Chapter VII: Part 7

The person who had admitted him, a very small, very neat gentleman in a high-collared blue coat and nankeen trousers, with a redundant soft cravat wound about his thin neck, bowed low. “Happy to see you, Mr. Vaughan,” he chirped. “I am Mr. Pybus, his lordship’s man of business. Happy to be the intermediary in so pleasant a matter.”

“I hope it may turn out so,” Vaughan replied drily. “You wrote me a very mysterious note.”

“Can’t be too careful, sir,” the little man, who was said to model himself upon Lord John Russell, answered with an important frown. “Can’t be too careful in these matters. You’re watched and I am watched, sir.”

“I dare say,” Vaughan replied.

“And the responsibility is great, very great. May I——” he continued, pulling out his box, “but I dare say you don’t take snuff?”

“No.”

“No? The younger generation! Just so! Many of the young gentry smoke, I am told. Other days, other manners! Well—we know of course what happened last night. And I’m bound to say, I honour you, Mr. Vaughan! I honour you, sir.”

“You can let that pass,” Vaughan replied coldly.

“Very good! Very good! Of course,” he continued with importance, “the news was brought to me at once, and his lordship knew it before he slept.”

“Oh!”

“Yes, indeed. Yes. And he wrote to me this morning—in his dressing gown, I don’t doubt. He commanded me to tell you——”

But here Vaughan stopped him—somewhat rudely. “One minute, Mr. Pybus,” he said, “I don’t wish to know what Lord Lansdowne said or did—because it will not affect my conduct. I am here because you requested me to grant you an interview. But if your purpose be merely to convey to me Lord Lansdowne’s approval—or disapproval,” in a tone a little more contemptuous than was necessary, “be good enough to understand that they are equally indifferent to me. I have done what I have done without regard to my cousin’s—to Sir Robert Vermuyden’s feelings. You may take it for certain,” he added loftily, “that I shall not be led beyond my own judgment by any regard for his lordship’s.”

“But hear me out!” the little man cried, dancing to and fro in his eagerness; so that, in the shifting lights under the great chestnut tree, he looked like a pert, bright-coloured bird. “Hear me out, and you’ll not say that!”

“I shall say, Mr. Pybus——”

“I beg you to hear me out!”

Vaughan shrugged his shoulders.

“Go on!” he said. “I have said my say, and I suppose you understand me.”

“I shall hold it unsaid,” Mr. Pybus rejoined warmly, “until I have spoken!” And he waved an agitated finger in the air. “Observe, Mr. Vaughan—his lordship bade me take you entirely into confidence, and I do so. We’ve only one candidate—Mr. Wrench. Colonel Petty is sure of his election in Ireland and we’ve no mind to stand a second contest to fill his seat: in fact we are not going to nominate him. Lord Kerry, my lord’s eldest son thought of it, but it is not a certainty, and my lord wishes him to wait a year or two and sit for Calne. I say it’s not a certainty. But it’s next door to a certainty since you have declared yourself. And my lord’s view, Mr. Vaughan, is that he who hits the buck should have the haunch. You take me?”

“Indeed, I don’t.”

“Then I’ll be downright, sir. To the point, sir. Will you be our candidate?”

“What?” Vaughan cried. He turned very red. “What do you mean?”

“What I said, sir. Will you be our candidate? For the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill? If so, we shall not say a word until to-morrow and then we shall nominate you with Mr. Wrench, and take ’em by surprise. Eh? Do you see? They’ve got their speeches ready full of my lord’s interference and my lord’s dictation, and they will point to Colonel Petty, my lord’s cousin, for proof! And then,” Mr. Pybus winked, much after the fashion of a mischievous paroquet, “we’ll knock the stool from under ’em by nominating you! And, mind you, Mr. Vaughan, we are going to win. We were hopeful before, for we’ve one of their men in gaol, and another, Pillinger of the Blue Duck, is tied by the leg. His wife owes a bit of money and thinks more of fifty guineas in her own pocket than of thirty pounds a year in her husband’s. And she and the doctor have got him in bed and will see that he’s not well enough to vote! Ha! Ha! So there it is, Mr. Vaughan! There it is! My lord’s offer, not mine. I believe he’d word from London what you’d be likely to do. Only he felt a delicacy about moving—until you declared yourself.”

“I see,” Vaughan replied. And indeed he did see more than he liked.

“Just so, sir. My lord’s a gentleman if ever there was one!” And Mr. Pybus, pulling down his waistcoat, looked as if he suspected that he had imbibed much of his lordship’s gentility.

Vaughan stood, thinking; his eyes gazing into the shimmering depths of green where the branches of the chestnut tree under which he stood swept the sun-kissed turf. And as he thought he tried to still the turmoil in his brain. Here within reach of his hand, to take or leave, was that which had been his ambition for years! No longer to play at the game, no longer to make believe while he addressed the Forum or the Academic that he was addressing the Commons of England; but verily and really to be one of that august body, and to have all within reach. Had not the offer of cabinet honours fallen to Lord Palmerston at twenty-five? And what Lord Palmerston had done at twenty-five, he might do at thirty-five! And more easily, if he gained a footing before the crowd of new members whom the Bill would bring in, took the floor. The thought set his pulse a-gallop. His chance! His chance at last! But if he let it slip now, it might not be his for long years. It is poor work waiting for dead men’s shoes.

And yet he hesitated, with a flushed face. For the thing offered without price or preface, by a man who had power to push him, by the man who even now was pushing Mr. Macaulay at Calne, tempted him sorely. Nor less—nor less because he remembered with bitterness that Sir Robert had made him no such offer, and now never would! So that if he refused this offer, he could look for no second from either side!

And yet he could not forget that Sir Robert was his kinsman, was the head of his family, the donor of his vote. And in the night watches he had decided that, his mind delivered, his independence declared, he would not vote. Neither for Sir Robert—for conscience’s sake; nor against Sir Robert, for his name’s sake!

Then how could he not only take an active part against him, but raise his fortunes on his fall?

He drew a deep breath. And he put the temptation from him. “I am much obliged to his lordship,” he said quietly. “But I cannot accept his offer.”

“Not accept it?” Mr. Pybus cried. “Mr. Vaughan! You don’t mean it, sir! You don’t mean it! It’s a safe seat! It’s in your own hands, I tell you! And after last night! Besides, it is not as if you had not declared yourself.”

“I cannot accept it,” Vaughan repeated coldly. “I am obliged to Lord Lansdowne for his kind thought of me. I beg you to convey my thanks to him. But I cannot—in the position I occupy—accept the offer.”

Mr. Pybus stared. Was it possible that the scene at the Vermuyden dinner had been a ruse? A piece of play-acting to gain his secrets? If so—he was undone! “But,” he quavered with an unhappy eye, “you are in favour of the Bill, Mr. Vaughan?”

“I am.

“And—and of Reform generally, I understand?”

“Certainly.”

“Then—I don’t understand? Why do you refuse?”

Vaughan raised his head and looked at him with a movement which would have reminded Isaac White of Sir Robert. “That is my business,” he said.

“But you see,” Mr. Pybus remonstrated timidly—he was rather a crestfallen bird by this time—“I confess I was never more surprised in my life! Never! You see I’ve told you all our secrets.”

“I shall keep them.”

“Yes, but—oh dear! oh dear!” Pybus was thinking of what he had said about Mrs. Pillinger of the Blue Duck. “I—I don’t know what to say,” he added. “I am afraid I have been too hasty, very hasty! Very precipitate! Of course, Mr. Vaughan,” he continued, “the offer would not have been made if we had not thought you certain to accept it!”

“Then,” Vaughan replied with dignity, “you can consider that it has not been made. I shall not name it for certain.”

“Well! Well!”

“I can say no more,” Vaughan continued coldly. “Indeed, there is nothing more to be said, Mr. Pybus?”

“No,” piteously, “I suppose not. If you really won’t change your mind, sir?”

“I shall not do that,” the young man answered. And a minute later with Mr. Pybus’s faint appeals still sounding in his ears he was on the other side of the garden door, and striding down the alley, towards the King’s Wall, whence making a detour he returned to the High Street.

XVI LESS THAN A HERO

It was the evening of the day on which the meeting between Arthur Vaughan and Mr. Pybus had taken place, and from the thirty-six windows in the front of Stapylton lights shone on the dusky glades of the park; here, twinkling fairy-like over the long slope of sward that shimmered pale-green as with the ghostly reflection of dead daylight, there, shining boldly upon the clump of beeches that topped an eminence with blackness. Vaughan sat beside Isaac White in the carriage which Sir Robert had sent for him; and looking curiously forth on the demesne which would be his if he lived, he could scarcely believe his eyes. Was the old squire so sure of victory that he already illuminated his windows? Or was the house, long sparely inhabited, and opened only at rare intervals and to dull and formal parties, full now from attic to hall? Election or no election, it seemed unlikely. Yet every window, yes, every window had its light!

He was too proud to question the agent who, his errand done, and his message delivered, showed no desire to talk. More than once, indeed, in the course of their short companionship, Vaughan had caught White looking at him strangely; with something like pity in his eyes. And though the young man was far from letting this distress him—probably White, with his inborn reverence for Sir Robert, despaired of all who fell under his displeasure—it closed his lips and hardened his heart. He was no paid servant; but a kinsman and the heir. And he would have Sir Robert remember this. For his own part, he was not going to forget who he was; that a Chancellor had stooped to flatter him and a Cabinet Minister had offered him a seat. He had refused for a point of honour a bait which few would have refused; and he was not going to be browbeaten by an old gentleman whom the world had out-paced, and whose beliefs, whose prejudices, whose views, were of yesterday. Who, in his profound ignorance of present conditions, would plunge England into civil war rather than resign a privilege as obsolete as ship-money, and as illegal as the Dispensing Power.

While he thought of this the carriage stopped at the door. He alighted and ascended the steps.

The hall more than made good the outside promise; it was brilliantly lighted, and behind Mapp and the servant who received him Vaughan had a passing glimpse of three or four men in full-dress livery. From the dining-room on his left issued peals of laughter, and voices, so clear that, though he had not the smallest reason to expect to hear them there, he was sure that he caught Bob Flixton’s tones. The discovery was not pleasing; but Mapp, turning the other way and giving him no time to think, went before him to the suite of state-rooms—which he had not seen in use more than thrice within his knowledge of the house. It must be so then—he thought with a slight shock of surprise. The place must be full! For the gilt mirrors in both the large and small drawing-rooms reflected the soft light of many candles, wood fires burned and crackled on the hearths, the “Morning Chronicle,” the “Quarterly,” and other signs of life lay about on the round tables, and an air of cheerful _bienséance_ pervaded all. What did it mean?

“Sir Robert has finished dinner, sir,” Mapp said—even he seemed to wear an unusual air of solemnity. “He will be with you, sir, immediately. Hope you are well, sir?”

“Quite well, Mapp, thank you.”

Then he was left alone—to wonder if a second surprise awaited him. He had had one that day. If a second were in store for him what was its nature? Could Sir Robert on his side be going to offer him one of the seats—if he would recant? He hoped not. But he had not time to give more than a thought to that before he heard footsteps and voices crossing the hall. The next moment there entered the outer room—at such a distance from the hearth of the room in which he stood, that he had a leisurely view of all before they reached him—three persons. The first was a tall burly man in slovenly evening clothes, and with an ungainly rolling walk; after him came Sir Robert himself, and after him again, Isaac White.

Vaughan advanced a step or two, and Sir Robert passed by the burly man, who had a pendulous under lip, and a face at once flabby and melancholy. The baronet held out his hand. “We have not quarrelled yet, Mr. Vaughan,” he said, with a cordiality which took Vaughan quite by surprise. “I trust and believe that we are not going to quarrel. I bid you welcome therefore. This,” he continued with a gesture of courteous deference, “is Sir Charles Wetherell, whom you know by reputation, and whom, for a reason which you will understand by and by, I have asked to be present at our interview.”

The stout man eyed Vaughan from under bushy eyebrows. “I think we have met before,” he said in a deep voice. “At Westminster, Mr. Vaughan, on the 22nd of last month.” He had a habit of blinking as he talked. “I was beholden to you on that occasion.”

Vaughan had already recognised him and recalled the incident in Palace Yard. He bowed with an expression of silent sympathy. But he wondered all the more. The presence of the late attorney-general, a man of mark in the political world, whose defeat at Norwich was in that morning’s paper—what did it mean? Did they think to browbeat him? Or—had Sir Charles Wetherell also an offer to make to him? In any event it seemed that he had made himself a personage by his independence. Sought by the one side, sought by the other! A résumé of the answer he would give flashed before him. However, they were not come to that yet!

“Will you sit down,” said Sir Robert. The great man’s voice and manner—to Vaughan’s surprise—were less autocratic and more friendly than he had ever known them. Indeed, in comparison of the lion of last evening he was but a mouse. “In the first place,” he continued, “I am obliged to you for your compliance with my wishes.”

Vaughan murmured that he had come at no inconvenience to himself.

“I hope not,” Sir Robert replied. “In the next place let me say, that we have to speak to you on a matter of the first importance; a matter also on which we have the advantage of knowledge which you have not. It is my desire, therefore, to admit you to a parity with us in that respect, Mr. Vaughan, before you express yourself on any subject on which we are likely to differ.”

Vaughan looked keenly, almost suspiciously at him; and an observer would have noticed that there was a closer likeness between the two men than the slender tie of blood warranted. “If it is a question, Sir Robert,” he said slowly, “of the subject on which we differed last evening, I would prefer to say at once——”

“Don’t!” Wetherell, who was seated within a long reach of him, struck in. “Don’t!” And he laid an elephantine and not over-clean hand on Vaughan’s knee. “You can spill words as easy as water,” he continued, “and they are as hard to pick up again. Hear what Vermuyden has to say, and what I’ve to say—’tisn’t much—and then blow your trumpet—if you’ve any breath left!” he added _sotto voce_, as he threw himself back.

Vaughan hesitated a moment. Then, “Very good,” he said, “if you will hear me afterwards. But——”

“But and If are two wenches always raising trouble!” Wetherell cried coarsely. “Do you listen, Mr. Vaughan. Do you listen. Now, Vermuyden, go on.”

But Sir Robert did not seem to have words at command. He took a pinch of snuff from the gold box with which his fingers trifled: and he opened his mouth to resume; but he hesitated. At length, “What I have to tell you, Mr. Vaughan,” he said, in a voice more diffident than usual, “had perhaps been more properly told by my attorney to yours. I fully admit that,” dusting the snuff from his frill. “And it would have been so told but for—but for exigencies not immediately connected with it, which are nevertheless so pressing as to—to induce me to take the one step immediately possible. Less regular, but immediately possible! In spite of this, you will believe, I am sure, that I do not wish to take any advantage of you other than,” he paused with an embarrassed look at Wetherell, “that which my position gives me. For the rest I”—he looked again at his snuffbox and hesitated—“I think—I——”

“You’d better come to the point!” Wetherell growled impatiently, jerking his ungainly person back in his chair, and lurching forward again. “To the point, man! Shall I tell him?”

Sir Robert straightened himself—with a sigh of relief. “If you please,” he said, “I think you had better. It—it may come better from you, as you are not interested.”

Vaughan looked from one to the other, and wondered what on earth they meant, and what they would be at. His cordial reception followed by this strange exordium, the preparations, the presence of the three men seated about him and all, it seemed, ill at ease—these things begot instinctive misgivings; and an uneasiness, which it was not in the power of reason to hold futile. What were they meditating? What threat, what inducement? And what meant this strange illumination of the house, this air of festivity? It could be nothing to him. And yet—but Wetherell was speaking.

“Mr. Vaughan,” he said gruffly—and he swayed himself as was his habit to and fro in his seat, “my friend here, and your kinsman, has made a discovery of—of the utmost possible importance to him; and, speaking candidly, of scarcely less importance to you. I don’t know whether you read the trash they call novels now-a-days—‘The Disowned’” with a snort of contempt, “and ‘Tremayne’ and the rest? I hope not, I don’t! But it’s something devilish like the stuff they put in them that I’ve to tell you. You’ll believe it or not, as you please. You think yourself heir to the Stapylton estates? Of course you do. Sir Robert has no more than a life-interest, and if he has no children, the reversion in fee, as we lawyers call it, is yours. Just so. But if he has children, son or daughter, you are ousted, Mr. Vaughan.”

“Are you going to tell me,” Vaughan said, his face grown suddenly rigid, “that he has children?” His heart was beating furiously under his waistcoat, but, taken aback as he was, he maintained outward composure.

“That’s it,” Wetherell answered bluntly.

“Then——”

“He has a daughter.”

“It will have to be proved!” Vaughan said slowly and in the tone of a man who chose his words. And he rose to his feet. He felt, perhaps he was justified in feeling, that they had taken him at a disadvantage. That they had treated him unfairly in trapping him hither, one to three; in order that they might see, perhaps, how he took it! Not—his thoughts travelled rapidly over the facts known to him—that the thing could be true! The punishment for last night’s revolt fell too pat, too _à propos_, he’d not believe it! And besides, it could not be true. For Lady Vermuyden lived, and there could be no question of a concealed marriage, or a low-born family. “It will have to be proved!” he repeated firmly. “And is matter rather for my lawyers than for me.”

Sir Robert, too, had risen to his feet. But it was Wetherell who spoke.

“Perhaps so!” he said. “Perhaps so. Indeed I admit it, young sir! It will have to be proved. But——”

“It should have been told to them rather than to me!” Vaughan repeated, with a sparkling eye. And he turned as if he were determined to treat them as hostile and to have nothing farther to say to them.

But Wetherell stopped him. “Stay, young man,” he said, “and be ashamed of yourself! You forget yourself!” And before Vaughan, stung and angry, could retort upon him, “You forget,” he continued, “that this touches another as closely as it touches you—and more closely! You are a gentleman, sir, and Sir Robert’s kinsman. Have you no word then, for him!” pointing, with a gesture roughly eloquent, to his host. “You lose, but have you no word for him who gains! You lose, but is it nothing to him that he finds himself childless no longer, heirless no longer? That his house is no longer lonely, his hearth no longer empty! Man alive,” he added, dropping with honest indignation to a low note, “you lose, but what does he not gain? And have you no word, no generous thought for him? Bah!” throwing himself back in his seat. “Poor human nature.”

“Still it must be proved,” said Vaughan sullenly, though in his heart he acknowledged the truth of the reproach.

“Granted! But will you not hear what it is, that is to be proved?” Wetherell retorted. “If so, sit down, sir, sit down, and hear what we have to tell you like a man. Will you do that,” in a tone of extreme exasperation, which did but reflect the slowly hardening expression of Sir Robert’s face, “or are you quite a fool?”

Vaughan hesitated, looking with angry eyes on Wetherell. Then he sat down. “Am I to understand,” he said coldly, “that this is news to Sir Robert?”

“It was news to him yesterday.”

Vaughan bowed and was silent; aware that a more generous demeanour would better become him, but unable to compass it on the spur of the moment. He was ignorant—unfortunately—of the spirit in which he had been summoned: consequently he could not guess that every word he uttered rang churlishly in the ears of more than one of his listeners. He was no churl; but he was taken unfairly—as it seemed to him. And to be called upon in the first moment of chagrin to congratulate Sir Robert on an event which ruined his own prospects and changed his life—was too much. Too much! But again Wetherell was speaking.

“You shall know what we know from the beginning,” he said, in his heavy melancholy way. “You are aware, I suppose, that Sir Robert married—in the year ’10, was it not?—Yes, in the year ’10, and that Lady Vermuyden bore him one child, a daughter, who died in Italy in the year ’15. It appears now—we are in a position to prove, I think—that that child did not die in that year, nor in any year; but is now alive, is in this country and can be perfectly identified.”

Vaughan coughed. “This is strange news,” he said, “after all these years; and somewhat sudden, is it not?”

Sir Robert’s face grew harder, but Wetherell only shrugged his shoulders. “If you will listen,” he replied, “you will know all that we know. It is no secret, at any rate in this room it is no secret, that in the year ’14 Sir Robert fancied that he had grave reason to be displeased with Lady Vermuyden. It was thought by her friends that a better agreement might be produced by a temporary separation, and the child’s health afforded a pretext. Accordingly, Sir Robert suffered Lady Vermuyden to take it abroad, her suite consisting of a courier, a maid, and a nurse. The nurse she sent back to England not long afterwards on the plea that an Italian woman from whom the child might learn the language would be better. For my part, I believe that she acted bonâ-fide in this. But in other respects,” puffing out his cheeks, “her conduct was such as to alarm her husband; and, in terms perhaps too peremptory, Sir Robert bade her return at once—or cease to consider his house as her home. Her answer was the announcement of the child’s death.”

“And that it did not die,” Vaughan murmured, “as Lady Vermuyden said?”

“We have this evidence. But first let me say, that Sir Robert on the receipt of the news set out for Italy overland. The Hundred Days, however, stopped him; he could not cross France, and he returned without certifying the child’s death. He had indeed no suspicion, no reason for suspicion. Well, then, for evidence that it did not die. The courier is dead, and there remains only the maid. She is alive, she is here, she is in this house. And it is from her that we have learned the truth—that the child did not die.”

He paused a moment, brooding in his fat, melancholy way on the pattern of the carpet between his feet. Sir Robert, with a face hard and proud, sat upright, listening to the tale of his misfortunes—and doubtless suffered torments as he listened.

“Her story,” Wetherell resumed—possibly he had been arranging his thoughts—“is this. Lady Vermuyden was living a life of the wildest gaiety. She had no affection for the child; if the woman is to be believed, she hated it. To part with it was nothing to her one way or the other, and on receipt of Sir Robert’s order to return, her ladyship conceived the idea of punishing him by abducting the child and telling him it was dead. She set out from Florence with it; on the way she left it at Orvieto in charge of the Italian nurse, and arriving in Rome she put about the story of its death. Shortly afterwards she had it carried to England and bred up in an establishment near London—always with the aid and connivance of her maid.”

“The maid’s name?” Vaughan asked.

“Herapath—Martha Herapath. But to proceed. By and by Lady Vermuyden returned to England, and settled at Brighton, and the maid left her and married, but continued to draw a pension from her. Lady Vermuyden persisted here—in the company of Lady Conyng—but I need name no names—in the same course of giddiness, if no worse, which she had pursued abroad; and gave little if any heed to the child. But this woman Herapath never forgot that the pension she enjoyed was dependent on her power to prove the truth: and when a short time back the girl, now well-grown, was withdrawn from her knowledge, she grew restive. She sought Lady Vermuyden, always a creature of impulse, and when her ladyship, foolish in this as in all things, refused to meet her views she—she came to us,” he continued, lifting his head abruptly and looking at Vaughan, “and told us the story.”

“It will have to be proved,” Vaughan said stubbornly.

“No doubt, strictly proved,” Wetherell replied. “In the meantime if you would like to peruse the facts in greater detail, they are here, as taken down from the woman’s mouth.” He drew from his capacious breast-pocket a manuscript consisting of several sheets which he unfolded and flattened on his knee. He handed it to Vaughan.

The young man took it, without looking at Sir Robert: and with his thoughts in a whirl—and underlying them a sick feeling of impending misfortune—he proceeded to read it, line after line, without taking in a single word. For all the time his brain was at work measuring the change. His modest competence would be left to him. He would have enough to live as he was now living, and to pursue his career; or, in the alternative, he might settle down as a small squire in his paternal home in South Wales. But the great inheritance which had loomed large in the background of his life and had been more to him than he had admitted, the future dignity which he had undervalued while he thought it his own, the position more enviable than many a peer’s, and higher by its traditions than any to which he could attain by his own exertions, though he reached the Woolsack—these were gone if Wetherell’s tale was true. Gone in a moment, at a word! And though he might have lost more, though many a man had lost his all by such a stroke and smiled, he was no hero, and he could not on the instant smile. He could not in a moment oust all bitterness. He knew that he was taking the news unworthily; that he was playing a poor part. But he could not force himself to play a better—on the instant. When he had read with unseeing eyes to the bottom of the first page and had turned it mechanically, he let the papers fall upon his knee.

“You do not wish me,” he said slowly, “to express an opinion now, I suppose?”

“No,” Wetherell answered. “Certainly not. But I have not quite done. I have not quite done,” he repeated ponderously. “I should tell you that for opening the matter to you now—we have two reasons, Mr. Vaughan. Two reasons. First, we think it due to you—as one of the family. And secondly, Vermuyden desires that from the beginning, his intentions shall be clear and—be understood.”

“I thoroughly understand them,” Vaughan answered drily. No one was more conscious than he that he was behaving ill.

“That is just what you do not!” Wetherell retorted stolidly. “You spill words, young man, and by and by you will wish to pick them up again. You cannot anticipate, at any rate, you have no right to anticipate, Sir Robert’s intentions, of which he has asked me to be the mouthpiece. The estate, of course, and the settled funds must go to his daughter. But there is, it appears, a large sum arising from the economical management of the property, which is at his disposal. He feels,” Wetherell continued sombrely, an elbow on each knee and his eyes on the floor, “that some injustice has been done to you, and he desires to compensate you for that injustice. He proposes, therefore, to secure to you the succession to two-thirds of this sum; which amounts—which amounts, in the whole I believe”—here he looked at White—“to little short of eighty thousand pounds.”

Vaughan, who had been more than once on the point of interrupting him, did so at last. “I could not accept it!” he exclaimed impulsively. And he rose, with a hot face, from his seat. “I could not accept it.”

“As a legacy?” Wetherell, who was fond of money, said with a queer look. “As a legacy, eh? Why not?” While Sir Robert, with compressed lips, almost repented of his generosity. He had looked for some show of good-feeling, some word of sympathy, some felicitation from the young man, who, after all, was his blood relation. But if this was to be his return, if his advances were to be met with suspicion, his benevolence with churlishness, then all, all in this young man was of a piece—and detestable!

And certainly Vaughan was not showing himself in the best light. He was conscious that he had taken the news ill; but he could not change his attitude in a moment. Under no circumstances is it an easy thing to take a gift with grace: to take one with grace under these circumstances—and when he had already misbehaved—was beyond him, as it would have been beyond most men.

For a moment drawn this way by his temper, that way by his better feelings, he did not know how to answer Wetherell’s last words. At last and lamely, “May I ask,” he said, “why Sir Robert makes me this offer while the matter lies open?”

“Sir Robert will prove his case,” Wetherell answered gruffly, “if that is what you mean.”

“I mean——”

“He does not ask you to surrender anything.”

“I am bound to say, then, that the offer is very generous,” Vaughan replied, melting, and speaking with some warmth. “Most generous. But——”

“He asks you to surrender nothing,” Wetherell repeated stolidly, his face between his knees.

“But I still think it is premature,” Vaughan persisted doggedly. “And handsome as it is, more than handsome as it is, I think that it would have come with greater force, were my position first made clear!”

“Maybe,” Wetherell said, his face still hidden. “I don’t deny that.”

“As it is,” with a deep breath, “I am taken by surprise. I do not know what to say. I find it hard to say anything in the first flush of the matter.” And Vaughan looked from one to the other. “So, for the present, with Sir Robert’s permission,” he continued, “and without any slight to his generosity, I will take leave. If he is good enough, to repeat on some future occasion, this very handsome—this uncalled for and generous offer, which he has now outlined, I shall know, I hope, what is due to him, without forgetting what is due also to myself. In the meantime I have only to thank him and——”

But the belated congratulation which was on his lips and which might have altered many things, was not to be uttered.

“One moment!” Sir Robert struck in. “One moment!” He spoke with a hardness born of long suppressed irritation. “You have taken your stand, Mr. Vaughan, strictly on the defensive, I see——”

“But I think you understand——”

“Strictly on the defensive,” the baronet repeated, requiring silence by a gesture. “You must not be surprised therefore, if I—nay, let me speak!—if I also say a word on a point which touches me.”

“I wouldn’t!” Wetherell growled in his deep voice; and for an instant he raised his huge face, and looked stolidly at the wall before him.

But Sir Robert was not to be bidden. “I think otherwise,” he said. “Mr. Vaughan, the election to-morrow touches me very nearly—in more ways than one. The vote you have, you received at my hands and hold only as my heir. I take it for granted, therefore, that under the present circumstances, you will use it as I desire.”

“Oh!” Vaughan said. And drawing himself up to his full height he passed his eyes slowly from one to the other with a singular smile. “Oh!” he repeated—and there was a world of meaning in his tone. “Am I to understand then——”

“I have made myself quite clear,” Sir Robert cried, his manner betraying his agitation.

“Am I to understand,” Vaughan persisted, “that the offer which you made me a few minutes back, the generous and handsome offer,” he continued with a faint note of irony in his voice, “was dependent on my conduct to-morrow? Am I to understand that?”

“If you please to put it so,” Sir Robert replied, his voice quivering with the resentment he had long and patiently suppressed. “And if your own sense of honour does not dictate to you how to act.”

“But do you put it so?”

“Do you mean——”

“I mean,” Vaughan said, “does the offer depend on the use I make of my vote to-morrow? That is the point, Sir Robert!”

“No,” Wetherell muttered indistinctly.

But again Sir Robert would not be bidden. “I will be frank,” he said haughtily. “And my answer is, yes! yes! For I do not conceive, Mr. Vaughan, that a gentleman would take so great a benefit, and refuse so slight a service! A service, too, which, quite apart from this offer, most men——”

“Thank you,” Vaughan replied, interrupting him. “That is clear enough.” And he looked from one to the other with a smile of amusement; the smile of a man suddenly reinstated in his own opinion—and once more master of his company. “Now I understand,” he continued. “I see now why the offer which a few minutes ago seemed so premature, so strangely premature, was made this evening. To-morrow it had been made too late! My vote had been cast and I could no longer be—bribed!”

“Bribed, sir?” cried Sir Robert, red with anger.

“Yes, bribed, sir. But let me tell you,” Vaughan went on, allowing the bitterness which he had been feeling to appear, “let me tell you, Sir Robert, that if not only my future, but my present, if my all, were at stake—I should resent such an offer as an insult!”

Sir Robert took a step towards the bell and stopped.

“An insult!” Vaughan repeated firmly. “As great an insult as I should inflict upon you, if I were unwise enough to do the errand I was asked to do a week ago—by a cabinet minister. And offered you, Sir Robert, here in your own house, a peerage conditional on your support of the Bill!”

“A peerage?” Sir Robert’s eyes seemed to be starting from his head. “A peerage! Conditional on my——”

“Yes, sir, conditional on your renunciation of those opinions which you honestly hold as I honestly hold mine!” Vaughan repeated coolly. “I will make the offer if you wish it.”

Wetherell rose ponderously. “See here!” he said. “Listen to me, will you, you two! You, Vermuyden, as well as the young man. You will both be sorry for what you are saying now! Listen to me! Listen to me, man!”

But the baronet was already tugging at the bell-rope. He was no longer red; he was white with anger. And not without reason. This whipper-snapper, this pettifogging lad, just out of his teens, to talk to him of peerages, to patronise him, to offer him—to—to——

For a moment he stammered and could not speak. At last, “Enough! Enough, sir; leave my house!” he cried, shaking from head to foot with passion, and losing for the first time in many years his self-control. “Leave my house,” he repeated furiously, “and never set foot in it again! Not a pound, and not a penny will you have of mine! Never! Never! Never!”

Vaughan smiled, “Very good, sir,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Your fortune is your own. But——”

“Begone, sir! Not another word, but go!”

Vaughan raised his eyebrows, bowed in a ceremonious fashion to Wetherell, and nodded to White, who stood petrified and gaping. Then he walked slowly through that room and the next, and with one backward smile—vanished.

And this time, as he passed through the hall, narrowly missing Flixton who was leaving the dining-room, there could be no doubt that the breach was complete, that the small cordiality which had existed between the two men was at an end. The Bill, which had played so many mischievous tricks, severed so many old friends, broken the ties of so many years, had dealt no one a more spiteful blow than it had dealt Arthur Vaughan.

XVII THE CHIPPINGE ELECTION

The great day on which the Borough of Chippinge was to give its vote, Aye or No, Reform or No Reform, the Rule of the Few or the Rule of the Many, was come; and in the large room on the first floor of the White Lion were assembled a score of persons deeply interested in the issue. Those who had places at the three windows were gazing on what was going forward in the space below; and it was noticeable that while the two or three who remained in the background talked and joked, these were silent; possibly because the uproar without made hearing difficult. The hour was early, the business of the day was to come, but already the hub-bub was indescribable. Nor was that all; every minute some missile, a much enduring cabbage-stalk, or a dead cat in Tory colours, rose to a level with the windows, hovered, and sank—amid a storm of groans or cheers. For the most part, indeed, these missiles fell harmless. But that the places of honour at the windows were not altogether places of safety was proved by a couple of shattered panes, as well as by the sickly hue of some among the spectators.

Nearly all who had attended the Vermuyden dinner were in the room. But, for certain, things which had worn one aspect across the mahogany, wore another now. At the table old and young had made light of the shoving and mauling and drubbing through which they had forced their way to the good things before them; they had even made a jest of the bit of a rub they were likely to have on the polling day. Now, the sight of the noisy crowd which filled the open space, from the head of the High Street to the wall of the Abbey, and from the Vineyard east of it, almost to the West Port—made their bones ache. They looked, even the boldest, at one another. The heart of Dewell, the barber, was in his boots; the rector stared aghast; and Mowatt, the barrister, Arthur Vaughan’s ill-found friend, wished for once that he was on the vulgar side.

True, the doors of the White Lion were guarded by a sturdy phalanx of Vermuyden lads; mustered with what difficulty and kept together by what arguments, White best knew. But what were two or three score, however faithful, and however strong, against the hundreds and thousands who swayed and cheered and groaned before the Inn? Who swarmed upon the old town-cross until they hid every inch of the crumbling stonework; who clung to every niche and buttress of the Abbey; and from whose mass as from a sea the solitary church spire rose like some lighthouse cut off by breakers? Who, here, forgetful of their Wiltshire birth cheered the Birmingham tub-thumper to the echo, and there, roared stern assent to the wildest statements of the Political Union?

True, a dozen banners and thrice as many flags gave something of a festive air to the scene. But the timid who tried to draw solace from these retreated appalled by the daring “Death or Freedom!” inscribed on one banner: or the scarcely less bold “The Sovereign People,” which bellied above the clothiers. The majority of the placards bore nothing worse than the watchword of the party: “The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!” or “Retrenchment and Reform!” or—in reference to the King—“God bless the two Bills!” But for all that, Dewell, the barber—and some more who would not have confessed it—wished the day well over and no bones broken! A great day for Chippinge, but a day on which many an old score was like to be paid, many a justice to hear the commonalty’s opinion of him, many a man who had thriven under the old rule, to read the writing on the wall!

Certainly nothing like the spectacle visible from the White Lion windows had been seen in Chippinge within living memory. The Abbey, indeed, which had seen the last of the mitred Abbots pass out—shorn of his strength, and with weeping townsfolk about him in lieu of belted knights—that pile, stately in its ruin, which had witnessed a revolution greater even than this which impended, and more tragic, might have viewed its pair, might have seen its precincts seethe as they seethed now. But no living man. Nor did those who scanned the crowd from the White Lion find aught to lessen its terrors. There were, indeed, plenty of decent, respectable people in the crowd, who, though they were set on gaining their rights, had no notion of violence. But wood burns when it is kindled: and here at the corner of the Heart and Hand, the Whig headquarters, was a spark like to light the fire—Boston, the bruiser, and a dozen of his fellows; men who were, one and all, the idols of the yokels who stood about them and stared. Pybus, who had brought them hither, was not to be seen; he was weaving his spells in the Heart and Hand. But Mr. Williams, White-Hat Williams, the richest man in Chippinge, who, voteless, had only lived of late to see this day—he was here at the head of his clothmen, and as fierce as the poorest. And half-a-dozen lesser men there were of the same kind; sallow Blackford, the Methodist, the fugleman of every dissenter within ten miles; and two or three small lawyers whom the landlords did not employ, and two or three apothecaries who were in the same case. With these were one or two famished curates, with Sydney Smith for their warranty, and his saying about Dame Partington’s Mop and the Atlantic on their lips; and a sprinkling of spouters from the big towns—men who had the glories of Orator Hunt and William Cobbett before their eyes. And everywhere, working in the mass like yeast, moved a score of bitter malcontents—whom the old system had bruised under foot—poachers whom Sir Robert had jailed, or the lovers of maids as frail as fair, or labourers whom the Poor Laws had crushed—a score of malcontents whose grievances long muttered in pothouses now flared to light and cried for vengeance. In a word, there were the elements of mischief in the crowd: and under the surface an ugly spirit. Even the most peaceable were grim, knowing it was now or never. So that the faces at the White Lion windows grew longer as their owners gazed and listened.

“I don’t know what’s come to the people!” the Rector bawled, turning about to make himself heard by his neighbour. “Eh, what?”

“I’d like to see Lord Grey hung!” answered Squire Rowley, his face purple. “And Lord Lansdowne with him! What do you say, sir?” to Sergeant Wathen.

“Fortunate a show of hands don’t carry it!” the Sergeant cried, shrugging his shoulders with an assumption of easiness.

“Carry it? Of course we’ll carry it!” the Squire replied wrathfully. “I suppose two and two still make four!”

Isaac White, who was whispering with a man in a corner of the room, wished that he was sure of that; or, rather, that three and two made six. But the Squire was continuing. “Bah!” he cried in disgust. “Give these people votes? Look at ’em! Look at ’em, sir! Votes indeed! Votes indeed! Give ’em oakum, I say!”

He forgot that nine-tenths of those below were as good as the voters at his elbow, who were presently to return two members for Chippinge. Or rather, it did not occur to him, good old Tory as he was, and convinced,

_’Twas the Jacobins brought every mischief about_,

that Dewell’s vote was Dewell’s, or Annibal’s Annibal’s.

Meanwhile, “I wish we were safe at the hustings!” young Mowatt shouted in the ear of the man who stood in front of him.

The man chanced to be Cooke, the other candidate. He turned. “At the hustings?” he said irascibly. “Do you mean, sir, that we are expected to fight our way through that rabble?”

“I am afraid we must,” Mowatt answered.

“Then it—has been d——d badly arranged!” retorted the outraged Cooke, who never forgot that as he paid well for his seat it ought to be a soft one. “Go through this mob, and have our heads broken?”

The faces of those who could hear him grew longer. “And it wants only five minutes of ten,” complained a third. “We ought to be going now.”

“D——n me, but suppose they don’t let us go!” cried Cooke. “Badly arranged! I should think it is, sir! D——d badly arranged! The hustings should have been on this side.”

But hitherto the hustings had been at Chippinge a matter of form, and it had not occurred to anyone to alter their position—cheek by jowl with the Whig headquarters, but divided by seventy yards of seething mob from the White Lion. However, White, on an appeal being made to him, put a better face on the matter. “It’s all right, gentlemen,” he said, “it’s all right! If they have the hustings, we have the returning officer, and they can do nothing without us. I’ve seen Mr. Pybus, and I have his safe conduct for our party to go to the hustings.”

But it is hard to satisfy everybody, and at this there was a fresh outcry. “A safe conduct?” cried the Squire, redder about the gills than before. “For shame, sir! Are we to be indebted to the other side for a safe conduct! I never heard of such a thing!”

“I quite agree with you,” cried the Rector. “Quite! I protest, Mr. White, against anything of the kind.”

But White was unmoved. “We’ve got to get our voters there,” he said. “Sir Robert will be displeased, I know, but——”

“Never was such a thing heard of!”

“No, sir, but never was such an election,” White answered with spirit.

“Where is Sir Robert?”

“He’ll be here presently,” White replied. “He’ll be here presently. Anyway, gentlemen,” he continued, “we had better be going down to the hall. In a body, gentlemen, if you please, and voters in the middle. And keep together, if you please. A little shouting,” he added cheerfully, “breaks no bones. We can shout too!”

The thing was unsatisfactory, and without precedent; nay, humiliating. But there seemed to be nothing else for it. As White said, this election was not as other elections; Bath was lost, and Bristol, too, it was whispered; the country was gone mad. And so, frowning and ill-content, the magnates trooped out, and led by White began to descend the stairs. There was much confusion, one asking if the Alderman was there, another demanding to see Sir Robert, here a man grumbling about White’s arrangements, there a man silent over the discovery, made perhaps for the first time, that here was like to be an end of old Toryism and the loaves and the fishes it had dispensed.

In the hall where the party was reinforced by a crowd of their smaller supporters a man plucked White’s sleeve and drew him aside. “She’s out now!” he whispered. “Pybus has left two with him and they won’t leave him for me. But if you went and ordered them out there’s a chance they’d go, and——”

“The doctor’s not there?”

“No, and Pillinger’s well enough to come, if you put it strong. He’s afraid of his wife and they’ve got him body and soul, but——”

White cast a despairing eye on the confusion about him. “How can I come?” he muttered. “I must get these to the poll first.”

“Then you’ll never do it!” the man retorted. “There’ll be no coming and going, to-day, Mr. White, you take it from me. Now’s the time while they’re waiting for you in front. You can slip out at the back and bring him in and take him with you. It’s the only way, so help me! They’re in that temper we’ll be lucky if we’re all alive to-morrow!”

The man was right; and White knew it, yet he hesitated. If he had had an _aide_ fit for the task, the thing might be done. But to go himself—he on whom everything fell! He reflected. Possibly Arthur Vaughan might not vote for the enemy after all. But if he did, Sir Robert would poll only five to six, and be beaten! Unless he polled Pillinger, when the returning officer’s vote, of which he was sure, would give him the election. Pillinger’s vote, therefore, was vital; everything turned upon it. And he determined to go. His absence would only cause a little delay, and he must risk that. He slipped away.

He was missed at once, and the discovery redoubled the confusion. One asked where he was, and another where Sir Robert was; while Cooke in tones louder and more irritable than was prudent found fresh fault, and wished to heaven that he had never seen the place. Long accustomed to one-sided contests of which both parties knew the issue, the Tory managers were helpless; they were aware that the hour had struck, and that they were expected, but without White they were uncertain how to act. Some cried that White had gone on, and that they should follow; some that Sir Robert was to meet them at the hustings, others that they might as well be home as waiting there! While the babel without deafened and distracted them. At last, without order given, they found themselves moving out.