“Mr. Avenel, I dare say, can manage them,” said Harley. “Pray do nothing immoral, and nothing that will upset the election. I think you might as well go home.”
“Home! No, pardon me, my Lord; there must be some head to direct the Committee, and keep our captains at their posts upon the doubtful electors. A great deal of mischief may be done between this and the morrow; and I would sit up all night—ay, six nights a week for the next three months—to prevent any awkward mistake by which Audley Egerton can be returned.”
“His return would really grieve you so much?” said Harley.
“You may judge of that by the zeal with which I enter into all your designs.”
Here there was a sudden and wondrously loud shout from another inn,—a Yellow inn, far down the lane, not so luminous as the Blue hostelry; on the contrary, looking rather dark and sinister, more like a place for conspirators or felons than honest, independent electors,—“Avenel forever! Avenel and the Yellows!”
“Excuse me, my Lord, I must go back and watch over my black sheep, if I would have them blue!” said Levy; and he retreated towards the threshold. But at that shout of “Avenel forever!” as if at a signal, various electors of the redoubted Hundred and Fifty rushed from the Blue hostelry, sweeping past Levy, and hurrying down the lane to the dark little Yellow inn, followed by the female stragglers, as small birds follow an owl. It was not, however, very easy to get into that Yellow inn; Yellow Reformers, eminent for their zeal on behalf of purity of election, were stationed outside the door, and only strained in one candidate for admittance at a time. “After all,” thought the baron, as he passed into the principal room of the Blue tavern, and proposed the national song of “Rule Britannia,”—“after all, Avenel hates Egerton as much as I do, and both sides work to the same end.” And thrumming on the table, he joined with a fine lass in the famous line,
“For Britons never will be slaves!”
In the interim, Harley had disappeared within the Lansmere Arms, which was the headquarters of the Blue Committee. Not, however, mounting to the room in which a few of the more indefatigable were continuing their labours, receiving reports from scouts, giving orders, laying wagers, and very muzzy with British principles and spirits, Harley called aside the landlord, and inquired if the stranger, for whom rooms had been prepared, was yet arrived. An affirmative answer was given, and Harley followed the host up a private stair, to a part of the house remote from the rooms devoted to the purposes of the election. He remained with this stranger about half an hour, and then walked into the Committee-room, got rid of the more excited, conferred with the more sober, issued a few brief directions to such of the leaders as he felt he could most rely upon, and returned home as rapidly as he had quitted it.
Dawn was gray in the skies when Harley sought his own chamber. To gain it, he passed by the door of Violante’s. His heart suffused with grateful ineffable tenderness, he paused and kissed the threshold. When he stood within his room (the same that he had occupied in his early youth), he felt as if the load of years were lifted from his bosom. The joyous, divine elasticity of spirit, that in the morning of life springs towards the Future as a bird soars into heaven, pervaded his whole sense of being. A Greek poet implies that the height of bliss is the sudden relief of pain: there is a nobler bliss still,—the rapture of the conscience at the sudden release from a guilty thought. By the bedside at which he had knelt in boyhood, Harley paused to kneel once more. The luxury of prayer, interrupted since he had nourished schemes of which his passions had blinded him to the sin, but which, nevertheless, he dared not confess to the All-Merciful, was restored to him. And yet, as he bowed his knee, the elation of spirits he had before felt forsook him. The sense of the danger his soul had escaped, the full knowledge of the guilt to which the fiend had tempted, came dread before his clearing vision; he shuddered in horror of himself. And he who but a few hours before had deemed it so impossible to pardon his fellow-man, now felt as if years of useful and beneficent deeds could alone purify his own repentant soul from the memory of one hateful passion.