone who kept himself out of sight.

“Buff and Blue,” Vaughan answered.

“Right; sir,” the voice rejoined briskly. The door opened wide and

Vaughan passed in. He found himself in a small walled garden smothered

in lilac and laburnum, and shaded by two great chestnut trees already

so fully in leaf as to hide the house to which the garden belonged.

The person who had admitted him, a very small, very neat gentleman in a

high-collared blue coat and nankeen trousers, with a redundant soft

cravat wound about his thin neck, bowed low. “Happy to see you, Mr.

Vaughan,” he chirped. “I am Mr. Pybus, his lordship’s man of business.

Happy to be the intermediary in so pleasant a matter.”

“I hope it may turn out so,” Vaughan replied drily. “You wrote me a

very mysterious note.”

“Can’t be too careful, sir,” the little man, who was said to model

himself upon Lord John Russell, answered with an important frown.

“Can’t be too careful in these matters. You’re watched and I am

watched, sir.”

“I dare say,” Vaughan replied.

“And the responsibility is great, very great. May I——” he continued,

pulling out his box, “but I dare say you don’t take snuff?”

“No.”

“No? The younger generation! Just so! Many of the young gentry smoke, I

am told. Other days, other manners! Well—we know of course what

happened last night. And I’m bound to say, I honour you, Mr. Vaughan! I

honour you, sir.”

“You can let that pass,” Vaughan replied coldly.

“Very good! Very good! Of course,” he continued with importance, “the

news was brought to me at once, and his lordship knew it before he

slept.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, indeed. Yes. And he wrote to me this morning—in his dressing

gown, I don’t doubt. He commanded me to tell you——”

But here Vaughan stopped him—somewhat rudely. “One minute, Mr. Pybus,”

he said, “I don’t wish to know what Lord Lansdowne said or did—because

it will not affect my conduct. I am here because you requested me to

grant you an interview. But if your purpose be merely to convey to me

Lord Lansdowne’s approval—or disapproval,” in a tone a little more

contemptuous than was necessary, “be good enough to understand that

they are equally indifferent to me. I have done what I have done

without regard to my cousin’s—to Sir Robert Vermuyden’s feelings. You

may take it for certain,” he added loftily, “that I shall not be led

beyond my own judgment by any regard for his lordship’s.”

“But hear me out!” the little man cried, dancing to and fro in his

eagerness; so that, in the shifting lights under the great chestnut

tree, he looked like a pert, bright-coloured bird. “Hear me out, and

you’ll not say that!”

“I shall say, Mr. Pybus——”

“I beg you to hear me out!”

Vaughan shrugged his shoulders.

“Go on!” he said. “I have said my say, and I suppose you understand

me.”

“I shall hold it unsaid,” Mr. Pybus rejoined warmly, “until I have

spoken!” And he waved an agitated finger in the air. “Observe, Mr.

Vaughan—his lordship bade me take you entirely into confidence, and I

do so. We’ve only one candidate—Mr. Wrench. Colonel Petty is sure of

his election in Ireland and we’ve no mind to stand a second contest to

fill his seat: in fact we are not going to nominate him. Lord Kerry, my

lord’s eldest son thought of it, but it is not a certainty, and my lord

wishes him to wait a year or two and sit for Calne. I say it’s not a

certainty. But it’s next door to a certainty since you have declared

yourself. And my lord’s view, Mr. Vaughan, is that he who hits the buck

should have the haunch. You take me?”

“Indeed, I don’t.”

“Then I’ll be downright, sir. To the point, sir. Will you be our

candidate?”

“What?” Vaughan cried. He turned very red. “What do you mean?”

“What I said, sir. Will you be our candidate? For the Bill, the whole

Bill, and nothing but the Bill? If so, we shall not say a word until

to-morrow and then we shall nominate you with Mr. Wrench, and take ’em

by surprise. Eh? Do you see? They’ve got their speeches ready full of

my lord’s interference and my lord’s dictation, and they will point to

Colonel Petty, my lord’s cousin, for proof! And then,” Mr. Pybus

winked, much after the fashion of a mischievous paroquet, “we’ll knock

the stool from under ’em by nominating you! And, mind you, Mr. Vaughan,

we are going to win. We were hopeful before, for we’ve one of their men

in gaol, and another, Pillinger of the Blue Duck, is tied by the leg.

His wife owes a bit of money and thinks more of fifty guineas in her

own pocket than of thirty pounds a year in her husband’s. And she and

the doctor have got him in bed and will see that he’s not well enough

to vote! Ha! Ha! So there it is, Mr. Vaughan! There it is! My lord’s

offer, not mine. I believe he’d word from London what you’d be likely

to do. Only he felt a delicacy about moving—until you declared

yourself.”

“I see,” Vaughan replied. And indeed he did see more than he liked.

“Just so, sir. My lord’s a gentleman if ever there was one!” And Mr.

Pybus, pulling down his waistcoat, looked as if he suspected that he

had imbibed much of his lordship’s gentility.

Vaughan stood, thinking; his eyes gazing into the shimmering depths of

green where the branches of the chestnut tree under which he stood

swept the sun-kissed turf. And as he thought he tried to still the

turmoil in his brain. Here within reach of his hand, to take or leave,

was that which had been his ambition for years! No longer to play at

the game, no longer to make believe while he addressed the Forum or the

Academic that he was addressing the Commons of England; but verily and

really to be one of that august body, and to have all within reach. Had

not the offer of cabinet honours fallen to Lord Palmerston at

twenty-five? And what Lord Palmerston had done at twenty-five, he might

do at thirty-five! And more easily, if he gained a footing before the

crowd of new members whom the Bill would bring in, took the floor. The

thought set his pulse a-gallop. His chance! His chance at last! But if

he let it slip now, it might not be his for long years. It is poor work

waiting for dead men’s shoes.

And yet he hesitated, with a flushed face. For the thing offered

without price or preface, by a man who had power to push him, by the

man who even now was pushing Mr. Macaulay at Calne, tempted him sorely.

Nor less—nor less because he remembered with bitterness that Sir Robert

had made him no such offer, and now never would! So that if he refused

this offer, he could look for no second from either side!

And yet he could not forget that Sir Robert was his kinsman, was the

head of his family, the donor of his vote. And in the night watches he

had decided that, his mind delivered, his independence declared, he

would not vote. Neither for Sir Robert—for conscience’s sake; nor

against Sir Robert, for his name’s sake!

Then how could he not only take an active part against him, but raise

his fortunes on his fall?

He drew a deep breath. And he put the temptation from him. “I am much

obliged to his lordship,” he said quietly. “But I cannot accept his

offer.”

“Not accept it?” Mr. Pybus cried. “Mr. Vaughan! You don’t mean it, sir!

You don’t mean it! It’s a safe seat! It’s in your own hands, I tell

you! And after last night! Besides, it is not as if you had not

declared yourself.”

“I cannot accept it,” Vaughan repeated coldly. “I am obliged to Lord

Lansdowne for his kind thought of me. I beg you to convey my thanks to

him. But I cannot—in the position I occupy—accept the offer.”

Mr. Pybus stared. Was it possible that the scene at the Vermuyden

dinner had been a ruse? A piece of play-acting to gain his secrets? If

so—he was undone! “But,” he quavered with an unhappy eye, “you are in

favour of the Bill, Mr. Vaughan?”

“I am.

“And—and of Reform generally, I understand?”

“Certainly.”

“Then—I don’t understand? Why do you refuse?”

Vaughan raised his head and looked at him with a movement which would

have reminded Isaac White of Sir Robert. “That is my business,” he

said.

“But you see,” Mr. Pybus remonstrated timidly—he was rather a

crestfallen bird by this time—“I confess I was never more surprised in

my life! Never! You see I’ve told you all our secrets.”

“I shall keep them.”

“Yes, but—oh dear! oh dear!” Pybus was thinking of what he had said

about Mrs. Pillinger of the Blue Duck. “I—I don’t know what to say,” he

added. “I am afraid I have been too hasty, very hasty! Very

precipitate! Of course, Mr. Vaughan,” he continued, “the offer would

not have been made if we had not thought you certain to accept it!”

“Then,” Vaughan replied with dignity, “you can consider that it has not

been made. I shall not name it for certain.”

“Well! Well!”

“I can say no more,” Vaughan continued coldly. “Indeed, there is

nothing more to be said, Mr. Pybus?”

“No,” piteously, “I suppose not. If you really won’t change your mind,

sir?”

“I shall not do that,” the young man answered. And a minute later with

Mr. Pybus’s faint appeals still sounding in his ears he was on the

other side of the garden door, and striding down the alley, towards the

King’s Wall, whence making a detour he returned to the High Street.

XVI

LESS THAN A HERO

It was the evening of the day on which the meeting between Arthur

Vaughan and Mr. Pybus had taken place, and from the thirty-six windows

in the front of Stapylton lights shone on the dusky glades of the park;

here, twinkling fairy-like over the long slope of sward that shimmered

pale-green as with the ghostly reflection of dead daylight, there,

shining boldly upon the clump of beeches that topped an eminence with

blackness. Vaughan sat beside Isaac White in the carriage which Sir

Robert had sent for him; and looking curiously forth on the demesne

which would be his if he lived, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Was

the old squire so sure of victory that he already illuminated his

windows? Or was the house, long sparely inhabited, and opened only at

rare intervals and to dull and formal parties, full now from attic to

hall? Election or no election, it seemed unlikely. Yet every window,

yes, every window had its light!

He was too proud to question the agent who, his errand done, and his

message delivered, showed no desire to talk. More than once, indeed, in

the course of their short companionship, Vaughan had caught White

looking at him strangely; with something like pity in his eyes. And

though the young man was far from letting this distress him—probably

White, with his inborn reverence for Sir Robert, despaired of all who

fell under his displeasure—it closed his lips and hardened his heart.

He was no paid servant; but a kinsman and the heir. And he would have

Sir Robert remember this. For his own part, he was not going to forget

who he was; that a Chancellor had stooped to flatter him and a Cabinet

Minister had offered him a seat. He had refused for a point of honour a

bait which few would have refused; and he was not going to be

browbeaten by an old gentleman whom the world had out-paced, and whose

beliefs, whose prejudices, whose views, were of yesterday. Who, in his

profound ignorance of present conditions, would plunge England into

civil war rather than resign a privilege as obsolete as ship-money, and

as illegal as the Dispensing Power.

While he thought of this the carriage stopped at the door. He alighted

and ascended the steps.

The hall more than made good the outside promise; it was brilliantly

lighted, and behind Mapp and the servant who received him Vaughan had a

passing glimpse of three or four men in full-dress livery. From the

dining-room on his left issued peals of laughter, and voices, so clear

that, though he had not the smallest reason to expect to hear them

there, he was sure that he caught Bob Flixton’s tones. The discovery

was not pleasing; but Mapp, turning the other way and giving him no

time to think, went before him to the suite of state-rooms—which he had

not seen in use more than thrice within his knowledge of the house. It

must be so then—he thought with a slight shock of surprise. The place

must be full! For the gilt mirrors in both the large and small

drawing-rooms reflected the soft light of many candles, wood fires

burned and crackled on the hearths, the “Morning Chronicle,” the

“Quarterly,” and other signs of life lay about on the round tables, and

an air of cheerful _bienséance_ pervaded all. What did it mean?

“Sir Robert has finished dinner, sir,” Mapp said—even he seemed to wear

an unusual air of solemnity. “He will be with you, sir, immediately.

Hope you are well, sir?”

“Quite well, Mapp, thank you.”

Then he was left alone—to wonder if a second surprise awaited him. He

had had one that day. If a second were in store for him what was its

nature? Could Sir Robert on his side be going to offer him one of the

seats—if he would recant? He hoped not. But he had not time to give

more than a thought to that before he heard footsteps and voices

crossing the hall. The next moment there entered the outer room—at such

a distance from the hearth of the room in which he stood, that he had a

leisurely view of all before they reached him—three persons. The first

was a tall burly man in slovenly evening clothes, and with an ungainly

rolling walk; after him came Sir Robert himself, and after him again,

Isaac White.

Vaughan advanced a step or two, and Sir Robert passed by the burly man,

who had a pendulous under lip, and a face at once flabby and

melancholy. The baronet held out his hand. “We have not quarrelled yet,

Mr. Vaughan,” he said, with a cordiality which took Vaughan quite by

surprise. “I trust and believe that we are not going to quarrel. I bid

you welcome therefore. This,” he continued with a gesture of courteous

deference, “is Sir Charles Wetherell, whom you know by reputation, and

whom, for a reason which you will understand by and by, I have asked to

be present at our interview.”

The stout man eyed Vaughan from under bushy eyebrows. “I think we have

met before,” he said in a deep voice. “At Westminster, Mr. Vaughan, on

the 22nd of last month.” He had a habit of blinking as he talked. “I

was beholden to you on that occasion.”

Vaughan had already recognised him and recalled the incident in Palace

Yard. He bowed with an expression of silent sympathy. But he wondered

all the more. The presence of the late attorney-general, a man of mark

in the political world, whose defeat at Norwich was in that morning’s

paper—what did it mean? Did they think to browbeat him? Or—had Sir

Charles Wetherell also an offer to make to him? In any event it seemed

that he had made himself a personage by his independence. Sought by the

one side, sought by the other! A résumé of the answer he would give

flashed before him. However, they were not come to that yet!

“Will you sit down,” said Sir Robert. The great man’s voice and

manner—to Vaughan’s surprise—were less autocratic and more friendly

than he had ever known them. Indeed, in comparison of the lion of last

evening he was but a mouse. “In the first place,” he continued, “I am

obliged to you for your compliance with my wishes.”

Vaughan murmured that he had come at no inconvenience to himself.

“I hope not,” Sir Robert replied. “In the next place let me say, that

we have to speak to you on a matter of the first importance; a matter

also on which we have the advantage of knowledge which you have not. It

is my desire, therefore, to admit you to a parity with us in that

respect, Mr. Vaughan, before you express yourself on any subject on

which we are likely to differ.”

Vaughan looked keenly, almost suspiciously at him; and an observer

would have noticed that there was a closer likeness between the two men

than the slender tie of blood warranted. “If it is a question, Sir

Robert,” he said slowly, “of the subject on which we differed last

evening, I would prefer to say at once——”

“Don’t!” Wetherell, who was seated within a long reach of him, struck

in. “Don’t!” And he laid an elephantine and not over-clean hand on

Vaughan’s knee. “You can spill words as easy as water,” he continued,

“and they are as hard to pick up again. Hear what Vermuyden has to say,

and what I’ve to say—’tisn’t much—and then blow your trumpet—if you’ve

any breath left!” he added _sotto voce_, as he threw himself back.

Vaughan hesitated a moment. Then, “Very good,” he said, “if you will

hear me afterwards. But——”

“But and If are two wenches always raising trouble!” Wetherell cried

coarsely. “Do you listen, Mr. Vaughan. Do you listen. Now, Vermuyden,

go on.”

But Sir Robert did not seem to have words at command. He took a pinch

of snuff from the gold box with which his fingers trifled: and he

opened his mouth to resume; but he hesitated. At length, “What I have

to tell you, Mr. Vaughan,” he said, in a voice more diffident than

usual, “had perhaps been more properly told by my attorney to yours. I

fully admit that,” dusting the snuff from his frill. “And it would have

been so told but for—but for exigencies not immediately connected with

it, which are nevertheless so pressing as to—to induce me to take the

one step immediately possible. Less regular, but immediately possible!

In spite of this, you will believe, I am sure, that I do not wish to

take any advantage of you other than,” he paused with an embarrassed

look at Wetherell, “that which my position gives me. For the rest I”—he

looked again at his snuffbox and hesitated—“I think—I——”

“You’d better come to the point!” Wetherell growled impatiently,

jerking his ungainly person back in his chair, and lurching forward

again. “To the point, man! Shall I tell him?”

Sir Robert straightened himself—with a sigh of relief. “If you please,”

he said, “I think you had better. It—it may come better from you, as

you are not interested.”

Vaughan looked from one to the other, and wondered what on earth they

meant, and what they would be at. His cordial reception followed by

this strange exordium, the preparations, the presence of the three men

seated about him and all, it seemed, ill at ease—these things begot

instinctive misgivings; and an uneasiness, which it was not in the

power of reason to hold futile. What were they meditating? What threat,

what inducement? And what meant this strange illumination of the house,

this air of festivity? It could be nothing to him. And yet—but

Wetherell was speaking.

“Mr. Vaughan,” he said gruffly—and he swayed himself as was his habit

to and fro in his seat, “my friend here, and your kinsman, has made a

discovery of—of the utmost possible importance to him; and, speaking

candidly, of scarcely less importance to you. I don’t know whether you

read the trash they call novels now-a-days—‘The Disowned’” with a snort

of contempt, “and ‘Tremayne’ and the rest? I hope not, I don’t! But

it’s something devilish like the stuff they put in them that I’ve to

tell you. You’ll believe it or not, as you please. You think yourself

heir to the Stapylton estates? Of course you do. Sir Robert has no more

than a life-interest, and if he has no children, the reversion in fee,

as we lawyers call it, is yours. Just so. But if he has children, son

or daughter, you are ousted, Mr. Vaughan.”

“Are you going to tell me,” Vaughan said, his face grown suddenly

rigid, “that he has children?” His heart was beating furiously under

his waistcoat, but, taken aback as he was, he maintained outward

composure.

“That’s it,” Wetherell answered bluntly.

“Then——”

“He has a daughter.”

“It will have to be proved!” Vaughan said slowly and in the tone of a

man who chose his words. And he rose to his feet. He felt, perhaps he

was justified in feeling, that they had taken him at a disadvantage.

That they had treated him unfairly in trapping him hither, one to

three; in order that they might see, perhaps, how he took it! Not—his

thoughts travelled rapidly over the facts known to him—that the thing

could be true! The punishment for last night’s revolt fell too pat, too

_à propos_, he’d not believe it! And besides, it could not be true. For

Lady Vermuyden lived, and there could be no question of a concealed

marriage, or a low-born family. “It will have to be proved!” he

repeated firmly. “And is matter rather for my lawyers than for me.”

Sir Robert, too, had risen to his feet. But it was Wetherell who spoke.

“Perhaps so!” he said. “Perhaps so. Indeed I admit it, young sir! It

will have to be proved. But——”

“It should have been told to them rather than to me!” Vaughan repeated,

with a sparkling eye. And he turned as if he were determined to treat

them as hostile and to have nothing farther to say to them.

But Wetherell stopped him. “Stay, young man,” he said, “and be ashamed

of yourself! You forget yourself!” And before Vaughan, stung and angry,

could retort upon him, “You forget,” he continued, “that this touches

another as closely as it touches you—and more closely! You are a

gentleman, sir, and Sir Robert’s kinsman. Have you no word then, for

him!” pointing, with a gesture roughly eloquent, to his host. “You

lose, but have you no word for him who gains! You lose, but is it

nothing to him that he finds himself childless no longer, heirless no

longer? That his house is no longer lonely, his hearth no longer empty!

Man alive,” he added, dropping with honest indignation to a low note,

“you lose, but what does he not gain? And have you no word, no generous

thought for him? Bah!” throwing himself back in his seat. “Poor human

nature.”

“Still it must be proved,” said Vaughan sullenly, though in his heart

he acknowledged the truth of the reproach.

“Granted! But will you not hear what it is, that is to be proved?”

Wetherell retorted. “If so, sit down, sir, sit down, and hear what we

have to tell you like a man. Will you do that,” in a tone of extreme

exasperation, which did but reflect the slowly hardening expression of

Sir Robert’s face, “or are you quite a fool?”

Vaughan hesitated, looking with angry eyes on Wetherell. Then he sat

down. “Am I to understand,” he said coldly, “that this is news to Sir

Robert?”

“It was news to him yesterday.”

Vaughan bowed and was silent; aware that a more generous demeanour

would better become him, but unable to compass it on the spur of the

moment. He was ignorant—unfortunately—of the spirit in which he had

been summoned: consequently he could not guess that every word he

uttered rang churlishly in the ears of more than one of his listeners.

He was no churl; but he was taken unfairly—as it seemed to him. And to

be called upon in the first moment of chagrin to congratulate Sir

Robert on an event which ruined his own prospects and changed his

life—was too much. Too much! But again Wetherell was speaking.

“You shall know what we know from the beginning,” he said, in his heavy

melancholy way. “You are aware, I suppose, that Sir Robert married—in

the year ’10, was it not?—Yes, in the year ’10, and that Lady Vermuyden

bore him one child, a daughter, who died in Italy in the year ’15. It

appears now—we are in a position to prove, I think—that that child did

not die in that year, nor in any year; but is now alive, is in this

country and can be perfectly identified.”

Vaughan coughed. “This is strange news,” he said, “after all these

years; and somewhat sudden, is it not?”

Sir Robert’s face grew harder, but Wetherell only shrugged his

shoulders. “If you will listen,” he replied, “you will know all that we

know. It is no secret, at any rate in this room it is no secret, that

in the year ’14 Sir Robert fancied that he had grave reason to be

displeased with Lady Vermuyden. It was thought by her friends that a

better agreement might be produced by a temporary separation, and the

child’s health afforded a pretext. Accordingly, Sir Robert suffered

Lady Vermuyden to take it abroad, her suite consisting of a courier, a

maid, and a nurse. The nurse she sent back to England not long

afterwards on the plea that an Italian woman from whom the child might

learn the language would be better. For my part, I believe that she

acted bonâ-fide in this. But in other respects,” puffing out his

cheeks, “her conduct was such as to alarm her husband; and, in terms

perhaps too peremptory, Sir Robert bade her return at once—or cease to

consider his house as her home. Her answer was the announcement of the

child’s death.”

“And that it did not die,” Vaughan murmured, “as Lady Vermuyden said?”

“We have this evidence. But first let me say, that Sir Robert on the

receipt of the news set out for Italy overland. The Hundred Days,

however, stopped him; he could not cross France, and he returned

without certifying the child’s death. He had indeed no suspicion, no

reason for suspicion. Well, then, for evidence that it did not die. The

courier is dead, and there remains only the maid. She is alive, she is

here, she is in this house. And it is from her that we have learned the

truth—that the child did not die.”

He paused a moment, brooding in his fat, melancholy way on the pattern

of the carpet between his feet. Sir Robert, with a face hard and proud,

sat upright, listening to the tale of his misfortunes—and doubtless

suffered torments as he listened.

“Her story,” Wetherell resumed—possibly he had been arranging his

thoughts—“is this. Lady Vermuyden was living a life of the wildest

gaiety. She had no affection for the child; if the woman is to be

believed, she hated it. To part with it was nothing to her one way or

the other, and on receipt of Sir Robert’s order to return, her ladyship

conceived the idea of punishing him by abducting the child and telling

him it was dead. She set out from Florence with it; on the way she left

it at Orvieto in charge of the Italian nurse, and arriving in Rome she

put about the story of its death. Shortly afterwards she had it carried

to England and bred up in an establishment near London—always with the

aid and connivance of her maid.”

“The maid’s name?” Vaughan asked.

“Herapath—Martha Herapath. But to proceed. By and by Lady Vermuyden

returned to England, and settled at Brighton, and the maid left her and

married, but continued to draw a pension from her. Lady Vermuyden

persisted here—in the company of Lady Conyng—but I need name no

names—in the same course of giddiness, if no worse, which she had

pursued abroad; and gave little if any heed to the child. But this

woman Herapath never forgot that the pension she enjoyed was dependent

on her power to prove the truth: and when a short time back the girl,

now well-grown, was withdrawn from her knowledge, she grew restive. She

sought Lady Vermuyden, always a creature of impulse, and when her

ladyship, foolish in this as in all things, refused to meet her views

she—she came to us,” he continued, lifting his head abruptly and

looking at Vaughan, “and told us the story.”

“It will have to be proved,” Vaughan said stubbornly.

“No doubt, strictly proved,” Wetherell replied. “In the meantime if you

would like to peruse the facts in greater detail, they are here, as

taken down from the woman’s mouth.” He drew from his capacious

breast-pocket a manuscript consisting of several sheets which he

unfolded and flattened on his knee. He handed it to Vaughan.

The young man took it, without looking at Sir Robert: and with his

thoughts in a whirl—and underlying them a sick feeling of impending

misfortune—he proceeded to read it, line after line, without taking in

a single word. For all the time his brain was at work measuring the

change. His modest competence would be left to him. He would have

enough to live as he was now living, and to pursue his career; or, in

the alternative, he might settle down as a small squire in his paternal

home in South Wales. But the great inheritance which had loomed large

in the background of his life and had been more to him than he had

admitted, the future dignity which he had undervalued while he thought

it his own, the position more enviable than many a peer’s, and higher

by its traditions than any to which he could attain by his own

exertions, though he reached the Woolsack—these were gone if

Wetherell’s tale was true. Gone in a moment, at a word! And though he

might have lost more, though many a man had lost his all by such a

stroke and smiled, he was no hero, and he could not on the instant

smile. He could not in a moment oust all bitterness. He knew that he

was taking the news unworthily; that he was playing a poor part. But he

could not force himself to play a better—on the instant. When he had

read with unseeing eyes to the bottom of the first page and had turned

it mechanically, he let the papers fall upon his knee.

“You do not wish me,” he said slowly, “to express an opinion now, I

suppose?”

“No,” Wetherell answered. “Certainly not. But I have not quite done. I

have not quite done,” he repeated ponderously. “I should tell you that

for opening the matter to you now—we have two reasons, Mr. Vaughan. Two

reasons. First, we think it due to you—as one of the family. And

secondly, Vermuyden desires that from the beginning, his intentions

shall be clear and—be understood.”

“I thoroughly understand them,” Vaughan answered drily. No one was more

conscious than he that he was behaving ill.

“That is just what you do not!” Wetherell retorted stolidly. “You spill

words, young man, and by and by you will wish to pick them up again.

You cannot anticipate, at any rate, you have no right to anticipate,

Sir Robert’s intentions, of which he has asked me to be the mouthpiece.

The estate, of course, and the settled funds must go to his daughter.

But there is, it appears, a large sum arising from the economical

management of the property, which is at his disposal. He feels,”

Wetherell continued sombrely, an elbow on each knee and his eyes on the

floor, “that some injustice has been done to you, and he desires to

compensate you for that injustice. He proposes, therefore, to secure to

you the succession to two-thirds of this sum; which amounts—which

amounts, in the whole I believe”—here he looked at White—“to little

short of eighty thousand pounds.”

Vaughan, who had been more than once on the point of interrupting him,

did so at last. “I could not accept it!” he exclaimed impulsively. And

he rose, with a hot face, from his seat. “I could not accept it.”

“As a legacy?” Wetherell, who was fond of money, said with a queer

look. “As a legacy, eh? Why not?” While Sir Robert, with compressed

lips, almost repented of his generosity. He had looked for some show of

good-feeling, some word of sympathy, some felicitation from the young

man, who, after all, was his blood relation. But if this was to be his

return, if his advances were to be met with suspicion, his benevolence

with churlishness, then all, all in this young man was of a piece—and

detestable!

And certainly Vaughan was not showing himself in the best light. He was

conscious that he had taken the news ill; but he could not change his

attitude in a moment. Under no circumstances is it an easy thing to

take a gift with grace: to take one with grace under these

circumstances—and when he had already misbehaved—was beyond him, as it

would have been beyond most men.

For a moment drawn this way by his temper, that way by his better

feelings, he did not know how to answer Wetherell’s last words. At last

and lamely, “May I ask,” he said, “why Sir Robert makes me this offer

while the matter lies open?”

“Sir Robert will prove his case,” Wetherell answered gruffly, “if that

is what you mean.”

“I mean——”

“He does not ask you to surrender anything.”

“I am bound to say, then, that the offer is very generous,” Vaughan

replied, melting, and speaking with some warmth. “Most generous. But——”

“He asks you to surrender nothing,” Wetherell repeated stolidly, his

face between his knees.

“But I still think it is premature,” Vaughan persisted doggedly. “And

handsome as it is, more than handsome as it is, I think that it would

have come with greater force, were my position first made clear!”

“Maybe,” Wetherell said, his face still hidden. “I don’t deny that.”

“As it is,” with a deep breath, “I am taken by surprise. I do not know

what to say. I find it hard to say anything in the first flush of the

matter.” And Vaughan looked from one to the other. “So, for the

present, with Sir Robert’s permission,” he continued, “and without any

slight to his generosity, I will take leave. If he is good enough, to

repeat on some future occasion, this very handsome—this uncalled for

and generous offer, which he has now outlined, I shall know, I hope,

what is due to him, without forgetting what is due also to myself. In

the meantime I have only to thank him and——”

But the belated congratulation which was on his lips and which might

have altered many things, was not to be uttered.

“One moment!” Sir Robert struck in. “One moment!” He spoke with a

hardness born of long suppressed irritation. “You have taken your

stand, Mr. Vaughan, strictly on the defensive, I see——”

“But I think you understand——”

“Strictly on the defensive,” the baronet repeated, requiring silence by

a gesture. “You must not be surprised therefore, if I—nay, let me

speak!—if I also say a word on a point which touches me.”

“I wouldn’t!” Wetherell growled in his deep voice; and for an instant

he raised his huge face, and looked stolidly at the wall before him.

But Sir Robert was not to be bidden. “I think otherwise,” he said. “Mr.

Vaughan, the election to-morrow touches me very nearly—in more ways

than one. The vote you have, you received at my hands and hold only as

my heir. I take it for granted, therefore, that under the present

circumstances, you will use it as I desire.”

“Oh!” Vaughan said. And drawing himself up to his full height he passed

his eyes slowly from one to the other with a singular smile. “Oh!” he

repeated—and there was a world of meaning in his tone. “Am I to

understand then——”

“I have made myself quite clear,” Sir Robert cried, his manner

betraying his agitation.

“Am I to understand,” Vaughan persisted, “that the offer which you made

me a few minutes back, the generous and handsome offer,” he continued

with a faint note of irony in his voice, “was dependent on my conduct

to-morrow? Am I to understand that?”

“If you please to put it so,” Sir Robert replied, his voice quivering

with the resentment he had long and patiently suppressed. “And if your

own sense of honour does not dictate to you how to act.”

“But do you put it so?”

“Do you mean——”

“I mean,” Vaughan said, “does the offer depend on the use I make of my

vote to-morrow? That is the point, Sir Robert!”

“No,” Wetherell muttered indistinctly.

But again Sir Robert would not be bidden. “I will be frank,” he said

haughtily. “And my answer is, yes! yes! For I do not conceive, Mr.

Vaughan, that a gentleman would take so great a benefit, and refuse so

slight a service! A service, too, which, quite apart from this offer,

most men——”

“Thank you,” Vaughan replied, interrupting him. “That is clear enough.”

And he looked from one to the other with a smile of amusement; the

smile of a man suddenly reinstated in his own opinion—and once more

master of his company. “Now I understand,” he continued. “I see now why

the offer which a few minutes ago seemed so premature, so strangely

premature, was made this evening. To-morrow it had been made too late!

My vote had been cast and I could no longer be—bribed!”

“Bribed, sir?” cried Sir Robert, red with anger.