Chapter XI: Part 11

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.