“Flixton? Flixton? Ah! The gentleman who is to marry Miss Vermuyden! Well, I can only repeat that I, at any rate, am no party to such an agreement.”
His sly look which seemed to deride his companion’s inexperience, said as plainly as a look could say, “You find the game of politics less simple than you thought?” And at another time it would have increased Vaughan’s ire. But as one pellet drives out another, the Sergeant’s reference to Miss Vermuyden had in a second driven the prime subject from his mind. He did not speak for a moment. Then with his face averted, “Is Mr. Flixton—going to marry Miss Vermuyden?” he asked, in a muffled tone. “I had not heard of it.”
“I only heard it yesterday,” the Sergeant answered, not unwilling to shelve the other topic. “But it is rumoured, and I believe it is true. Quite a romance, wasn’t it?” he continued airily. “Quite a nine days’ wonder! But”—he pulled himself up—“I beg your pardon! I was forgetting how nearly it concerned you. Dear me, dear me! It is a fair wind indeed that blows no one any harm!”
Vaughan made no reply. He could not speak for the hard beating of his heart. Wathen saw that there was something wrong and looked at him inquisitively. But the Sergeant had not the clue, and could only suspect that the marriage touched the other, because issue of it would entirely bar his succession. And no more was said. As they crossed New Palace Yard, a member drew the Sergeant aside, and Vaughan went up alone to the lobby.
But all thought of speaking was flown from his mind; nor did the thinness of the House when he entered tempt him. There were hardly more than a hundred present; and these were lolling here and there with their hats on, half asleep it seemed, in the dull light of a September afternoon. A dozen others looked sleepily from the galleries, their arms flattened on the rail, their chins on their arms. There were a couple of ministers on the Treasury Bench, and Lord John Russell was moving the third reading. No one seemed to take much interest in the matter; a stranger entering at the moment would have learned with amazement that this was the mother of parliaments, the renowned House of Commons; and with still greater amazement would he have learned that the small, boyish-looking gentleman in the high-collared coat, and with lips moulded on Cupid’s bow, who appeared to be making some perfunctory remarks upon the weather, or the state of the crops, was really advancing by an important stage the famous Bill, which had convulsed three kingdoms and was destined to change the political face of the land.
Lord John sat down presently, thrusting his head at once into a packet of papers, which the gloom hardly permitted him to read. A clerk at the table mumbled something; and a gentleman on the other side of the House rose and began to speak. He had not uttered many sentences, however, before the members on the Reform benches awoke, not only to life, but to fury. Stentorian shouts of “Divide! Divide!” rendered the speaker inaudible; and after looking towards the door of the House more than once he sat down, and the House went to a division. In a few minutes it was known that the Bill had been read a third time, by 113 to 58.
But the foreign gentleman would have made a great mistake had he gone away, supposing that Lord John’s few placid words—and not those spiteful shouts—represented the feelings of the House. In truth the fiercest passions were at work under the surface. Among the fifty-eight who shrugged their shoulders and accepted the verdict in gloomy silence were some primed with the fiercest invective; and others, tongue-tied men, who nevertheless honestly believed that Lord John Russell was a republican, and Althorp a fool; who were certain that the Whigs wittingly or unwittingly were working the destruction of the country, were dragging her from the pride of place to which a nicely-balanced Constitution had raised her, and laying her choicest traditions at the feet of the rabble. Men who believed such things, and saw the deed done before their eyes, might accept their doom in silence—even as the King of old went silently to the Banquet Hall hard by—but not with joy or easy hearts!
Vaughan, therefore, was not the only one who walked into the lobby that evening, brooding darkly on his revenge. Yet, even he behaved himself as men, so bred, so trained do behave themselves. He held his peace. And no one dreamed, not even Orator Hunt, who sat not far from him under the shadow of his White Hat, that this well-conducted young gentleman was revolving thoughts of the Social Order, and of the Party System, and of most things which the Church Catechism commends, beside which that terrible Radical’s own opinions were mere Tory prejudices. The fickleness of women! The treachery of men! Oh, Aetna bury them! Oh, Ocean overwhelm them! Let all cease together and be no more! But give me sweet, oh, sweet, oh, sweet Revenge!
XXV
AT STAPYLTON
It was about a week before his encounter with Vaughan in the park—and on a fine autumn day—that the Honourable Bob, walking with Sir Robert by the Garden Pool, allowed his eyes to travel over the prospect. The smooth-shaven lawns, the stately, lichened house, the far-stretching park, with its beech-knolls and slopes of verdure, he found all fair; and when to these, when to the picture on which his bodily eyes rested, that portrait of Mary—Mary, in white muslin and blue ribbons, bowing her graceful head while Sir Robert read prayers—which he carried in his memory, he told himself that he was an uncommonly happy fellow.