That could not be. There was an end of that. And his face settled back into its gloom. Still he was less unhappy. The certainty of a seat in the next Parliament was a great point gained! A great point to the good!
XXIV
A RIGHT AND LEFT
If anything was certain in a political world so changed, it was certain that if the Reform Bill passed the Lords—in the teeth of those plaguy Bishops of whose opposition so much was heard—a Dissolution would immediately follow. To not a few of the members this contingency was a spectre, ever present, seated at bed and board, and able to defy the rules even of Almack’s and Crockford’s. For how could a gentleman, who had just given five thousand pounds for his seat, contemplate with equanimity a notice to quit, so rude and so premature? And worse, a notice to quit which meant extrusion into a world in which seats at five thousand for a Parliament would be few and far between; and fair agreements to pay a thousand a year while the privilege lasted, would be unknown!
Many a member asked loudly and querulously, “What will happen to the country if the Bill pass?” But more asked themselves in their hearts, and more often and more querulously, “What will happen to me if the Bill pass? How shall I fare at the hands of these new constituencies, which, unwelcome as a gipsy’s brats, I am forced to bring into the world?”
Hitherto few on his own side of the House, and not many on the Tory side, had regarded a Dissolution with more misgiving than Arthur Vaughan. The borough for which he sat lay under doom; and he saw no opening elsewhere. He had no longer the germs of influence nor great prospects: nor yet such a fortune as justified him in an appeal to one of the new and populous boroughs. It was a pleasant thing to go in and out by the door of the privileged, to take his chop at Bellamy’s, to lounge in the dignified seclusion of the library, or to air his new honours in Westminster Hall; pleasant also to have that sensation of living at the hub of things, to receive whips, to give franks, to feel that the ladder of ambition was open to him. But he knew that an experience of the House counted by months did no man good; and the prospect of losing his plumes and going forth again a common biped, was the more painful to him because his all was embarked in the venture. He might, indeed, fall back on the bar; but with half a heart and the reputation of a man who had tried to fly before he could walk.
His relief, therefore, when Chippinge, alone of all the Boroughs in Schedule A, was removed in Committee to Schedule B, may be imagined. The road before him was once more open, while the exceptional nature of his luck almost persuaded him that he was reserved for greatness. True, Sergeant Wathen might pride himself on the same fact; but at the thought Vaughan smiled. The Sergeant and Sir Robert would find it a trifle harder, he thought, to deal with the hundred-and-odd voters whom the Act enfranchised, than with the old Cripples! And very, very ungrateful would those hundred-and-odd be, if they did not vote for the man who had made their cause his own!
A load, indeed, was lifted from his mind, and for some days his relief could be read in the lightness of his step, and the returning gaiety of his eyes. He knew nothing of the things which were being whispered about him. And though he had cause to fancy that he was not persona grata on his own benches, he thought sufficiently well of himself to set this down to jealousy. There is a stage in the life of a rising man when many hands are against him; and those most cruelly which will presently applaud him most loudly. He flattered himself that he had set a foot on the ladder: and while he waited for an opportunity to raise himself another step, he came as near to a kind of feverish happiness as thoughts of Mary, ever recurring when he was alone, would permit. For the time the loss of his prospects ceased to trouble him seriously. He lived less in his rooms, more among men. He was less crabbed, less moody. And so the weeks wore away in Committee, and a day or two after the Coronation, the Bill came on for the third reading.
The House was utterly weary. The leaders on both sides were reserving their strength for the final debate, and Vaughan had some hope that he might find an opening to speak with effect. With this in his mind he was on his way across the Park about three in the afternoon, conning his peroration, when a hand was clapped on his shoulder, and he turned to find himself face to face with Flixton.
So much had happened since they stood together on the hustings at Chippinge, Vaughan’s fortunes had changed so greatly since they had parted in anger in Queen’s Square, that he, at any rate, had no thought of bearing malice. To Flixton’s “Well, my hearty, you’re a neat artist, ain’t you? Going to the House, I take it?” he gave a cordial answer.
“Yes,” he said. “That’s it.”