Chippinge Borough

He could hardly believe it. But so it turned out. And so great was the boon-the greater as no other borough was transferred in Committee-that it swept away for the time the memory of what had happened. His eyes sparkled. The seat saved, it was odd if with the wider electorate created by the Bill, he was not sure of return! Still more odd, if he was not sure of beating Wathen-he, who had opened the borough and been returned by the Whig interest even while it was closed! No longer need he feel so anxious and despondent when the Dissolution, which must follow the passage of the Bill, rose to his mind. No longer need he be in so great a hurry to make his mark, so envious of Mr. Macaulay, so jealous of Mr. Sadler.

Certainly as far as his political career was in question the horizon was clearing. If only other things had been as favourable! If only there had been someone, were it in a cottage at Hammersmith or in a dull street off Bloomsbury Square, to whom he might take home this piece of news; certain that other eyes would sparkle more brightly than his, and another heart beat quick with joy!

That could not be. There was an end of that. And his face settled back into its gloom. Still he was less unhappy. The certainty of a seat in the next Parliament was a great point gained! A great point to the good!

XXIV

A RIGHT AND LEFT

If anything was certain in a political world so changed, it was certain that if the Reform Bill passed the Lords-in the teeth of those plaguy Bishops of whose opposition so much was heard-a Dissolution would immediately follow. To not a few of the members this contingency was a spectre, ever present, seated at bed and board, and able to defy the rules even of Almack's and Crockford's. For how could a gentleman, who had just given five thousand pounds for his seat, contemplate with equanimity a notice to quit, so rude and so premature? And worse, a notice to quit which meant extrusion into a world in which seats at five thousand for a Parliament would be few and far between; and fair agreements to pay a thousand a year while the privilege lasted, would be unknown!

Many a member asked loudly and querulously, "What will happen to the country if the Bill pass?" But more asked themselves in their hearts, and more often and more querulously, "What will happen to me if the Bill pass? How shall I fare at the hands of these new constituencies, which, unwelcome as a gipsy's brats, I am forced to bring into the world?"

Hitherto few on his own side of the House, and not many on the Tory side, had regarded a Dissolution with more misgiving than Arthur Vaughan. The borough for which he sat lay under doom; and he saw no opening elsewhere. He had no longer the germs of influence nor great prospects: nor yet such a fortune as justified him in an appeal to one of the new and populous boroughs. It was a pleasant thing to go in and out by the door of the privileged, to take his chop at Bellamy's, to lounge in the dignified seclusion of the library, or to air his new honours in Westminster Hall; pleasant also to have that sensation of living at the hub of things, to receive whips, to give franks, to feel that the ladder of ambition was open to him. But he knew that an experience of the House counted by months did no man good; and the prospect of losing his plumes and going forth again a common biped, was the more painful to him because his all was embarked in the venture. He might, indeed, fall back on the bar; but with half a heart and the reputation of a man who had tried to fly before he could walk.

His relief, therefore, when Chippinge, alone of all the Boroughs in Schedule A, was removed in Committee to Schedule B, may be imagined. The road before him was once more open, while the exceptional nature of his luck almost persuaded him that he was reserved for greatness. True, Sergeant Wathen might pride himself on the same fact; but at the thought Vaughan smiled. The Sergeant and Sir Robert would find it a trifle harder, he thought, to deal with the hundred-and-odd voters whom the Act enfranchised, than with the old Cripples! And very, very ungrateful would those hundred-and-odd be, if they did not vote for the man who had made their cause his own!

A load, indeed, was lifted from his mind, and for some days his relief could be read in the lightness of his step, and the returning gaiety of his eyes. He knew nothing of the things which were being whispered about him. And though he had cause to fancy that he was not persona grata on his own benches, he thought sufficiently well of himself to set this down to jealousy. There is a stage in the life of a rising man when many hands are against him; and those most cruelly which will presently applaud him most loudly. He flattered himself that he had set a foot on the ladder: and while he waited for an opportunity to raise himself another step, he came as near to a kind of feverish happiness as thoughts of Mary, ever recurring when he was alone, would permit. For the time the loss of his prospects ceased to trouble him seriously. He lived less in his rooms, more among men. He was less crabbed, less moody. And so the weeks wore away in Committee, and a day or two after the Coronation, the Bill came on for the third reading.

The House was utterly weary. The leaders on both sides were reserving their strength for the final debate, and Vaughan had some hope that he might find an opening to speak with effect. With this in his mind he was on his way across the Park about three in the afternoon, conning his peroration, when a hand was clapped on his shoulder, and he turned to find himself face to face with Flixton.

So much had happened since they stood together on the hustings at Chippinge, Vaughan's fortunes had changed so greatly since they had parted in anger in Queen's Square, that he, at any rate, had no thought of bearing malice. To Flixton's "Well, my hearty, you're a neat artist, ain't you? Going to the House, I take it?" he gave a cordial answer.

"Yes," he said. "That's it."

"Bringing ruination on the country, eh?" Flixton continued. And he passed his arm through Vaughan's, and walked on with him. "That's the ticket?"

"Some say so, but I hope not."

"Hope's a cock that won't fight, my boy!" the Honourable Bob rejoined. "Fact is, you're doing your best, only the House of Lords is in the way, and won't let you! They'll pull you up sweetly by and by, see if they don't!"

"And what will the country say to that?" Vaughan rejoined good-humouredly.

"Country be d-d! That's what all your chaps are saying. And I tell you what! That book-in-breeches man-what do you call him-Macaulay? – ought to be pulled up! He ought indeed! I read one of his farragoes the other day and it was full of nothing but 'Think long, I beg, before you thwart the public will!' and 'The might of an angered people!' and 'Let us beware of rousing!' and all that rubbish! Meaning, my boy, only he didn't dare to say it straight out, that if the Lords did not give way to you chaps, there'd be a revolution; and the deuce to pay! And I say he ought to be in the dock. He's as bad as old Brereton down in Bristol, predicting fire and flames and all the rest of it."

"But you cannot deny, Flixton," Vaughan answered soberly, "that the country is excited as we have never known it excited before? And that a rising is not impossible!"

"A rising! I wish we could see one! That's just what we want," the Honourable Bob answered, stopping and bringing his companion to a sudden stand also. "Eh? Who was that old Roman-Poppæa, or some name like that, who said he wished the people had all one head that he might cut it off?" suiting the action to the word with his cane. "A rising, begad? The sooner the better! The old Fourteenth would know how to deal with it!"

"I don't know," Vaughan answered, "that you would be so confident if you were once face to face with it!"

"Oh, come! Don't talk nonsense!"

"Well, but-"

"Oh, I know all that! But I say, old chap," he continued, changing his tone, and descending abruptly from the political to the personal situation, "You've played your cards badly, haven't you? Eh?"

Vaughan fancied that he referred to Mary; or at best to his quarrel with Sir Robert. And he froze visibly, "I won't discuss that," he said in a different tone. And he moved on again.

"But I was there the evening you had the row!"

"At Stapylton?"

"Yes."

"Well?" stiffly.

"And, lord, man, why didn't you sing a bit small? And the old gentleman would have come round in no time!"

Vaughan halted, with anger in his face. "I won't discuss it!" he said with something of violence in his tone.

"Very well, very well!" Flixton answered with the superabundant patience of the man whose withers are not wrung. "But when you did get your seat-why didn't you come to terms with someone?" with a wink. "As it is, what's the good of being in the House three months, or six months-and out again?"

Vaughan wished most heartily that he had not met the Honourable Bob; who, he remembered, had always possessed, hearty and jovial as he seemed, a most remarkable knack of rubbing him the wrong way. "How do you know?" he asked with a touch of contempt-was he, a rising Member of Parliament to be scolded after this fashion? – "How do you know that I shall be out?"

"You'll be out, if it's Chippinge you are looking to!"

"Why, if you please, my friend? Why so sure?"

Flixton winked with deeper meaning than before. "Ah, that's telling," he said. "Still-why not? If you don't hear it from me, old chap, you'll soon hear it from someone. Why, you ask? Well, because a little bird whispered to me that Chippinge was-arranged! That Sir Robert and the Whigs understood one another, and whichever way it went it would not come your way!"

Vaughan reddened deeply. "I don't believe it," he said bluntly.

"Did you know that Chippinge was going to be spared?"

"No."

"They didn't tell you?"

"No."

"Ah!" shrugging his shoulders, with a world of meaning, and preparing to turn away. "Well, other people did, and there it is. I may be wrong, I hope I am, old chap. Hope I am! But anyway-I must be going. I turn here. See you soon, I hope!"

And with a wave of the hand the Honourable Bob marched off through Whitehall, his face breaking into a mischievous grin as soon as he was out of Vaughan's sight. "Return hit for your snub, Miss Mary!" he muttered. "If you prick me, at least I can prick him! And do him good, too! He was always a most confounded prig."

Meanwhile, Vaughan, freed from his companion, was striding on past Downing Street; the old street, long swept away, in which Walpole lived, and to which the dying Chatham was carried. And unconsciously, under the spur of his angry thoughts, he quickened his pace. It was incredible, it was inconceivable that so monstrous an injustice had been planned, or could be perpetrated. He, who had stepped into the breach, well-nigh in his own despite, he, who had refused, so scrupulous had he been, to stand on a first invitation, he, who had been elected almost against his will, was, for all thanks, to be set aside, and by his friends! By those whose unsolicited act it had been to return him and to put him into this position! It was impossible, he told himself. It was unthinkable! Were this true, were this a fact, the meanness of political life had reached its apogee! The faithlessness of the Whigs, their incredible treachery to their dependants, could need no other exemplar!

"I'll not bear it! By Heaven, I'll not bear it!" he muttered. And as he spoke, striding along in the hurry of his spirits as if he carried a broom and swept the whole Whig party before him, he overtook no less a person than Sergeant Wathen, who had been lunching at the Athenæum.

The Sergeant heard his voice and turning, saw who it was. He fancied that Vaughan had addressed him. "I beg your pardon," he said politely. "I did not catch what you said, Mr. Vaughan."

For a moment Vaughan glowered at him, as if he would sweep him from his path, along with the Whigs. Then out of the fullness of the heart the mouth spoke. "Mr. Sergeant," he said, in a not very friendly tone, "do you know anything of an agreement disposing of the future representation of Chippinge?"

The Sergeant who knew all under the rose, looked shrewdly at his companion to see, if possible, what he knew. And, to gain time, "I beg your pardon," he said. "I don't think I-quite understand you."

"I am told," Vaughan said haughtily, "that an agreement has been made to avoid a contest at Chippinge."

"Do you mean," the Sergeant asked blandly, "at the next election, Mr. Vaughan?"