“My friends,” Brougham cried, checking with his hand the ragamuffins’ shrill attempt at a cheer, “I am obliged to you for your approval; but I beg to bid you good-day! Assemblages such as these are — —”
“Disgusting!” Cornelius muttered audibly, wrinkling his nose as he eyed them over his high collar.
“Are apt to cause disorder!” the Chancellor continued, smiling. “Rest assured that your friends, of whom, if I am the highest in office I am not the least in good-will, will not desert you.”
“Hurrah! God bless you, my lord! Hurrah!” cried the tatterdemalions in various tones more or less drunken. And some held out their caps. “Hurrah! If your lordship would have the kindness to — —”
“Disgusting!” Cornelius repeated, wheeling about.
Vaughan seized the opportunity to intervene. “May I,” he said, raising his hat and addressing the Chancellor as he turned, “consult you, my lord, for two minutes as you walk?”
Brougham started on finding a gentleman of his appearance at his elbow; and looked as if he were somewhat ashamed of the guise in which he had been detected. “Ah!” he said. “Mr. — Mr. Vaughan? To be sure! Oh, yes, you can speak to me, what can I do for you? It is,” he added, with affected humility, “my business to serve.”
Vaughan looked doubtfully at Mr. Cornelius, who raised his hat. “I have no secrets from Mr. Cornelius,” said the Chancellor pleasantly. And then with a backward nod and a tinge of colour in his cheek, “Gratifying, but troublesome,” he continued. “Eh? Very troublesome, these demonstrations! I often long for the old days when I could walk out of Westminster Hall, with my bag and my umbrella, and no one the wiser!”
“Those days are far back, my lord,” Vaughan said politely.
“Ah, well! Ah, well! Perhaps so.” They were walking on by this time. “I can’t say that since the Queen’s trial I’ve known much privacy. However, it is something that those whom one serves are grateful. They — —”
“Cry ‘Hosanna’ to-day,” Cornelius said gruffly, with his eyes fixed steadily before him, “and ‘Crucify him’ tomorrow!”
“Cynic!” said the Chancellor, with unabated good-humour. “But even you cannot deny that they are better employed in cheering their friends than in breaches of the peace? Not that” — cocking his eye at Vaughan with a whimsical expression of confidence— “a little disorder here and there, eh, Mr. Vaughan — though to be deplored, and by no one more than by one in my position — has not its uses? Were there no apprehension of mob-rule, how many borough-mongers, think you, would vote with us? How many waverers, like Harrowby and Wharncliffe, would waver? And how, if we have no little ebullitions here and there, are we to know that the people are in earnest? That they are not grown lukewarm? That Wetherell is not right in his statement — of which he’ll hear more than he will like at Bristol, or I am mistaken — that there is a Tory re-action, an ebb in the tide which so far has carried us bravely? But of course,” he added, with a faint smile, “God forbid that we should encourage violence!”
“Amen!” said Mr. Cornelius. And sniffed in a very peculiar manner.
“But to discern that camomile,” the Chancellor continued gaily, “though bitter to-day makes us better tomorrow, is a different thing from — —”
“Administering a dose!” Vaughan laughed, falling into the great man’s humour.
“To be sure. But enough of that. Now I think of it, Mr. Vaughan,” he continued, looking at his companion, “I have not had the pleasure of seeing you since — but I need not remind you of the occasion. You’ve had good cause to remember it! Yes, yes,” he went on with voluble complacency — he was walking as well as talking very fast— “I seldom speak without meaning, or interfere without result. I knew well what would come of it. It was not for nothing, Mr. Vaughan, that I got down our Borough List and asked you if you had no thought of entering the House. The spark — and tinder! For there you are in the House!”
“Yes,” Vaughan replied, astonished at the coolness with which the other unveiled, and even took credit for, the petty intrigue of six months back. “But — —”
“But,” Brougham said, taking him up with a quick, laughing glance, “you are not yet on the Treasury Bench? That’s it?”
“No, not yet,” Vaughan answered, good-humouredly.
“Ah, well, time and patience and Bellamy’s chops, Mr. Vaughan, will carry you far, I am sure.”
“It is on that subject — the subject of time — I venture to trouble your lordship.”
The Chancellor’s lumpish but singularly mobile features underwent a change. Caught in a complacent, vain humour, he had forgotten a thing which, with Vaughan’s last words, recurred to him. “Yes?” he said, “yes, Mr. Vaughan?” But the timbre of that marvellously flexible voice with which he boasted that he could whisper so as to be heard to the very door of the House of Commons, was changed. “Yes, what is it, pray?”
“It is time I require,” Vaughan answered. “And, in fine, I have done some service, yeoman service, my lord, and I think that I ought not to be cast aside by the party in whose interest I was returned, and with whose objects I am in sympathy.”
“Cast aside? Tut, tut! What do you mean?”
“I am told that though the borough for which I sit will continue to return one member, I shall not have the support of the party in retaining my seat.”
“Indeed! Indeed!” Brougham answered, “Is it so? I am sorry to hear that.”
“But — —”
“Very sorry, Mr. Vaughan.”
“But, with submission, my lord, it is something more than sorrow I seek,” Vaughan answered, too sore to hide his feelings. “You have owned very candidly that I derived from you the impulse which has carried me so far. Is it unreasonable if I venture to turn to you, when advised to see one of the chiefs of my party?”
“Who,” Brougham asked with a quick look, “gave you that advice, Mr. Vaughan?”
“Sir Charles Wetherell.”
“Um!” the Chancellor replied through pinched lips. And he stood, “they had crossed Piccadilly and Berkeley Square, and had reached the corner of Hill Street, where at No. 5, Brougham lived.
“I repeat, my lord,” Vaughan continued, “is it unreasonable if I apply to you in these circumstances, rather — —”
“Rather than to one of the whips?” Brougham said drily.
“Yes.”
“But I know nothing of the matter, Mr. Vaughan.”
But Vaughan was in no mood to put up with subterfuges. If the other did not know, he should know. He had been all-powerful, it seemed, to bring him in: was he powerless to keep him in? “There is a compact, I am told,” he said, “under which the seat is to be surrendered — for this turn, at any rate — to my cousin’s nominee.”
Brougham shrugged his shoulders, and looked at Mr. Cornelius. “Dear me, dear me,” he said. “That’s not a thing of which I can approve. Far from it! Far from it! But you must see, Mr. Vaughan, that I cannot meddle in my position with arrangements of that kind. Impossible, my dear sir, it is clearly impossible!”
Vaughan stared; and with some spirit and more temper, “But the spark, my lord! I’m sure you won’t forget the spark?” he said.
For an instant a gleam of fun shone in the other’s eyes. Then he was funereal again. “Before the Bill, and after the Bill, are two things,” he said drily. “Before the Bill all is, all was impure. And in an impure medium — you understand me, I am sure? You are scientific, I remember. But after the Bill — to ask me, who in my humble measure, Mr. Vaughan, may call myself its prime cause — to ask me to infringe its first principles by interposing between the Electors and their rights, to ask me to use an influence which cannot be held legitimate — no, Mr. Vaughan, no!” He shook his head solemnly and finally. And then to Mr. Cornelius, “Yes, I am coming, Mr. Cornelius,” he said. “I know I am late.”
“I can wait,” said Mr. Cornelius.
“But I cannot. Good-day, Mr. Vaughan. Good-day,” he r
epeated, refusing to see the young man’s ill-humour. “I am sorry that I cannot help you. Or, stay!” he continued, halting in the act of turning away. “One minute. I gather that you are a friend of Sir Charles Wetherell’s?”
“He has been a friend to me,” Vaughan answered sullenly.
“Ah, well, he is going to Bristol to hold his sessions — on the 29th, I think. Go with him. Our fat friend hates me like poison, but I would not have a hair of his head injured. We have been warned that there will be trouble, and we are taking steps to protect him. But an able-bodied young soldier by his side will be no bad thing. And upon my honour,” he continued, eyeing Vaughan with impudent frankness — impudent in view of all that had gone before— “upon my honour, I am beginning to think that we spoiled a good soldier when we — eh!”
“The spark!” Mr. Cornelius muttered grimly.
“Good-day, my lord,” said Vaughan with scant ceremony; his blood was boiling. And he turned and strode away, scarcely smothering an execration. The two, who did not appear to be in a hurry after all, remained looking after him. And presently Mr. Cornelius smiled.
“What amuses you?” Brougham asked, with a certain petulence. For at bottom, and in cases where no rivalry existed, he was good-natured; and in his heart he was sorry for the young man. But then, if one began to think of the pawn’s feelings, the game he was playing would be spoiled. “What is it?”
“I was thinking,” Mr. Cornelius answered slowly, “of purity.” He sniffed. “And the Whigs!”
Meanwhile Arthur Vaughan was striding down Bruton Street with every angry passion up in arms. He was too clever to be tricked twice, and he saw precisely what had happened. Brougham — well, well was he called Wicked Shifts! — reviewing the Borough List before the General Election, had let his eyes fall on Sir Robert’s seats at Chippinge; and looking about, with his customary audacity, for a means of snatching them, had alighted on him — and used him for a tool! Now, he was of no farther use. And, as the loss of his expectations rendered it needless to temporise with him, he was contemptuously tossed aside.
And this was the game of politics which he had yearned to play! This was the party whose zeal for the purity of elections and the improvement of all classes he had shared, and out of loyalty to which he had sacrificed a fortune! He strode along the crowded pavement of Parliament Street — it was the fashionable hour of the afternoon and the political excitement kept London full — his head high, his face flushed. And unconsciously as he shouldered the people to right and left, he swore aloud.
As he uttered the word, regardless in his anger of the scene about him, his fixed gaze pierced for an instant the medley of gay bonnets and smiling faces, moving chariots and waiting footmen, which even in those days filled Parliament Street — and met another pair of eyes.
The encounter lasted for a second only. Then half a dozen heads and a parasol intervened. And then — in another second — he was abreast of the carriage in which Mary Vermuyden sat, her face the prettiest and her bonnet the daintiest — Lady Worcester had seen to that — of all the faces and all the bonnets in Parliament Street that day. The landau in which she sat was stationary at the edge of the pavement; and on the farther side of her reposed a lady of kind face and ample figure.
For an instant their eyes met again; and Mary’s colour, which had fled, returned in a flood of crimson, covering brow and cheeks. She leaned from the carriage and held out her white-gloved hand. “Mr. Vaughan!” she said. And he might have read in her face, had he chosen, the sweetest and frankest appeal. “Mr. Vaughan!”
But the moment was unlucky. The devil had possession of him. He raised his hat and passed on, passed on wilfully. He fancied — afterwards, that is, he fancied — that she had risen to her feet after he had gone by and called him a third time in a voice at which the convenances of Parliament Street could only wink. But he went on. He heard, but he went on. He told himself that all was of a piece. Men and women, all were alike. He was a fool who trusted any, believed in any, loved any.
XXVIII
ONCE MORE, TANTIVY!
Vaughan had been sore at heart before the meeting in Parliament Street. After that meeting he was in a mood to take any step which promised to salve his self-esteem. The Chancellor, Lord Lansdowne, Sir Robert, and — and Mary, all, he told himself, were against him. But they should not crush him. He would prove to them that he was no negligible quantity. Parliament was prorogued; the Long Vacation was far advanced; the world, detained beyond its time, was hurrying out of town. He, too, would go out of town; and he would go to Chippinge. There, in defiance alike of his cousin and the Bowood interest, he would throw himself upon the people. He would address himself to those whom the Bill enfranchised, he would appeal to the future electors of Chippinge, he would ask them whether the will of their great neighbours was to prevail, and the claims of service and of gratitude were to go for nothing. Surely at this time of day the answer could not be adverse!
True, the course he proposed matched ill with the party notions which still prevailed. It was a complete breach with the family traditions in which he had been reared. But in his present mood Vaughan liked his plan the better for this. Henceforth he would be iron, he would be adamant! And only by a little thing did he betray that under the iron and under the adamant he carried an aching heart. When he came to book his place, deliberately, wilfully, he chose to travel by the Bath road and the White Lion coach, though he could have gone at least as conveniently by another coach and another route. Thus have men ever, since they first felt the pangs of love, rejoiced to press the dart more deeply in the wound.
A dark October morning was brooding over the West End when he crossed Piccadilly to take his place outside the White Horse Cellar. Now, as on that distant day in April, when the car of rosy-fingered love had awaited him ignorant, the coaches stood one behind the other in a long line before the low-blind windows of the office. But how different was all else! To-day the lamps were lighted and flickered on wet pavements, the streets were windy and desolate, the day had barely broken above the wet roofs, and on all a steady rain was falling. The watermen went to and fro with sacks about their shoulders, and the guards, bustling from the office with their waybills and the late parcels, were short of temper and curt of tongue. The shivering passengers, cloaked to the eyes in boxcoats and wrap-rascals, climbed silently and sullenly to the roof, and there sat shrugging their shoulders to their ears. Vaughan, who had secured a place beside the driver, cast an eye on all, on the long dark vista of the street, on the few shivering passers; and he found the change fitting. Let it rain, let it blow, let the sun rise niggardly behind a mask of clouds! Let the world wear its true face! He cared not how discordantly the guard’s horn sounded, nor how the coachman swore at his cattle, nor how the mud splashed up, as two minutes after time they jostled and rattled and bumped down the slope and through the dingy narrows of Knightsbridge.
Perhaps to please him, the rain fell more heavily as the light broadened and the coach passed through Kensington turnpike. The passengers, crouching inside their wraps, looked miserably from under dripping umbrellas on a wet Hammersmith, and a wetter Brentford. Now the coach ploughed through deep mud, now it rolled silently over a bed of chestnut or sycamore leaves which the first frost of autumn had brought down. Swish, swash, it splashed through a rivulet. It was full daylight now; it had been daylight an hour. And, at last, joyous sight, pleasant even to the misanthrope on the box-seat, not far in front, through a curtain of mist and rain, loomed Maidenhead — and breakfast.
The up night-coach, retarded twenty minutes by the weather, rattled up to the door at the same moment. Vaughan foresaw that there would be a contest for seats at the table, and, without waiting for the ladder, he swung himself to the ground, and entered the house. Hastily doffing his streaming overcoats, he made for the coffee-room, where roaring fires and a plentiful table awaited the travellers. In two minutes he was served, and isolated by his gloomy thoughts and almost unconscious of the crowde
d room and the clatter of plates, he was eating his breakfast when his next-door neighbour accosted him.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” he said in a meek voice. “Are you going to Bristol, sir?”
Vaughan looked at the speaker, a decent, clean-shaven person in a black high-collared coat, and a limp white neck-cloth. The man’s face seemed familiar to him, and instead of answering the question, Vaughan asked if he knew him.
“You’ve seen me in the Lobby, sir,” the other answered, fidgeting in his humility. “I’m Sir Charles Wetherell’s clerk, sir.”
“Ah! To be sure!” Vaughan replied. “I thought I knew your face. Sir Charles opens the Assizes to-morrow, I understand?”
“Yes, sir, if they will let him. Do you think that there is much danger, sir?”
“Danger?” Vaughan answered with a smile. “No serious danger.”
“The Government did not wish him to go, sir,” the other rejoined with an air of mystery.
“Oh, I don’t believe that,” Vaughan said.
“Well, the Corporation didn’t, for certain, sir,” the man persisted in a low voice. “They wanted him to postpone the Assizes. But he doesn’t know what fear is, sir. And now the Government’s ordered troops to Bristol, and I’m afraid that’ll make ‘em worse. They’re so set against him for saying that Bristol was no longer for the Bill. And they’re a desperate rough lot, sir, down by the Docks!”
“So I’ve heard,” Vaughan said. “But you may be sure that the authorities will see that Sir Charles is well guarded!”
The clerk said nothing to that, although it was clear that he was far from convinced, or easy. And Vaughan returned to his thoughts. But by and by it chanced that as he raised his eyes he met those of a girl who was passing his table on her way from the room; and he remembered with a sharp pang how Mary had passed his table and looked at him, and blushed; and how his heart had jumped at the sight. Why, there was the very waiting-maid who had gone out with her! And there, where the April sun had shone on her through the window, she had sat! And there, three places only from his present seat, he had sat himself. Three seats only — and yet how changed was all! The unmanly tears rose very near to his eyes as he thought of it.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 535