Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “I don’t know,” Mr. Cornelius answered gruffly.

  “No?” the Chancellor said, not a whit put out. “He never knows anything!” And then, throwing one knee over the other, he regarded Vaughan with closer attention. “Mr. Vaughan,” he said, “have you ever thought of entering Parliament?”

  Vaughan’s heart bounded, and his face betrayed his emotions. Good heavens, was the Chancellor about to offer him a Government seat? He scarcely knew what to expect or what to say. The prospect, suddenly opened, blinded him. He muttered that he had not as yet thought of it.

  “You have no connection,” Brougham continued, “who could help you to a seat? For if so, now is the time. Presently there will be a Reformed Parliament and a crowd of new men, and the road will be blocked by the throng of aspirants. You are not too young. Palmerston was not so old when Perceval offered him a seat in the Cabinet.”

  The words, the tone, the assumption that such things were for him — that he had but to hold out his hand and they would fall into it — dropped like balm into the young man’s soul. Yet he was not sure that the other was serious, and he made a tremendous effort to hide the emotion he felt. “I am afraid,” he said, with a forced smile, “that I, my lord, am not Lord Palmerston.”

  “No?” Brougham answered with a faint sneer. “But not much the worse for that, perhaps. So that if you have any connection who commands a seat, now is the time.”

  Vaughan shook his head. “I have none,” he said, “except my cousin, Sir Robert Vermuyden.”

  “Vermuyden of Chippinge?” the Chancellor exclaimed, in a voice of surprise.

  “The same, my lord.”

  “Good G — d!” Brougham cried. It was not a mealy-mouthed age. And he leant back and stared at the young man. “You don’t mean to say that he is your cousin?”

  “Yes.”

  The Chancellor laughed grimly. “Oh, dear, dear!” he said. “I am afraid that he won’t help us much. I remember him in the House — an old high and dry Tory. I am afraid that, with your opinions, you’ve not much to expect of him. Still — Mr. Cornelius,” to the gentleman at the table, “oblige me with Oldfield’s ‘House of Commons,’ the Wiltshire volume, and the private Borough List. Thank you. Let me see — ah, here it is!”

  He proceeded to read in a low tone, skipping from heading to heading: “Chippinge, in the county of Wilts, has returned two members since the twenty-third of Edward III. Right of election in the Alderman and the twelve capital burgesses, who hold their places for life. Number of voters, thirteen. Patron, Sir Robert Vermuyden, Bart., of Stapylton House.

  “Umph, as I thought,” he continued, laying down the book. “Now what does the list say?” And, taking it in turn from his knee, he read:

  “In Schedule A for total disfranchisement, the population under 2000. Present members, Sergeant Wathen and Mr. Cooke, on nomination of Sir Robert Vermuyden; the former to oblige Lord Eldon, the latter by purchase. Both opponents of Bill; nothing to be hoped from them. The Bowood interest divides the corporation in the proportion of four to nine, but has not succeeded in returning a member since the election of 1741 — on petition. The heir to the Vermuyden interest is — —” He broke off sharply, but continued to study the page. Presently he looked over it.

  “Are you the Mr. Vaughan who inherits?” he asked gravely.

  “The greater part of the estates — yes.”

  Brougham laid down the book and rubbed his chin. “Under those circumstances,” he said, after musing a while, “don’t you think that your cousin could be persuaded to return you as an independent member?”

  Vaughan shook his head with decision.

  “The matter is important,” the Chancellor continued slowly, and as if he weighed his words. “I cannot precisely make a promise, Mr. Vaughan; but if your cousin could see the question of the Bill in another light, I have little doubt that any object in reason could be secured for him. If, for instance, it should be necessary in passing the Bill through the Upper House to create new — eh?”

  He paused, looking at Vaughan, who laughed outright. “Sir Robert would not cross the park to save my life, my lord,” he said. “And I am sure he would rather hang outside the White Lion in Chippinge marketplace than resign his opinions or his borough!”

  “He’ll lose the latter, whether or no,” Brougham answered, with a touch of irritation. “Was there not some trouble about his wife? I think I remember something.”

  “They were separated many years ago.”

  “She is alive, is she not?”

  “Yes.”

  Brougham saw, perhaps, that the subject was not palatable, and he abandoned it. With an abrupt change of manner he flung the books from him with the recklessness of a boy, and raised his sombre figure to its height. “Well, well,” he said, “I hoped for better things; but I fear, as Tommy Moore sings —

  “He’s pledged himself, though sore bereft

  Of ways and means of ruling ill,

  To make the most of what are left

  And stick to all that’s rotten still!

  And by the Lord, I don’t say that I don’t respect him. I respect every man who votes honestly as he thinks.” And grandly, with appropriate gestures, he spouted:

  “Who spurns the expedient for the right

  Scorns money’s all-attractive charms,

  And through mean crowds that clogged his flight

  Has nobly cleared his conquering arms.

  That’s the Attorney-General’s. He turns old Horace well, doesn’t he?”

  Vaughan coloured. Young and candid, he could not bear the thought of taking credit where he did not deserve it. “I fear,” he said awkwardly, “that would bear rather hardly on me if we had a contest at Chippinge, my lord. Fortunately it is unlikely.”

  “How would it bear hardly on you?” Brougham asked, with interest.

  “I have a vote.”

  “You are one of the twelve burgesses?” in a tone of surprise.

  “Yes, by favour of Sir Robert.”

  The Chancellor, smiling gaily, shook his head. “No,” he said, “no; I do not believe you. You do yourself an injustice. Leave that sort of thing to older men, to Lyndhurst, if you will, d —— d Jacobin as he is, preening himself in Tory feathers, and determined whoever’s in he’ll not be out; or to Peel. Leave it! And believe me you’ll not repent it. I,” he continued loftily, “have seen fifty years of life, Mr. Vaughan, and lived every year of them and every day of them, and I tell you that the thing is too dearly bought at that price.”

  Vaughan felt himself rebuked; but he made a fight. “And yet,” he said, “are there no circumstances, my lord, in which such a vote may be justified?”

  “A vote against your conscience — to oblige someone?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “A Jesuit might justify it. There is nothing which a Jesuit could not justify, I suppose. But though no man was stronger for the Catholic Claims than I was, I do not hold a Jesuit to be a man of honour. And that is where the difference lies. There! But,” he continued, with an abrupt change from the lofty to the confidential, “let me tell you a fact, Mr. Vaughan. In ‘29 — was it in April or May of ‘29, Mr. Cornelius?”

  “I don’t know to what you refer,” Mr. Cornelius grunted.

  “To be sure you don’t,” the Chancellor replied, without any loss of good-humour; “but in April or May of ‘29, Mr. Vaughan, the Duke offered me the Rolls, which is £7000 a year clear for life, and compatible with a seat in the Commons. It would have suited me better in every way than the Seals and the House of Lords. It was the prize, to be frank with you, at which I was aiming; and as at that time the Duke was making his right-about-face on the Catholic question, and was being supported by our side, I might have accepted it with an appearance of honour and consistency. But I did not accept it. I did not, though my refusal injured myself, and did no one any good. But there, I am chattering.” He broke off, with a smile, and held out his hand. “However,

  “Est et f
ideli tuta silentio

  Merces!

  You won’t forget that, I am certain. And you may be sure I shall remember you. I am pleased to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Vaughan. Decide on the direction, politics or the law, in which you mean to push, and some day let me know. In the meantime follow the light! Light, more light! Don’t let them lure you back into old Giant Despair’s cave, or choke you with all the dead bones and rottenness and foulness they keep there, and that, by God’s help, I’ll sweep out of the world before it’s a year older!”

  And still talking, he saw Vaughan, who was murmuring his acknowledgments, to the door.

  When that had closed on the young man Brougham came back, and, throwing wide his arms, yawned prodigiously. “Now,” he said, “if Lansdowne doesn’t effect something in that borough, I am mistaken.”

  “Why,” Cornelius muttered curtly, “do you trouble about the borough? Why don’t you leave those things to the managers?”

  “Why? Why, first because the Duke did that last year, and you see the result — he’s out and we’re in. Secondly, Corny, because I am like the elephant’s trunk, that can tear down a tree or pick up a pin.”

  “But in picking up a pin,” the other grunted, “it picks up a deal of something else.”

  “Of what?”

  “Dirt!”

  “Old Pharisee!” the Chancellor cried.

  Mr. Cornelius threw down his pen, and, turning in his seat, opened fire on his companion. “Dirt!” he reiterated sternly. “And for what? What will be the end of it when you have done all for them, clean and dirty? They’ll not keep you. They use you now, but you’re a new man. What, you — you think to deal on equal terms with the Devonshires and the Hollands, the Lansdownes and the Russells! Who used Burke, and when they had squeezed him tossed him aside? Who used Tierney till they wore him and his fortune out? Who would have used Canning, but he did not trust them, and so they worried him — though they were all dumb dogs before him — to his death. Ay, and presently, when you have served their turn, they will cast you aside.”

  “They will not dare!” Brougham cried.

  “Pshaw! You are Samson, but you are shorn of your strength. They have been too clever for you. While you were in the Commons they did not dare. Harry Brougham was their master. So they lured you, poor fool, into the trap, into the Lords, where you may spout, and spout, and spout, and it will have as much effect as the beating of a bird’s wings against the bars of its cage!”

  “They will not dare!” Brougham reiterated.

  “You will see. They will throw you aside.”

  Brougham walked up and down the room, his eyes glittering, his quaint, misshapen features working passionately.

  “They will throw you aside,” Mr. Cornelius repeated, watching him keenly. “You are a man of the people. You are in earnest. You are honestly in favour of retrenchment, of education, of reform. But to these Whigs — save and except to Althorp, who is that lusus naturæ, an honest man, and to Johnny Russell, who is a fanatic — these are but catchwords, stalking-horses, the means by which, after the dull old fashion of their fathers and their grandfathers and their great-grandfathers, they think to creep into power. Reform, if reform means the representation of the people by the people, the rule of the people by the people, or by any but the old landed families — why, the very thought would make them sick!”

  Brougham stopped in his pacing to and fro. “You are right,” he said sombrely.

  “You acknowledge it?”

  “I have known it — here!” And, drawing himself to his full height, he clapped his hand to his breast. “I have known it here for months. Ay, and though I have sworn to myself that they would not dare to treat me as they treated Burke, and Sheridan, and Tierney, and as they would have treated Canning, I knew it was a lie, my lad; I knew they would. My mother — ay, my old mother, sitting by the chimneyside, out of the world there, knew it, and warned me.”

  “Then why did you go into the Lords?” Cornelius asked. “Why be lured into the gilded cage, where you are helpless?”

  “Because, mark you,” Brougham replied sternly, “if I had not, they had not brought in this Bill. And we had waited, and the people had waited, another twenty years, maybe!”

  “And so you went into the prison-house shorn of your strength?”

  Brougham looked at him with a gleam of ferocity in his brilliant eyes. “Ay,” he said, “I did. And by that act,” he continued, stretching his long arms to their farthest extent, “mark you, mark you, never forget it, I avenged all — not only all I may suffer at their hands, but all that every slave who ever ground in their mill has suffered, the slights, the grudged meticulous office, the one finger lent to shake — all, all! I went into the prison-house, but when I did so I laid my hands upon the pillars. And their house falls, falls. I hear it — I hear it falling even now about their ears. They may throw me aside. But the house is falling, and the great Whig families — pouf! — they are not in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water that is under the earth. You call Reform their stalking-horse? Ay, but it is into their own Troy that they have dragged it; and the clatter of strife which you hear is the death-knell of their power. They have let in the waves of the sea, and dream fondly that they can say where they shall stop and what they shall not touch. They may as well speak to the tide when it flows; they may as well command the North Sea in its rage; they may as well bid Hume be silent, or Wetherell be sane. You say I am spent, Cornelius; and so I am, it may be. I know not. But this I know. Never again will the families say ‘Go!’ and he goeth, and ‘Do!’ and he doeth, as in the old world that is passing — passing even at this minute, passing with the Bill. No,” he continued, flinging out his arms with passion; “for when they thought to fool me, and to shut me dumb among dumb things behind the gilded wires, I knew — I knew that I was dragging down their house upon their heads.”

  Mr. Cornelius stared at him. “By G — d!” he said, “I believe you are right. I believe that you are a cleverer man than I thought you were.”

  III

  TWO LETTERS

  The Hall was empty when Vaughan came forth; and as the young man strode down its echoing length there was nothing save his own footsteps on the pavement to distract his mind from the scene in which he had taken part. He was excited and a little uplifted, as was natural. The promises made, if they were to be counted as promises, were of the vague and indefinite character which it is as easy to evade as to fulfil. But the Chancellor had spoken to him as to an equal and treated him as one who had but to choose a career to succeed in it, and to win the highest prizes which it could bestow. This was flattering; nor was it to a young man who had little experience of the world, less flattering to be deemed the owner of a stake in the country, and a person through whom offers of the most confidential and important character might be properly made.

  He walked to his rooms in Bury Street with a pleasant warmth at his heart. And at the Academic that evening, where owing to the events of the day there was a fuller house than had ever been known, and a fiercer debate, he championed the Government and upheld the dissolution in a speech which not only excelled his previous efforts, but was a surprise to those who knew him best. Afterwards he recognised that his peroration had been only a paraphrase of Brougham’s impassioned “Light! More Light!” and that the whole owed more than he cared to remember to the same source. But, after all, why not? It was not to be expected that he could at once rise to the heights of the greatest of living orators. And it was much that he had made a hit; that as he left the room he was followed by all eyes.

  Nor did a qualm worthy of the name trouble him until the morning of the 27th, five days later — a Wednesday. Then he found beside his breakfast plate two letters bearing the postmark of Chippinge.

  “What’s afoot?” he muttered. But he had a prevision before he broke the seal of the first. And the contents bore out his fears. The letter ran thus:

  “Stapylton, Chippinge.

&nbs
p; “Dear Sir — I make no apology for troubling you in a matter in which your interest is second only to mine and which is also of a character to make apology beside the mark. It has not been necessary to require your presence at Chippinge upon the occasion of former elections. But the unwholesome ferment into which the public mind has been cast by the monstrous proposals of Ministers has nowhere been more strongly exemplified than here, by the fact that, for the first time in half a century, the right of our family to nominate the members for the Borough is challenged. Since the year 1783 no serious attempt has been made to disturb the Vermuyden interest. And I have yet to learn that — short of this anarchical Bill, which will sweep away all the privileges attaching to property — such an attempt can be made with any chance of success.

  “I am informed nevertheless that Lord Lansdowne, presuming on a small connection in the Corporation, intends to send at least one candidate to the poll. Our superiority is so great that I should not, even so, trouble you to be present, were it not an object to discourage these attempts by the exhibition of our full strength, and were it not still more important to do so at a time when the existence of the Borough itself is at stake.

  “Isaac White will apprise you of the arrangements to be made and will keep you informed of all matters which you should know. Be good enough to let Mapp learn the day and hour of your arrival, and he will see that the carriage and servants meet the coach at Chippenham. Probably you will come by the York House. It is the most convenient.