No Diviner like Love!
On this same day, with the cholera raging all around, Parliament was re-opened; and Lord John Russell again brought in the Reform Bill. There was something pathetic in this persistence of a people, hungry and naked, and overshadowed by an unknown pestilence, swift and malignant as a Fate. It was evident, immediately, that the same course of “obstruction” which had proved fatal to the two previous Bills was to be pursued against the third attempt. Yet the temper of the House of Commons, sullenly, doggedly determined, might even thus early have warned its opposers. All the unfairness and pertinacity of Peel and his associates was of no avail against the inflexible steadiness of Lord Althorp and the cold impassibility of Lord John Russell.
Week after week passed in debating, while the press and people waited in alternating fits of passionate threats and still more alarming silence,–a silence, Lord Grey declared to be, “Most ominous of trouble, and of the most vital importance to the obstructing force.” The Squire was weary to death. He found it impossible to take a dutiful interest in the proceedings. The tactics of the fight did not appeal to his nature. He thought they were neither fair nor straightforward; and, unconsciously, his own opinions had been much leavened by his late familiar intercourse with Lord Ashley and his son.
In these days his chief comfort came from the friendship of Piers Exham. The young man frequently sought his company; and it became almost a custom for them to dine together at the Tory Club. And at such times words were dropped that neither would have uttered, or even thought of, at the beginning of the contest. Thus one night Piers said, in his musing way, as he fingered his glass, rather than drank the wine in it,–
“I have been wondering, Squire, whether the wish of a whole nation, gradually growing in intensity for sixty years, until it has become, to-day, a command and a threat, is not something more than a wish?”
“I should say it was, Piers,” answered the Squire. “Very likely the wish has grown to–a right.”
“Perhaps.”
Then both men were silent; and the next topic discussed was the new sickness, and Piers anxiously asked if “it had reached Atheling.”
“No, it has not, thank the Almighty!” replied the Squire. “There has not been a case of it. My family are all well.”
Allusions to Kate were seldom more definite than this one; but Piers found inexpressible comfort in the few words. Such intercourse might not seem conducive to much kind feeling; but it really was. The frequent silences; the short, pertinent sentences; the familiar, kindly touch of the young man’s hand, when it was time to return to the House; the little courteous attentions which it pleased Piers to render, rather than let the Squire be indebted to a servant for them,–these, and other things quite as trivial, made a bond between the two men that every day strengthened.