II

A CRIMEAN EPISODE

It was eight o'clock in the evening of the 5th of April, 1880, and the Travellers' Club was full to overflowing. Men who were just sitting down to dinner got up from their tables, and joined the excited concourse in the hall. The General Election which terminated Lord Beaconsfield's reign was nearing its close, and the issue was scarcely in doubt; but at this moment the decisive event of the campaign was announced. Members, as they eagerly scanned the tape, saw that Gladstone was returned for Midlothian; and, as they passed, the news to the expectant crowd behind them, there arose a tumult of excited voices.

"I told you how it would be!" "Well, I've lost my money." "I could not have believed that Scotsmen would be such fools." "I'm awfully sorry for Dalkeith." "Why couldn't that old windbag have stuck to Greenwich?" "I blame Rosebery for getting him down." "Well, I suppose we're in for another Gladstone Premiership." "Oh, no fear. The Queen won't speak to him." "No, Hartington's the man, and, as an old Whig, I'm glad of it." "Perhaps Gladstone will take the Exchequer." "What! serve under Hartington? You don't know the old gentleman's pride if you expect that;" and so on and so forth, a chorus of excited and bewildering exclamations. Amid all the hurly-burly, one figure in the throng seemed quite unmoved, and its immobility attracted the notice of the throng. "Well, really, Vaughan, I should have thought that even you would have felt excited about this. I know you don't care much about politics in a general way, but this is something out of the common. The Duke of Buccleuch beaten on his own ground, and Gladstone heading straight for the Premiership! Isn't that enough to quicken your pulse?"

But the man whom they saluted as Vaughan still looked undisturbed. "Well, I don't think I ever was quite as much in love with Dizzy as you were; and as to the Premiership, we are not quite at the end yet, and Alors comme alors."

Philip Vaughan was a man just over fifty: tall, pale, distinguished-looking, with something in his figure and bearing that reminded one of the statue of Sidney Herbert, which in 1880 still stood before the War Office in Pall Mall. He looked both delicate and melancholy. His face was curiously devoid of animation; but his most marked characteristic was an habitual look of meditative abstraction from the things which immediately surrounded him. As he walked down the steps of the club towards a brougham which was waiting for him, the man who had tried in vain to interest him in the Midlothian Election turned to his nearest neighbour, and said: "Vaughan is really the most extraordinary fellow I know. There is nothing on earth that interests him in the faintest degree. Politics, books, sport, society, foreign affairs—he I never seems to care a rap about any of them; and yet he knows something about them all, and, if only you can get him to talk, he can talk extremely well. It is particularly curious about politics, for generally, if a man has once been in political life, he feels the fascination of it to the end." "But was Vaughan ever in political life?" "Oh yes I suppose you are too young to remember. He got into Parliament just after he left Oxford. He was put in by an old uncle for a Family Borough—Bilton—one of those snug little seats, not exactly 'Pocket Boroughs,' but very like them, which survived until the Reform Act of 1867." "How long did he sit?" "Only for one Parliament—from 1852 to 1857. No one ever knew why he gave up. He put it on health, but I believe it was just freakishness. He always was an odd chap, and of course he grows odder as he grows older." But just at that moment another exciting result came, trickling down the tape, and the hubbub was renewed.

Philip Vaughan was, as he put it in his languid way, "rather fond of clubs," so long as they were not political, and he spent a good deal of his time at the Travellers', the Athenæum, and the United Universities, and was a member of some more modern institutions. He had plenty of acquaintances, but no friends—at least of his own age. The Argus-eyed surveyors of club-life noticed that the only people to whom he seemed to talk freely and cheerfully were the youngest members; and he was notoriously good-natured in helping young fellows who wished to join his clubs, and did his utmost to stay the hand of the blackballer.

He had a very numerous cousinship, but did not much cultivate it. Sometimes, yielding to pressure, he would dine with cousins in London; or pay a flying visit to them in the country; but in order, as it was supposed to avoid these family entanglements, he lived at Wimbledon, where he enjoyed, in a quiet way, his garden and his library, and spent most of the day in solitary rides among the Surrey hills. When winter set in he generally vanished towards the South of Europe, but by Easter he was back again at Wimbledon, and was to be found pretty often at one or other of his clubs.

This was Philip Vaughan, as people knew him in 1880. Some liked him; some pitied him; some rather despised him; but no one took the trouble to understand him; and indeed, if anyone had thought it worth while to do so, the attempt would probably have been unsuccessful; for Vaughan never talked of the past, and to understand him in 1880 one must have known him as he had been thirty years before.

In 1850 two of the best known of the young men in society were Arthur Grey and Philip Vaughan. They were, and had been ever since their schooldays at Harrow, inseparable friends. The people to whom friendship is a sealed and hopeless mystery were puzzled by the alliance. "What have those two fellows in common?" was the constant question, "and yet you never see them apart." They shared lodgings in Mount Street, frequented the same clubs, and went, night after night, to the same diners and balls. They belonged, in short, to the same set: "went everywhere," as the phrase is, and both were extremely popular; but their pursuits and careers were different. Grey was essentially a sportsman and an athlete. He was one of those men to whom all bodily exercises come naturally, and who attain perfection in them with no apparent effort. From his earliest days he had set his heart on being a soldier, and by 1850 had obtained a commission in the Guards. Vaughan had neither gifts nor inclinations in the way of sport or games. At Harrow he lived the life of the intellect and the spirit, and was unpopular accordingly. He was constantly to be found "mooning," as his schoolfellows said, in the green lanes and meadow-paths which lie between Harrow and Uxbridge, or gazing, as Byron had loved to gaze, at the sunset from the Churchyard Terrace. It was even whispered that he wrote poetry.

Arthur Grey, with his good looks, his frank bearing, and his facile supremacy on the cricket-ground and in the racquet-court, was a popular hero; and of all his schoolfellows none paid him a more whole-hearted worship than the totally dissimilar Philip Vaughan. Their close and intimate affection was a standing puzzle to hard and dull and superficial natures; but a poet could interpret it.

"We trifled, toiled, and feasted, far apart
From churls, who, wondered what our friendship meant;
And in that coy retirement heart to heart
Drew closer, and our natures were content."[*]

[Footnote *: William Cory.]

Vaughan and Grey left Harrow, as they had entered it, on the same day, and in the following October both went up to Christ Church. Neither contemplated a long stay at Oxford, for each had his career cut out. Grey was to join the Guards at the earliest opportunity, and Vaughan was destined for Parliament. Bilton was a borough which the "Schedule A" of 1832 had spared. It numbered some 900 voters; and, even as the electors of Liskeard "were commonly of the same opinion as Mr. Eliot," so the electors of Bilton were commonly of the same opinion as Lord Liscombe.

The eighth Lord Liscombe was the last male member of his family. The peerage must die with him; but his property, including the "Borough influence," was at his own disposal. His only sister had married a Mr. Vaughan, and Lord Liscombe, having carefully watched the character and career of his nephew Philip Vaughan, determined to make him his heir. This was all very well; no one had a word to say against it, for no more obvious heir could be suggested. But when it became known that Lord Liscombe meant to bring Philip Vaughan into Parliament for Bilton there was great dissatisfaction. "What a shame," people said, "to disturb old Mr. Cobley, who has sat so long and voted so steadily! To be sure, he is very tiresome, and can't make himself heard a yard off, and is very stingy about subscriptions; and, if there was some rising young man to put into his seat, as the Duke of Newcastle put Gladstone, it might be all very well. But, really, Philip Vaughan is such a moody, dreamy creature, and so wrapped up in books and poetry, that he can never make a decent Member of Parliament. Politics are quite out of his line, and I shouldn't wonder if Lord Liscombe contrived to lose the seat. But he's as obstinate as a mule; and he has persuaded himself that young Vaughan is a genius. Was there ever such folly?"

Lord Liscombe had his own way—as he commonly had. Mr. Cobley received a polite intimation that at the next election he would not be able to rely on the Liscombe interest, and retired with a very bad grace, but not without his reward; for before long he received the offer of a baronetcy (which he accepted, as he said, to please his wife), and died honourably as Sir Thomas Cobley. Meanwhile Lord Liscombe, who, when he had framed a plan, never let the grass grow under his feet, induced Philip Vaughan to quit Oxford without waiting for a degree, made him address "Market Ordinaries" and political meetings at Bilton, presented him at the Levee, proposed him at his favourite clubs, gave him an ample allowance, and launched him, with a vigorous push, into society. In all this Lord Liscombe did well, and showed his knowledge of human nature. The air of politics stirred young Vaughan's pulses as they had never been stirred before. What casual observers had regarded as idle reveries turned out to have been serious studies. With the theory of English politics, as it shaped itself in 1852 when Lord Derby and Disraeli were trying to restore Protection, Vaughan showed himself thoroughly acquainted; and, as often happens when a contemplative and romantic nature is first brought into contact with eager humanity, he developed a faculty of public speaking which astonished his uncle as much as it astonished anyone, though that astute nobleman concealed his surprise. Meanwhile, Grey had got his commission. In those days officers of the Guards lived in lodgings, so it was obvious for Grey and Vaughan to live together; and every now and then Grey would slip down to Bilton, and by making himself pleasant to the shop-keepers, and talking appropriately to the farmers, would act as his friend's most effective election-agent. The Dissolution came in July, 1852, and Philip Vaughan was returned unopposed for the Free and Independent Borough of Bilton.

Then followed a halcyon time. The two friends had long known that they had only one heart between them; and now, living under the same roof and going into the same society, they lived practically one life. There was just enough separation to make reunion more delightful—a dull debate at the House for Vaughan, or a dusty field-day at Aldershot for Grey; but for both there was the early gallop in Rotten Row, the breakfast which no third person ever shared, the evening of social amusement, and the long, deep, intimate talk over the last cigar, when the doings of the day were reviewed and the programme for to-morrow was sketched.

Grey had always been popular and always lighthearted. Vaughan, as a schoolboy and an undergraduate, had been unpopular and grave. But now people who knew them both observed that, at any rate as far as outward characteristics showed, the two natures were becoming harmonized. Vaughan was a visibly lighter, brighter, and more companionable fellow; and Grey began to manifest something of that manly seriousness which was wanted to complete his character. It is pleasant to contemplate "one entire and perfect chrysolite" of happiness, and that, during these bright years of opening manhood, was the rare and fragile possession of Philip Vaughan and Arthur Grey.

John Bright was once walking with one of his sons, then a schoolboy, past the Guards' Memorial in Waterloo Place. The boy asked the meaning of the single word inscribed on the base, CRIMEA. Bright's answer was as emphatic as the inscription: "A crime." There is no need to recapitulate in this place the series of blunders through which this country, in Lord Clarendon's phrase, "drifted towards war." Month by month things shaped themselves in a way which left no reasonable doubt about the issue. The two friends said little. Deep in the heart of each there lay the conviction that an event was at hand which would "pierce even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow." But each held the conviction with a difference. To Grey it meant the approach of that to which, from the days of his chivalrous boyhood, he had looked forward, as the supreme good of life—the chance of a soldier's glory and a soldier's death. To Vaughan it meant simply the extinction of all that made life worth living. Each foresaw an agony, but the one foresaw it with a joy which no affection could subdue; the other with a despair which even religion seemed powerless to relieve. Before long silence became impossible. The decision of the Cabinet was made known. Two strong and ardent natures, which since boyhood had lived in and on one another, were forced to admit that a separation, which might be eternal, "was nigh, even at the doors." But there was this vital difference between the two cases—the one had to act; the other only to endure.

On the 22nd of February, 1854, the Guards sailed from Southampton, and on the 27th of March war between England and Russia was formally declared.

The events of the next two years must be compressed into a few lines. To the inseparable evils of war—bloodshed and sickness—were added the horrors of a peculiarly cruel winter. Five-sixths of the soldiers whom England lost died from preventable diseases, and the want of proper food, clothing, and shelter. Bullets and cholera and frost-bite did their deadly work unchecked. The officers had at least their full share of the hardships and the fatalities. What the Guards lost can be read on the walls of the Chapel at Wellington Barracks and in the pedigrees of Burke's Peerage. For all England it was a time of piercing trial, and of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick. No one ever knew what Vaughan endured, for he as too proud to bare his soul. For two years he never looked at a gazette, or opened a newspaper, or heard a Ministerial announcement in the House of Commons, or listened to a conversation at his club, without the sickening apprehension that the next moment he would know that Arthur Grey was dead. Letters from Grey reached him from time to time, but their brave cheerfulness did nothing to soothe his apprehensions. For they were few and far between; postal communication was slow and broken, and by the time a letter reached him the hand which had penned it might be cold in death. Yet, in spite of an apprehensive dread which had become a second nature to Philip Vaughan, the fatal news lingered. Weeks lengthened into months, and months into two years, and yet the blow had not fallen. It was not in Philip's nature to "cheer up," or "expect the best," or "hope against hope," or to adopt any of the cheap remedies which shallow souls enjoy and prescribe. Nothing but certainty could give him ease, and certainty was in this case impossible. Nervousness, restlessness, fidgetiness, increased upon him day by day. The gossip and bustle of the House of Commons became intolerable to him. Society he had never entered since Grey sailed for the Crimea. As in boyhood, so again now, he felt that Nature was the only true consoler, and for weeks at a time he tried to bury himself in the wilds of Scotland or Cumberland or Cornwall, spending his whole day in solitary walks, with Wordsworth or the Imitatio for a companion, and sleeping only from physical exhaustion.

In the early part of 1856 the newspapers began to talk of peace. Sebastopol had fallen, and Russia was said to be exhausted. The Emperor of the French had his own reasons for withdrawing from the contest, and everything seemed to turn on the decision of Lord Palmerston. This tantalizing vision of a swift fulfilment of his prayers seemed to Philip Vaughan even less endurable than his previous apprehensions. To hear from hour to hour the contradictory chatter of irresponsible clubmen and M.P.'s was an insupportable affliction; so, at the beginning of the Session, he "paired" till Easter, and departed on one of his solitary rambles. Desiring to cut himself off as completely as possible from his usual environment, he left no address at his lodgings, but told his servant that when he wanted his letters he would telegraph for them from the place, whatever it might be, where he was halting. He kept steadily to his plan, wandering over hill and dale, by lake and river, and steeping his soul in "the cheerful silence of the fells." When he lighted on a spot which particularly took his fancy, he would halt there for two or three days, and would send what in those day was called "a telegraphic despatch" from the nearest town. In response to the despatch he would receive from his servant in Mount Street a package containing all the letters which had been accumulating during the fortnight or three weeks since he last telegraphed. One day in April, when he opened the customary package, he found in it a letter from Arthur Grey.

"The General has just told us that peace is practically settled. If this proves true, you will not get another letter from me. I presume we shall be sent home directly, and I shall make straight for London and Mount Street, where I expect I shall find you. Dear old chap, I can guess what you have been going through; but it looks as if we should meet again in this world after all."

What this letter meant to Philip Vaughan they only know who have been through a similar experience; and words are powerless to express it

After the first bewilderment of joy had subsided, Philip began to study the practical bearings of the letter. By a comparison of the date within and the post-mark outside, the letter appeared to have been a long time on the way, and another delay had occurred since it had arrived at Mount Street. It was possible that peace might have been actually concluded. News in those days took long to travel through Scottish glens, and Vaughan had never looked at a paper since he left England. It was conceivable that the Guards were already on their homeward voyage—nay, it might even be that they were just arriving, or had arrived, in London. The one clear point was that Vaughan must get home. Twenty miles on his landlord's pony brought him to a telegraph-office, whence he telegraphed to his servant, "Returning immediately," and then, setting his face southward, he travelled as fast as steamers and express trains would take him. As he travelled, he picked up the news. Peace had been concluded on the 30th of March, and some of our troops were homeward bound; some had actually arrived. The journey seemed unnaturally long, and it was dark when the train rattled into Euston Station.... In a bewildered mood of uncertainty and joy, he rang the bell in Mount Street. His servant opened the door. "You're just in time, sir. You will find him in the drawing-room."

The drawing-room of the lodging-house had always been Grey's sitting-room, and during his absence Vaughan had studiously kept it in it accustomed order. There were some stags' heads on the walls, and a fox's brush with a label; a coloured print of Harrow, and engravings of one or two Generals whom Grey had specially honoured as masters of the art of war; the book-case, the writing-desk, the rather stiff furniture, were just as he had left them. Philip flung open the door with a passionate cry of "Arthur! Arthur! At last! Thank God——" But the words died on his lips.

In the middle of the room, just under the central chandelier, there was a coffin supported by trestles, with its foot towards the door. On the white pillow there lay the still whiter face of a corpse, and it was the corpse of Arthur Grey.

What happened immediately after no one ever precisely knew. Not even the waiting servant had heard the street-door shut.

Next morning the park-keepers found a young man lying on the grass in Hyde Park, drenched to the skin with the night's heavy rain, unconscious, and apparently dying. The papers in his pockets proved that he was Philip Vaughan. A long and desperate illness followed, and for months both life and reason trembled in the balance. Lord Liscombe hurried up to London, and Vaughan's servant explained everything. Arthur Grey had been taken ill on the homeward voyage. The symptoms would now be recognized as typhoid, but the disease had not then been diagnosed, and the ship's surgeon pronounced it "low fever." He landed at Southampton, pushed his way to London, arrived at his lodgings more dead than alive, and almost immediately sank into the coma from which he never recovered. It was impossible to communicate with Vaughan, whose address was unknown; and when his telegram arrived, announcing his instant return, the servant and the landlady agreed that he must have heard the news from some other source, and was hurrying back to see his friend before he became invisible for ever. "You're just in time" meant just in time to see the body, for the coffin was to be closed that evening.

The struggle was long and desperate, but Vaughan had on his side youth and a constitution, not strong indeed, but unweakened by profligacy. By slow degrees his nervous system rallied from the shock, and after a long period of foreign travel he returned, in great part, to his former habits. Only he could not and would not re-enter the House of Commons, but announced his retirement, on the score of health, at the next Election. Soon afterwards he inherited Lord Liscombe's fortune, made over Liscombe Abbey and its responsibilities to a distant cousin, and insensibly glided into the way of living which I described at the outset. Two years after the Election of 1880 he died at Rome, where he had been spending the winter. The attack of fever to which he succumbed was not peculiarly severe, but the doctor said that he made no effort to live, and was in fact worn out, though not by years.

Nobody missed him. Nobody lamented him. Few even said a kind word about him. His will expressed only one personal wish—that he might be buried by the side of Arthur Grey. But his executors thought that this arrangement would cause them a great deal of trouble, and he rests in the English cemetery at Rome.