Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “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.

  Their reception did not clear their brains. Such a roar of execration as greeted them had never been heard in Chippinge: the hair on Dewell, the barber’s, head stood up, the Alderman’s checks grew pale, Cooke dropped his cane, the stoutest flinched. Changed indeed were the times from those a year or two past when their exit had been greeted by sycophantic cheers, or, at worst, by a little good-humoured jesting! Now the whole multitude in the open, not in one part, but in every part, knew as by instinct of their setting forth, brandished on the instant a thousand arms at them, deafened them with a thousand voices, demanded monotonously “The Bill! The Bill!” Nor had the demonstration stopped there, but for the intervention of a body of a hundred Whig stalwarts who, posting themselves on the flanks of the derided procession, conferred on its slow march an ignoble safety.