“Because, mark you,” Brougham replied sternly, “if I had not, they had not brought in this Bill. And we had waited, and the people had waited, another twenty years, maybe!”
“And so you went into the prison-house shorn of your strength?”
Brougham looked at him with a gleam of ferocity in his brilliant eyes. “Ay,” he said, “I did. And by that act,” he continued, stretching his long arms to their farthest extent, “mark you, mark you, never forget it, I avenged all—not only all I may suffer at their hands, but all that every slave who ever ground in their mill has suffered, the slights, the grudged meticulous office, the one finger lent to shake—all, all! I went into the prison-house, but when I did so I laid my hands upon the pillars. And their house falls, falls. I hear it—I hear it falling even now about their ears. They may throw me aside. But the house is falling, and the great Whig families—pouf!—they are not in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water that is under the earth. You call Reform their stalking-horse? Ay, but it is into their own Troy that they have dragged it; and the clatter of strife which you hear is the death-knell of their power. They have let in the waves of the sea, and dream fondly that they can say where they shall stop and what they shall not touch. They may as well speak to the tide when it flows; they may as well command the North Sea in its rage; they may as well bid Hume be silent, or Wetherell be sane. You say I am spent, Cornelius; and so I am, it may be. I know not. But this I know. Never again will the families say ‘Go!’ and he goeth, and ‘Do!’ and he doeth, as in the old world that is passing—passing even at this minute, passing with the Bill. No,” he continued, flinging out his arms with passion; “for when they thought to fool me, and to shut me dumb among dumb things behind the gilded wires, I knew—I knew that I was dragging down their house upon their heads.”
Mr. Cornelius stared at him. “By G—d!” he said, “I believe you are right. I believe that you are a cleverer man than I thought you were.”
III
TWO LETTERS
The Hall was empty when Vaughan came forth; and as the young man strode down its echoing length there was nothing save his own footsteps on the pavement to distract his mind from the scene in which he had taken part. He was excited and a little uplifted, as was natural. The promises made, if they were to be counted as promises, were of the vague and indefinite character which it is as easy to evade as to fulfil. But the Chancellor had spoken to him as to an equal and treated him as one who had but to choose a career to succeed in it, and to win the highest prizes which it could bestow. This was flattering; nor was it to a young man who had little experience of the world, less flattering to be deemed the owner of a stake in the country, and a person through whom offers of the most confidential and important character might be properly made.
He walked to his rooms in Bury Street with a pleasant warmth at his heart. And at the Academic that evening, where owing to the events of the day there was a fuller house than had ever been known, and a fiercer debate, he championed the Government and upheld the dissolution in a speech which not only excelled his previous efforts, but was a surprise to those who knew him best. Afterwards he recognised that his peroration had been only a paraphrase of Brougham’s impassioned “Light! More Light!” and that the whole owed more than he cared to remember to the same source. But, after all, why not? It was not to be expected that he could at once rise to the heights of the greatest of living orators. And it was much that he had made a hit; that as he left the room he was followed by all eyes.
Nor did a qualm worthy of the name trouble him until the morning of the 27th, five days later—a Wednesday. Then he found beside his breakfast plate two letters bearing the postmark of Chippinge.
“What’s afoot?” he muttered. But he had a prevision before he broke the seal of the first. And the contents bore out his fears. The letter ran thus:
“Stapylton, Chippinge.