Chapter VI: Part 6

But “Yah! Borough-monger!” the rabble answered, and before he could say more a young farmer was hurled against him, and a whip, of which a postillion had just been despoiled, whizzed past his head. He, too, turned tail at that, with his face a shade paler than usual; and with his retreat resistance ceased. The carriages were hustled somehow and anyhow into the yard, and there the greater part of the procession also took refuge. A few, sad to say, sneaked off and got rid of their badges, and a few more escaped through a neighbouring alley. No one was much hurt; a few black eyes were the worst of the mischief, nor could it be said that any vindictive feeling was shown. But the town was swept clear, and the victory of the Radicals was complete. Left in possession of the open space before the Abbey, they paraded for some time under the windows of the White Lion, waving a captured flag, and cheering and groaning by turns.

Meantime in the hall of the inn the grandees were smoothing their ruffled plumes, in a state of mind in which it was hard to say whether indignation or astonishment had larger place. Oaths flew thick as hail, unrebuked by the Church, the most outspoken perhaps being by the landlord, who met them with a pale face.

“Good Lord, good Lord, gentlemen!” he said, “what violence! What violence! What are we coming to next? What’s took the people, gentlemen? Isn’t Sir Robert here?”

For to this simple person it seemed impossible that people should behave badly in that presence.

“No, he’s not!” Mr. Cooke answered with choler. “I’d like to know why he’s not! I wish to Heaven”—only he did not say “Heaven”—“that he were here, and he’d see what sort of thing he has let us into!”

“Ah, well, ah, well!” returned the more discreet and philosophic Sergeant, “shouting breaks no bones. We are all here, I hope? And after all, this shows up the Bill in a pretty strong light, eh, Rector? If it is to be carried by methods such as these—these—”

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

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

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

“It will soon be plain to all,” the Sergeant concluded, in his House of Commons manner, “that it is a most revolutionary, dangerous, and—and unconstitutional measure, gentlemen.”

“By G—d!” Mr. Cooke cried—he was thinking that if this was the kind of thing he was to suffer he might as well have fought Taunton or Preston, or any other open borough, and kept his money in his pocket—“by G—d, I wish Lord John were stifled in the mud he’s stirred up, and Gaffer Grey with him!”

“You can add Bruffam, if you like,” Wathen answered good-humouredly—he was not paying two thousand five hundred guineas for his seat. “And rid me of a rival and the country of a pest, Cooke! But come, gentlemen, now we’re here and no bones broken, shall we sit down? We are all safe, I trust, Mr. White? And especially—my future constituents?” with a glance of his shrewd Jewish-looking eyes.

“Yes, sir, no harm done,” White replied as cheerfully as he could; which was not overcheerfully, for in all his experience of Chippinge he had known nothing like this; and he was a trifle scared. “Yes, sir,” he continued, looking round, “all here, I think! And—and by Jove,” in a tone of relief, “one more than I expected! Mr. Vaughan! I am glad, sir, very glad, sir,” he added heartily, “to see you. Very glad!”

The young man who had alighted from his postchaise a few minutes before did not, in appearance at least, reciprocate the feeling. He looked sulky and bored. But he shook the outstretched hand; he could do no less. Then, saying scarcely a word, he stood back again. He had hastened to Chippinge on receiving White’s belated express, but rather because, irritated by the collision with Flixton, he welcomed any change, than because he was sure what he would do. In the chaise he had thought more of Mary than of politics, more of the Honourable Bob than of his cousin. And though, as far as Sir Robert was concerned, he was resolved to be frank and to play the man, his mind had travelled no farther.

Now, thrown suddenly among these people, he was, in a churlish way, taken somewhat aback. But, in a thoroughly bad temper, he told himself it did not matter. If they did not like the line he was going to take, that was their business. He was not responsible to them. In fine, he was in a savage mood, with half his mind here and the other half dwelling on the events of the morning. For the moment politics seemed to him a poor game, and what he did or did not do of little consequence!

White and the others were not blind to his manner, and might have resented it in another. But Sir Robert’s heir was a great man and had a right to moods if any man had; doubtless he was become a fine gentleman and thought it a nuisance to vote in his own borough. They were all politeness to him, therefore, and while his eyes passed haughtily beyond them, seeking Sir Robert, they presented to him those whom he did not know.

“Very kind of you to come, Mr. Vaughan,” said the Sergeant, who, like many browbeaters, could be a sycophant at need. “Very kind indeed! I don’t know whether you know Mr. Cooke? He, equally with me, is obliged to you for your attendance.”

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

Vaughan bowed coldly.

“Is not Sir Robert here?” he asked.

He was still looking beyond those to whom he spoke.

“No, Mr. Vaughan.”

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

And Vaughan, heedless what he did or where he dined, but inclined in a sardonic way to amuse himself, went in with them. What did it matter? He was not going to vote for them. But that was his business, and Sir Robert’s. He was not responsible to them.

Certainly he was in a very bad temper.

XIII THE VERMUYDEN DINNER

Vaughan began to think more soberly of his position when he found himself set down at the table. He had White, who took one end, on his right; and the Sergeant was opposite him. At the other end the Alderman presided, supported by Mr. Cooke and the Rector.

The young man looked down the board, at the vast tureens that smoked on it, and at the faces, smug or jolly, hungry or expectant, that surrounded them; and amid the flood of talk which burst forth the moment his reverence had said a short grace, he began to feel the situation uncomfortable. True, he had a sort of right to be there, as the heir, and a Vermuyden. True, too, he owed nothing to anyone there; nothing to the Sergeant, whom he secretly disliked, nothing to Mr. Cooke, whom he despised—in his heart he was as exclusive as Sir Robert himself—nothing to White, who would one day be his paid dependant. He owed them no explanation. Why then should he expose himself to their anger and surprise? He would be silent and speak only when the time came, and he could state his views to Sir Robert with a fair chance of a fair hearing.

Still he saw that the position in which he had placed himself was a false one: and might become ridiculous. And it crossed his mind to feign illness and to go out and incontinently walk over to Stapylton and see Sir Robert. Or he might tell White quietly that he did not find himself able to support his cousin’s nominations: and before the news got abroad he might withdraw and let them think what they would. But he was too proud to do the one, and in too sulky a mood to do the other. And he sat still.

“Where is Sir Robert?” he asked.

“He left home on a sudden call, this morning, sir,” White explained; wondering what made the young squire—who was wont to be affable—so distant. “On unexpected business.”

“It must have been important as well as unexpected,” Wathen said, with a smile, “to take Sir Robert away today, Mr. White.”

“It was both, sir, as I understood,” White answered, “for Sir Robert did not make me acquainted with it. He seemed somewhat put out—more put out than I have often seen him. But he said that whatever happened he would be back before the nomination.” And then, turning to Vaughan, “You must have passed him, sir?” he added.

“Well, now I think of it,” Vaughan answered, his spoon suspended, “I did. I met a travelling carriage and four with jackets like his. But, I thought it was empty.”

“No, sir, that was Sir Robert. He will not be best pleased,” White continued, turning to the Sergeant, “when he hears what a reception we had!”

“Ah, well, ah, well!” the Sergeant replied—pleasantness was his cue to-day. “Things are worse in Bath I’ll be sworn, Mr. White.”

“No doubt, sir, no doubt! I think,” White added, forgetting his study of Cobbett, “the nation has gone mad.”

After that Vaughan’s other neighbour, Squire Rowley, who met him annually at Stapylton, claimed his ear. The old fellow, hearty and good-natured, but a bigoted Tory, who would have given Orator Hunt four dozen and thought Lord Grey’s proper reward a block on Tower Hill, was the last person whom Vaughan would have chosen for a confidant; since only to hear of a Vermuyden turned Whig would have gone near to giving him a fit. Perforce, nevertheless, Vaughan had to listen to him and answer him; he could not without rudeness cut him short. But all the time as they talked, Vaughan’s uneasiness increased. With every minute his eyes wandered more longingly to the door. Improved in temper by the fare and by the politeness of his neighbours, he began to see that he had been foolish to thrust himself among people with whom he did not agree. Still he was there; and he must see the dinner to an end. After all a little more or a little less would not add to Sir Robert’s anger. He could explain that he thought it more delicate to avoid an open scandal.

Meanwhile the collision with the crowd had loosened the guests’ tongues and never had a Vermuyden dinner gone more freely. Even the “Cripples,” whose wont it was to begin the evening with odious obsequiousness and close it with a freedom as unpleasant, found speech early, and were loudest in denunciation of a Bill which threatened to deprive them of their annuities. By the time huge joints had taken the place of the tureens, and bowls of potatoes and mounds of asparagus dotted the table, the noise was incessant. There was claret for those who cared for it, and strong ale for all. And while some discussed the effect which a Bill that disfranchised Chippinge would have on their pockets and interests, others driving their arguments home with blows on the table recalled, almost with tears, the sacred name of Pitt—the pilot who weathered the storm; or held up to execration a cabinet of Whigs dead to every Whig principle, and alive only to the chance of power which a revolution might afford.

“But what was to be expected? What was to be expected?” old Rowley insisted. “We’ve only ourselves to thank! When Peel and the Duke took up the Catholic Claims they stepped into the Whigs’ shoes—and devilishly may they pinch them! The Whigs had to find another pair, you see, sir, and stepped into the Radicals’! And the only people left at a loss are the honest part of us; who are likely to end not only barefoot but barebacked! Ay, by G—d, we are!”

And so on, and so on; even White, who was vastly relieved by Vaughan’s arrival, which made his majority safe, talked freely, and gave Dyas and Pillinger of the Blue Duck the rough side of his tongue. While Vaughan, used to a freer atmosphere, listened to their one-sided arguments, their trite prophecies, their incredible prejudices—such they seemed to him—and now turned up his nose, now pitied them, as an effete, a doomed, a dying race.

While he thought of this the dinner wore on, the joints vanished, and huge steaming puddings made their appearance on the board; those who cared not for plum puddings could have marrow-puddings. Then cheese and spring onions, and some special old ale, light coloured, heady, and served in tall, spare glasses, went round. At length the rector, a trifle flushed, rose to say grace, and Vaughan saw that the cloth was about to be removed. Bottles of strong port and tawny Madeira were at hand. Some called already for their favourite punch, or for hot grog.

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

But as he made a movement to rise, the Sergeant rose opposite him, lifted his glass, and fixed him with his eye. And Vaughan felt that he could not leave at that moment without rudeness. “Gentlemen, on your feet, if you please,” he cried blandly. “The King! The King, God bless him! The King, gentlemen, and may he never suffer for the faults of his servants! May the Grey mare never run away with him. May William the Good ne’er be ruined by a—bad Bill! Gentlemen, the King, God bless him, and deliver him from the Whigs!”

They drank the toast amid a roar of laughter and applause. And once more as they sat down Vaughan thought that he would escape. Again he was hindered. This time the interruption came from behind.

“Hallo, Vaughan!” someone muttered in his ear. “You’re the last person I expected to see here!”

He turned and disgust filled him. The speaker, who had just entered, was the son of a clergyman in the neighbourhood and had gone to the bar. He was a shifty, flattering fellow, at once a toady and a backbiter; who had wormed himself into society too good for him, and in London was Vaughan’s _bête noir_. But had that been all! Alas, he was also a member of the Academic. He had been present at Vaughan’s triumph ten days before, and had heard him proclaim himself a Reformer of the Reformers.

For a moment Vaughan could find not a word. He could only mutter “Oh!” in a tone of dismay. He feared that his face betrayed the chagrin he felt.

“I thought you were quite the other way?” Mowatt said. And he grinned. He was a weedy, pale young man, with thin lips and a false smile.

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

“But—but I thought——”

“Order! Order!” cried the Alderman, a trifle uplifted by wine and his position. “Silence, if you please, gentlemen, for the Senior Candidate! And charge your glasses!”

Vaughan turned to the table, a frown on his brow. Wathen was on his feet, holding his wine glass before his breast with one hand, while the other rested on the table. His attitude was that of a man confident of his powers and pleased to exert them. Nevertheless, as he prepared to speak, he lowered his eyes to the table as if he thought that a little mock-modesty became him.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “it is my privilege to propose a toast, that at this time and in this place—this time, gentlemen, when to an extent unknown within living memory, all is at stake, and this place which has so much to lose—it is my privilege, I say, to propose a toast that must go straight to the heart of every man in this room, nay, of every true-born Englishman, and every lover of his country! It is _Our Ancient Constitution, our Chartered Rights, our Vested Interests!_ [Loud and continued applause.] Yes, gentlemen, our ancient Constitution, the security of every man, woman, and child in this realm! And coupled with it our Chartered Rights, our Vested Interests, which, unassailed for generations, are to-day called in question by the weakness of many, by the madness of some, by the wicked ambition of a few. [Loud cheering]. Gentlemen, to one Cromwell this town owes the destruction of your famous Abbey, once the pride of this county! To another Cromwell it owes the destruction of the walls that in troublous times secured the hearths of your forefathers! It lies with us—but we must be instant and diligent—it lies with us, I say, to see that those civil bulwarks which protect us and ours in the enjoyment of all we have and all we hope for——”

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

“In this world,” the Sergeant continued, accepting the amendment with a complimentary bow, “are not laid low by a third Cromwell! I care not whether he mask himself under the name of Grey, or of Russell, or of Brougham, or of Lansdowne!”

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

“For think not”—the Sergeant resumed when it died down—“think not, gentlemen, whatever the easily led vulgar may think, that sacrilegious hands can be laid on the Ark of the Constitution without injury to many other interests; without the shock being felt through all the various members of the State down to the lowest: without endangering all those multiform rights and privileges for which the Constitution is our guarantee! Let the advocates of this pernicious, this revolutionary Bill say what they will, they cannot deny that its effect will be to deprive you in Chippinge who, for nearly five centuries, have enjoyed the privilege of returning members to Parliament—of that privilege, with all”—here he glanced at the rich array of bottles that covered the board—“the amenities which it brings with it! And for whose benefit? For that of men no better qualified—nay, by practice and heredity less qualified—than yourselves. But, gentlemen, mark me, that is not all! That is but the beginning, and it may be the least part. That loss they cannot hide from you. That loss they do not attempt to hide from you. But they do hide from you,” he continued in his deepest and most tragic tone, “a fact to which the whole course of history is witness—that a policy of robbery once begun is rarely stayed, if it be stayed, until the victim is bare! Bare, gentlemen! Gentlemen, the freemen of this borough have of ancient right, conferred by an ancient sovereign——”

“God bless him!” from Annibal, now somewhat drunk. “God bless him! Here’s his health!”

The Sergeant paused an instant and looked round the table. Then more slowly, “Ay, God bless him!” he said. “God bless King Canute! But what—what if those grants of land—-I care not whether you call them chartered rights or vested interests—which you freemen enjoy of him—what if they do not enure? You have them,” with a penetrating glance from face to face, “but for how long, gentlemen, if this Bill pass? You are too clear-sighted to be blind to the peril! Too shrewd to think that you can part with one right, as old, as well vested, as perfectly secured—and keep the others undiminished? Gentlemen, if you are so blind, take warning! For wherever this anarchical, this dangerous, this revolutionary Bill——”

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

“Wherever, I say, this Bill finds supporters—and I can well believe that in Birmingham and Sheffield, where they have all to gain and nothing to lose, it will find supporters, it should find none in Chippinge! Where we have all to lose and nothing to gain, and where no man but a fool or a rogue can in reason support it! Gentlemen, you are neither fools nor rogues——”

“No! No! No! No!”

“No, gentlemen, and therefore, though a few silly fellows may shout for the Bill in the streets, I am sure that I shall have the whole of this influential company with me when I give you the toast of ‘Our Ancient Constitution, Our Chartered Rights, Our Vested Interests!’ May the Bill that assails them be defeated by the good sense of a sober and united people! May those who urge it and those who support it—rogues where they are not fools, and fools where they are not rogues—meet with the fate they deserve! And may we be there to see! Gentlemen,” he continued, raising his hand for silence, “in the absence upon pressing business of our beloved High Steward, the model of an English gentleman and the pattern of an English landlord, I beg to couple this toast”—here the Sergeant’s sharp black eyes fixed themselves suddenly on his opposite neighbour—“with the name of his kinsman, Mr. Arthur Vaughan!”

“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” The room shook with the volume of applause, the tables trembled. And through it all Arthur Vaughan’s heart beat hard, and he swallowed nervously. He was caught. Whether the Sergeant knew it or not, he was trapped. From the beginning of the speech he had had his misgivings. He had listened anxiously; and though he had lost nothing, though one half of his mind had followed the speaker’s thread, the other half had scanned the prospect feverishly, weighed the chances of escape, and grown chill with the fear of what was coming. If he had only withdrawn in time! If he had only——

“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” They were pounding the table with fist and glass, and looking towards him—two long rows of flushed, excited, tipsy faces. Some were drinking to him. Others were scanning him curiously. All were waiting.

He leant forward. “I don’t wish to speak,” he said, addressing the Sergeant in a troubled voice. “Call on some one else, if you please.”

But “Impossible, sir!” White, surprised by his evident nervousness, answered. He had thought Vaughan anything but a shy person. “Impossible, sir!”

“Get up! Get up!” cried the Squire, his neighbour, laying a jocund hand on him and trying to lift him to his feet.

But Vaughan resisted; his throat was so dry that he could hardly frame his words. “I don’t wish to speak,” he muttered. “I don’t agree——”

“Say what you like, my dear sir!” the Sergeant rejoined blandly, but with a gleam of amusement in his eyes. He had had his doubts of Master Vaughan ever since he had caught him on his way to the Chancellor: now he thought that he had him pinned. He did not suppose that the young man would dare to revolt openly.

“Yes, sir, you must get up,” said White, who had no suspicion that his hesitation arose from any cause but shyness. “Anything will do.”

Vaughan rose—slowly, and with a beating heart. He rose perforce. For a moment he stood, deafened by his reception. For the smaller men saw in him one of the old family, the future landlord of two-thirds of them, the sometime owner of the very roof under which they were gathered. And he, while they greeted his rising and he stood waiting with an unhappy face for silence, wondered, even at this last moment, what he would say. And Heaven knows what he would have said—so hard was it to disappoint those cheering men, all looking at him with worship in their eyes—so painful was it to break old ties—if he had not caught behind him Mowatt’s whisper, “Eat his words! He’ll have to unsay——”

No more than that, a fragment, but enough; enough to show him that he had better, far better seem false to these men, to his blood, to the past, than be false to himself. He straightened his shoulders, and lifted his head.

“Gentlemen,” he said, and now his voice though low was steady, “I rise unwillingly—unwillingly, because I feel too late that I ought not to be here. That I have no right to be here. [No! No!] No right to be here, for this reason,” he continued, raising his hand for silence, “for this reason, that in much of what Sergeant Wathen has said, I cannot go with him.”

There, it was out! But no more than a stare of perplexity passed from the more intelligent faces about him to the duller faces lower down the table. They did not understand; it was only clear that he could not mean what he seemed to mean. But he was going on in a silence so complete that a pin falling to the floor might have been heard!

“I rise unwillingly, I say again, gentlemen,” he continued, “and I beg you to remember this, and that I did not come here of set purpose to flaunt my opinions before you. For I, too”—here he betrayed his secret agitation—“thus far I do go with Sergeant Wathen,—I, too, am for Our Ancient Constitution, I give place to no man in love of it. And I, too, am against revolution, I will stand second to none in abhorrence of it.”

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

“Ay, go on,” chimed in the Squire. “Go on, lad, go on! That’s all right!” And half aside in his neighbour’s ear, “Gad! he frightened me!” he muttered.

“But—but to be plain,” Vaughan resumed, pronouncing every word clearly, “I do not regard the Bill which the Sergeant has mentioned, the Bill which is in all your minds, as assailing the one, or as being tantamount to the other! On the contrary, I believe that it restores the ancient balance of the Constitution, and will avert, as nothing else will avert, a Revolution!”

As he paused on that word, the Squire, who was of a free habit, tried to rise and speak, but choked. The Rector gasped. Only Mr. Cooke found his voice. He sprang to his feet, purple in the face. “By G—d!” he roared, “are we going to listen to this?”

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

“It was against my will I said what I have said,” he resumed. “I did not wish to speak. I do not wish you to listen. I rose only because I was forced to rise. But being up, I owed it to myself to say enough to clear myself of—of the appearance of duplicity. That is all.”

The Sergeant did not speak, but gazed darkly at him, his mind busy with the effect which this would have on the election. White, too, did not speak—he sat stricken dumb. The Squire swore, and five or six of the more intelligent hissed. But again it was Cooke who found words.

“That all? But that is not all!” he shouted. “That is not all! What are you, sir?” For still, in common with most of those at the table, he could not believe that he heard aright. He fancied that this was some trope, some nice distinction, which he had not followed. “You may be Sir Robert Vermuyden’s cousin ten times over,” he continued, vehemently, “but we’ll have it clear what we have to expect. Speak like a man, sir! Say what you mean!”

Vaughan had taken his seat, but he rose again, a gleam of anger in his eyes. “Have I not spoken plainly?” he said. “I thought I had. If you have still any doubt, sir, I am for the Constitution, but I think that it has suffered by the wear and tear of time and needs repair. I think that the shifting of population during the last two centuries, the decay of one place and the rise of another, call for some change in the representation! I hold that the spread of education and the creation of a large and wealthy class unconnected with the land, render that change more urgent if we would avoid a revolution! I believe that the more we enlarge the base upon which our institutions rest, the more safely, the more steadily, and the longer will they last!”

They knew now, they understood, and the storm broke. The smaller men, or such of them as were sober, stared. But the greater number burst into a roar of dissent, of reprobation, of anger, led by the Squire.

“A Whig, by Heaven!” he cried violently. And he thrust his chair as far as possible from his neighbour. “A Whig, by Heaven! And here!” While others cried, “Renegade!” “Radical!” and “What are you doing here?” and hissed him. But above all, in some degree stilling all, rose Cooke’s crucial question, “Are you for the Bill? Answer me that!” And he extended his hand for silence. “Are you for the Bill?”

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

“You are?”

“Yes.”

“Fool or rogue, then! which are you?” shrieked a voice from the lower end of the table. “Fool or rogue? Which are you?”

Vaughan turned sharply in the direction of the voice. “That reminds me,” he said with a vigour which seemed after a few seconds to gain him a hearing—for the noise died down—“that reminds me, Sergeant Wathen is against the Bill. But he has addressed himself solely and only to your prejudices, gentlemen! I am for the Bill—I am for the Bill,” he repeated, seeing that their attention was wandering, “I——”

He stopped, silenced and taken aback. For some were on their feet, others were rising; the faces of nine out of ten were turned from him. What was it? He turned to see; and he saw.

A few paces within the door stood Sir Robert himself; his fur collared travelling cloak hanging loose about him and showing his tall spare figure at its best. He stooped, but his high-bred face, cynically smiling, was turned full on the speaker; it was certain that he had heard much, if not all. And Vaughan had been brave indeed, he had been a hero, if taken by surprise and at this disadvantage he had not shown some discomfiture.

It is easy to smile now! Easy to say that this was but an English gentleman, bound like others by the law! And Vaughan’s own kinsman! But few would have smiled then. He, through whose hands passed a quarter of the patronage of a county, who dammed or turned the stream of promotion, who had made many there and could unmake them, whose mere hint could have consigned, a few years back, the troublesome to the press-gang, who belonged almost as definitely, almost as exclusively, to a caste, as do white men in the India of to-day; who seldom showed himself to the vulgar save in his coach and four, or riding with belted grooms behind him—about such an one in ’31 there was, if no divinity, at least the ægis of real power, that habit which unquestioned authority confers, that port of Jove to which men bow! Scan the pictured faces of the men who steered this country through the long war—the faces of Liverpool and Castlereagh—

_Daring pilots in extremity_,

_Scorning the danger when the waves ran high_;

or of those men, heirs to their traditions, who, for nearly twenty years, confronted the no less formidable forces of discontent and disaffection—of Peel and Wellington, Croker and Canning, and he is blind who does not find there the reflection of that firm rule, the shadow of that power which still survived, though maimed and weakened in the early thirties.

Certainly it was not easy to smile at such men then; at their pride or their prejudices, their selfishness or their eccentricity. For behind lay solid power. Small blame to Vaughan therefore, if in the face of the servile attitude, the obsequious rising of the company about him, he felt his countenance change, if he could not quite hide his dismay. And though he told himself that his feelings were out of place, that the man did but stand in the shoes which would one day be his, and was but now what he would be, _vox faucibus hæsit_—he was dumb. It was Sir Robert who broke the silence.

“I fear, Mr. Vaughan,” he said, the gleam in his eyes alone betraying his passion—for he would as soon have walked the country lanes in his dressing robe as given way to rage in that company—“I fear you are saying in haste words which you will repent at leisure! Did I hear aright that—that you are in favour of the Bill?”

“I am,” Vaughan replied a little huskily. “I——”

“Just so, just so!” Sir Robert replied with a certain lightness. And raising his walking cane he pointed gravely and courteously to the door a pace or two from him. “That is the door, Mr. Vaughan,” he said. “You must be here, I am sure, under an error.”

Vaughan coloured painfully. “Sir Robert,” he said, “I owe you, I know——”

“You will owe me very little by to-morrow evening,” Sir Robert rejoined, interrupting him suavely. “Much less than you now think! But that is not to the point. Will you—kindly withdraw?”

“I would like at least to say this! That I came here——”

“Will you kindly withdraw?” Sir Robert persisted. “That is all.” And he pointed again, and still more blandly, to the door. “Any explanation you may please to offer—and I do not deny that one may be in place—you can give to my agent to-morrow. He, on his part, will have something to say. For the present—Annibal,” turning with kindly condescension, “be good enough to open the door for this gentleman. Good-evening, Mr. Vaughan. You will not, I am sure, compel me to remove with my friends to another room?”

And as he continued to point to the door, and would listen to nothing—and the room was certainly his—Vaughan walked out. And Annibal closed the door behind him.

XIV MISS SIBSON’S MISTAKE

It was perhaps fortunate for Miss Hilhouse that she did not hazard any remarks on that second escapade in the Square. Whether this amendment in her manners was due to Miss Sibson’s apothegms, or to the general desire of the school to see the new teacher’s new pelisse—which could only be gratified by favour—or to a threatening rigidity in Mary Smith’s bearing must remain a question. But children are keen observers. Their senses are as sharp as their tongues are cruel. And it is certain that Miss Smith had not read four lines of the fifth chapter of The Fairchild Family before a certain sternness in her tone was noted by those who had not already marked the danger signal in her eyes. For the gentlest eyes can dart lightnings on occasion. The sheep will turn in defence of its lamb. Nor ever walked woman who could not fight for her secret and her pride.

So Miss Hilhouse bit her tongue and kept silence, the girls behaved beautifully, and Mary read The Fairchild Family to them in a tone of monotony that perfectly reflected the future as she saw it. She had been very foolish, and very weak, but she was not without excuse. He had saved her life, she could plead that. True, brought up as she had been at Clapham, shielded from all dealings with the other sex, taught to regard them as wolves, or at best as a race with which she could have no safe parley, she should have known better. She should have known that handsome, courteous, masterful-eyed, as they were—and with a way with them that made poor girls’ hearts throb at one moment and stand still at another—she should have known that they meant nothing. That they were still men, and that she must not trust them, must not think of them, must not expect to find them more steadfast to a point than the weather-cock on St. Mary’s at Redcliffe.

The weather-cock? Ah!

She had no sooner framed the thought in the middle of the reading than she was aware of a sensation; and a child, one of the youngest, raised her hand. “Please—”

Mary paused.

“Yes?” she asked. “What is it?”

“Please, Miss Smith, did the weather-cock speak?”

Mary reddened violently.

“Speak? The weather-cock? What do you mean, child?”

“Please, Miss Smith, you said that the weather-cock told Lucy the truth, the truth, and all the truth.”

“Impossible!” Mary stammered. “I—I should have said, the coachman.” And Mary resumed the story, but with a hot face; a face that blushed more painfully and more intolerably because she was conscious that every eye was upon it, and that a score of small minds were groping for the cause of her confusion.

She remembered, oh, how well she remembered, that the schoolmistress at Clapham had told her that she had every good quality except strength of will. And how thoroughly, how rapidly had she proved the truth of the exception! Freed from control for only twenty-four hours, left for that time to her own devices, she had listened to the first voice that addressed her, believed the first flattering look that fell on her, taken the most ordinary attentions—attentions at which any girl with knowledge of the world or strength of will would have smiled—for gold, real red gold! So that a light look without a spoken word had drawn her heart from her. How it behoved her to despise herself, loathe herself, discipline herself! How she ought to guard herself in the future! Above all, how thankful should she be for the dull but safe routine that fenced, and henceforth would fence, her life from such dangers!

True. Yet how dreary to her young eyes seemed that routine stretched before her! How her courage fainted at the prospect of morning added to morning, formal walk to formal walk, lesson to lesson, one generation of pupils to another! For generation would follow generation, one chubby face would give place to another, and still she would be there, plodding through the stale task, listening with an aching head to the strumming on the harpsichord, saying the same things, finding the same faults, growing slowly into a correcting, scolding, punishing machine. By and by she would know The Fairchild Family by heart, and she would sicken at the “Letters on the Improvement of the Mind.” The children would still be young, but grey hairs would come to her, she would grow stout and dull; and those slender hands, those dainty fingers still white and fine, still meet for love, would be seared by a million needle-pricks and roughened by the wear and tear of ten thousand hours of plain sewing.

She was ungrateful, oh, she was ungrateful to think such thoughts! For in what was her lot worse than the lot of others? Or worse than it had been a week before when, who more humble-minded or contented, more cheerful or helpful than Mary Smith? When her only fault had been a weakness of character which her old schoolmistress hoped would be cured by time? When, though the shadow of an unknown Miss Sibson loomed formidable before her, she had faced her fate bravely and hopefully, supported not a little by the love and good wishes—won by a thousand kind offices—which went with her into the unknown world.

What had happened in the meantime? A little thing, oh, a very little thing. But to think of it under the childrens’ eyes made her face burn again. She had lost her heart—to a man. To a man! The very word seemed improper in that company. How much more improper when the man cared nothing for her, but tossing her a smile for guerdon, had taken her peace of mind and gone his way, with a laugh. At the best, if he had ever dreamt seriously of her, ever done more than deem her an innocent, easily flattered and as lightly to be won, he had changed his mind as quickly as a weather-cock shifts in April. And he had talked—that hurt her, that hurt her most! He had talked of her freely, boasted of her silliness, told his companions what he would do, or what he would not do; made her common to them!

She got away for a few minutes at tea-time. But twenty pairs of eyes followed her from the room and seized on her as she returned. And “Miss Smith, ain’t you well?” piped a tiny treble.

She was controlling her voice to answer—that she was quite well, when Miss Sibson intervened. “Miss Fripp,” she said sombrely, “write ‘Are you not,’ twenty times on your slate after tea! Miss Hilhouse, if you stare in that fashion you will be goggle-eyed. Young ladies, elbows, elbows! Have I not told you a score of times that the art of deportment consists in the right use of the elbow? Now, Miss Claxton, in what does the art of deportment consist?”

“In the right use of the elbow, Ma’am.”

“And what is the right use of the elbow?”

“To efface it, Ma’am.”

“That is better,” Miss Sibson replied, somewhat mollified. “Understood is half done. Miss Smith,” looking about her with benevolence, “had you occasion to commend any young lady’s needle this afternoon?”

Miss Smith looked unhappy: conscious that she had not been as attentive to her duties as became her. “I had no occasion to find fault, Ma’am,” she said timidly.

“Very good. Then every fourth young lady beginning at my right hand may take a piece of currant cake. I see that Miss Burges is wearing the silver medal for good conduct. She may take a piece, and give a piece to a friend. When you have eaten your cake you may go to the schoolroom and play for half an hour at Blind Man’s Buff. But—elbows! Elbows, young ladies,” gazing austerely at them over her glasses. “In all your frolics let deportment be your first consideration.”

The girls trooped out and Mary Smith rose to go with them. But Miss Sibson bade her remain. “I wish to speak to you,” she said.

Poor Mary trembled. For Miss Sibson was still in some measure an unknown quantity, a perplexing mixture of severity and benevolence, sound sense and Mrs. Chapone.

“I wish to speak to you,” Miss Sibson continued when they were alone. And then after a pause during which she poured herself out a third cup of tea, “My dear,” she said soberly, “the sooner a false step is retraced the better. I took a false step yesterday—I blame myself for it—when I allowed you—in spite of my rule to the contrary—to see a gentleman. I made that exception partly out of respect to the note which the parcel contained; the affair was strange and out of the ordinary. And partly because I liked the gentleman’s face. I thought him a gentleman; he told me that he had an independence: I had no reason to think him more than that. But I have heard to-day, my dear—I thought it right to make some enquiry in view of the possibility of a second visit—that he is a gentleman of large expectations, who will one day be very rich and a man of standing in the country. That alters the position,” Miss Sibson continued gravely. “Had I known it”—she rubbed her nose thoughtfully with the handle of her teaspoon—“I should not have permitted the interview.” And then after a few seconds of silence, “You understand me, I think, my dear?” she asked.

“Yes,” Mary said in a low voice. She spoke with perfect composure.

“Just so, just so,” Miss Sibson answered, pleased to see that the girl was too proud to give way before her—though she was sure that she would cry by and by. “I am glad to think that there is no harm done. As I have said, the sooner a false step is retraced, the better; and therefore if he calls again I shall not permit him to see you.”

“I do not wish to see him,” Mary said with dignity.

“Very good. Then that is understood.”

But strangely enough, the words had barely fallen from Miss Sibson’s lips when there came a knock at the house door, and the same thought leapt to the mind of each; and to Mary’s cheek a sudden vivid blush that, fading as quickly as it came, left her paler than before. Miss Sibson saw the girl’s distress, and she was about to suggest, in words equivalent to a command, that she should retire, when the door opened and the neat maidservant announced—with poorly masked excitement—that a gentleman wished to see Miss Smith.

Miss Sibson frowned.

“Where is he?” she asked, with majesty; as if she already scented the fray.

“In the parlour, Ma’am.”

“Very good. Very good. I will see him.” But not until the maid had retired did the schoolmistress rise to her feet. “You had better stay here,” she said, looking at her companion, “until my return. It is of course your wish that I should dismiss him?”

Mary shivered. Those dreams of something brighter, something higher, something fuller than the daily round; of a life in the sunshine, of eyes that looked into hers—this was their end! But she said “Yes,” bravely.

“Good girl,” said Miss Sibson, feeling, good, honest creature, more than she showed. “I will do so.” And she swam forth.

Poor Mary! The door was barely shut before her heart whispered that she had only to cross the hall and she would see him; that, on the other hand, if she did not cross the hall, she would never, never, never see him again! She would stay here for all time, bound hand and foot to the unchanging round of petty duties, a blind slave in the mill, no longer a woman—though her woman’s heart hungered for love—but a dull, formal, old maid, growing more stiff and angular with every year! No farther away than the other side of the hall were love and freedom. And she dared not, she dared not open the door!

And then she bethought her, that he was no weathercock, for he had come again! He had come! And it must be for something. For what?

She heard the door open on the parlour side of the hall, and she knew that he was going. And she stood listening, waiting with blanched cheeks.

The door opened and Miss Sibson came in, met her look—and started.

“Oh!” the schoolmistress exclaimed; and for a moment she stood, looking strangely at the girl, as if she did not know what to say to her. Then, “We were mistaken,” she said, with a serious face. “It is not the gentleman you were expecting, my dear. On the contrary, it’s a stranger who wishes to see you on business.”

Mary tried to gain command of herself. “I had rather not,” she said faintly. “I don’t think I can.”

“I fear—you must,” Miss Sibson rejoined, with unusual gravity. “Still, there is no hurry. He can wait a few minutes. He can await your leisure. Do you sit down and compose yourself. You have no reason to be disturbed. The gentleman”—she continued, with an odd inflection in her voice—“is old enough to be your father.”

XV MR. PYBUS’S OFFER

“A note for you, sir.” Vaughan turned moodily to take it. It was the morning after the Vermuyden dinner, and he had slept ill, he had risen late, he was still sitting before his breakfast, toying with it rather than eating it. His first feeling on leaving the dining-room had been bitter chagrin at the ease with which Sir Robert had dealt with him. This had given place a little later to amusement; for he had a sense of humour. And he had laughed, though sorely, at the figure he had cut as he beat his retreat. Still later, as he lay, excited and wakeful, he had fallen a prey to doubt; that horrible three o’clock in the morning doubt, which defies reason, which sees all the _cons_ in the strongest light and reduces the _pros_ to shadows. However, one thing was certain. He had crossed the Rubicon. He had divorced himself by public act from the party to which his forbears—for the Vaughans as well as the Vermuydens had been Tories—had belonged. He had joined the Whigs; nay, he had joined the Reformers. But though he had done this deliberately and from conviction, though his reason approved the step, and his brain teemed with arguments in its favour, the chance that he might be wrong haunted him.

That governing class from which he was separating himself, from which his policy would snatch power, which in future would dub him traitor, what had it not done for England? With how firm a hand had it not guided the country through storm and stress, with what success shielded it not from foreign foes only, but from disruption and revolution? He scanned the last hundred and fifty years and saw the country, always under the steady rule of that class which had the greatest stake in its prosperity, advancing in strength and riches and comfort, ay, and, though slowly in these, in knowledge also and the humanities and decencies. And the question forced itself upon him, would that great middle class into whose hands the sway now fell, use it better? Would they produce statesmen more able than Walpole or Chatham, generals braver than Wolfe or Moore, a higher heart than Nelson’s? Nay, would the matter end there? Would not power slip into the hands of a wider and yet a wider circle? Would Orator Hunt’s dream of Manhood Suffrage, Annual Parliaments and the Ballot become a reality? Would government by the majority, government by tale of heads, as if three chawbacons must perforce be wiser than one squire, government by the ill-taught, untrained mass, with the least to lose and the most to gain—would that in the long run plunge the country in fatal misfortunes?

It was just possible that those who deemed the balance of power, established in 1688, the one perfect mean between despotism and anarchy—it was just possible that they were right. And that he was a fool.

Then to divert his mind he had allowed himself to think of Mary Smith. And he had tossed and tumbled, ill-satisfied with himself. He was brave, he told himself, in the wrong place. He had the courage to break with old associations, to defy opinion, to disregard Sir Robert—where no more than a point of pride was concerned; for it was absurd to fancy that the fate of England hung on his voice. But in a matter which went to the root of his happiness—for he was sure that he loved Mary Smith and would love no other—he had not the spirit to defy a little gossip, a few smiles, the contempt of the worldly. He flushed from head to foot at the thought of a life which, however modest—and modesty was not incompatible with ambition—was shared by her, and would be pervaded by her. And yet he dared not purchase that life at so trifling a cost! No, he was weak where he should be strong, and strong where he should be weak. And so he had tossed and turned, and now after two or three hours of feverish sleep, he sat glooming over his tea cup.

Presently he broke open the note which the waiter had handed to him. He read it, and “Who brought this?” he asked, with a perplexed face.

“Don’t know, sir,” Sam replied glibly, beginning to collect the breakfast dishes.

“Will you enquire?”

“Found it on the hall table, sir,” the man answered, in the same tone. “Fancy,” with a grin, “it’s a runaway knock, sir. Known a man find a cabbage at the door and a whole year’s wages under it—at election time, sir! Yes, sir. Find funny things in funny places—election time, sir.”

Vaughan made no reply, but a few minutes later he took his hat and descending the stairs, strolled with an easy air into the street. He paused as if to contemplate the Abbey Church, beautiful even in its disfigurement. Then, but as if he were careless which way he went, he turned to the right.

The main street, with its whitened doorsteps and gleaming knockers, lay languid in the sunshine; perhaps, enervated by the dissipation of the previous evening. The candidates who would presently pay formal visits to the voters were not yet afoot: and though taverns where the tap was running already gave forth maudlin laughter, no other sign of the coming event declared itself. A few tradesmen stood at their doors, a few dogs lay stretched in the sun; and only Vaughan’s common sense told him that he was watched.

From the High Street he presently turned into a narrow alley on the right which descended between garden walls to the lower level of the town. A man who was lounging in the mouth of the alley muttered “second door on the left,” as Vaughan passed, and the latter moved on counting the doors. At the one indicated he paused, and, after making certain that he was not observed, he knocked. The door opened a little way.

“For whom are you?” asked someone who kept himself out of sight.

“Buff and Blue,” Vaughan answered.

“Right; sir,” the voice rejoined briskly. The door opened wide and Vaughan passed in. He found himself in a small walled garden smothered in lilac and laburnum, and shaded by two great chestnut trees already so fully in leaf as to hide the house to which the garden belonged.