Chippinge Borough

XXIII

IN THE HOUSE

In truth Mary's notion of the opinion which Arthur Vaughan had of her was above, rather than below, the reality. In her most despondent moments she scarcely exaggerated the things he thought of her, the contempt in which he held her, or the resentment which set his blood boiling when he remembered how she had treated him. He had gone to her and laid all that was left to him at her feet; and she, who had already dealt his fortunes so terrible a blow, had paid him for his unselfish offer, for his sacrifice of much that was dear to him, with suspicion, with contumely, with mistrust! Instead of clinging to him, to whom she had that moment plighted her troth, she had deserted him at a word. In place of trusting the man who had woo'd her in her poverty, she had believed the first whisper against him. She had shown herself heartless, faithless, inconstant as the wind-a very woman! And

he might have murmured with a bitterness of which the author of the lines had been incapable. But then, Mr. Moore, though his poetry and his singing brought tears to the eyes of hardened women of fashion, had never lost at a blow a great estate, a high position, and his love.

Certainly Vaughan had, if man ever had, grounds for a quarrel with fate. He had left London heart-whole and happy, the heir to a large fortune. He returned a fortnight later, a member of the Commons House indeed, but heart-sick and soured, beggared of his expectations and tortured by the thought of what might have been-if his love had proved true as she was fair, and constant as she was sweet. Fond dreams of her beauty still tormented him. Visions of the modest home in which he would have found consolation in failure, and smiles in success, rose up before him and derided him. He hated Sir Robert. He hated, or tried to hate, the weakest and the most despicable of women. He saw all things and all men with a jaundiced eye, the sound of his voice and the look of his face were altered. Men who knew him and who passed him in the street, or who saw him eating his chop in solitary churlishness, nudged one another and said that he took his reverses ill; while others, wounded by his curtness or his ill-humour, added that he did not go the right way to make the most of what was left.

For a certainty he was become a man unpleasant to handle. But within, under the thorns, was a very human soul, wounded, sore, and miserable, seeking every way for an outlet from its pains, and finding hope of escape at one point only. Men were right, when they said that he did not go the way to make the most of his chances. For he laid himself out to please no one at this time; it was not in him. But he worked late and early, and with a furious energy to fit himself for a political career; believing that success in that career was all that was left to him, and that by the necessary labour he could best put the past behind him. Love and pleasure, and those sweets of home life of which he had dreamed, were gone from him. But the stern prizes of ambition, the crown of those who live laborious days, might still be his-if the Mirror of Parliament were never out of his hands, and if Mr. Hume himself were not more constant to his favourite pillar under the gallery than he to such chance seat as might fall to him on the same side of the House.

Alas, he had not taken the oaths an hour-with a sore heart, in a ruck of undistinguished new Members-before he saw that success was not so near or so clearly within reach, as hope, with her flattering tale, had argued. The times were propitious, certainly. The debates were close and fiery, and were scanned out of doors with an interest unknown before. The strife between Croker and Macaulay in the Commons, the duel between Brougham and Lyndhurst in the Lords, were followed in the country with as much attention as a battle between Belcher and Tom Cribb; and by the same classes. Everywhere men talked politics, talked of Reform, and of little else. The clubs, the 'Change, the taverns, nay, the drawing-rooms and the schools rang with the Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill; with Schedule A, cruel as Herod, and Schedule B, which spared one of twins. Before the window in the Haymarket which weekly displayed H.B.'s Political Caricatures, crowds stood gazing all day long, whatever the weather.

These things were in his favour. He remembered, too, the stress which the Chancellor had laid on the advantage of entering the House in advance of the crowd of new men whom the first Reformed Parliament must contain.

Unfortunately it seemed to him that he was one of just such a mob of new men, as it was. Nearly a fourth of his colleagues were strange to St. Stephen's; and the greater part of these, owing to the circumstances of the election, were Whigs and sat on his side of the House. To raise his head above the level of a hundred competitors, numbering not a few men of wit and ability, and to do so within the short life of the present Parliament-for he saw no certain prospect of being returned again-was no mean task. Little wonder that he was as regular in his attendance as Mr. Speaker, and grew pale of nights over Woodfall's Important Debates.

In the pride of his first return he had dreamed of a reputation to be gained by his maiden speech; of burning periods that would astonish all who heard them, of flights of fancy to live forever in the mouths of men, of a marshalling of facts so masterly, and an exposition of figures so clear, as to obscure the fame of Single-speech Hamilton, or of that modern phenomenon, Mr. Sadler. But whatever the effect of the present chamber on the minds of novices, there was that in the old, – mean and dingy as was its wainscotted interior, and cumbered by overhanging galleries-there was a something, were it but the memory that those walls had echoed the diatribes of Chatham and given back the voice of Burke, had heard the laugh of Walpole and the snore of North, which cooled the spirit of a new member; which shook his knees as effectually as if the panelling of the room had vanished at a touch, and revealed the glories of the Gothic Chapel which lay behind it. For behind that panelling and those galleries, the ancient Chapel, with its sumptuous tracery and statues, its frescoed walls and stained glass, still existed; no unfit image of the stately principles which lie behind the dull everyday working of our Constitution.

To Arthur Vaughan, a student of the history of the House, this effect of the Chamber upon a new member was a commonplace. But he was a practised speaker in the mimic arena; and he thought that he might rise above this feeling in his own case. He fancied that he understood the Genius Loci; its hatred of affectation, and almost of eloquence, its dislike to be bored, its preference for the easy, the conversational, and the personal. And when he had waited three weeks-so much he gave to prudence-his time came.

He rose in a moderately thin house in the middle of the dinner-hour; and rose as he thought fully prepared. Indeed he started well. He brought out two or three sentences with ease and aplomb; and he fancied the difficulty over, the threshold passed. But then-he knew not why, nor could he overcome the feeling-the silence, kindly meant, in which as a new Member, he was received, had a terrifying effect upon him. A mist rose before his eyes, his voice sounded strange to him-and distant. He dropped the thread of what he was saying, repeated himself, lost his nerve. For some seconds, standing there with all faces turned to him-they seemed numberless seconds to him, though in truth they were few-he could see nothing but the Speaker's wig, grown to an immense white cauliflower, which swelled and swelled and swelled until it filled the whole House. He stammered, repeated himself again-and was silent. And then, seeing that he was embarrassed, they cheered him-and the mist cleared; and he went on-hurriedly and nervously. But he was aware that he had dropped a link in his argument-which he had not now the coolness to supply. And when he had murmured a few sentences, more or less inept and incoherent, he sat down.

In fact, though he had made no mark, he had also incurred no discredit. But he felt that the eyes of all were on him, that they were gloating over his failure, and comparing what he had done with what he had hoped to do, his achievement with those secret hopes, those cherished aspirations, he felt all the shame of open and disgraceful defeat. His face burned; he sat looking before him, not daring for a while to divert his gaze, or to learn in others' eyes how great had been his mishap.

Unfortunately, when he ventured to change his posture, and to put on his hat, which he discovered he had been holding in his hand, he encountered Sergeant Wathen's eyes; and he read in them a look of amusement, which wounded his pride more than the open ridicule of a crowd. That was the finishing stroke. He walked out soon afterwards, bearing himself as indifferently as he could. But no man ever carried out of the House a lower heart or a sense of more utter failure. He had mistaken his talents, he had no aptitude for debate. Success as a speaker was not within his reach.

He thought something better of it next day, but not much. Nor could he put off a sneaking, hang-dog air as he entered the lobby. A number of members were gathered inside the double doors, where the stairs from the cloisters came up by a third door; and one or two whom he knew spoke to him-but not of his attempt. He fancied that he read in their looks a knowledge that he had failed, that he was no longer a man to be reckoned with. He imagined that they used a different tone to him. And at last one of them spoke of it.

"Well, Vaughan," he said pleasantly, "you got through yesterday. But if you'll take my advice you'll wait a bit. It's only one here and there can make much of it to begin."

"I certainly cannot," Vaughan said, smiling frankly, the better to hide his mortification.

"Ah, well, you're not alone," the other answered, shrugging his shoulders. "You'll pick it up by and by, I dare say." And he turned to speak to another member.

Vaughan turned on his side to the paper for the day winch hung against each of the four pillars of the lobby; and he pretended to be absorbed in it. The employment helped him to keep his countenance. But he was sore wounded. He had held his head so high in imagination, he had given so loose a rein to his ambition; he had dreamt of making such an impression on the House as Mr. Macaulay, though new to it, had made in his speech on the second reading of the former Bill, and had deepened by his speech at the like stage of the present Bill. Now he was told that he was no worse than the common run of country members, who twice in three sessions rose and blundered through half a dozen sentences! He was consoled with the reflection that only "one here and there" succeeded! Only one here and there! When to him it was everything to succeed, and to succeed quickly. When it was all he had left.

The stream of members, entering the House, was large; for the motion to commit the Bill was down for that afternoon, and if carried, would virtually put an end to opposition in the Commons. Out of the corner of his eye Vaughan scanned them, as they passed, and envied them. Peel, cold, proud and unapproachable, went by on the arm of Goulburn. Croker, pale and saturnine, casting frowning glances here and there, went in alone. The handsome, portly form of Sir James Graham passed, in talk with the Rupert of Debate. After these a rush of members; and at the tail of all slouched in the unwieldy, slovenly form of Sir Charles Wetherell, followed by a couple of his satellites.

Vaughan, glancing on one side of the paper which he appeared to be studying, caught Sir Charles's eye, and reddened. Seated on opposite sides of the House-and no man on either side was more bitter, virulent, and pugnacious than the late Attorney-General-the two had not encountered one another since that evening at Stapylton, when the existence of Sir Robert's daughter had been disclosed to Vaughan. They had not spoken, much less had there been any friendly passage between them. But now Sir Charles paused, and held out his hand.

"How do you do, Mr. Vaughan?" he said, in his deep bass voice. "Your maiden essay yesterday, eh?"

Vaughan winced. "Yes," he said stiffly, fancying that he read amusement in the other's moist eye.

To his surprise, "You'll do," Sir Charles rejoined, looking at the floor and speaking in a despondent tone. "The House would rather you began in that way, than like some d-d peacock on a lady's terrace. Take the opportunity of saying three or four sentences some fine day, and repeat it a week later. And I'll wager you'll do."

"But little, I am afraid," Vaughan said. None the less was his heart full of gratitude to the fat, ungainly man.

"All, may be," Wetherell answered. "I shouldn't wonder. I've been told, by one who heard him, that Canning hesitated in his first speech, very much as you did. It was on the Sardinian Subsidy. The men who don't feel the House never know the House. They dazzle it, Mr. Vaughan, but they don't guide it. And that's what we've got to do."

He passed on then, with a melancholy nod and averted eyes, but Vaughan could have blest him for that "we." "There's one man at least believes in me," he told himself. And when a few hours later, in the midst of a scene as turbulent as any which the House of Commons had ever witnessed-nine times without a pause it divided on the motion that "this House do now adjourn" – he watched the man who had commended him, riding the storm and directing the whirlwind, now lashing the Whigs to fury by his sarcasm, and now, carrying the whole House away in a hurricane of laughter, if he did not approve-and with his views he could not approve-he learnt, and learnt much. He saw that the fat, slovenly man, with the heavy face and that hiatus between his breeches and his waistcoat which had made him famous, was allowed to do things, and to say things, and to look things, for which a less honest man had been hurried long ago to the Clock Tower. And this, because the House believed in him; because it knew that he was fighting for a principle really dear to him; because it knew that he honestly put faith in those predictions of woe, which he scattered so freely, and in that ruin of the Constitution, with which he twitted his opponents.

A week later Vaughan acted upon his advice. He seized an opportunity and, catching the Chairman's eye-the Bill was in Committee-delivered himself of a dozen sentences, with so much spirit and propriety, that Sir Robert Peel, speaking an hour later, referred to the "plausible defence raised by the Honourable Member for Chippinge." The reference drew all eyes to Vaughan: and though nothing was said to him and he took care to bear himself as if he had done no better than before, he left the House with a lighter step and a comfortable warmth about the heart. He was more at ease that evening, if not more happy, than he had been for weeks past. Love, pleasure, and the rest were gone; and faith in woman. But if he could be sure of gaining a seat in the next Parliament, the way might be longer than he had hoped, it might be more toilsome and more dusty: but in the end he would arrive at the Treasury Bench.

He little thought, alas, that the effort on which he hugged himself was to prove a source of misfortunes. But so it was. His maiden speech had attracted neither notice nor envy. But those few sentences, short and simple as they were, by drawing an answer from the leader of the Opposition, had gained both for him. Within five minutes a score of members had asked "Who is he?" and another score had detailed the circumstances of his election for Chippinge. He had gone down to vote for his cousin, in his cousin's borough, family vote and the rest; so the story ran. Then, finding on the morning of the polling that if he threw over his cousin, he might gain the seat for himself, he had turned his coat in a-well, in a very dubious manner, snatched the seat, and-here he was!

In a word, it was the version of the facts which he had once dreaded, and about which he had afterwards ceased to trouble himself.

There were, perhaps, half a dozen persons in the House who knew the facts, and knew that the young man had professed from the first the opinions which he was now supporting. But there was just so much truth in the version, garbled as it was, just so much vraisemblance in the tale that even those who knew the facts, could not wholly contradict it. The story did not come to Wetherell's ears; or he, for certain, would have gainsaid it. But it did come to Wathen's. Now the Sergeant was capable of spite, and he had not forgotten the manner after which Vaughan had flouted him at Chippinge; his defence-if a defence it could be called-was accompanied by so many nods and shrugs, that persons less prejudiced than Tories, embittered by defeat, and wounded by personalities, might have been forgiven, if they went from the Sergeant with a lower opinion of our friend than before.

From that day Vaughan, though he knew nothing of it, and though no one spoke to him of it, was a marked man in the eyes of the opposite party. They regarded him as a renegade; while his own side were not overanxious to make his cause their own. The May elections had been contested with more spirit and less scruple than any elections within living memory; and many things had been done and many said, of which honourable men were not proud. Still it was acknowledged that such things must be done-here and there-and even that the doers must not be repudiated. But it was felt that the party was not required to grapple the latter to its breast with hooks of steel. Rumour had it that Lord Lansdowne felt himself to blame; and that the offender had been disinherited by his cousin was asserted. The man would be of no great importance, therefore, in the future; and if he did not make a second appearance in Parliament, the loss in the end would be small. Not a few summed up the matter in that way.

If Vaughan had been intimate with anyone in the House he would have learned what was afoot; and he might have taken steps to set himself right. But he had lived little of his life in London, he had but made his bow to Society; of late, also, he had been too sore to make new friends. Of course he had acquaintances, every man has acquaintances. But no one in political circles knew him well enough to think it worth while to put him on his guard.

Unluckily, the next occasion which brought him to his feet, was of a kind to give point to the feeling against him. On a certain Thursday, Sergeant Wathen moved that the Borough of Chippinge be removed from Schedule A, to Schedule B-his object being that it might retain one member; and Vaughan, thinking the opening favourable, rose, intending to make a few remarks in a strain to which the House, proverbially fond of a personal explanation, is prone to listen with indulgence. For the motion itself, he had not much hope that it would be carried: in a dozen other cases, a similar motion had failed.

"It can only be," he began-and this time the sound of his voice did not perturb him-"from a strict sense of duty, Mr. Bernal, it cannot be without pain that any Member-and I say this not on my account only, but on behalf of many Honourable Members of this House-"

"No! No! Leave us out."

The words were uttered so loudly and so rudely that they silenced him; and he looked in the direction whence they came. At once cries of "No, no! Divide! No! No!" poured on him from all parts of the House, accompanied by a dropping fire of catcalls and cockcrows. He lost the thread of his remarks, and for a moment stood abashed and confounded. The Chairman did not interfere and for an instant it looked as if the young speaker would be compelled to sit down.

But he recovered himself, gaining courage from the very vigour with which he was attacked; and which seemed out of proportion to his importance. The moment a lull in the fire of interruption occurred, he spoke in a louder voice.

"I say, sir," he proceeded, looking about him courageously, "that it is only with pain, only under the force majeure of a love of their country, that any Member can support the deletion from the Borough Roll of this House, of that Constituency which has honoured him with its confidence."

"Divide! Divide!" roared many on both sides of the House. For the Tories were uncertain on which side he was speaking. "Cock-a-doodle-doo-doo-doo!"

But this fresh burst of disapproval found him better prepared. Firmly, though the beads of perspiration stood on his brow, he persisted. "And if," he continued, "in the case which appeals so nearly to himself an Honourable Member sees that the standard which justifies the survival of a representative can be reached, with what gratification, sir, whether he sits on this side of the House or on that-"