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.