Mary could only confess the fact with tears, her distress in as strange

contrast with the gaiety of her dress as with the strains of the

neighbouring band, which told of festivity and pleasure. Perhaps some

thought of this nature forced itself upon Lady Sybil’s light and

evasive mind: for as she looked, the cynical expression of her eyes

gave place to one of feeling and emotion, better fitted to those wasted

features as well as to the relation in which the two stood to one

another. She looked down the path, as if for the first time she feared

an intrusive eye. Then her glance reverted to her daughter’s slender

form and drooping head: and again it changed, it grew soft, it grew

pitiful. The laurels shut all in, the path was empty. The maternal

feeling, long repressed, long denied, long buried under a mountain of

pique and resentment, of fancied wrongs and real neglect, broke forth

irresistibly. In a step she was at the girl’s side, and snatching her

to her bosom in a fierce embrace, was covering her face, her neck, her

hair with hungry kisses.

The action was so sudden, so unexpected, that crushed and even hurt by

the other’s grasp, and frightened by her vehemence, Mary would have

resisted, would have tried to free herself. Then she understood. And a

rush of pent-up affection, of love and pity, carried away the barriers

of constraint and timidity. She clung to Lady Sybil with tears of joy,

murmuring low broken words, calling her “Mother, Mother,” burying her

face on her shoulder, pressing herself against her. In a moment her

being was stirred to its depths. In all her life no one had caressed

her after this fashion, no one had embraced her with passion, no one

had kissed her with more than the placid affection which gentleness and

goodness earn, and which kind offices kindly performed warrant. Even

Sir Robert, even her father, proud as he was of her, much as he loved

her, had awakened in her respect and gratitude—mingled with fear—rather

than love.

After a time, warned by approaching voices, Lady Sybil put her from

her; but with a low and exultant laugh. “You are mine, now!” she said,

“Mine! Mine! You will come to me when I want you. And I shall want you

soon! Very soon!”

Mary laid hold of her again. “Let me come now!” she cried with passion,

forgetting all but the mother she had gained, the clinging arms which

had cherished her, the kisses that had rained on her. “Let me come to

you! You are ill!”

“No, not now! Not now! I will send for you when I want you,” Lady Sybil

answered. “I will promise to send for you. And you will come,” she

added with the same ring of triumph in her voice. “You will come!” For

it was joy to her, even amid the satisfaction of her mother-love, to

know that she had tricked her husband; it was joy to her to know that

though she had taken all from the child and he had given all, the child

was hers—hers, and could never be taken from her! “You will come! For

you will not have me long. But,” she whispered, as the voices came

nearer, “go now! Go now! And not a word! Not a word, child, as you love

me. I will send for you when—when my time comes.”

And with a last look, strangely made up of love and pain and triumph,

Lady Sybil moved out of sight among the laurels. And Mary, drying her

tears and composing her countenance as well as she could, turned to

meet the intruders’ eyes.

Fortunately—for she was far from being herself—the two persons who had

wandered that way, did but pause at the end of the Kennel Path, and,

murmuring small talk, turn again to retrace their steps. She gained a

minute or two, in which to collect her thoughts and smooth her hair;

but more than a minute or two she dared not linger lest her continued

absence should arouse curiosity. As sedately as she could, she emerged

from the shrubbery and made her way—though her breast heaved with a

hundred emotions—towards the rustic bridge on which she saw that Lady

Lansdowne was standing, keeping Sir Robert in talk.

In talk, indeed, of her. For as she approached he placed the

coping-stone on the edifice of her praises which her ladyship had

craftily led him to build. “The most docile,” he said, “I assure you,

the most docile child you can imagine! A beautiful disposition. She is

docility itself!”

“I hope she may always remain so,” Lady Lansdowne answered slily.

“I’ve no doubt she will,” Sir Robert replied with fond assurance, his

eye on the Honourable Bob, who was approaching the bridge from the

lawns.

Lady Lansdowne followed the look with her eyes and smiled. But she said

nothing. She turned to Mary, who was now near at hand, and reading in

the girl’s looks plain traces of trouble, and agitation, she contented

herself with sending for Lady Louisa, and asking that her carriage

might be called. In this way she cloaked under a little bustle the

girl’s embarrassment as she came up to them and joined them. Five

minutes later Lady Lansdowne was gone.

* * * * *

After that, Mary would have had only too much food for thought, had her

mother alone filled her mind; had those kisses which had so stirred her

being, those clinging arms, and that face which bore the deep imprint

of illness, alone burdened her memory. Years afterwards the beat of the

music which played in the gardens that evening, while the party within

sat at dinner, haunted her; bringing back, as such things will, the

scene and her aching heart, the outward glitter and the inward care,

the Honourable Bob’s gallantries and her father’s stately figure as he

rose and drank wine with her; ay, and the hip, hip, hurrah which shook

the glasses when an old Squire, a privileged person, rose, before she

could leave, and toasted her.

Burdened only with the sacred memories of the afternoon, and the

anxiety, the pity, the love which they engendered, she had been far

from happy, far from free. But in truth, with all her feeling for her

mother, Mary bore about with her a keener and more bitter regret. The

dull pain which had troubled her of late when thoughts of Arthur

Vaughan would beset her was grown to a pang of shame, almost

intolerable. She had told herself a hundred times before this that it

was her weakness, her fear of her father, her mean compliance that had

led her to give him up—rather than any real belief in his baseness. For

she had never, she was sure now, believed in that baseness. But now,

now when her mother, whose word it never struck her to doubt, had

affirmed his innocence, now that she knew, now since a phrase of that

mother’s had brought to her mind every incident of the

never-to-be-forgotten coach-drive, the May morning, the sunshine and

the budding trees, the birth of love—pain gnawed at her heart. She was

sick with misery.

For, oh, how vile, how thankless, how poor and small a thing he must

think her! He would have given her all, and she had robbed him of all.

And then when she had robbed him and he could give her little she had

turned her back on him, abandoned him, believed evil of him, heard him

insulted, and joined in the outrage! Over that thought, over that

memory, she shed many and many a bitter tear. Romance had come to her

in her lowliness, and a noble lover, stooping to her; and she had

killed the one and denied the other. And now, now there was nothing she

could do, nothing she would dare to do.

For that she had for a moment believed in his baseness—if she had

indeed believed—was not the worst. In that she had been the sport of

circumstances; appearances had deceived her, and the phase had been

brief. But that she had been weak, that she had been swayed, that she

had given him up at a word, that she had shown herself wholly unworthy

of him—there was the rub. Now, how happy had she been could she have

gone back to Miss Sibson’s, and the dull schoolroom and the old stuff

dress and the children’s prattle—and heard his step as he came across

the forecourt to the door!

XXIII

IN THE HOUSE

In truth Mary’s notion of the opinion which Arthur Vaughan had of her

was above, rather than below, the reality. In her most despondent

moments she scarcely exaggerated the things he thought of her, the

contempt in which he held her, or the resentment which set his blood

boiling when he remembered how she had treated him. He had gone to her

and laid all that was left to him at her feet; and she, who had already

dealt his fortunes so terrible a blow, had paid him for his unselfish

offer, for his sacrifice of much that was dear to him, with suspicion,

with contumely, with mistrust! Instead of clinging to him, to whom she

had that moment plighted her troth, she had deserted him at a word. In

place of trusting the man who had woo’d her in her poverty, she had

believed the first whisper against him. She had shown herself

heartless, faithless, inconstant as the wind—a very woman! And

_Away, away—your smile’s a curse

Oh, blot me from the race of men,

Kind pitying Heaven! by death or worse_

_Before I love such things again!_

he might have murmured with a bitterness of which the author of the

lines had been incapable. But then, Mr. Moore, though his poetry and

his singing brought tears to the eyes of hardened women of fashion, had

never lost at a blow a great estate, a high position, and his love.

Certainly Vaughan had, if man ever had, grounds for a quarrel with

fate. He had left London heart-whole and happy, the heir to a large

fortune. He returned a fortnight later, a member of the Commons House

indeed, but heart-sick and soured, beggared of his expectations and

tortured by the thought of what might have been—if his love had proved

true as she was fair, and constant as she was sweet. Fond dreams of her

beauty still tormented him. Visions of the modest home in which he

would have found consolation in failure, and smiles in success, rose up

before him and derided him. He hated Sir Robert. He hated, or tried to

hate, the weakest and the most despicable of women. He saw all things

and all men with a jaundiced eye, the sound of his voice and the look

of his face were altered. Men who knew him and who passed him in the

street, or who saw him eating his chop in solitary churlishness, nudged

one another and said that he took his reverses ill; while others,

wounded by his curtness or his ill-humour, added that he did not go the

right way to make the most of what was left.

For a certainty he was become a man unpleasant to handle. But within,

under the thorns, was a very human soul, wounded, sore, and miserable,

seeking every way for an outlet from its pains, and finding hope of

escape at one point only. Men were right, when they said that he did

not go the way to make the most of his chances. For he laid himself out

to please no one at this time; it was not in him. But he worked late

and early, and with a furious energy to fit himself for a political

career; believing that success in that career was all that was left to

him, and that by the necessary labour he could best put the past behind

him. Love and pleasure, and those sweets of home life of which he had

dreamed, were gone from him. But the stern prizes of ambition, the

crown of those who live laborious days, might still be his—if the

Mirror of Parliament were never out of his hands, and if Mr. Hume

himself were not more constant to his favourite pillar under the

gallery than he to such chance seat as might fall to him on the same

side of the House.

Alas, he had not taken the oaths an hour—with a sore heart, in a ruck

of undistinguished new Members—before he saw that success was not so

near or so clearly within reach, as hope, with her flattering tale, had

argued. The times were propitious, certainly. The debates were close

and fiery, and were scanned out of doors with an interest unknown

before. The strife between Croker and Macaulay in the Commons, the duel

between Brougham and Lyndhurst in the Lords, were followed in the

country with as much attention as a battle between Belcher and Tom

Cribb; and by the same classes. Everywhere men talked politics, talked

of Reform, and of little else. The clubs, the ’Change, the taverns,

nay, the drawing-rooms and the schools rang with the Bill, the whole

Bill, and nothing but the Bill; with Schedule A, cruel as Herod, and

Schedule B, which spared one of twins. Before the window in the

Haymarket which weekly displayed H.B.’s Political Caricatures, crowds

stood gazing all day long, whatever the weather.

These things were in his favour. He remembered, too, the stress which

the Chancellor had laid on the advantage of entering the House in

advance of the crowd of new men whom the first Reformed Parliament must

contain.

Unfortunately it seemed to him that he was one of just such a mob of

new men, as it was. Nearly a fourth of his colleagues were strange to

St. Stephen’s; and the greater part of these, owing to the

circumstances of the election, were Whigs and sat on his side of the

House. To raise his head above the level of a hundred competitors,

numbering not a few men of wit and ability, and to do so within the

short life of the present Parliament—-for he saw no certain prospect of

being returned again—was no mean task. Little wonder that he was as

regular in his attendance as Mr. Speaker, and grew pale of nights over

Woodfall’s Important Debates.

In the pride of his first return he had dreamed of a reputation to be

gained by his maiden speech; of burning periods that would astonish all

who heard them, of flights of fancy to live forever in the mouths of

men, of a marshalling of facts so masterly, and an exposition of

figures so clear, as to obscure the fame of Single-speech Hamilton, or

of that modern phenomenon, Mr. Sadler. But whatever the effect of the

present chamber on the minds of novices, there was that in the

old,—mean and dingy as was its wainscotted interior, and cumbered by

overhanging galleries—there was a something, were it but the memory

that those walls had echoed the diatribes of Chatham and given back the

voice of Burke, had heard the laugh of Walpole and the snore of North,

which cooled the spirit of a new member; which shook his knees as

effectually as if the panelling of the room had vanished at a touch,

and revealed the glories of the Gothic Chapel which lay behind it. For

behind that panelling and those galleries, the ancient Chapel, with its

sumptuous tracery and statues, its frescoed walls and stained glass,

still existed; no unfit image of the stately principles which lie

behind the dull everyday working of our Constitution.

To Arthur Vaughan, a student of the history of the House, this effect

of the Chamber upon a new member was a commonplace. But he was a

practised speaker in the mimic arena; and he thought that he might rise

above this feeling in his own case. He fancied that he understood the

_Genius Loci_; its hatred of affectation, and almost of eloquence, its

dislike to be bored, its preference for the easy, the conversational,

and the personal. And when he had waited three weeks—so much he gave to

prudence—his time came.

He rose in a moderately thin house in the middle of the dinner-hour;

and rose as he thought fully prepared. Indeed he started well. He

brought out two or three sentences with ease and aplomb; and he fancied

the difficulty over, the threshold passed. But then—he knew not why,

nor could he overcome the feeling—the silence, kindly meant, in which

as a new Member, he was received, had a terrifying effect upon him. A

mist rose before his eyes, his voice sounded strange to him—and

distant. He dropped the thread of what he was saying, repeated himself,

lost his nerve. For some seconds, standing there with all faces turned

to him—they seemed numberless seconds to him, though in truth they were

few—he could see nothing but the Speaker’s wig, grown to an immense

white cauliflower, which swelled and swelled and swelled until it

filled the whole House. He stammered, repeated himself again—and was

silent. And then, seeing that he was embarrassed, they cheered him—and

the mist cleared; and he went on—hurriedly and nervously. But he was

aware that he had dropped a link in his argument—which he had not now

the coolness to supply. And when he had murmured a few sentences, more

or less inept and incoherent, he sat down.

In fact, though he had made no mark, he had also incurred no discredit.

But he felt that the eyes of all were on him, that they were gloating

over his failure, and comparing what he had done with what he had hoped

to do, his achievement with those secret hopes, those cherished

aspirations, he felt all the shame of open and disgraceful defeat. His

face burned; he sat looking before him, not daring for a while to

divert his gaze, or to learn in others’ eyes how great had been his

mishap.

Unfortunately, when he ventured to change his posture, and to put on

his hat, which he discovered he had been holding in his hand, he

encountered Sergeant Wathen’s eyes; and he read in them a look of

amusement, which wounded his pride more than the open ridicule of a

crowd. That was the finishing stroke. He walked out soon afterwards,

bearing himself as indifferently as he could. But no man ever carried

out of the House a lower heart or a sense of more utter failure. He had

mistaken his talents, he had no aptitude for debate. Success as a

speaker was not within his reach.

He thought something better of it next day, but not much. Nor could he

put off a sneaking, hang-dog air as he entered the lobby. A number of

members were gathered inside the double doors, where the stairs from

the cloisters came up by a third door; and one or two whom he knew

spoke to him—but not of his attempt. He fancied that he read in their

looks a knowledge that he had failed, that he was no longer a man to be

reckoned with. He imagined that they used a different tone to him. And

at last one of them spoke of it.

“Well, Vaughan,” he said pleasantly, “you got through yesterday. But if

you’ll take my advice you’ll wait a bit. It’s only one here and there

can make much of it to begin.”

“I certainly cannot,” Vaughan said, smiling frankly, the better to hide

his mortification.

“Ah, well, you’re not alone,” the other answered, shrugging his

shoulders. “You’ll pick it up by and by, I dare say.” And he turned to

speak to another member.

Vaughan turned on his side to the paper for the day winch hung against

each of the four pillars of the lobby; and he pretended to be absorbed

in it. The employment helped him to keep his countenance. But he was

sore wounded. He had held his head so high in imagination, he had given

so loose a rein to his ambition; he had dreamt of making such an

impression on the House as Mr. Macaulay, though new to it, had made in

his speech on the second reading of the former Bill, and had deepened

by his speech at the like stage of the present Bill. Now he was told

that he was no worse than the common run of country members, who twice

in three sessions rose and blundered through half a dozen sentences! He

was consoled with the reflection that only “one here and there”

succeeded! Only one here and there! When to him it was everything to

succeed, and to succeed quickly. When it was all he had left.

The stream of members, entering the House, was large; for the motion to

commit the Bill was down for that afternoon, and if carried, would

virtually put an end to opposition in the Commons. Out of the corner of

his eye Vaughan scanned them, as they passed, and envied them. Peel,

cold, proud and unapproachable, went by on the arm of Goulburn. Croker,

pale and saturnine, casting frowning glances here and there, went in

alone. The handsome, portly form of Sir James Graham passed, in talk

with the Rupert of Debate. After these a rush of members; and at the

tail of all slouched in the unwieldy, slovenly form of Sir Charles

Wetherell, followed by a couple of his satellites.

Vaughan, glancing on one side of the paper which he appeared to be

studying, caught Sir Charles’s eye, and reddened. Seated on opposite

sides of the House—and no man on either side was more bitter, virulent,

and pugnacious than the late Attorney-General—the two had not

encountered one another since that evening at Stapylton, when the

existence of Sir Robert’s daughter had been disclosed to Vaughan. They

had not spoken, much less had there been any friendly passage between

them. But now Sir Charles paused, and held out his hand.

“How do you do, Mr. Vaughan?” he said, in his deep bass voice. “Your

maiden essay yesterday, eh?”

Vaughan winced. “Yes,” he said stiffly, fancying that he read amusement

in the other’s moist eye.

To his surprise, “You’ll do,” Sir Charles rejoined, looking at the

floor and speaking in a despondent tone. “The House would rather you

began in that way, than like some d——d peacock on a lady’s terrace.

Take the opportunity of saying three or four sentences some fine day,

and repeat it a week later. And I’ll wager you’ll do.”

“But little, I am afraid,” Vaughan said. None the less was his heart

full of gratitude to the fat, ungainly man.

“All, may be,” Wetherell answered. “I shouldn’t wonder. I’ve been told,

by one who heard him, that Canning hesitated in his first speech, very

much as you did. It was on the Sardinian Subsidy. The men who don’t

feel the House never know the House. They dazzle it, Mr. Vaughan, but

they don’t guide it. And that’s what we’ve got to do.”

He passed on then, with a melancholy nod and averted eyes, but Vaughan

could have blest him for that “we.” “There’s one man at least believes

in me,” he told himself. And when a few hours later, in the midst of a

scene as turbulent as any which the House of Commons had ever

witnessed—nine times without a pause it divided on the motion that

“this House do now adjourn”—he watched the man who had commended him,

riding the storm and directing the whirlwind, now lashing the Whigs to

fury by his sarcasm, and now, carrying the whole House away in a

hurricane of laughter, if he did not approve—and with his views he

could not approve—he learnt, and learnt much. He saw that the fat,

slovenly man, with the heavy face and that hiatus between his breeches

and his waistcoat which had made him famous, was allowed to do things,

and to say things, and to look things, for which a less honest man had

been hurried long ago to the Clock Tower. And this, because the House

believed in him; because it knew that he was fighting for a principle

really dear to him; because it knew that he honestly put faith in those

predictions of woe, which he scattered so freely, and in that ruin of

the Constitution, with which he twitted his opponents.

A week later Vaughan acted upon his advice. He seized an opportunity

and, catching the Chairman’s eye—the Bill was in Committee—delivered

himself of a dozen sentences, with so much spirit and propriety, that

Sir Robert Peel, speaking an hour later, referred to the “plausible

defence raised by the Honourable Member for Chippinge.” The reference

drew all eyes to Vaughan: and though nothing was said to him and he

took care to bear himself as if he had done no better than before, he

left the House with a lighter step and a comfortable warmth about the

heart. He was more at ease that evening, if not more happy, than he had

been for weeks past. Love, pleasure, and the rest were gone; and faith

in woman. But if he could be sure of gaining a seat in the next

Parliament, the way might be longer than he had hoped, it might be more

toilsome and more dusty: but in the end he would arrive at the Treasury

Bench.

He little thought, alas, that the effort on which he hugged himself was

to prove a source of misfortunes. But so it was. His maiden speech had

attracted neither notice nor envy. But those few sentences, short and

simple as they were, by drawing an answer from the leader of the

Opposition, had gained both for him. Within five minutes a score of

members had asked “Who is he?” and another score had detailed the

circumstances of his election for Chippinge. He had gone down to vote

for his cousin, in his cousin’s borough, family vote and the rest; so

the story ran. Then, finding on the morning of the polling that if he

threw over his cousin, he might gain the seat for himself, he had

turned his coat in a—well, in a very dubious manner, snatched the seat,

and—here he was!

In a word, it was the version of the facts which he had once dreaded,

and about which he had afterwards ceased to trouble himself.

There were, perhaps, half a dozen persons in the House who knew the

facts, and knew that the young man had professed from the first the

opinions which he was now supporting. But there was just so much truth

in the version, garbled as it was, just so much _vraisemblance_ in the

tale that even those who knew the facts, could not wholly contradict

it. The story did not come to Wetherell’s ears; or he, for certain,

would have gainsaid it. But it did come to Wathen’s. Now the Sergeant

was capable of spite, and he had not forgotten the manner after which

Vaughan had flouted him at Chippinge; his defence—if a defence it could

be called—was accompanied by so many nods and shrugs, that persons less

prejudiced than Tories, embittered by defeat, and wounded by

personalities, might have been forgiven, if they went from the Sergeant

with a lower opinion of our friend than before.

From that day Vaughan, though he knew nothing of it, and though no one

spoke to him of it, was a marked man in the eyes of the opposite party.

They regarded him as a renegade; while his own side were not

overanxious to make his cause their own. The May elections had been

contested with more spirit and less scruple than any elections within

living memory; and many things had been done and many said, of which

honourable men were not proud. Still it was acknowledged that such

things must be done—here and there—and even that the doers must not be

repudiated. But it was felt that the party was not required to grapple

the latter to its breast with hooks of steel. Rumour had it that Lord

Lansdowne felt himself to blame; and that the offender had been

disinherited by his cousin was asserted. The man would be of no great

importance, therefore, in the future; and if he did not make a second

appearance in Parliament, the loss in the end would be small. Not a few

summed up the matter in that way.

If Vaughan had been intimate with anyone in the House he would have

learned what was afoot; and he might have taken steps to set himself

right. But he had lived little of his life in London, he had but made

his bow to Society; of late, also, he had been too sore to make new

friends. Of course he had acquaintances, every man has acquaintances.

But no one in political circles knew him well enough to think it worth

while to put him on his guard.

Unluckily, the next occasion which brought him to his feet, was of a

kind to give point to the feeling against him. On a certain Thursday,

Sergeant Wathen moved that the Borough of Chippinge be removed from

Schedule A, to Schedule B—his object being that it might retain one

member; and Vaughan, thinking the opening favourable, rose, intending

to make a few remarks in a strain to which the House, proverbially fond

of a personal explanation, is prone to listen with indulgence. For the

motion itself, he had not much hope that it would be carried: in a

dozen other cases, a similar motion had failed.

“It can only be,” he began—and this time the sound of his voice did not

perturb him—“from a strict sense of duty, Mr. Bernal, it cannot be

without pain that any Member—and I say this not on my account only, but

on behalf of many Honourable Members of this House——”

“No! No! Leave us out.”

The words were uttered so loudly and so rudely that they silenced him;

and he looked in the direction whence they came. At once cries of “No,

no! Divide! No! No!” poured on him from all parts of the House,

accompanied by a dropping fire of catcalls and cockcrows. He lost the

thread of his remarks, and for a moment stood abashed and confounded.

The Chairman did not interfere and for an instant it looked as if the

young speaker would be compelled to sit down.

But he recovered himself, gaining courage from the very vigour with

which he was attacked; and which seemed out of proportion to his

importance. The moment a lull in the fire of interruption occurred, he

spoke in a louder voice.

“I say, sir,” he proceeded, looking about him courageously, “that it is

only with pain, only under the _force majeure_ of a love of their

country, that any Member can support the deletion from the Borough Roll

of this House, of that Constituency which has honoured him with its

confidence.”

“Divide! Divide!” roared many on both sides of the House. For the

Tories were uncertain on which side he was speaking.

“Cock-a-doodle-doo-doo-doo!”

But this fresh burst of disapproval found him better prepared. Firmly,

though the beads of perspiration stood on his brow, he persisted. “And

if,” he continued, “in the case which appeals so nearly to himself an

Honourable Member sees that the standard which justifies the survival

of a representative can be reached, with what gratification, sir,

whether he sits on this side of the House or on that——”

“No! No! Leave us out!” in a roar of sound. And “Divide! Divide!”

“Or on that,” he repeated.

“Divide! Divide!”

“Must he not press its claims and support its interests?” he persisted

gallantly. “Ay, sir, welcome in the event of success a decision at once

just, and of so much advantage, I will not say to himself——”

“It never will be to you!” shrieked a voice from the darker corner

under the opposite gallery.

The shaft went home. He faltered. A roar of laughter drowned his last

words, and he sat down with a burning face; in some confusion, but in

greater perplexity. Had he transgressed, he wondered ruefully, some

unwritten law of the House! Had he offended in ignorance, and persisted

in his offence? Should he not, though Wathen had spoken, have spoken in

his own case? In a matter so nearly touching himself?

He spoke to the Member who chanced to sit next him. “What was it?” he

asked humbly. “Did I do something wrong?”

The man glanced at him coldly. “Oh, no,” he said. And he shrugged his

shoulders.

“But——”

“On the contrary, I fancy you’ve to congratulate yourself,” with a

sneer so faint that Vaughan did not perceive it. “I understand that

we’re to do as we like on this—and they know it on the other side. Eh?

Yes, there’s the division. I think,” he added with the same faint

sneer, “you’ll save your seat.”

“By Jove!” Vaughan exclaimed. “You don’t say so!”

He could hardly believe it. But so it turned out. And so great was the

boon—the greater as no other borough was transferred in Committee—that

it swept away for the time the memory of what had happened. His eyes

sparkled. The seat saved, it was odd if with the wider electorate

created by the Bill, he was not sure of return! Still more odd, if he

was not sure of beating Wathen—he, who had opened the borough and been

returned by the Whig interest even while it was closed! No longer need

he feel so anxious and despondent when the Dissolution, which must

follow the passage of the Bill, rose to his mind. No longer need he be

in so great a hurry to make his mark, so envious of Mr. Macaulay, so

jealous of Mr. Sadler.

Certainly as far as his political career was in question the horizon

was clearing. If only other things had been as favourable! If only

there had been someone, were it in a cottage at Hammersmith or in a

dull street off Bloomsbury Square, to whom he might take home this

piece of news; certain that other eyes would sparkle more brightly than

his, and another heart beat quick with joy!

That could not be. There was an end of that. And his face settled back

into its gloom. Still he was less unhappy. The certainty of a seat in

the next Parliament was a great point gained! A great point to the

good!

XXIV

A RIGHT AND LEFT

If anything was certain in a political world so changed, it was certain

that if the Reform Bill passed the Lords—in the teeth of those plaguy

Bishops of whose opposition so much was heard—a Dissolution would

immediately follow. To not a few of the members this contingency was a

spectre, ever present, seated at bed and board, and able to defy the

rules even of Almack’s and Crockford’s. For how could a gentleman, who

had just given five thousand pounds for his seat, contemplate with

equanimity a notice to quit, so rude and so premature? And worse, a

notice to quit which meant extrusion into a world in which seats at

five thousand for a Parliament would be few and far between; and fair

agreements to pay a thousand a year while the privilege lasted, would

be unknown!

Many a member asked loudly and querulously, “What will happen to the

country if the Bill pass?” But more asked themselves in their hearts,

and more often and more querulously, “What will happen to me if the

Bill pass? How shall I fare at the hands of these new constituencies,

which, unwelcome as a gipsy’s brats, I am forced to bring into the

world?”

Hitherto few on his own side of the House, and not many on the Tory

side, had regarded a Dissolution with more misgiving than Arthur

Vaughan. The borough for which he sat lay under doom; and he saw no

opening elsewhere. He had no longer the germs of influence nor great

prospects: nor yet such a fortune as justified him in an appeal to one

of the new and populous boroughs. It was a pleasant thing to go in and

out by the door of the privileged, to take his chop at Bellamy’s, to

lounge in the dignified seclusion of the library, or to air his new

honours in Westminster Hall; pleasant also to have that sensation of

living at the hub of things, to receive whips, to give franks, to feel

that the ladder of ambition was open to him. But he knew that an

experience of the House counted by months did no man good; and the

prospect of losing his plumes and going forth again a common biped, was

the more painful to him because his all was embarked in the venture. He

might, indeed, fall back on the bar; but with half a heart and the

reputation of a man who had tried to fly before he could walk.

His relief, therefore, when Chippinge, alone of all the Boroughs in

Schedule A, was removed in Committee to Schedule B, may be imagined.

The road before him was once more open, while the exceptional nature of

his luck almost persuaded him that he was reserved for greatness. True,

Sergeant Wathen might pride himself on the same fact; but at the

thought Vaughan smiled. The Sergeant and Sir Robert would find it a

trifle harder, he thought, to deal with the hundred-and-odd voters whom

the Act enfranchised, than with the old Cripples! And very, very

ungrateful would those hundred-and-odd be, if they did not vote for the

man who had made their cause his own!

A load, indeed, was lifted from his mind, and for some days his relief

could be read in the lightness of his step, and the returning gaiety of

his eyes. He knew nothing of the things which were being whispered

about him. And though he had cause to fancy that he was not _persona

grata_ on his own benches, he thought sufficiently well of himself to

set this down to jealousy. There is a stage in the life of a rising man

when many hands are against him; and those most cruelly which will

presently applaud him most loudly. He flattered himself that he had set

a foot on the ladder: and while he waited for an opportunity to raise

himself another step, he came as near to a kind of feverish happiness

as thoughts of Mary, ever recurring when he was alone, would permit.

For the time the loss of his prospects ceased to trouble him seriously.

He lived less in his rooms, more among men. He was less crabbed, less

moody. And so the weeks wore away in Committee, and a day or two after

the Coronation, the Bill came on for the third reading.

The House was utterly weary. The leaders on both sides were reserving

their strength for the final debate, and Vaughan had some hope that he

might find an opening to speak with effect. With this in his mind he

was on his way across the Park about three in the afternoon, conning

his peroration, when a hand was clapped on his shoulder, and he turned

to find himself face to face with Flixton.

So much had happened since they stood together on the hustings at

Chippinge, Vaughan’s fortunes had changed so greatly since they had

parted in anger in Queen’s Square, that he, at any rate, had no thought

of bearing malice. To Flixton’s “Well, my hearty, you’re a neat artist,

ain’t you? Going to the House, I take it?” he gave a cordial answer.

“Yes,” he said. “That’s it.”

“Bringing ruination on the country, eh?” Flixton continued. And he

passed his arm through Vaughan’s, and walked on with him. “That’s the

ticket?”

“Some say so, but I hope not.”

“Hope’s a cock that won’t fight, my boy!” the Honourable Bob rejoined.

“Fact is, you’re doing your best, only the House of Lords is in the

way, and won’t let you! They’ll pull you up sweetly by and by, see if

they don’t!”

“And what will the country say to that?” Vaughan rejoined

good-humouredly.

“Country be d——d! That’s what all your chaps are saying. And I tell you

what! That book-in-breeches man—what do you call him—Macaulay?—ought to

be pulled up! He ought indeed! I read one of his farragoes the other

day and it was full of nothing but ‘Think long, I beg, before you

thwart the public will!’ and ‘The might of an angered people!’ and ‘Let

us beware of rousing!’ and all that rubbish! Meaning, my boy, only he

didn’t dare to say it straight out, that if the Lords did not give way

to you chaps, there’d be a revolution; and the deuce to pay! And I say

he ought to be in the dock. He’s as bad as old Brereton down in

Bristol, predicting fire and flames and all the rest of it.”

“But you cannot deny, Flixton,” Vaughan answered soberly, “that the

country is excited as we have never known it excited before? And that a

rising is not impossible!”

“A rising! I wish we could see one! That’s just what we want,” the

Honourable Bob answered, stopping and bringing his companion to a

sudden stand also. “Eh? Who was that old Roman—Poppæa, or some name

like that, who said he wished the people had all one head that he might

cut it off?” suiting the action to the word with his cane. “A rising,

begad? The sooner the better! The old Fourteenth would know how to deal

with it!”

“I don’t know,” Vaughan answered, “that you would be so confident if

you were once face to face with it!”

“Oh, come! Don’t talk nonsense!”

“Well, but——”

“Oh, I know all that! But I say, old chap,” he continued, changing his

tone, and descending abruptly from the political to the personal

situation, “You’ve played your cards badly, haven’t you? Eh?”

Vaughan fancied that he referred to Mary; or at best to his quarrel

with Sir Robert. And he froze visibly, “I won’t discuss that,” he said

in a different tone. And he moved on again.

“But I was there the evening you had the row!”

“At Stapylton?”

“Yes.”

“Well?” stiffly.

“And, lord, man, why didn’t you sing a bit small? And the old gentleman

would have come round in no time!”

Vaughan halted, with anger in his face. “I won’t discuss it!” he said

with something of violence in his tone.

“Very well, very well!” Flixton answered with the superabundant

patience of the man whose withers are not wrung. “But when you did get

your seat—why didn’t you come to terms with someone?” with a wink. “As

it is, what’s the good of being in the House three months, or six

months—and out again?”

Vaughan wished most heartily that he had not met the Honourable Bob;

who, he remembered, had always possessed, hearty and jovial as he

seemed, a most remarkable knack of rubbing him the wrong way. “How do

you know?” he asked with a touch of contempt—was he, a rising Member of

Parliament to be scolded after this fashion?—“How do you know that I

shall be out?”

“You’ll be out, if it’s Chippinge you are looking to!”

“Why, if you please, my friend? Why so sure?”

Flixton winked with deeper meaning than before. “Ah, that’s telling,”

he said. “Still—why not? If you don’t hear it from me, old chap, you’ll

soon hear it from someone. Why, you ask? Well, because a little bird

whispered to me that Chippinge was—arranged! That Sir Robert and the

Whigs understood one another, and whichever way it went it would not

come your way!”

Vaughan reddened deeply. “I don’t believe it,” he said bluntly.

“Did you know that Chippinge was going to be spared?”

“No.”

“They didn’t tell you?”

“No.”

“Ah!” shrugging his shoulders, with a world of meaning, and preparing

to turn away. “Well, other people did, and there it is. I may be wrong,

I hope I am, old chap. Hope I am! But anyway—I must be going. I turn

here. See you soon, I hope!”

And with a wave of the hand the Honourable Bob marched off through

Whitehall, his face breaking into a mischievous grin as soon as he was

out of Vaughan’s sight. “Return hit for your snub, Miss Mary!” he

muttered. “If you prick me, at least I can prick him! And do him good,

too! He was always a most confounded prig.”

Meanwhile, Vaughan, freed from his companion, was striding on past

Downing Street; the old street, long swept away, in which Walpole

lived, and to which the dying Chatham was carried. And unconsciously,

under the spur of his angry thoughts, he quickened his pace. It was

incredible, it was inconceivable that so monstrous an injustice had

been planned, or could be perpetrated. He, who had stepped into the

breach, well-nigh in his own despite, he, who had refused, so

scrupulous had he been, to stand on a first invitation, he, who had

been elected almost against his will, was, for all thanks, to be set

aside, and by his friends! By those whose unsolicited act it had been

to return him and to put him into this position! It was impossible, he

told himself. It was unthinkable! Were this true, were this a fact, the

meanness of political life had reached its apogee! The faithlessness of

the Whigs, their incredible treachery to their dependants, could need

no other exemplar!

“I’ll not bear it! By Heaven, I’ll not bear it!” he muttered. And as he

spoke, striding along in the hurry of his spirits as if he carried a

broom and swept the whole Whig party before him, he overtook no less a

person than Sergeant Wathen, who had been lunching at the Athenæum.

The Sergeant heard his voice and turning, saw who it was. He fancied

that Vaughan had addressed him. “I beg your pardon,” he said politely.

“I did not catch what you said, Mr. Vaughan.”

For a moment Vaughan glowered at him, as if he would sweep him from his

path, along with the Whigs. Then out of the fullness of the heart the

mouth spoke. “Mr. Sergeant,” he said, in a not very friendly tone, “do

you know anything of an agreement disposing of the future

representation of Chippinge?”

The Sergeant who knew all under the rose, looked shrewdly at his

companion to see, if possible, what he knew. And, to gain time, “I beg

your pardon,” he said. “I don’t think I—quite understand you.”

“I am told,” Vaughan said haughtily, “that an agreement has been made

to avoid a contest at Chippinge.”

“Do you mean,” the Sergeant asked blandly, “at the next election, Mr.

Vaughan?”

“At future elections!”

The Sergeant shrugged his shoulders. “As a member,” he said primly, “I

take care to know nothing of such agreements. And I would recommend

you, Mr. Vaughan, to adopt that rule. For the rest,” he added, with a

candid smile, “I give you fair warning that I shall contest the seat.

May I ask who was your informant?”

“Mr. Flixton.”

“Flixton? Flixton? Ah! The gentleman who is to marry Miss Vermuyden!

Well, I can only repeat that I, at any rate, am no party to such an

agreement.”

His sly look which seemed to deride his companion’s inexperience, said

as plainly as a look could say, “You find the game of politics less

simple than you thought?” And at another time it would have increased

Vaughan’s ire. But as one pellet drives out another, the Sergeant’s

reference to Miss Vermuyden had in a second driven the prime subject

from his mind. He did not speak for a moment. Then with his face

averted, “Is Mr. Flixton—going to marry Miss Vermuyden?” he asked, in a

muffled tone. “I had not heard of it.”

“I only heard it yesterday,” the Sergeant answered, not unwilling to

shelve the other topic. “But it is rumoured, and I believe it is true.

Quite a romance, wasn’t it?” he continued airily. “Quite a nine days’

wonder! But”—he pulled himself up—“I beg your pardon! I was forgetting

how nearly it concerned you. Dear me, dear me! It is a fair wind indeed

that blows no one any harm!”

Vaughan made no reply. He could not speak for the hard beating of his

heart. Wathen saw that there was something wrong and looked at him

inquisitively. But the Sergeant had not the clue, and could only

suspect that the marriage touched the other, because issue of it would

entirely bar his succession. And no more was said. As they crossed New

Palace Yard, a member drew the Sergeant aside, and Vaughan went up

alone to the lobby.

But all thought of speaking was flown from his mind; nor did the

thinness of the House when he entered tempt him. There were hardly more

than a hundred present; and these were lolling here and there with

their hats on, half asleep it seemed, in the dull light of a September

afternoon. A dozen others looked sleepily from the galleries, their

arms flattened on the rail, their chins on their arms. There were a

couple of ministers on the Treasury Bench, and Lord John Russell was

moving the third reading. No one seemed to take much interest in the

matter; a stranger entering at the moment would have learned with

amazement that this was the mother of parliaments, the renowned House

of Commons; and with still greater amazement would he have learned that

the small, boyish-looking gentleman in the high-collared coat, and with

lips moulded on Cupid’s bow, who appeared to be making some perfunctory

remarks upon the weather, or the state of the crops, was really

advancing by an important stage the famous Bill, which had convulsed

three kingdoms and was destined to change the political face of the

land.

Lord John sat down presently, thrusting his head at once into a packet

of papers, which the gloom hardly permitted him to read. A clerk at the

table mumbled something; and a gentleman on the other side of the House

rose and began to speak. He had not uttered many sentences, however,

before the members on the Reform benches awoke, not only to life, but

to fury. Stentorian shouts of “Divide! Divide!” rendered the speaker

inaudible; and after looking towards the door of the House more than

once he sat down, and the House went to a division. In a few minutes it

was known that the Bill had been read a third time, by 113 to 58.

But the foreign gentleman would have made a great mistake had he gone

away, supposing that Lord John’s few placid words—and not those

spiteful shouts—represented the feelings of the House. In truth the

fiercest passions were at work under the surface. Among the fifty-eight

who shrugged their shoulders and accepted the verdict in gloomy silence

were some primed with the fiercest invective; and others, tongue-tied

men, who nevertheless honestly believed that Lord John Russell was a

republican, and Althorp a fool; who were certain that the Whigs

wittingly or unwittingly were working the destruction of the country,

were dragging her from the pride of place to which a nicely-balanced

Constitution had raised her, and laying her choicest traditions at the

feet of the rabble. Men who believed such things, and saw the deed done

before their eyes, might accept their doom in silence—even as the King

of old went silently to the Banquet Hall hard by—but not with joy or

easy hearts!

Vaughan, therefore, was not the only one who walked into the lobby that

evening, brooding darkly on his revenge. Yet, even he behaved himself

as men, so bred, so trained do behave themselves. He held his peace.

And no one dreamed, not even Orator Hunt, who sat not far from him

under the shadow of his White Hat, that this well-conducted young

gentleman was revolving thoughts of the Social Order, and of the Party

System, and of most things which the Church Catechism commends, beside

which that terrible Radical’s own opinions were mere Tory prejudices.

The fickleness of women! The treachery of men! Oh, Aetna bury them! Oh,

Ocean overwhelm them! Let all cease together and be no more! But give

me sweet, oh, sweet, oh, sweet Revenge!

XXV

AT STAPYLTON

It was about a week before his encounter with Vaughan in the park—and

on a fine autumn day—that the Honourable Bob, walking with Sir Robert

by the Garden Pool, allowed his eyes to travel over the prospect. The

smooth-shaven lawns, the stately, lichened house, the far-stretching

park, with its beech-knolls and slopes of verdure, he found all fair;

and when to these, when to the picture on which his bodily eyes rested,

that portrait of Mary—Mary, in white muslin and blue ribbons, bowing

her graceful head while Sir Robert read prayers—which he carried in his

memory, he told himself that he was an uncommonly happy fellow.

Beauty he might have had, wealth he might have had, family too. But to

alight on all in such perfection, to lose his heart where his head

approved the step, was a gift of fortune so rare, that as he strutted

and talked by the side of his host, his face beamed with ineffable

good-humour.

Nevertheless for a few moments silence had fallen between the two; and

gradually Sir Robert’s face had assumed a grave and melancholy look. He

sighed more than once, and when he spoke, it was to repeat in different

words what he had already said.

“Certainly, you may speak,” he said, in a tone of some formality. “And

I have little doubt, Mr. Flixton, that your overtures will be received

as they deserve.”

“Yes? Yes? You think so?” Flixton answered with manifest delight. “You

really think so, Sir Robert, do you?”

“I think so,” his host replied. “Not only because your suit is in every

way eligible, and one which does us honour.” He bowed courteously as he

uttered the compliment. “But because, Mr. Flixton, for docility—and I

think a husband may congratulate himself on the fact——”

“To be sure! To be sure!” Flixton cried, not permitting him to finish.

“Yes, Sir Robert, capital! You mean that if I am not a happy man——”

“It will not be the fault of your wife,” Sir Robert said; remembering

with a faint twinge of conscience that the Honourable Bob’s past had

not been without its histories.

“No! By gad, Sir Robert, no! You’re quite right! She’s got an ank——” He

stopped abruptly, his mouth open; bethinking himself, when it was

almost too late, that her father was not the person to whom to detail

her personal charms.

But Sir Robert had not divined the end of the sentence. He was a trifle

deaf. “Yes?” he said.

“She’s an—an—animated manner, I was going to say,” Flixton answered

with more readiness than fervour. And he blessed himself for his

presence of mind.

“Animated? Yes, but gentle also,” Sir Robert replied, well-nigh purring

as he did so. “I should say that gentleness, and—and indeed, my dear

fellow, goodness, were the—but perhaps I am saying more than I should.”

“Not at all!” Flixton answered with heartiness. “Gad, I could listen to

you all day, Sir Robert.”

He had listened, indeed, during a large part of the last week; and with

so much effect, that those histories to which reference has been made,

had almost faded from the elder man’s mind. Flixton seemed to him a

hearty, manly young fellow, a little boastful and self-assertive

perhaps—but remarkably sound. A soldier, who asked nothing better than

to put down the rabble rout which was troubling the country; a Tory, of

precisely his, Sir Robert’s opinions; the younger son of a peer, and a

West Country peer to boot. In fine, a staunch, open-air patrician, with

good old-fashioned instincts, and none of that intellectual conceit,

none of those cranks, and fads, and follies, which had ruined a man who

also might have been Sir Robert’s son-in-law.

Well that man, Sir Robert, perhaps because his conscience pricked him

at times by suggesting impossible doubts, was still bitterly angry. So

angry that, had the Baronet been candid, he must have acknowledged that

the Honourable Bob’s main virtue was his unlikeness to Arthur Vaughan;

it was in proportion as he differed from the young fellow who had so

meanly intrigued to gain his daughter’s affections, that Flixton

appeared desirable to the father. Even those histories proved that at

any rate he had blood in him; while his loud good-nature, his

positiveness, as long as it marched with Sir Robert’s positiveness, his

short views, all gained by contrast. “I am glad he is a younger son,”

the Baronet thought. “He shall take the old Vermuyden name!” And he

lifted his handsome old chin a little higher as he pictured the

honours, that even in a changed and worsened England, might cluster

about his house. At the worst, and if the Bill passed, he had a seat

alternately with the Lansdownes; and in a future, which would know

nothing of Lord Lonsdale’s cat-o’-nine-tails, when pocket boroughs

would be rare, and great peers and landowners would be left with scarce

a representative, much might be done with half a seat.

Suddenly, “Damme, Sir Robert,” Flixton cried, “there is the little

beauty—hem!—there she is, I think. With your permission I think I’ll

join her.”

“By all means, by all means,” Sir Robert answered indulgently. “You

need not stand on ceremony.”

Flixton waited for no more. Perhaps he had no mind to be bored, now

that he had gained what he wanted. He hurried after the slim figure

with the white floating skirts and the Leghorn hat, which had descended

the steps of the house, moved lightly across the lawns—and vanished. He

guessed, however, whither she was bound. He knew that she had a liking

for walking in the wilderness behind the house; a beech wood which was

already beginning to put on its autumn glory. And sure enough,

hastening to a point among the smooth grey trunks where three paths

met, he discerned her a hundred paces away, walking slowly from him

with her eyes raised.

“Squirrels!” Flixton thought. And he made up his mind to bring the

terriers and have a hunt on the following Sunday afternoon. In the

meantime he had another quarry in view, and he made after the

white-gowned figure.

She heard his tread on the carpet of dry beech leaves, and she turned

and saw him. She had come out on purpose that she might be alone, at

liberty to think at her ease and orientate herself, in relation to her

new environment, and the fresh and astonishing views which were

continually opening before her. Or, perhaps, that was but her pretext:

an easy explanation of silence and solitude, which might suffice for

her father and possibly for Miss Sibson. For, for certain, amid sombre

thoughts of her mother, she thought more often and more sombrely in

these days of another; of happiness which had been forfeited by her own

act; of weakness, and cowardice, and ingratitude; of a man’s head that

stooped to her adorably, and then again of a man’s eyes that burned her

with contempt.

It is probable, therefore, that she was not overjoyed when she saw Mr.

Flixton. But Sir Robert was so far right in his estimate of her nature

that she hated to give pain. It was there, perhaps, that she was weak.

And so, seeing the Honourable Bob, she smiled pleasantly on him.

“You have discovered a favourite haunt of mine,” she said. She did not

add that she spent a few minutes of every day there: that the smooth

beech-trunks knew the touch of her burning cheeks, and the rustle of

the falling leaves the whisper of her penitence. Daily she returned by

way of the Kennel Path and there breathed a prayer for her mother,

where a mother’s arms had first enfolded her, and a mother’s kisses won

her love. What she did add was, “I often come here.”

“I know you do,” the Honourable Bob answered, with a look of

admiration. “I assure you, Miss Mary, I could astonish you with the

things I know about you!”

“Really!”

“Oh, yes. Really.”

There was a significant chuckle in his voice which brought the blood to

her check. But she was determined to ignore its meaning. “You are

observant?” she said.

“Of those—yes, by Jove, I am—of those, I—admire,” he rejoined. He had

it on his tongue to say “those I love,” but she turned her eyes on him

at the critical moment, and though he was doing a thing he had often

done, and he had impudence enough, his tongue failed him. There are

women so naturally modest that until the one man who awakens the heart

appears, it seems an outrage to speak to them of love. Mary Vermuyden,

perhaps by reason of her bringing up, was one of these; and though

Flixton had had little to do with women of her kind, he recognised the

fact and bowed to it. He came, having her father’s leave to speak to

her; yet he found himself less at his ease, than on many a less

legitimate occasion. “Yes, by Jove,” he repeated. “I observe them, I

can tell you.”

Mary laughed. “Some are more quick to notice than others,” she said.

“And to notice some than others!” he rejoined, gallantly. “That is what

I mean. Now that old girl who is with you——”

“Miss Sibson?” Mary said, setting him right with some stiffness.

“Yes! Well, she isn’t young! Anyway, you don’t suppose I could say what

she wore yesterday! But what you wore, Miss Mary”—trying to catch her

eye and ogle her—“ah, couldn’t I! But then you don’t wear powder on

your nose, nor need it!”

“I don’t wear it,” she said, laughing in spite of herself. “But you

don’t know what I may do some day! And for Miss Sibson, it does not

matter, Mr. Flixton, what she wears. She has one of the kindest hearts,

and was one of the kindest friends I had—or could have had—when things

were different with me.”

“Oh, yes, good old girl,” he rejoined, “but snubby! Bitten my nose off

two or three times, I know. And, come now, not quite an angel, you

know, Miss Mary!”

“Well,” she replied, smiling, “she is not, perhaps, an angel to look

at. But——”

“She can’t be! For she is not like you!” he cried. “And you are one,

Miss Mary! You are the angel for me!” looking at her with impassioned

eyes. “I’ll never want another nor ask to see one!”

His look frightened her; she began to think he meant—something. And she

took a new way with him. “How singular it is,” she said, thoughtfully,

“that people say those things in society! Because they sound so very

silly to one who has not lived in your world!”

“Silly!” Flixton replied, in a tone of mortification; and for a moment

he felt the check. He was really in love, to a moderate extent; and on

the way to be more deeply in love were he thwarted. Therefore he was,

to a moderate extent, afraid of her. And, “Silly?” he repeated. “Oh,

but I mean it, so help me! I do, indeed! It’s not silly to call you an

angel, for I swear you are as beautiful as one! That’s true, anyway!”

“How many have you seen?” she asked, ridiculing him. “And what coloured

wings had they?” But her cheek was hot. “Don’t say, if you please,” she

continued, before he could speak, “that you’ve seen me. Because that is

only saying over again what you’ve said, Mr. Flixton. And that is worse

than silly. It is dull.”

“Miss Mary,” he cried, pathetically, “you don’t understand me! I want

to assure you—I want to make you understand——”

“Hush!” she said, cutting him short, in an earnest whisper. And,

halting, she extended a hand behind her to stay him. “Please don’t

speak!” she continued. “Do you see them, the beauties? Flying round and

round the tree after one another faster than your eyes can follow them.

One, two, three—three squirrels! I never saw one, do you know, until I

came here,” she went on, in a tone of hushed rapture. “And until now I

never saw them at play. Oh, who could harm them?”

He stood behind her, biting his lip with vexation; and wholly untouched

by the scene, which, whether her raptures were feigned or not, was

warrant for them. Hitherto he had had to do with women who met him

halfway; who bridled at a compliment, were alive to an _équivoque_, and

knew how to simulate, if they did not feel, a soft confusion under his

gaze. For this reason Mary’s backwardness, her apparent unconsciousness

that they were not friends of the same sex, puzzled him, nay, angered

him. As she stood before him, a hand still extended to check his

advance, the sunshine which filtered through the beech leaves cast a

soft radiance on her figure. She seemed more dainty, more graceful,

more virginal than aught that he had ever conceived. It was in vain

that he told himself, with irritation, that she was but a girl after

all. That, under her aloofness, she was a woman like the others, as

vain, passionate, flighty, as jealous as other women. He knew that he

stood in awe of her. He knew that the words which he had uttered so

lightly many a time—ay, and to those to whom he had no right to address

them—stuck in his throat now. He wanted to say “I love you!” and he had

the right to say it, he was commissioned to say it. Yet he was dumb.

All the boldness which he had exhibited in her presence in Queen’s

Square—where another had stood tongue-tied—was gone.

He took at last a desperate step. The girl was within arm’s reach of

him; her delicate waist, the creamy white of her slender neck, invited

him. Be she never so innocent, never so maidenly, a kiss, he told

himself, would awaken her. It was his experience, it was a scrap drawn

from his store of worldly wisdom, that a woman kissed was a woman won.

True, as he thought of it, his heart began to riot, as it had not

rioted from that cause since he had kissed the tobacconist’s daughter

at Exeter, his first essay in gallantry. But only the bold deserve the

fair! And how often had he boasted that, where women were concerned,

lips were made for other things than talking!

And—in a moment it was done.

Twice! Then she slipped from his grasp, and stood at bay, with flaming

checks and eyes that—that had certainly not ceased to be virginal.

“You! You!” she cried, barely able to articulate. “Don’t touch me!”

She had been taken utterly, wholly by surprise; and the shock was

immensely increased by the facts of her bringing up and the restraints

and conditions of school-life. In his grasp, with his breath on her

cheek, all those notions about ravening wolves and the danger which

attached to beauty in low places—notions no longer applicable, had she

taken time to reason—returned upon her in force. The man had kissed

her!

“How—-how dare you?” she continued, trembling with rage and

indignation.

“But your father——”

“How dare you——”

“Your father sent me,” he pleaded, quite crestfallen. “He gave me

leave——”

She stared at him, as at a madman. “To insult me?” she cried.

“No, but—but you won’t understand!” he answered, almost querulously. He

was quite chapfallen. “You don’t listen to me. I want to marry you. I

want you to be my wife. Your father said I might come to you, and—and

ask you. And—and you’ll say ‘Yes,’ won’t you? That’s a good girl!”

“Never!” she answered.

He stared at her, turning red. “Oh, nonsense!” he stammered. And he

made as if he would go nearer. “You don’t mean it. My dear girl! Listen

to me! I do love you! I do indeed! And I—I tell you what it is, I never

loved any woman——”

But she looked at him in such a way that he could not go on. “Do not

say those things!” she said. And her austerity was terrible to him.

“And go, if you please. My father, if he sent you to me——”

“He did!”

“Then he did not,” she replied with dignity, “understand my feelings.”

“But—but you must marry someone,” he complained. “You know—you’re

making a great fuss about nothing!”

“Nothing!” she cried, her eyes sparkling. “You insult me, Mr. Flixton,

and——”

“If a man may not kiss the girl he wants to marry——”

“If she does not want to marry him?”

“But it’s not as bad as that,” he pleaded. “No, by Jove, it’s not.

You’ll not be so cruel. Come, Miss Mary, listen to me a minute. You

must marry someone, you know. You are young, and I’m sure you have the

right to choose——”

“I’ve heard enough,” she struck in, interrupting him with something of

Sir Robert’s hauteur. “I understand now what you meant, and I forgive

you. But I can never be anything to you, Mr. Flixton——”

“You can be everything to me,” he declared. It couldn’t, it really

couldn’t be that she meant to refuse him! Finally and altogether!

“But you can be nothing to me!” she answered, cruelly—very cruelly for

her, but her cheek was tingling. “Nothing! Nothing! And that being so,

I beg that you will leave me now.”

He looked at her with a mixture of supplication, resentment, chagrin.

But she showed no sign of relenting. “You really—you really do mean

it?” he muttered, with a sickly smile. “Come, Miss Mary!”

“Don’t! Don’t!” she cried, as if his words pained her. And that was

all. “Please go! Or I shall go.”

The Honourable Bob’s conceit had been so far taken out of him that he

felt that he could make no farther fight. He could see no sign of

relenting, and feeling that, with all his experience, he had played his

cards ill, he turned away sullenly. “Oh, I will go,” he said. And he

longed to add something witty and careless. But he could not add

anything. He, Bob Flixton, the hero of so many _bonnes fortunes_, to be

refused! He had laid his all, and _pour le bon motif_ at the feet of a

girl who but yesterday was a little schoolmistress. And she had refused

him! It was incredible! But, alas, it was also fact.

Mary, the moment his back was turned, hurried with downcast face

towards the Kennels; to hide her hot cheeks and calm her feelings in

the depths of the shrubbery. Oddly enough, her first thoughts were less

of that which had just happened to her than of that suit which had been

paid to her months before. This man might love her or not; she could

not tell. But Arthur Vaughan had loved her: the fashion of this love

taught her to prize the fashion of that.

He had loved her. And if he had treated her as Mr. Flixton had treated

her? Would she have held to him, she wondered. She believed that she

would. But the mere thought set her knees trembling, made her cheeks

flame afresh, filled her with rapture. So that, shamefaced, frightened,

glancing this way and that, as one hunted, she longed to be safe in her

room, there to cry at her ease.

Doubtless it was natural that the incident should turn her thoughts to

that other love-making; and presently to her father’s furious dislike

of that other lover. She could not understand that dislike; for the

Bill and the Borough, Franchise or No Franchise, were nothing to her.

And the grievance, when Sir Robert had essayed to explain it, had been

nothing. To her mind, Trafalgar and Waterloo and the greatness of

England were the work of Nelson and Wellington—at the remotest,

perhaps, of Mr. Pitt and Lord Castlereagh. She could not enter into the

reasoning which attributed these and all other blessings of her country

to a System! To a System which it seemed her lover was pledged to

overthrow.

She walked until the tumult of her thoughts had somewhat abated; and

then, still yearning for the security of her own chamber, she made for

the house. She saw nothing of Flixton, no one was stirring. Already she

thought herself safe; and it was the very spirit of mischief which

brought her, at the corner of the church, face to face with her father.

Sir Robert’s brow was clouded, and the “My dear, one moment,” with

which he stayed her, was pitched in a more decisive tone than he

commonly used to her.

“I wish to speak to you, Mary,” he continued. “Will you come with me to

the library?”

She would fain have postponed the discussion of Mr. Flixton’s proposal,

which she foresaw. But her father, affectionate and gentle as he was,

was still unfamiliar; and she had not the courage to make her petition.

So she accompanied him, with a sinking heart, to the library. And, when

he pointed to a seat, she was glad to sit down.

He took up his own position on the hearth rug; whence he looked at her

gravely before he spoke. At length:

“My dear,” he said, “I’m sorry for this! Though I do not blame you. I

think that you do not understand, owing to those drawbacks of your

early life, which have otherwise, thank God, left so slight a mark upon

you, that there are things which at your time of life you must leave

to—to the decision of your elders.”

She looked at him. And there was not that complete docility in her look

which he expected to find. “I don’t think I understand, sir,” she

murmured.

“But you can easily understand this, Mary,” he replied. “That young

girls of your age, without experience of life or of—of the darker side

of things, cannot be allowed to judge for themselves on all occasions.

There are sometimes circumstances to be weighed which it is not

possible to detail to them.”

She closed her eyes for an instant, to collect her thoughts.

“But—but, sir,” she said, “you cannot wish me to have no will—no

choice—in a matter which affects me so nearly.”

“No,” he said, speaking seriously and with something approaching

sternness. “But that will and that choice must be guided. They should

be guided. Your feelings are natural—God forbid that I should think

them otherwise! But you must leave the decision to me.”

She looked at him, aghast. She had heard, but had never believed, that

in the upper classes matches were arranged after this fashion. But to

have no will and no choice in such a thing as marriage! She must be

dreaming.

“You cannot,” he continued, looking at her firmly but not unkindly,

“have either the knowledge of the past,” with a slight grimace, as of

pain, “or the experience needful to enable you to measure the result of

the step you take. You must, therefore, let your seniors decide for

you.”

“But I could never—never,” she answered, with a deep blush, “marry a

man without—liking him, sir.”

“Marry?” Sir Robert repeated. He stared at her.

She returned the look. “I thought, sir,” she faltered, with a still

deeper blush, “that you were talking of that.”

“My dear,” he said, gravely, “I am referring to the subject on which I

understood that you requested Miss Sibson to speak to me.”

“My mother?” she whispered, the colour fading quickly from her face.

He paused a moment. Then, “You would oblige me,” he said, slowly and

formally, “by calling her Lady Sybil Vermuyden. And not—that.”

“But she is—my mother,” she persisted.

He looked at her, his head slightly bowed, his lower lip thrust out.

“Listen,” he said, with decision. “What you propose—to go to her, I

mean—is impossible. Impossible, you understand. There must be an end of

any thought of it!” His tone was cold, but not unkind. “The thing must

not be mentioned again, if you please,” he added.

She was silent a while. Then, “Why, sir?” she asked. She spoke

tremulously, and with an effort. But he had not expected her to speak

at all.

Yet he merely continued, as he stood on the hearth rug, to look at her

askance. “That is for me,” he said, “to decide.”

“But——”

“But I will tell you,” he said, stiffly. “Because she has already

ruined part of your life!”

“I forgive her, from my heart!” Mary cried.

“And ruined, also,” he continued, putting the interruption aside, “a

great part of mine. At your age I do not think fit to tell you—all. It

is enough, that she has robbed me of you, and deceived me. Deceived

me,” he repeated, more bitterly, “through long years when you, my

daughter, might have been my comfort and—” he ended, almost inaudibly,

“my joy.”

He turned his back on her with the word and began to walk the room, his

chin sunk on his breast, his hands clasped. It was clear to Mary,

watching him with loving, pitying eyes, that his thoughts were with the

unhappy past, with the short fever, the ignoble contentions of his

married life, or with the lonely, soured years which had followed. She

felt that he was laying to his wife’s charge the wreck of his life, and

the slow dry-rot which had sapped hope, and strength, and development.

Mary waited until his step trod the carpet less hurriedly. Then, as he

paused to turn, she stepped forward.

“Yet, sir—forgive her!” she cried. And there were warm tears in her

voice.

He turned and looked at her. Possibly he was astonished at her

persistence.

“Never!” he said in a tone of finality. “Never! Let that be the end.”

But Mary had been dreaming of this moment for days. And she had

resolved that, come what might, though he frown, though his tone grow

hard and his eye angry, though he bring to bear on her the stern

command of his eagle visage, she would not be found lacking a second

time. She would not again give way to her besetting weakness, and spend

sleepless nights in futile remorse. Diffidence in the lonely

schoolmistress had been pardonable, had been natural. But now, if she

were indeed sprung from those who had a right to hold their heads above

the crowd, if the doffed hats which greeted her when she went abroad,

in the streets of Chippinge as well as in the lanes and roads,—if these

meant anything—shame on her if she proved craven.

“It cannot be the end, sir,” she said, in a low voice. “For she

is—still my mother. And she is alone and ill—and she needs me.”

He had begun to pace the room anew, this time with an impatient, angry

step. But at that he stood and faced her, and she needed all her

courage to support the gloom of his look. “How do you know?” he said.

For Miss Sibson, discharging an ungrateful task, had not entered into

details. “Have you seen her?”

She felt that she must judge for herself; and though her mother had

said something to the contrary, and hitherto she had obeyed her, she

thought it best to tell all. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“When?”

“A fortnight ago?” She trembled under the growing darkness of his look.

“Here?”

“In the grounds, sir.”

“And you never told me!” he cried. “You never told me!” he repeated,

with a strange glance, a glance which strove with terror to discern the

mother’s features in the daughter’s face. “You, too—you, too, have

begun to deceive me!”

And he threw up his hands in despair.

“Oh, no! no!” Mary cried, infinitely distressed.

“But you have!” he rejoined. “You have kept this from me.”

“Only, believe me, sir,” she cried, eagerly, “until I could find a

fitting time.”

“And now you want to go to her!” he answered, unheeding. “She has

suborned you! She, who has done the greatest wrong to you, has now done

the last wrong to me!”

He began again to pace up and down the room.

“Oh, no! no!” she sobbed.

“It is so!” he answered, darting an angry glance at her. “It is so! But

I shall not let you go! Do you hear, girl? I shall not let you go! I

have suffered enough,” he continued, with a gesture which called those

walls to witness to the humiliations, the sorrows, the loneliness, from

which he had sought refuge within them. “I will not—suffer again! You

shall not go!”

She was full of love for him, and of pity. She understood even that

gesture, and the past wretchedness to which it bore witness. And she

yearned to comfort him, and to convince him that nothing that had gone

before, nothing that could happen in the future, would set her against

him. Had he been seated, she would have knelt and kissed his hand, or

cast herself on his breast and his love, and won him to her. But as he

walked she could not approach him, she did not know how to soften him.

Yet her duty was clear. It lay beside her dying mother. Nevertheless,

if he forbade her to go, if he withstood her, how was she to perform

it?

At length, “But if she be dying, sir,” she murmured. “Will you not then

let me see her?”

He looked at her from under his heavy eyebrows. “I tell you, I will not

let you go!” he said stubbornly. “She has forfeited her right to you.

When she made you die to me—you died to her! That is my decision. You

hear me? And now—now,” he continued, returning in a measure to

composure, “let there be an end!”

She stood silenced, but not conquered; knowing him more intimately than

she had known him before; and loving him not less, but more, since pity

and sympathy entered into her love and drove out fear; but assured that

he was wrong. It could not be her duty to forsake: it must be his duty

to forgive. But for the present she saw that in spite of all his

efforts he was cruelly agitated, that she had stirred pangs long lulled

to rest, that he had borne as much as he could bear. And she would not

press him farther for the time.

Meanwhile he, as he stood fingering his trembling lips, was trying to

bring the cunning of age to bear. He was silently forming his plan. She

had been too much alone, he reflected; that was it. He had forgotten

that she was young, and that change and movement and life and gaiety

were needful for her. This about—that woman—was an obsession, an

unwholesome fancy, which a few days in a new place, and amid lively

scenes, would weaken and perhaps remove. And by and by, when he thought

that he could trust his voice, he spoke.

“I said, let there be an end! But—you are all I have,” he continued,

with emotion, “and I will say instead, let this be for a time. I must

have time to think. You want—there are many things you want that you

ought to have—frocks, laces, and gew-gaws,” he added, with a sickly

smile, “and I know not what, that you cannot get here, nor I choose for

you. Lady Worcester has offered to take you with her to town—she goes

the day after to-morrow. I was uncertain this morning whether to send

you or not, whether I could spare you or not. Now, I say, go. Go, and

when you return, Mary, we will talk again.”

“And then,” she said, pleading softly, “you will let me go!”

“Never!” he cried, lifting his head in a sudden, uncontrollable

recurrence of rage. “But there, there! There! there! I shall have

thought it over—more at leisure. Perhaps! I don’t know! I will tell you

then. I will think it over.”

She saw with clear eyes that this was an evasion, that he was deceiving

her. But she felt no resentment, only pity. She had no reason to think

that her mother needed her on the instant. And much was gained by the

mere discussion of the subject. At least he promised to consider it:

and though he meant nothing now, perhaps when he was alone he would

think of it, and more pitifully. Yes, she was sure he would.

“I will go, if you wish it,” she said, submissively. She would show

herself obedient in all things lawful.

“I do wish it,” he answered. “My daughter must know her way about. Go,

and Lady Worcester will take care of you. And when—when you come back

we will talk. You will have things to prepare, my dear,” he continued,

avoiding her eyes, “a good deal to prepare, I dare say, since this is

sudden, and you had better go now. I think that is all.”

XXVI

THE SCENE IN THE HALL

Arthur Vaughan had been quick to see that he could not step at once

into place and fame; that success in political life could not in these

days be attained at a bound. But had he been less quick, the great

debate which preceded the passage of the Bill through the Commons must

have availed to persuade him. That their last words of warning to the

country, their solemn remonstrances, might have more effect, the

managers of the Opposition had permitted the third reading to be

carried in the manner which has been described. But, that done, they

unmasked all their forces, bent on proving that if in the time to come

the peers threw out the Bill they would do so with a respectable

weight, not only of argument, but of public feeling behind them; and

that, not only in the country, but in the popular House. All that the

bitter invective of Croker, the mingled gibes and predictions of

Wetherell, the close and weighty reasoning of Peel, the precedents of

Sugden could do to warn the timid and arouse the prudent was done. That

ancient Chamber, which was never again to echo the accents of a debate

so great, which stood indeed already doomed, as if it could not long

survive the order of things of which it had been for centuries the

centre, had heard, it may be, speeches more lofty, men more

eloquent—for whom had it not heard?—but never men more in earnest, or

words more keenly barbed by the prejudices of the passing, or the

aspirations of the coming, age. Of the one party were those who could

see naught but glory in the bygone, naught but peril in change, of the

other, those whose strenuous aim it was to make the future redress the

wrongs of the past. The former were like children, viewing the Armada

hangings which tapestried the neighbouring Chamber, and seeing only the

fair front: the latter like the same children, picking with soiled

fingers at the backing, coarse, dusty and cobwebbed, which for two

hundred years had clung to the roughened masonry.

Vaughan sat through the three nights, brooding darkly on the feats

performed before him. If they who fought in the arena were not giants,

if the House no longer held a match for Canning and Brougham, the

combatants seemed giants to him; for a man’s opinion of himself is

never far from the opinion which others hold of him. And he soon

perceived that a common soldier might as easily step from the ranks and

set the battle in order as he, Arthur Vaughan, rise up, without farther

training, and lead the attack or cover the defence. He sat soured and

gloomy, a mere spectator; dwelling, even while he listened to the

flowery periods of Macaulay, or the trenchant arguments of Peel, on the

wrong done to himself by the disposal of his seat.

It was so like the Whigs, he told himself. Here on the floor of the

House who so loud as they in defence of the purity of elections, of the

people’s right to be represented, of the unbiassed vote of the

electors? But behind the scenes they were as keenly bent on jobbing a

seat here, or neutralising a seat there, and as careless of the

people’s rights as they had ever been! It was atrocious, it was

shameful! If this were political life, if this were political honesty,

he had had enough of it!

But alas, though he said it in his anger, there was the rub! He had not

had, and now he was not likely to have, enough of it. The hostility to

himself, of which he had come slowly to be conscious, as a man grows

slowly to perceive a frostiness in the air, had insensibly sapped his

self-confidence and lowered his claims. He no longer dreamt of rising

and outshining the chiefs of his party. But he still believed that he

had it in him to succeed—were time given him. And all through the long

hours of the three nights’ debates his thoughts were as often on his

wrongs as on the momentous struggle which was passing before his eyes,

and for the issue of which the clubs of London were keeping vigil.

But enthusiasm is infectious. And when the tellers for the last time

walked up to the table, at five o’clock on the morning of the 22nd of

September, with the grey light of daybreak stealing in to shame the

candles and betray the jaded faces—when he and all men knew that for

them the end of the great struggle was come—Vaughan waited breathless

with the rest and strained his ears to catch the result. And when, a

moment later, peal upon peal of fierce cheering shook the old panels in

their frames, and being taken up by waiting crowds without, carried the

news through the dawn to the very skirts of London—the news that Reform

had passed the People’s House, and that only the peers now stood

between the country and its desire—he shared the triumph and shouted

with the rest, shook hands with exultant neighbours, and waved his hat,

perspiring.

But in his case the feeling of exultation was short-lived; perhaps in

the case of many another, who roared himself hoarse and showed a

gleeful face to the daylight. Certainly it was something to have taken

part in such a scene, the memory of which must survive for generations.

It was something to have voted in such a division. He might talk of it

in days to come to his grandchildren. But for him personally it meant

that all was over; that here, if the Lords passed the Bill, was the

end. A Dissolution must follow, and when the House met again, his place

would know him no more. He would be gone, and no man would feel the

blank.

Nor were less selfish doubts wanting. As he stood, caught in the press

and awaiting his turn to leave the crowded House, his eyes rested on

the pale, scowling faces which dotted the opposite benches; the faces

of men who, honestly believing that here and now the old Constitution

of England had got its deathblow, could not hide their bitter chagrin,

or their scorn of the foe. Nor could he, at any rate, view those men

without sympathy; without the possibility that they were right weighing

on his spirits; without a faint apprehension that this might indeed be

the beginning of decay, the starting point of that decadence which

every generation since Queen Anne’s had foreseen. For if many on that

side represented no one but themselves, they still represented vast

interests, huge incomes, immense taxation. They were those who, if

England sank, had most to lose. He, in the past, had given up almost

his all that he might stand aloof from them; and that, because he

thought them prejudiced, wrong-headed, unreasonable. But he respected

them. And—what if they were right?

Meanwhile the persistent cheering of his friends began to jar on his

tired nerves. He seemed to see in this a beginning of disorder, of

license, of revolution, of all those evils which the other party

foretold. And then he had little liking for the statistics of Hume: and

Hume with his arm about his favourite pillar, was high among the

triumphant. Hard by him again was the tall, thin form of Orator Hunt,

for whom the Bill was too moderate; and the taller, thinner form of

Burdett. They, crimson with shouting, were his partners in this; the

bedfellows among whom his opinions had cast him.

Thinking such thoughts, he was among the last to leave the House, which

he did by way of Westminster Hall. The scene as he descended to the

Hall was so striking that he stood an instant on the steps to view it.

The hither half of the great space was comparatively bare, but the

farther half was occupied by a throng of people held back by a line of

the New Police, who were doing all they could to keep a passage for the

departing Members. As groups of the latter, after chatting awhile at

the upper end, passed, conscious of the greatness of the occasion, down

the lane thus formed, bursts of loud cheering greeted the better-known

Reformers. Some of the more forward of those who waited shook hands

with them, or patted them on the back; while others cried “God bless

you, sir! Long life to you, sir!” On the other hand, an angry moan, or

a spirit of hissing, marked the passage of a known Tory; or a voice was

raised calling to these to bid the Lords beware. A few lamps, which had

burned through the night, contended pallidly with the growing daylight,

and gave to the scene that touch of obscurity, that mingling of light

and shadow—under the dusky, far-receding roof—which is necessary to the

picturesque.

Vaughan did not suspect that, as he paused, looking down on the Hall,

he was himself watched, and by some sore enough that moment to be glad

to wreak their feelings in any direction. As he set his foot on the

stone pavement a group near at hand raised a cry of “Turncoat!

Turncoat!” and that so loudly that he could not but hear it. An

unmistakable hiss followed; and then, “Who stole a seat?” cried one of

the men.

“And isn’t going to keep it?” cried another.

Vaughan turned short at the last words—he had not felt sure that the

first were addressed to him. With a hot face, and every fibre in his

body tingling with defiance, he stepped up to the group. “Did you speak

to me?” he said.

A man with a bullying air put himself before the others. He was a

ruined Irish Member, who had sat for years for a close borough, and for

whom the Bill meant duns, bailiffs, a sponging-house, in a word, the

loss of all those thing’s which made life tolerable. He was full of

spite and spoiling for a fight with someone, no matter with whom.

“Who are you?” he replied, confronting our friend with a sneer. “I have

not the pleasure of your acquaintance, sir!”

Vaughan was about to answer him in kind, when he espied in the middle

of the group the pale, keen face and greyish whiskers of Sergeant

Wathen. And, “Perhaps you have not,” he retorted, “but that gentleman

has.” He pointed to Wathen. “And, if what was said a moment ago,” he

continued, “was meant for me, I have the honour to ask for an

explanation.”

“Explanation?” a Member in the background cried, in a jeering tone. “Is

there need of one?”

Vaughan was no longer red, he was white with anger. “Who spoke?” he

asked, his voice ringing.

The Irishman looked over his shoulder and laughed. “Right you are,

Jerry!” he said: “I’ll not give you up!” And then to Vaughan, “I did

not,” he said rudely. “For the rest, sir, the Hall is large enough. And

we have no need of your heroics here!”

“Your pleasure, however,” Vaughan replied, haughtily, “is not my law.

Some one of you used words a moment ago which seemed to imply——”

“What, sir?”

“That I obtained my seat by unfair means! And the truth being perfectly

well known to that gentleman”—again he pointed to the Sergeant in a way

which left Wathen anything but comfortable. “I am sure that he will

tell you that the statement——”

“Statement?”

“Statement or imputation, or whatever you please to call it,” Vaughan

answered, sticking to his point in spite of interruptions, “is

absolutely unfounded—and false. And false! And, therefore, must be

retracted.”

“Must, sir?”

“Yes, must!” Vaughan replied—he was no coward. “Must, if you call

yourselves gentlemen. But first, Mr. Sergeant,” he continued, fixing

Wathen with his eye, “I will ask you to tell these friends of yours

that I did not turn my coat at Chippinge. And that there was nothing in

my election which in any degree touched my honour.”

The Sergeant looked flurried. He was of those who love to wound, but do

not love to fight. And at this moment he wished from the crown of his

head to the soles of his feet, that he had held his tongue. But

unluckily, whether the cloud upon Vaughan’s reputation had been his

work or not, he had certainly said more than he liked to remember; and,

worse still, had said some part of it within the last five minutes, in

the hearing of those about him. To retract, therefore, was to dub

himself a liar; and he sought refuge, the perspiration standing on his

brow, in that half-truth which is at once worse than a lie—and safer.

“I must say, Mr. Vaughan,” he said, “that the—the circumstances in

which you used the vote given to you by your cousin, and—and the way in

which you turned against him after attending a dinner of his

supporters——”

“Openly, fairly, and after warning, I turned against him,” Vaughan

cried, enraged at the show of justice which the accusation wore. “And

that, sir, in pursuance of opinions which I had publicly professed.

More, I allowed myself to be elected only after I had once refused Lord

Lansdowne’s offer of the seat! And after, only after, Sir Robert

Vermuyden had so treated me that all ties were broken. Sergeant Wathen,

I appeal to you again! Was that not so?”

“I know nothing of that,” Wathen answered, sullenly.

“Nothing? You know nothing of that?” Vaughan cried.

“No,” the Sergeant answered, still more sullenly. “I know nothing of

what passed between you and your cousin. I know only that you were

present, as I have said, at a dinner of his supporters on the eve of

the election, and that on a sudden, at that dinner, you declared

yourself against him—with the result that you were elected by the other

side!”

For a moment Vaughan stood glowering at him, struck dumb by his denial

and by the unexpected plausibility, nay, the unexpected strength of the

case against him. He was sure that Wathen knew more, he was sure that

if he would he could say more! He was sure that the man was dishonest.

But he did not see how he could prove it, and——

The Irish Member laughed. “Well, sir,” he said, derisively, “is the

explanation, now you’ve got it, to your mind?”

The taunt stung Vaughan. He took a step forward. The next moment would

have seen him commit himself to a foolish action, that could only have

led him to Wimbledon Common or Primrose Hill. But in the nick of time a

voice stayed him.

“What’s this, eh?” it asked, its tone more lugubrious than usual. And

Sir Charles Wetherell, who had just descended the stairs from the

lobby, turned a dull eye from one disputant to the other. “Can’t you do

enough damage with your tongues?” he rumbled. “Brawl upstairs as much

as you like! That’s the way to the Woolsack! But you mustn’t brawl

here!” And the heavy-visaged man, whose humour had again and again

conciliated a House which his coarse invective had offended, once more

turned from one to the other. “What is it?” he repeated. “Eh?”

Vaughan hastened to appeal to him. “Sir Charles,” he said, “I will

abide by your decision! Though I do not know, indeed, that I ought to

take any man’s decision on a point which touches my honour!”

“Oh!” Wetherell said in an inimitable tone. “Court of Honour, is it?”

And he cast a queer look round the circle. “That’s it, is it? Well, I

dare say I’m eligible. I dare swear I know as much about honour as

Brougham about equity! Or the Sergeant there”—Wathen reddened

angrily—“about law! Or Captain McShane here about his beloved country!

Yes,” he continued, amid the unconcealed grins of those of the party

whose weak points had escaped, “you may proceed, I think.”

“You are a friend, Sir Charles,” Vaughan said, in a voice which

quivered with anxiety, “you are a friend of Sir Robert Vermuyden’s?”

“Well, I won’t deny him until I know more!” Wetherell answered

quaintly. “What of it?”

“You know what occurred at Chippinge before the election?”

“None better. I was there.”

“And what passed between Sir Robert Vermuyden and me?” Vaughan

continued, eagerly.

“I think I do,” Wetherell answered. “In the main I do.”

“Thank you, Sir Charles. Then I appeal to you. You are opposed to me in

politics, but you will do me justice. These gentlemen have thought fit

to brand me here and now as a turncoat; and, worse, as one who was—who

was elected”—he could scarcely speak for passion—“in opposition to Sir

Robert’s, to my relative’s candidates, under circumstances

dishonourable to me!”

“Indeed? Indeed? That is serious.”

“And I ask you, sir, is there a word of truth in that charge?”

Wetherell had his eyes fixed gloomily on the pavement. He appeared to

weigh the matter a moment or two. Then he shook his head.

“Not a word,” he said, ponderously.

“You—you bear me out, sir.”

“Quite, quite,” the other answered slowly, as he took out his snuffbox.

“To tell the truth, gentlemen,” he continued, in the same melancholy

tone, “Mr. Vaughan was fool enough to quarrel with his bread and butter

for the sake of the most worthless, damnable and mistaken convictions

any man ever held! That’s the truth. He showed himself a very perfect

fool, but an honourable and an honest fool—and that’s a rare thing. I

see none here.”

No one laughed at the gibe, and he turned to Vaughan, who stood,

relieved indeed, but stiff and uncomfortable, uncertain what to do

next. “I’ll take your arm,” he said. “I’ve saved you,” coolly, “from

the ragged regiment on my side. Do you take me safe,” he continued,

with a look towards the lower end of the Hall, “through your ragged

regiment outside, my lad!”

Vaughan understood only too well the generous motive which underlay the

invitation. But for a moment he hung back.

“I am your debtor, Sir Charles,” he said, deeply moved, “as long as I

live. But I would like to know before I go,” and he raised his head,

with a look worthy of Sir Robert, “whether these gentlemen are

satisfied. If not——”

“Oh, perfectly,” the Sergeant cried, hurriedly. “Perfectly!” And he

muttered something about being glad—hear explanation—satisfactory.

But the Irish Member stepped up and held out his hand. “Faith,” he

said, “there’s no man whose word I’d take before Sir Charles’s! There’s

no hiatus in his honour, whatever may be said of his breeches! That’s

one for you,” he added, addressing Wetherell. “I owed you one, my good

sir!” And then he turned to Vaughan. “There’s my hand, sir! I

apologise,” he said. “You’re a man of honour, and it’s mistaken we

were!”

“I am obliged to you for your candour,” Vaughan said, gratefully.

Half a dozen others raised their hats to him, or shook hands with him

frankly. The Sergeant did the same less frankly. But Vaughan saw that

he was cowed. Wetherell was Sir Robert Vermuyden’s friend, and the

Sergeant was Sir Robert’s nominee. So he pushed his triumph no farther.

With a feeling of gratitude too deep for words, he offered his arm to

Sir Charles, and went down the Hall in his company.

By this time the crowd at the lower end had carried their joy and their

horseplay elsewhere; and no attempt was made—Vaughan only wished an

attempt had been made—to molest Wetherell. They walked across the yard

to Parliament Street, as the first sunshine of the day fell on the

bridge and the river. Flocks of gulls were swinging to and fro in the

clear air above the water, and dumb barges were floating up with the

tide. The hub-bub in that part was past and over; at that moment a

score of coaches were speeding through the suburbs, bearing to

market-town and busy city, ay, and to village greens, where the news

was awaited eagerly, the tidings that the Bill had passed the Lower

House.

Sir Charles walked a short distance in silence. Then, “I thought some

notion of the kind was abroad,” he said. “It’s as well this happened.

What are you going to do about your seat if the Bill pass, young man?”

“I am told that it is pre-empted,” Vaughan answered, in a tone between

jest and earnest.

“It is. But——”

“Yes, Sir Charles?”

“You should see your own side about it,” Wetherell answered gruffly. “I

can’t say more than that.”

“I am obliged to you for that.”

“You should be!” Wetherell retorted in a peculiar tone. And with an

oath and a strange gesture he disengaged his arm. Halting and wheeling

about, he pointed with a shaking hand to the towers of the Abbey, which

rose against the blue, beatified by the morning sunshine. “If I said

‘batter down those walls, undig the dead, away with every hoary thing

of time, the present and the future are enough, and we, the generation

that burns the mummies, which three thousand years have spared—we are

wiser than all our forbears—’ what would you say? You would call me

mad. Yet what are you doing? Ay, you, you among the rest! The building

that our fathers built, patiently through many hundred years, adding a

little here and strengthening there, the building that Hampden and

Shrewsbury and Walpole, Chatham and his son, and Canning, and many

others tended reverently, repairing here and there, as time required,

you, you, who think you know more than all who have gone before you,

hurry in ruin to the ground! That you may build your own building,

built in a day, to suit the day, and to perish with the day! Oh, mad,

mad, mad! Ay,

“_Hostis habet muros; ruit alta a culmine Troja.

Sat patriæ Priamoque datum; si Pergama linquâ.

Defendi possent, etiam, hoc defensa fuissent!_”

His voice quavered on the last accent, his chin sank on his breast. He

turned wearily and resumed his course. When Vaughan, who did not

venture to address him again, parted from him in silence at the door of

his house, the fat man’s pendulous lip quivered, and a single tear ran

down his cheek.

XXVII

WICKED SHIFTS

It was with a lighter heart that Vaughan walked on to Bury Street.

There were still, it seemed, faith and honour in the world, and some

men who could be trusted. But if he expected much to come of this, if

he expected to be received with an ovation on his next appearance at

Westminster, he was doomed to disappointment. Wetherell’s defence

convinced those who heard it; and in time, no doubt, passing from mouth

to mouth, would improve the young Member’s relations, not only on the

floor of the House, but in the lobbies and at Bellamy’s. But the

English are not dramatic. They have no love for scenes. And no one of

those whose silence or whose catcalls had wronged him thought fit to

take his hand in cold blood and ask his pardon; nor did any Don Quixote

cast down his glove in Westminster Hall and offer to do battle with his

traducers. The manner of one man became a shade more cordial; another

spoke where he would have nodded. And if Vaughan had risen at this time

to speak on any question which he understood he would have been heard

upon his merits.

But the change, slow though genial, like the breaking up of an English

frost, came too late to do him much service. With the transfer of the

Bill to the House of Lords public interest deserted the Commons. They

sat, indeed, through the month of September, to the horror of many a

country gentleman, who saw in this the herald of evil days; and they

debated after a fashion. But the attendance was sparse, and the

thoughts and hopes of all men were in another place. Vaughan saw that

for all the reputation he could now make the Dissolution might be come

already. And with this, and the emptiness of his heart, from which he

could no more put the craving for Mary Vermuyden than he could dismiss

her image from the retina of his mind, he was very miserable. The void

left by love, indeed, was rendered worse by the void left unsatisfied

by ambition. Mary’s haunting face was with him at his rising, went with

him to his pillow, her little hand was often on his sleeve, her eyes

often pleaded to his. In his lonely rooms he would pace the floor

feverishly, savagely, pestering himself with what might have been;

kicking the furniture from his path and—and hating her! For the idea of

marriage, once closely presented to man or woman, leaves neither

unchanged, leaves neither as it found them, however quickly it be put

aside.

Still it was not possible for one who sprang from the governing

classes, and was gifted with political instincts, to witness the

excitement which moved the whole country during those weeks of

September and the early days of October, without feeling his own blood

stirred; without sharing to some extent the exhilaration with which the

adventurous view the approach of adventures. What would the peers do?

All England was asking that question. At Crockford’s, in the little

supper-room, or at the French Hazard table itself, men turned to put it

and to hear the answer. At White’s and Boodle’s, in the hall of the

Athenæum, as they walked before Apsley House, or under the gas-lamps of

Pall Mall, men asked that question again and again. It shared with

Pasta and the slow-coming cholera—which none the less was coming—the

chit-chat of drawing-rooms; and with the next prize fight or with

ridicule of the New Police, the wrangling debates of every tavern and

posthouse. Would the peers throw out the Bill? Would they—would those

doting old Bishops in particular—dare to thwart the People’s will?

Would they dare to withhold the franchise from Birmingham and

Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield? On this husbands took one side, wives

the other, families quarrelled. What Croker thought, what Lord Grey

threatened, what the Duke had let drop, what Brougham had boasted, how

Lady Lyndhurst had sneered, or her husband retorted, what the Queen

wished—scraps such as these were tossed from mouth to mouth, greedily

received, carried far into the country, and eventually, changed beyond

recognition, were repeated in awestruck ears, in county ballrooms and

at Sessions.

One member of the Privy Council, who had left his party on the Bill,

and whose vote, it was thought, had turned a division, shot himself.

And many another, it was whispered, never recovered wholly from the

strain of those days.

For far more hung upon the Lords’ decision than the mere fate of the

Bill. If they threw it out, what would the Ministry do? And—more

momentous still, and looming larger in the minds of men—what would the

country do? What would Birmingham and Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds

do? What would they do?

Lord Grey, strong in the King’s support, would persevere, said some. He

would bring in the Bill again, and create peers in number sufficient to

carry it. And Macaulay’s squib was flung from club to club, from

meeting to meeting, until it reached the streets:

_What, though new opposed I be_,

_Twenty peers shall carry me!_

_If twenty won’t, thirty will_,

_For I am his Majesty’s bouncing Bill_.

Ay, his Majesty’s Bill, God bless him! His Majesty’s own Bill! Hurrah

for Lord Grey! Hurrah for Brougham! Hurrah for Lord John, and down with

the Bishops! So the word flew from mouth to mouth, so errand boys

yelled it under the windows of London House, in St. James’s Square, and

wherever aproned legs might be supposed to meet under the mahogany.

But others maintained that Lord Grey would simply resign, and let the

consequences fall on the heads of those who opposed the People’s will.

Those consequences, it was whispered everywhere—and not by the timid

and the rich only—spelled Revolution! Revolution, red and anarchical,

was coming, said many. Was not Scotland ready to rise? Was not the

Political Union of Birmingham threatening to pay no taxes? Were not the

Political Unions everywhere growling and lashing their sides? The

winter was coming, and there would be fires by night and drillings by

day, as there had been during the previous autumn. Through the long

dark nights there would be fear and trembling, and barring of doors,

and waiting for the judgment to come. And then some morning the

crackling sound of musketry would awaken Pall Mall and Mayfair, the mob

would seize the Tower and Newgate, the streets would run blood and the

guillotine would rise in Leicester Square or Finsbury Fields.

So widely were these fears spread—fostered as they were by both

parties, by the Tories for the purpose of proving whither Reform was

leading the country, by the Whigs to show to what the obstinacy of the

borough-mongers was driving it—that few were proof against them. So

few, that when the Bill was rejected in the early morning of Saturday,

the 8th of October, the Tory peers, from Lord Eldon downwards, though

they had not shrunk from doing their duty, could hardly be made to

believe that they were at liberty to go to their homes unscathed.

They did so, however. But the first mutterings of the storm soon made

themselves heard. Within twenty-four hours the hearts of many failed

them for fear. The Funds fell at once. The journals appeared in

mourning borders. In many towns the bells were tolled and the shops

were shut. The mob of Nottingham rose and burned the Castle and fired

the house of an unpopular squire. The mob of Derby besieged the gaol

and released the prisoners. At Darlington, Lord Tankerville narrowly

escaped with his life; Lord Londonderry was left for dead; no Bishop

dared to wear his apron in public. Everywhere rose the cry of “No

Taxes!” Finally, the rabble rose in immense numbers, paraded the West

End of London, broke the windows of many peers, assaulted others, and

were only driven from Apsley House by the timely arrival of the Life

Guards. The country, amazed and shaken from end to end, seemed to be

already in the grip of rebellion; so that within the week the very

Tories hastened to beg Lord Grey to retain office. Even the King, it

was supposed, was shaken; and his famous distich—his one contribution

to the poetry of the country,

_I consider Dissolution

Tantamount to Revolution_,

found admirers for its truth, if not for its beauty.

Such a ferment could not but occupy Vaughan’s mind and divert his

thoughts from his own troubles, even from thoughts of Mary. Every day

there was news: every day, in the opinion of many, the sky grew darker.

But though the rejection of the Bill promised him a second short

session, and many who sat for close boroughs chuckled privately over

the respite, he was ill-content with a hand-to-mouth life. He saw that

the Bill must pass eventually. He did not believe that there would be a

revolution. It was clear that his only chance lay in following

Wetherell’s advice, and laying his case before one of his chiefs.

Some days after the division he happened on an opportunity. He was

walking down Parliament Street when he came on a scene, much of a piece

of the unrest of the time. A crowd was pouring out of Downing Street,

and in the van of the rabble he espied the tall, ungainly figure of no

less a man than Lord Brougham. Abreast of the Chancellor, but keeping

himself to the wall as if he desired to dissociate himself from the

demonstration, walked another tall figure, also in black, with

shepherd’s plaid trousers. A second glance informed Vaughan that this

was no other than Mr. Cornelius, who had been present at his interview

with Brougham; and accepting the omen, he made up to the Chancellor

just as the latter halted to rid himself of the ragged tail, which had,

perhaps, been more pleasing to his vanity in the smaller streets.

“My friends,” Brougham cried, checking with his hand the ragamuffins’

shrill attempt at a cheer, “I am obliged to you for your approval; but

I beg to bid you good-day! Assemblages such as these are——”

“Disgusting!” Cornelius muttered audibly, wrinkling his nose as he eyed

them over his high collar.

“Are apt to cause disorder!” the Chancellor continued, smiling. “Rest

assured that your friends, of whom, if I am the highest in office I am

not the least in good-will, will not desert you.”

“Hurrah! God bless you, my lord! Hurrah!” cried the tatterdemalions in

various tones more or less drunken. And some held out their caps.

“Hurrah! If your lordship would have the kindness to——”

“Disgusting!” Cornelius repeated, wheeling about.

Vaughan seized the opportunity to intervene. “May I,” he said, raising

his hat and addressing the Chancellor as he turned, “consult you, my

lord, for two minutes as you walk?”

Brougham started on finding a gentleman of his appearance at his elbow;

and looked as if he were somewhat ashamed of the guise in which he had

been detected. “Ah!” he said. “Mr.—Mr. Vaughan? To be sure! Oh, yes,

you can speak to me, what can I do for you? It is,” he added, with

affected humility, “my business to serve.”

Vaughan looked doubtfully at Mr. Cornelius, who raised his hat. “I have

no secrets from Mr. Cornelius,” said the Chancellor pleasantly. And

then with a backward nod and a tinge of colour in his cheek,

“Gratifying, but troublesome,” he continued. “Eh? Very troublesome,

these demonstrations! I often long for the old days when I could walk

out of Westminster Hall, with my bag and my umbrella, and no one the

wiser!”

“Those days are far back, my lord,” Vaughan said politely.

“Ah, well! Ah, well! Perhaps so.” They were walking on by this time. “I

can’t say that since the Queen’s trial I’ve known much privacy.

However, it is something that those whom one serves are grateful.

They——”

“Cry ‘Hosanna’ to-day,” Cornelius said gruffly, with his eyes fixed

steadily before him, “and ‘Crucify him’ tomorrow!”

“Cynic!” said the Chancellor, with unabated good-humour. “But even you

cannot deny that they are better employed in cheering their friends

than in breaches of the peace? Not that”—cocking his eye at Vaughan

with a whimsical expression of confidence—“a little disorder here and

there, eh, Mr. Vaughan—though to be deplored, and by no one more than

by one in my position—has not its uses? Were there no apprehension of

mob-rule, how many borough-mongers, think you, would vote with us? How

many waverers, like Harrowby and Wharncliffe, would waver? And how, if

we have no little ebullitions here and there, are we to know that the

people are in earnest? That they are not grown lukewarm? That Wetherell

is not right in his statement—of which he’ll hear more than he will

like at Bristol, or I am mistaken—that there is a Tory re-action, an

ebb in the tide which so far has carried us bravely? But of course,” he

added, with a faint smile, “God forbid that we should encourage

violence!”

“Amen!” said Mr. Cornelius. And sniffed in a very peculiar manner.

“But to discern that camomile,” the Chancellor continued gaily, “though

bitter to-day makes us better tomorrow, is a different thing from——”

“Administering a dose!” Vaughan laughed, falling into the great man’s

humour.

“To be sure. But enough of that. Now I think of it, Mr. Vaughan,” he

continued, looking at his companion, “I have not had the pleasure of

seeing you since—but I need not remind you of the occasion. You’ve had

good cause to remember it! Yes, yes,” he went on with voluble

complacency—he was walking as well as talking very fast—“I seldom speak

without meaning, or interfere without result. I knew well what would

come of it. It was not for nothing, Mr. Vaughan, that I got down our

Borough List and asked you if you had no thought of entering the House.

The spark—and tinder! For there you are in the House!”

“Yes,” Vaughan replied, astonished at the coolness with which the other

unveiled, and even took credit for, the petty intrigue of six months

back. “But——”

“But,” Brougham said, taking him up with a quick, laughing glance, “you

are not yet on the Treasury Bench? That’s it?”

“No, not yet,” Vaughan answered, good-humouredly.

“Ah, well, time and patience and Bellamy’s chops, Mr. Vaughan, will

carry you far, I am sure.”

“It is on that subject—the subject of time—I venture to trouble your

lordship.”

The Chancellor’s lumpish but singularly mobile features underwent a

change. Caught in a complacent, vain humour, he had forgotten a thing

which, with Vaughan’s last words, recurred to him. “Yes?” he said,

“yes, Mr. Vaughan?” But the timbre of that marvellously flexible voice

with which he boasted that he could whisper so as to be heard to the

very door of the House of Commons, was changed. “Yes, what is it,

pray?”

“It is time I require,” Vaughan answered. “And, in fine, I have done

some service, yeoman service, my lord, and I think that I ought not to

be cast aside by the party in whose interest I was returned, and with

whose objects I am in sympathy.”

“Cast aside? Tut, tut! What do you mean?”

“I am told that though the borough for which I sit will continue to

return one member, I shall not have the support of the party in

retaining my seat.”

“Indeed! Indeed!” Brougham answered, “Is it so? I am sorry to hear

that.”

“But——”

“Very sorry, Mr. Vaughan.”