XXIII
IN THE HOUSE
In truth Mary's notion of the opinion which Arthur Vaughan had of herwas above, rather than below, the reality. In her most despondentmoments she scarcely exaggerated the things he thought of her, thecontempt in which he held her, or the resentment which set his bloodboiling when he remembered how she had treated him. He had gone to herand laid all that was left to him at her feet; and she, who hadalready dealt his fortunes so terrible a blow, had paid him for hisunselfish offer, for his sacrifice of much that was dear to him, withsuspicion, with contumely, with mistrust! Instead of clinging to him,to whom she had that moment plighted her troth, she had deserted himat a word. In place of trusting the man who had woo'd her in herpoverty, she had believed the first whisper against him. She had shownherself heartless, faithless, inconstant as the wind--a very woman!And
_Away, away--your smile's a curse Oh, blot me from the race of men, Kind pitying Heaven! by death or worse Before I love such things again!_
he might have murmured with a bitterness of which the author of thelines had been incapable. But then, Mr. Moore, though his poetry andhis singing brought tears to the eyes of hardened women of fashion,had never lost at a blow a great estate, a high position, and hislove.
Certainly Vaughan had, if man ever had, grounds for a quarrel withfate. He had left London heart-whole and happy, the heir to a largefortune. He returned a fortnight later, a member of the Commons Houseindeed, but heart-sick and soured, beggared of his expectations andtortured by the thought of what might have been--if his love hadproved true as she was fair, and constant as she was sweet. Fonddreams of her beauty still tormented him. Visions of the modest homein which he would have found consolation in failure, and smiles insuccess, rose up before him and derided him. He hated Sir Robert. Hehated, 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 hisvoice and the look of his face were altered. Men who knew him and whopassed him in the street, or who saw him eating his chop in solitarychurlishness, nudged one another and said that he took his reversesill; while others, wounded by his curtness or his ill-humour, addedthat 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 ofescape at one point only. Men were right, when they said that he didnot go the way to make the most of his chances. For he laid himselfout to please no one at this time; it was not in him. But he workedlate and early, and with a furious energy to fit himself for apolitical career; believing that success in that career was all thatwas left to him, and that by the necessary labour he could best putthe past behind him. Love and pleasure, and those sweets of home lifeof which he had dreamed, were gone from him. But the stern prizes ofambition, the crown of those who live laborious days, might still behis--if the Mirror of Parliament were never out of his hands, and ifMr. Hume himself were not more constant to his favourite pillar underthe gallery than he to such chance seat as might fall to him on thesame side of the House.
Alas, he had not taken the oaths an hour--with a sore heart, in a ruckof undistinguished new Members--before he saw that success was not sonear or so clearly within reach, as hope, with her flattering tale,had argued. The times were propitious, certainly. The debates wereclose and fiery, and were scanned out of doors with an interestunknown before. The strife between Croker and Macaulay in the Commons,the duel between Brougham and Lyndhurst in the Lords, were followed inthe country with as much attention as a battle between Belcher and TomCribb; and by the same classes. Everywhere men talked politics, talkedof Reform, and of little else. The clubs, the 'Change, the taverns,nay, the drawing-rooms and the schools rang with the Bill, the wholeBill, and nothing but the Bill; with Schedule A, cruel as Herod, andSchedule B, which spared one of twins. Before the window in theHaymarket which weekly displayed H.B.'s Political Caricatures, crowdsstood gazing all day long, whatever the weather.
These things were in his favour. He remembered, too, the stress whichthe Chancellor had laid on the advantage of entering the House inadvance of the crowd of new men whom the first Reformed Parliamentmust contain.
Unfortunately it seemed to him that he was one of just such a mob ofnew men, as it was. Nearly a fourth of his colleagues were strange toSt. Stephen's; and the greater part of these, owing to thecircumstances of the election, were Whigs and sat on his side of theHouse. 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 theshort life of the present Parliament---for he saw no certain prospectof being returned again--was no mean task. Little wonder that he wasas regular in his attendance as Mr. Speaker, and grew pale of nightsover Woodfall's Important Debates.
In the pride of his first return he had dreamed of a reputation to begained by his maiden speech; of burning periods that would astonishall who heard them, of flights of fancy to live forever in the mouthsof men, of a marshalling of facts so masterly, and an exposition offigures so clear, as to obscure the fame of Single-speech Hamilton, orof that modern phenomenon, Mr. Sadler. But whatever the effect ofthe present chamber on the minds of novices, there was that in theold,--mean and dingy as was its wainscotted interior, and cumbered byoverhanging galleries--there was a something, were it but the memorythat those walls had echoed the diatribes of Chatham and given backthe voice of Burke, had heard the laugh of Walpole and the snore ofNorth, which cooled the spirit of a new member; which shook his kneesas effectually as if the panelling of the room had vanished at atouch, and revealed the glories of the Gothic Chapel which lay behindit. For behind that panelling and those galleries, the ancient Chapel,with its sumptuous tracery and statues, its frescoed walls and stainedglass, still existed; no unfit image of the stately principles whichlie behind the dull everyday working of our Constitution.
To Arthur Vaughan, a student of the history of the House, this effectof the Chamber upon a new member was a commonplace. But he was apractised speaker in the mimic arena; and he thought that he mightrise above this feeling in his own case. He fancied that he understoodthe _Genius Loci_; its hatred of affectation, and almost of eloquence,its dislike to be bored, its preference for the easy, theconversational, and the personal. And when he had waited threeweeks--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. Hebrought out two or three sentences with ease and aplomb; and hefancied the difficulty over, the threshold passed. But then--he knewnot why, nor could he overcome the feeling--the silence, kindly meant,in which as a new Member, he was received, had a terrifying effectupon him. A mist rose before his eyes, his voice sounded strange tohim--and distant. He dropped the thread of what he was saying,repeated himself, lost his nerve. For some seconds, standing therewith all faces turned to him--they seemed numberless seconds to him,though in truth they were few--he could see nothing but the Speaker'swig, grown to an immense white cauliflower, which swelled and swelledand swelled until it filled the whole House. He stammered, repeatedhimself again--and was silent. And then, seeing that he wasembarrassed, they cheered him--and the mist cleared; and he wenton--hurriedly and nervously. But he was aware that he had dropped alink in his argument--which he had not now the coolness to supply. Andwhen he had murmured a few sentences, more or less inept andincoherent, he sat down.
In fact, though he had made no mark, he had also incurred nodiscredit. But he felt that the eyes of all were on him, that theywere gloating over his failure, and comparing what he had done withwhat he had hoped to do, his achievement with those secret hopes,those cherished aspirations, he felt all the shame of open anddisgraceful defeat. His face burned; he sat looking before him, notdaring for a while to di
vert his gaze, or to learn in others' eyes howgreat had been his mishap.
Unfortunately, when he ventured to change his posture, and to put onhis hat, which he discovered he had been holding in his hand, heencountered Sergeant Wathen's eyes; and he read in them a look ofamusement, which wounded his pride more than the open ridicule of acrowd. That was the finishing stroke. He walked out soon afterwards,bearing himself as indifferently as he could. But no man ever carriedout of the House a lower heart or a sense of more utter failure. Hehad mistaken his talents, he had no aptitude for debate. Success as aspeaker was not within his reach.
He thought something better of it next day, but not much. Nor could heput off a sneaking, hang-dog air as he entered the lobby. A number ofmembers were gathered inside the double doors, where the stairs fromthe cloisters came up by a third door; and one or two whom he knewspoke to him--but not of his attempt. He fancied that he read in theirlooks a knowledge that he had failed, that he was no longer a man tobe 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. Butif you'll take my advice you'll wait a bit. It's only one here andthere can make much of it to begin."
"I certainly cannot," Vaughan said, smiling frankly, the better tohide his mortification.
"Ah, well, you're not alone," the other answered, shrugging hisshoulders. "You'll pick it up by and by, I dare say." And he turned tospeak to another member.
Vaughan turned on his side to the paper for the day winch hung againsteach of the four pillars of the lobby; and he pretended to be absorbedin it. The employment helped him to keep his countenance. But he wassore wounded. He had held his head so high in imagination, he hadgiven so loose a rein to his ambition; he had dreamt of making such animpression on the House as Mr. Macaulay, though new to it, had made inhis speech on the second reading of the former Bill, and had deepenedby his speech at the like stage of the present Bill. Now he was toldthat he was no worse than the common run of country members, who twicein 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 tosucceed, and to succeed quickly. When it was all he had left.
The stream of members, entering the House, was large; for the motionto commit the Bill was down for that afternoon, and if carried, wouldvirtually put an end to opposition in the Commons. Out of the cornerof 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; andat the tail of all slouched in the unwieldy, slovenly form of SirCharles Wetherell, followed by a couple of his satellites.
Vaughan, glancing on one side of the paper which he appeared to bestudying, caught Sir Charles's eye, and reddened. Seated on oppositesides of the House--and no man on either side was more bitter,virulent, and pugnacious than the late Attorney-General--the two hadnot encountered one another since that evening at Stapylton, when theexistence of Sir Robert's daughter had been disclosed to Vaughan. Theyhad not spoken, much less had there been any friendly passage betweenthem. But now Sir Charles paused, and held out his hand.
"How do you do, Mr. Vaughan?" he said, in his deep bass voice. "Yourmaiden essay yesterday, eh?"
Vaughan winced. "Yes," he said stiffly, fancying that he readamusement in the other's moist eye.
To his surprise, "You'll do," Sir Charles rejoined, looking at thefloor and speaking in a despondent tone. "The House would rather youbegan 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 heartfull of gratitude to the fat, ungainly man.
"All, may be," Wetherell answered. "I shouldn't wonder. I've beentold, by one who heard him, that Canning hesitated in his firstspeech, very much as you did. It was on the Sardinian Subsidy. The menwho 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 Vaughancould have blest him for that "we." "There's one man at least believesin me," he told himself. And when a few hours later, in the midst of ascene as turbulent as any which the House of Commons had everwitnessed--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 tofury by his sarcasm, and now, carrying the whole House away in ahurricane of laughter, if he did not approve--and with his views hecould not approve--he learnt, and learnt much. He saw that the fat,slovenly man, with the heavy face and that hiatus between his breechesand 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 hadbeen hurried long ago to the Clock Tower. And this, because the Housebelieved in him; because it knew that he was fighting for a principlereally dear to him; because it knew that he honestly put faith inthose predictions of woe, which he scattered so freely, and in thatruin of the Constitution, with which he twitted his opponents.
A week later Vaughan acted upon his advice. He seized an opportunityand, catching the Chairman's eye--the Bill was in Committee--deliveredhimself of a dozen sentences, with so much spirit and propriety, thatSir Robert Peel, speaking an hour later, referred to the "plausibledefence raised by the Honourable Member for Chippinge." The referencedrew all eyes to Vaughan: and though nothing was said to him and hetook care to bear himself as if he had done no better than before, heleft the House with a lighter step and a comfortable warmth about theheart. He was more at ease that evening, if not more happy, than hehad been for weeks past. Love, pleasure, and the rest were gone; andfaith in woman. But if he could be sure of gaining a seat in the nextParliament, the way might be longer than he had hoped, it might bemore toilsome and more dusty: but in the end he would arrive at theTreasury Bench.
He little thought, alas, that the effort on which he hugged himselfwas to prove a source of misfortunes. But so it was. His maiden speechhad attracted neither notice nor envy. But those few sentences, shortand simple as they were, by drawing an answer from the leader of theOpposition, had gained both for him. Within five minutes a score ofmembers had asked "Who is he?" and another score had detailed thecircumstances of his election for Chippinge. He had gone down to votefor his cousin, in his cousin's borough, family vote and the rest; sothe story ran. Then, finding on the morning of the polling that if hethrew over his cousin, he might gain the seat for himself, he hadturned his coat in a--well, in a very dubious manner, snatched theseat, 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 thefacts, and knew that the young man had professed from the first theopinions which he was now supporting. But there was just so much truthin the version, garbled as it was, just so much _vraisemblance_ in thetale that even those who knew the facts, could not wholly contradictit. 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 Sergeantwas capable of spite, and he had not forgotten the manner after whichVaughan had flouted him at Chippinge; his defence--if a defence itcould be called--was accompanied by so many nods and shrugs, thatpersons less prejudiced than Tories, embittered by defeat, and woundedby personalities, might have been forgiven, if they went from theSergeant with a lower opinion of our friend than before.
From that day Vaughan, though he knew nothing of it, and though no onespoke to him of it, was a marked man in the eyes of the
oppositeparty. They regarded him as a renegade; while his own side were notoveranxious to make his cause their own. The May elections had beencontested with more spirit and less scruple than any elections withinliving memory; and many things had been done and many said, of whichhonourable men were not proud. Still it was acknowledged that suchthings must be done--here and there--and even that the doers must notbe repudiated. But it was felt that the party was not required tograpple the latter to its breast with hooks of steel. Rumour had itthat Lord Lansdowne felt himself to blame; and that the offender hadbeen disinherited by his cousin was asserted. The man would be of nogreat importance, therefore, in the future; and if he did not make asecond 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 havelearned what was afoot; and he might have taken steps to set himselfright. But he had lived little of his life in London, he had but madehis bow to Society; of late, also, he had been too sore to make newfriends. Of course he had acquaintances, every man has acquaintances.But no one in political circles knew him well enough to think it worthwhile to put him on his guard.
Unluckily, the next occasion which brought him to his feet, was of akind to give point to the feeling against him. On a certain Thursday,Sergeant Wathen moved that the Borough of Chippinge be removed fromSchedule A, to Schedule B--his object being that it might retain onemember; and Vaughan, thinking the opening favourable, rose, intendingto make a few remarks in a strain to which the House, proverbiallyfond 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 didnot perturb him--"from a strict sense of duty, Mr. Bernal, it cannotbe without pain that any Member--and I say this not on my accountonly, 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 thethread of his remarks, and for a moment stood abashed and confounded.The Chairman did not interfere and for an instant it looked as if theyoung speaker would be compelled to sit down.
But he recovered himself, gaining courage from the very vigour withwhich he was attacked; and which seemed out of proportion to hisimportance. The moment a lull in the fire of interruption occurred, hespoke in a louder voice.
"I say, sir," he proceeded, looking about him courageously, "that itis only with pain, only under the _force majeure_ of a love of theircountry, that any Member can support the deletion from the BoroughRoll of this House, of that Constituency which has honoured him withits 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. "Andif," he continued, "in the case which appeals so nearly to himself anHonourable Member sees that the standard which justifies the survivalof a representative can be reached, with what gratification, sir,whether he sits on this side of the House or on that----"
"No! No! Leave us out!" in a roar of sound. And "Divide! Divide!"
"Or on that," he repeated.
"Divide! Divide!"
"Must he not press its claims and support its interests?" he persistedgallantly. "Ay, sir, welcome in the event of success a decision atonce just, and of so much advantage, I will not say to himself----"
"It never will be to you!" shrieked a voice from the darker cornerunder the opposite gallery.
The shaft went home. He faltered. A roar of laughter drowned his lastwords, and he sat down with a burning face; in some confusion, but ingreater perplexity. Had he transgressed, he wondered ruefully, someunwritten law of the House! Had he offended in ignorance, andpersisted in his offence? Should he not, though Wathen had spoken,have spoken in his own case? In a matter so nearly touching himself?
He spoke to the Member who chanced to sit next him. "What was it?" heasked humbly. "Did I do something wrong?"
The man glanced at him coldly. "Oh, no," he said. And he shrugged hisshoulders.
"But----"
"On the contrary, I fancy you've to congratulate yourself," with asneer so faint that Vaughan did not perceive it. "I understand thatwe're to do as we like on this--and they know it on the other side.Eh? Yes, there's the division. I think," he added with the same faintsneer, "you'll save your seat."
"By Jove!" Vaughan exclaimed. "You don't say so!"
He could hardly believe it. But so it turned out. And so greatwas the boon--the greater as no other borough was transferred inCommittee--that it swept away for the time the memory of what hadhappened. His eyes sparkled. The seat saved, it was odd if with thewider electorate created by the Bill, he was not sure of return! Stillmore odd, if he was not sure of beating Wathen--he, who had opened theborough and been returned by the Whig interest even while it wasclosed! No longer need he feel so anxious and despondent when theDissolution, which must follow the passage of the Bill, rose to hismind. No longer need he be in so great a hurry to make his mark, soenvious of Mr. Macaulay, so jealous of Mr. Sadler.
Certainly as far as his political career was in question the horizonwas clearing. If only other things had been as favourable! If onlythere had been someone, were it in a cottage at Hammersmith or in adull street off Bloomsbury Square, to whom he might take home thispiece of news; certain that other eyes would sparkle more brightlythan his, and another heart beat quick with joy!
That could not be. There was an end of that. And his face settled backinto its gloom. Still he was less unhappy. The certainty of a seat inthe next Parliament was a great point gained! A great point to thegood!