Buch lesen: «Chippinge Borough»

I
THE DISSOLUTION

Boom!

It was April 22, 1831, and a young man was walking down Whitehall in the direction of Parliament Street. He wore shepherd's plaid trousers and the swallow-tail coat of the day, with a figured muslin cravat wound about his wide-spread collar. He halted opposite the Privy Gardens, and, with his face turned skywards, listened until the sound of the Tower guns smote again on the ear and dispelled his doubts. To the experienced, his outward man, neat and modestly prosperous, denoted a young barrister of promise or a Treasury clerk. His figure was good, he was above the middle height, and he carried himself with an easy independence. He seemed to be one who both held a fair opinion of himself and knew how to impress that opinion on his fellows; yet was not incapable of deference where deference was plainly due. He was neither ugly nor handsome, neither slovenly nor a petit-maître; indeed, it was doubtful if he had ever seen the inside of Almack's. But his features were strong and intellectual, and the keen grey eyes which looked so boldly on the world could express both humour and good humour. In a word, this young man was one upon whom women, even great ladies, were likely to look with pleasure, and one woman-but he had not yet met her-with tenderness.

Boom!

He was only one among a dozen, who within the space of a few yards had been brought to a stand by the sound; who knew what the salute meant, and in their various ways were moved by it. The rumour which had flown through the town in the morning that the King was about to dissolve his six-months-old Parliament was true, then! so true that already in the clubs, from Boodle's to Brooks's, men were sending off despatches, while the long arms of the semaphore were carrying the news to the Continent. Persons began to run by Vaughan-the young man's name was Arthur Vaughan; and behind him the street was filling with a multitude hastening to see the sight, or so much of it as the vulgar might see. Some ran towards Westminster without disguise. Some, of a higher station, walked as fast as dignity and their strapped trousers permitted; while others again, who thought themselves wiser than their neighbours, made quickly for Downing Street and the different openings which led into St. James's Park, in the hope of catching a glimpse of the procession before the crowd about the Houses engulfed it.

Nine out of ten, as they ran or walked-nay, it might be said more truly, ninety-nine out of a hundred-evinced a joy quite out of the common, and such as no political event of these days produces. One cried, "Hip! Hip! Hip!"; one flung up his cap; one swore gaily. Strangers told one another that it was a good thing, bravely done! And while the whole of that part of the town seemed to be moving towards the Houses, the guns boomed on, proclaiming to all the world that the unexpected had happened; that the Parliament which had passed the People's Bill by one-a miserable one in the largest House which had ever voted-and having done that, had shelved it by some shift, some subterfuge, was meeting the fate which it deserved.

No man, be it noted, called the measure the Reform Bill, or anything but the Bill, or, affectionately, the People's Bill. But they called it that repeatedly, and in their enthusiasm, exulted in the fall of its enemies as in a personal gain. And though here and there amid the general turmoil a man of mature age stood aside and scowled on the crowd as it swept vociferating by him, such men were but as straws in a backwater of the stream-powerless to arrest the current, and liable at any moment to be swept within its influence.

That generation had seen many a coach start laurel-clad from St. Martin's and listened many a time to the salvoes that told of victories in France or Flanders. But it was no exaggeration to say that even Waterloo had not flung abroad more general joy, nor sown the dingy streets with brighter faces, than this civil gain. For now-now, surely-the People's Bill would pass, and the people be truly represented in Parliament! Now, for certain, the Bill's ill-wishers would get a fall! And if every man-about which some doubts were whispered even in the public-houses-did not get a vote which he could sell for a handful of gold, as his betters had sold their votes time out of mind, at least there would be beef and beer for all! Or, if not that, something indefinite, but vastly pleasant. Few, indeed, knew precisely what they wished and what they were going to gain, but

 
Hurrah for Mr. Brougham!
Hurrah for Gaffer Grey!
Hurrah for Lord John!
 

Hurrah, in a word, for the Ministry, hurrah for the Whigs! And above all, three cheers for the King, who had stood by Lord Grey and dissolved this niggling, hypocritical Parliament of landowners.

Meanwhile the young man who has been described resumed his course; but slowly, and without betraying by any marked sign that he shared the general feeling. Still, he walked with his head a little higher than before; he seemed to sniff the battle; and there was a light in his eyes as if he saw a wider arena before him. "It is true, then," he muttered. "And for to-day I shall have my errand for my pains. He will have other fish to fry, and will not see me. But what of that! Another day will do as well."

At this moment a ragamuffin in an old jockey-cap attached himself to him, and, running beside him, urged him to hasten.

"Run, your honour," he croaked in gin-laden accents, "and you'll 'ave a good place! And I'll drink your honour's health, and Billy the King's! Sure he's the father of his country, and seven besides. Come on, your honour, or they'll be jostling you!"

Vaughan glanced down and shook his head. He waved the man away.

But the lout looked only to his market, and was not easily repulsed. "He's there, I tell you," he persisted. "And for threepence I'll get you to see him. Come on, your honour! It's many a Westminster election I've seen, and beer running, from Mr. Fox, that was the gentleman had always a word for the poor man, till now, when maybe it's your honour's going to stand! Anyway, it's, Down with the mongers!"

A man who was clinging to the wall at the corner of Downing Street waved his broken hat round his head. "Ay, down with the borough-mongers!" he cried. "Down with Peel! Down with the Dook! Down with 'em all! Down with everybody!"

"And long live the Bill!" cried a man of more respectable appearance as he hurried by. "And long live the King, God bless him!"

"They'll know what it is to balk the people now," chimed in a fourth. "Let 'em go back and get elected if they can. Ay, let 'em!"

"Ay, let 'em! Mr. Brougham'll see to that!" shouted the other. "Hurrah for Mr. Brougham!"

The cry was taken up by the crowd, and three cheers were given for the Chancellor, who was so well known to the mob by the style under which he had been triumphantly elected for Yorkshire that his peerage was ignored.

Vaughan, however, heard but the echo of these cheers. Like most young men of his time, he leant to the popular side. But he had no taste for the populace in the mass; and the sight of the crowd, which was fast occupying the whole of the space before Palace Yard and even surging back into Parliament Street, determined him to turn aside. He shook off his attendant and, crossing into Whitehall Place, walked up and down, immersed in his reflections.

He was honestly ambitious, and his thoughts turned naturally on the influence which this Bill-which must create a new England, and for many a new world-was likely to have on his own fortunes. The owner of a small estate in South Wales, come early to his inheritance, he had sickened of the idle life of an officer in peacetime; and after three years of service, believing himself fit for something higher, he had sold his commission and turned his mind to intellectual pursuits. He hoped that he had a bent that way; and the glory of the immortal three, who thirty years before had founded the "Edinburgh Review," and, by so doing, made this day possible, attracted him. Why should not he, as well as another, be the man who, in the Commons, the cockpit of the nation, stood spurred to meet all comers-in an uproar which could almost be heard where he walked? Or the man who, in the lists of Themis, upheld the right of the widow and the poor man's cause, and to whom judges listened with reluctant admiration? Or best of all, highest of all, might he not vie with that abnormal and remarkable man who wore at once the three crowns, and whether as Edinburgh Reviewer, as knight of the shire for York, or as Chancellor of England, played his part with equal ease? To be brief, it was prizes such as these, distant but luminous, that held his eyes, incited him to effort, made him live laborious days. He believed that he had ability, and though he came late to the strife, he brought his experience. If men living from hand to mouth and distracted by household cares could achieve so much, why should not he who had his independence and his place in the world? Had not Erskine been such another? He, too, had sickened of barrack life. And Brougham and the two Scotts, Eldon and Stowell. To say nothing of this young Macaulay, whose name was beginning to run through every mouth; and of a dozen others who had risen to fame from a lower and less advantageous station.

The goal was distant, but it was glorious. Nor had the eighteen months which he had given to the study of the law, to attendance at the Academic and at a less ambitious debating society, and to the output of some scientific feelers, shaken his faith in himself. He had not yet thought of a seat at St. Stephen's; for no nomination had fallen to him, nor, save from one quarter, was likely to fall. And his income, some six hundred a year, though it was ample for a bachelor, would not stretch to the price of a seat at five thousand for the Parliament, or fifteen hundred for the Session-the quotations which had ruled of late. A seat some time, however, he must have; it was a necessary stepping-stone to the heights he would gain. And the subject in his mind as he paced Whitehall Place was the abolition of the close boroughs and the effect which the transfer of electoral power to the middle-class would have on his chances.

A small thing-no more than a quantity of straw laid thickly before one of the houses-brought his thoughts down to the present. By a natural impulse he raised his eyes to the house; by a coincidence, less natural, a hand, even as he looked, showed itself behind one of the panes of a window on the first floor, and drew down the blind. Vaughan stood after that, fascinated, and watched the lowering of blind after blind. And the solemn contrast between his busy thoughts and that which had even then happened in the house-between that which lay behind the darkened windows and the bright April sunshine about him, the twittering of the sparrows in the green, and the tumult of distant cheering-went home to him.

He thought of the lines, so old and so applicable:

 
Omnes eodem cogimur, omnium
Versatur urna, serius, ocius,
Sors exitura, et nos in æternum
Exilium impositura cymbæ.
 

He was still rolling the words on his tongue with that love of the classical rhythm which was a mark of his day-and returns no more than the taste for the prize-ring which was coeval with it-when the door of the house opened and a man came clumsily and heavily out, closed the door behind him, and, with his head bent low and the ungainly movements of an automaton, made off down the street.

The man was very stout as well as tall, his dress slovenly and disordered. His hat was pulled awry over his eyes, and his hands were plunged deep in his breeches pockets. Vaughan saw so much. Then the door opened again, and a face, unmistakably that of a butler, looked out.

The servant's eyes met his, and though the man neither spoke nor beckoned, his eyes spoke for him. Vaughan crossed the way to him. "What is it?" he asked.

The man was blubbering. "Oh, Lord; oh, Lord!" he said. "My lady's gone not five minutes, and he'll not be let nor hindered! He's to the House, and if the crowd set upon him he'll be murdered. For God's sake, follow him, sir! He's Sir Charles Wetherell, and a better master never walked, let them say what they like. If there's anybody with him, maybe they'll not touch him."

"I will follow him," Vaughan answered. And he hastened after the stout man, who had by this time reached the corner of the street.

Vaughan was surprised that he had not recognised Wetherell. For in every bookseller's window caricatures of the "Last of the Boroughbridges," as the wits called him, after the pocket borough for which he sat, were plentiful as blackberries. Not only was he the highest of Tories, but he was a martyr in their cause; for, Attorney-General in the last Government, he had been dismissed for resisting the Catholic Claims. Since then he had proved himself, of all the opponents of the Bill, the most violent, the most witty, and, with the exception of Croker perhaps, the most rancorous. At this date he passed for the best hated man in England; and representative to the public mind of all that was old-fashioned and illiberal and exclusive. Vaughan knew, therefore, that the servant's fears were not unfounded, and with a heart full of pity-for he remembered the darkened house-he made after him.

By this time Sir Charles was some way ahead and already involved in the crowd. Fortunately the throng was densest opposite Old Palace Yard, whence the King was in the act of departing; and the space before the Hall and before St. Stephen's Court-the buildings about which abutted on the river-though occupied by a loosely moving multitude, and presenting a scene of the utmost animation, was not impassable. Sir Charles was in the heart of the crowd before he was recognised; and then his stolid unconsciousness and the general good-humour, born of victory, served him well. He was too familiar a figure to pass altogether unknown; and here and there a man hissed him. One group turned and hooted after him. But he was within a dozen yards of the entrance of St. Stephen's Court, with Vaughan on his heels, before any violence was offered. There a man whom he happened to jostle recognised him and, bawling abuse, pushed him rudely; and the act might well have been the beginning of worse things. But Vaughan touched the man on the shoulder and looked him in the face. "I shall know you," he said quietly. "Have a care!" And the fellow, intimidated by his words and his six feet of height, shrank into himself and stood back.

Wetherell had barely noticed the rudeness. But he noted the intervention by a backward glance. "Much obliged," he grunted. "Know you, too, again, young gentleman." And he went heavily on and passed out of the crowd into the court, followed by a few scattered hisses.

Behind the officers of the House who guarded the entrance a group of excited talkers were gathered. They were chiefly members who had just left the House and had been brought to a stand by the sight of the crowd. On seeing Wetherell, surprise altered their looks. "Good G-d!" cried one, stepping forward. "You've come down, Wetherell?"

"Ay," the stricken man answered without lifting his eyes or giving the least sign of animation. "Is it too late?"

"By an hour. There's nothing to be done. Grey and Bruffam have got the King body and soul. He was so determined to dissolve, he swore that he'd come down in a hackney-coach rather than not come. So they say!"

"Ay!"

"But I hope," a second struck in, in a tone of solicitude, "that as you are here, Lady Wetherell has rallied."

"She died a quarter of an hour ago," he muttered. "I could do no more. I came here. But as I am too late, I'll go back."

Yet he stood awhile, as if he had no longer anything to draw him one way more than another; with his double chin and pendulous cheeks resting on his breast and his leaden eyes sunk to the level of the pavement. And the others stood round him with shocked faces, from which his words and manner had driven the flush of the combat. Presently two members, arguing loudly, came up, and were silenced by a glance and a muttered word. The ungainly attitude, the ill-fitting clothes, did but accentuate the tragedy of the central figure. They knew-none better-how fiercely, how keenly, how doggedly he had struggled against death, against the Bill.

And yet, had they thought of it, the vulgar caricatures that had hurt her, the abuse that had passed him by to lodge in her bosom, would hurt her no more!

Meanwhile, Vaughan, as soon as he had seen Sir Charles within the entrance reserved for members, had betaken himself to the main door of the Hall, a few paces to the westward. He had no hope that he would now be able to perform the errand on which he had set forth; for the Chancellor, for certain, would have other fish to fry and other people to see. But he thought that he would leave a card with the usher, so that Lord Brougham might know that he had not failed to come, and might make a fresh appointment if he still wished to see him.

Of the vast congeries of buildings which then encased St. Stephen's Chapel and its beautiful but degraded cloisters, little more than the Hall is left to us. The Hall we have, and in the main in the condition in which the men of that generation viewed it; as Canning viewed it, when with death in his face he paced its length on Peel's arm, and suspecting, perhaps, that they two would meet no more, proved to all men the good-will he bore his rival. Those among us whose memories go back a quarter of a century, and who can recall its aspect in term-time, with three score barristers parading its length, and thrice as many suitors and attorneys darting over its pavement-all under the lofty roof which has no rival in Europe-will be able to picture it as Vaughan saw it when he entered. To the bustle attending the courts of law was added on this occasion the supreme excitement of the day. In every corner, on the steps of every court, eager groups wrangled and debated; while above the hubbub of argument and the trampling of feet, the voices of ushers rose monotonously, calling a witness or enjoining order.

Vaughan paused beside the cake-stall at the door and surveyed the scene. As he stood, one of two men who were pacing near saw him, and with a whispered word left his companion and came towards him.

"Mr. Vaughan," he said, extending his hand with bland courtesy, "I hope you are well. Can I do anything for you? We are dissolved, but a frank is a frank for all that-to-day."

"No, I thank you," Vaughan answered. "The truth is, I had an appointment with the Chancellor for this afternoon. But I suppose he will not see me now."

The other's eyebrows met, with the result that his face looked less bland. He was a small man, with keen dark eyes and bushy grey whiskers, and an air of hawk-like energy which sixty years had not tamed. He wore the laced coat of a sergeant at law, powdered on the shoulders, as if he had but lately and hurriedly cast off his wig. "Good G-d!" he said. "With the Chancellor!" And then, pulling himself up, "But I congratulate you. A student at the Bar, as I believe you are, Mr. Vaughan, who has appointments with the Chancellor, has fortune indeed within his grasp."

Vaughan laughed. "I fear not," he said. "There are appointments and appointments, Sergeant Wathen. Mine is not of a professional nature."

Still the sergeant's face, do what he would, looked grim. He had his reasons for disliking what he heard. "Indeed!" he said drily. "Indeed! But I must not detain you. Your time," with a faint note of sarcasm, "is valuable." And with a civil salutation the two parted.

Wathen went back to his companion. "Talk of the Old One!" he said. "Do you know who that is?"

"No," the other answered. They had been discussing the coming election. "Who is it?"

"One of my constituents."

His friend laughed. "Oh, come," he said. "I thought you had but one, sergeant-old Vermuyden."

"Only one," Wathen answered, his eyes travelling from group to group, "who counts; or rather, who did count. But thirteen who poll. And that's one of them." He glanced frowning in the direction which Vaughan had taken. "And what do you think his business is here, confound him?"

"What?"

"An appointment with old Wicked Shifts."

"With the Chancellor? Pheugh!"

"Ay," the sergeant answered morosely, "you may whistle. There's some black business on foot, you may depend upon it. And ten to one it's about my seat. He's a broom," he continued, tugging at the whiskers which the late King had stamped with the imprimatur of fashion, "that will make a clean sweep of us if we don't take care. Whatever he does, there's something behind it. Some bedchamber plot, or some intrigue to get A. out and put B. in. If it was a charwoman's place he wanted, he'd not ask for it and get it. That wouldn't please him. But he'd tunnel and tunnel and tunnel-and so he'd get it."

"Still," the other replied, with secret amusement-for he had no seat, and the woes of our friends, especially our better-placed friends, have their comic side-"I thought that you had a safe thing, Wathen? That old Vermuyden's nomination at Chippinge was as good as an order on the Bank of England?"

"It was," Wathen answered drily. "But with the country wild for the Bill, there's no saying what may happen anywhere. Safe!" he continued, with a snarl. "Was there ever a safer seat than Westbury? Or a man who had a place in better order than old Lopes, who owned it, and died last month; taken from the evil to come, Jekyll said, for he never could have existed in a world without rotten boroughs! It's not far from Chippinge, so I know-know it well. And I tell you his system was beautiful-beautiful! Yet when Peel was there-after he had rattled on the Catholic Claims and been thrown out at Oxford, Lopes made way for him, you remember? – he would not have got in, no, by G-d, he wouldn't have got in if there had been a man against him. And the state in which the country was then, though there was a bit of a Protestant cry, too, wasn't to compare with what it will be now. That man" – he shook his fist stealthily in the direction of the Chancellor's Court-"has lighted a fire in England that will never be put out till it has consumed King, Lords, and Commons-ay, every stick and stone of the old Constitution. You take my word for it. And to think-to think," he added still more savagely, "that it is the Whigs have done this. The Whigs! who own more than half the land in the country; who are prouder and stiffer than old George the Third himself; who wouldn't let you nor me into their Cabinet to save our lives. By the Lord," he concluded with gusto, "they'll soon learn the difference!"

"In the meantime-there'll be dead cats and bad eggs flying, you think?"

Wathen groaned. "If that were the end of it," he said, "I'd not mind."

"Still, with it all, you are pretty safe, I suppose?"

"With that fellow closeted with the Chancellor? No, no!"

"Who is the young spark!" the other asked carelessly. "He looked a decentish kind of fellow. A little of the prig, perhaps."

"He's that!" Wathen answered. "A d-d prig. What's more, a cousin of old Vermuyden's. And what's worse, his heir. That's why they put him in the corporation and made him one of the thirteen. Thought the vote safe in the family, you see? And cheaper?" He winked. "But there's no love lost between him and old Sir Robert. A bed for a night once a year, and one day in the season among the turnips, and glad to see your back, my lad! That's about the position. Now I wonder if Brougham is going to try-but Lord! there's no guessing what is in that man's head! He's fuller of mischief than an egg of meat!"

The other was about to answer when one of the courts, in which a case of some difficulty had caused a late sitting, discharged its noisy, wrangling, perspiring crowd. The two stepped aside to avoid the evasion, and did not résumé their talk. Wathen's friend made his way out by the main door near which they had been standing; while the sergeant, with looks which mirrored the gloom that a hundred Tory faces wore on that day, betook himself to the robing-room. There he happened upon another unfortunate. They fell to talking, and their talk ran naturally upon the Chancellor, upon old Grey's folly in letting himself be led by the nose by such a rogue; finally, upon the mistakes of their own party. They differed on the last topic, and in that natural and customary state we may leave them.