Chippinge Borough

"At future elections!"

The Sergeant shrugged his shoulders. "As a member," he said primly, "I take care to know nothing of such agreements. And I would recommend you, Mr. Vaughan, to adopt that rule. For the rest," he added, with a candid smile, "I give you fair warning that I shall contest the seat. May I ask who was your informant?"

"Mr. Flixton."

"Flixton? Flixton? Ah! The gentleman who is to marry Miss Vermuyden! Well, I can only repeat that I, at any rate, am no party to such an agreement."

His sly look which seemed to deride his companion's inexperience, said as plainly as a look could say, "You find the game of politics less simple than you thought?" And at another time it would have increased Vaughan's ire. But as one pellet drives out another, the Sergeant's reference to Miss Vermuyden had in a second driven the prime subject from his mind. He did not speak for a moment. Then with his face averted, "Is Mr. Flixton-going to marry Miss Vermuyden?" he asked, in a muffled tone. "I had not heard of it."

"I only heard it yesterday," the Sergeant answered, not unwilling to shelve the other topic. "But it is rumoured, and I believe it is true. Quite a romance, wasn't it?" he continued airily. "Quite a nine days' wonder! But" – he pulled himself up-"I beg your pardon! I was forgetting how nearly it concerned you. Dear me, dear me! It is a fair wind indeed that blows no one any harm!"

Vaughan made no reply. He could not speak for the hard beating of his heart. Wathen saw that there was something wrong and looked at him inquisitively. But the Sergeant had not the clue, and could only suspect that the marriage touched the other, because issue of it would entirely bar his succession. And no more was said. As they crossed New Palace Yard, a member drew the Sergeant aside, and Vaughan went up alone to the lobby.

But all thought of speaking was flown from his mind; nor did the thinness of the House when he entered tempt him. There were hardly more than a hundred present; and these were lolling here and there with their hats on, half asleep it seemed, in the dull light of a September afternoon. A dozen others looked sleepily from the galleries, their arms flattened on the rail, their chins on their arms. There were a couple of ministers on the Treasury Bench, and Lord John Russell was moving the third reading. No one seemed to take much interest in the matter; a stranger entering at the moment would have learned with amazement that this was the mother of parliaments, the renowned House of Commons; and with still greater amazement would he have learned that the small, boyish-looking gentleman in the high-collared coat, and with lips moulded on Cupid's bow, who appeared to be making some perfunctory remarks upon the weather, or the state of the crops, was really advancing by an important stage the famous Bill, which had convulsed three kingdoms and was destined to change the political face of the land.

Lord John sat down presently, thrusting his head at once into a packet of papers, which the gloom hardly permitted him to read. A clerk at the table mumbled something; and a gentleman on the other side of the House rose and began to speak. He had not uttered many sentences, however, before the members on the Reform benches awoke, not only to life, but to fury. Stentorian shouts of "Divide! Divide!" rendered the speaker inaudible; and after looking towards the door of the House more than once he sat down, and the House went to a division. In a few minutes it was known that the Bill had been read a third time, by 113 to 58.

But the foreign gentleman would have made a great mistake had he gone away, supposing that Lord John's few placid words-and not those spiteful shouts-represented the feelings of the House. In truth the fiercest passions were at work under the surface. Among the fifty-eight who shrugged their shoulders and accepted the verdict in gloomy silence were some primed with the fiercest invective; and others, tongue-tied men, who nevertheless honestly believed that Lord John Russell was a republican, and Althorp a fool; who were certain that the Whigs wittingly or unwittingly were working the destruction of the country, were dragging her from the pride of place to which a nicely-balanced Constitution had raised her, and laying her choicest traditions at the feet of the rabble. Men who believed such things, and saw the deed done before their eyes, might accept their doom in silence-even as the King of old went silently to the Banquet Hall hard by-but not with joy or easy hearts!

Vaughan, therefore, was not the only one who walked into the lobby that evening, brooding darkly on his revenge. Yet, even he behaved himself as men, so bred, so trained do behave themselves. He held his peace. And no one dreamed, not even Orator Hunt, who sat not far from him under the shadow of his White Hat, that this well-conducted young gentleman was revolving thoughts of the Social Order, and of the Party System, and of most things which the Church Catechism commends, beside which that terrible Radical's own opinions were mere Tory prejudices. The fickleness of women! The treachery of men! Oh, Aetna bury them! Oh, Ocean overwhelm them! Let all cease together and be no more! But give me sweet, oh, sweet, oh, sweet Revenge!

XXV

AT STAPYLTON

It was about a week before his encounter with Vaughan in the park-and on a fine autumn day-that the Honourable Bob, walking with Sir Robert by the Garden Pool, allowed his eyes to travel over the prospect. The smooth-shaven lawns, the stately, lichened house, the far-stretching park, with its beech-knolls and slopes of verdure, he found all fair; and when to these, when to the picture on which his bodily eyes rested, that portrait of Mary-Mary, in white muslin and blue ribbons, bowing her graceful head while Sir Robert read prayers-which he carried in his memory, he told himself that he was an uncommonly happy fellow.

Beauty he might have had, wealth he might have had, family too. But to alight on all in such perfection, to lose his heart where his head approved the step, was a gift of fortune so rare, that as he strutted and talked by the side of his host, his face beamed with ineffable good-humour.

Nevertheless for a few moments silence had fallen between the two; and gradually Sir Robert's face had assumed a grave and melancholy look. He sighed more than once, and when he spoke, it was to repeat in different words what he had already said.

"Certainly, you may speak," he said, in a tone of some formality. "And I have little doubt, Mr. Flixton, that your overtures will be received as they deserve."

"Yes? Yes? You think so?" Flixton answered with manifest delight. "You really think so, Sir Robert, do you?"

"I think so," his host replied. "Not only because your suit is in every way eligible, and one which does us honour." He bowed courteously as he uttered the compliment. "But because, Mr. Flixton, for docility-and I think a husband may congratulate himself on the fact-"

"To be sure! To be sure!" Flixton cried, not permitting him to finish. "Yes, Sir Robert, capital! You mean that if I am not a happy man-"

"It will not be the fault of your wife," Sir Robert said; remembering with a faint twinge of conscience that the Honourable Bob's past had not been without its histories.

"No! By gad, Sir Robert, no! You're quite right! She's got an ank-" He stopped abruptly, his mouth open; bethinking himself, when it was almost too late, that her father was not the person to whom to detail her personal charms.

But Sir Robert had not divined the end of the sentence. He was a trifle deaf. "Yes?" he said.

"She's an-an-animated manner, I was going to say," Flixton answered with more readiness than fervour. And he blessed himself for his presence of mind.

"Animated? Yes, but gentle also," Sir Robert replied, well-nigh purring as he did so. "I should say that gentleness, and-and indeed, my dear fellow, goodness, were the-but perhaps I am saying more than I should."

"Not at all!" Flixton answered with heartiness. "Gad, I could listen to you all day, Sir Robert."

He had listened, indeed, during a large part of the last week; and with so much effect, that those histories to which reference has been made, had almost faded from the elder man's mind. Flixton seemed to him a hearty, manly young fellow, a little boastful and self-assertive perhaps-but remarkably sound. A soldier, who asked nothing better than to put down the rabble rout which was troubling the country; a Tory, of precisely his, Sir Robert's opinions; the younger son of a peer, and a West Country peer to boot. In fine, a staunch, open-air patrician, with good old-fashioned instincts, and none of that intellectual conceit, none of those cranks, and fads, and follies, which had ruined a man who also might have been Sir Robert's son-in-law.

Well that man, Sir Robert, perhaps because his conscience pricked him at times by suggesting impossible doubts, was still bitterly angry. So angry that, had the Baronet been candid, he must have acknowledged that the Honourable Bob's main virtue was his unlikeness to Arthur Vaughan; it was in proportion as he differed from the young fellow who had so meanly intrigued to gain his daughter's affections, that Flixton appeared desirable to the father. Even those histories proved that at any rate he had blood in him; while his loud good-nature, his positiveness, as long as it marched with Sir Robert's positiveness, his short views, all gained by contrast. "I am glad he is a younger son," the Baronet thought. "He shall take the old Vermuyden name!" And he lifted his handsome old chin a little higher as he pictured the honours, that even in a changed and worsened England, might cluster about his house. At the worst, and if the Bill passed, he had a seat alternately with the Lansdownes; and in a future, which would know nothing of Lord Lonsdale's cat-o'-nine-tails, when pocket boroughs would be rare, and great peers and landowners would be left with scarce a representative, much might be done with half a seat.

Suddenly, "Damme, Sir Robert," Flixton cried, "there is the little beauty-hem! – there she is, I think. With your permission I think I'll join her."

"By all means, by all means," Sir Robert answered indulgently. "You need not stand on ceremony."

Flixton waited for no more. Perhaps he had no mind to be bored, now that he had gained what he wanted. He hurried after the slim figure with the white floating skirts and the Leghorn hat, which had descended the steps of the house, moved lightly across the lawns-and vanished. He guessed, however, whither she was bound. He knew that she had a liking for walking in the wilderness behind the house; a beech wood which was already beginning to put on its autumn glory. And sure enough, hastening to a point among the smooth grey trunks where three paths met, he discerned her a hundred paces away, walking slowly from him with her eyes raised.

"Squirrels!" Flixton thought. And he made up his mind to bring the terriers and have a hunt on the following Sunday afternoon. In the meantime he had another quarry in view, and he made after the white-gowned figure.

She heard his tread on the carpet of dry beech leaves, and she turned and saw him. She had come out on purpose that she might be alone, at liberty to think at her ease and orientate herself, in relation to her new environment, and the fresh and astonishing views which were continually opening before her. Or, perhaps, that was but her pretext: an easy explanation of silence and solitude, which might suffice for her father and possibly for Miss Sibson. For, for certain, amid sombre thoughts of her mother, she thought more often and more sombrely in these days of another; of happiness which had been forfeited by her own act; of weakness, and cowardice, and ingratitude; of a man's head that stooped to her adorably, and then again of a man's eyes that burned her with contempt.

It is probable, therefore, that she was not overjoyed when she saw Mr. Flixton. But Sir Robert was so far right in his estimate of her nature that she hated to give pain. It was there, perhaps, that she was weak. And so, seeing the Honourable Bob, she smiled pleasantly on him.

"You have discovered a favourite haunt of mine," she said. She did not add that she spent a few minutes of every day there: that the smooth beech-trunks knew the touch of her burning cheeks, and the rustle of the falling leaves the whisper of her penitence. Daily she returned by way of the Kennel Path and there breathed a prayer for her mother, where a mother's arms had first enfolded her, and a mother's kisses won her love. What she did add was, "I often come here."

"I know you do," the Honourable Bob answered, with a look of admiration. "I assure you, Miss Mary, I could astonish you with the things I know about you!"

"Really!"

"Oh, yes. Really."

There was a significant chuckle in his voice which brought the blood to her check. But she was determined to ignore its meaning. "You are observant?" she said.

"Of those-yes, by Jove, I am-of those, I-admire," he rejoined. He had it on his tongue to say "those I love," but she turned her eyes on him at the critical moment, and though he was doing a thing he had often done, and he had impudence enough, his tongue failed him. There are women so naturally modest that until the one man who awakens the heart appears, it seems an outrage to speak to them of love. Mary Vermuyden, perhaps by reason of her bringing up, was one of these; and though Flixton had had little to do with women of her kind, he recognised the fact and bowed to it. He came, having her father's leave to speak to her; yet he found himself less at his ease, than on many a less legitimate occasion. "Yes, by Jove," he repeated. "I observe them, I can tell you."

Mary laughed. "Some are more quick to notice than others," she said.

"And to notice some than others!" he rejoined, gallantly. "That is what I mean. Now that old girl who is with you-"

"Miss Sibson?" Mary said, setting him right with some stiffness.

"Yes! Well, she isn't young! Anyway, you don't suppose I could say what she wore yesterday! But what you wore, Miss Mary" – trying to catch her eye and ogle her-"ah, couldn't I! But then you don't wear powder on your nose, nor need it!"

"I don't wear it," she said, laughing in spite of herself. "But you don't know what I may do some day! And for Miss Sibson, it does not matter, Mr. Flixton, what she wears. She has one of the kindest hearts, and was one of the kindest friends I had-or could have had-when things were different with me."

"Oh, yes, good old girl," he rejoined, "but snubby! Bitten my nose off two or three times, I know. And, come now, not quite an angel, you know, Miss Mary!"

"Well," she replied, smiling, "she is not, perhaps, an angel to look at. But-"

"She can't be! For she is not like you!" he cried. "And you are one, Miss Mary! You are the angel for me!" looking at her with impassioned eyes. "I'll never want another nor ask to see one!"

His look frightened her; she began to think he meant-something. And she took a new way with him. "How singular it is," she said, thoughtfully, "that people say those things in society! Because they sound so very silly to one who has not lived in your world!"

"Silly!" Flixton replied, in a tone of mortification; and for a moment he felt the check. He was really in love, to a moderate extent; and on the way to be more deeply in love were he thwarted. Therefore he was, to a moderate extent, afraid of her. And, "Silly?" he repeated. "Oh, but I mean it, so help me! I do, indeed! It's not silly to call you an angel, for I swear you are as beautiful as one! That's true, anyway!"