“I am told that it is pre-empted,” Vaughan answered, in a tone between jest and earnest.
“It is. But——”
“Yes, Sir Charles?”
“You should see your own side about it,” Wetherell answered gruffly. “I can’t say more than that.”
“I am obliged to you for that.”
“You should be!” Wetherell retorted in a peculiar tone. And with an oath and a strange gesture he disengaged his arm. Halting and wheeling about, he pointed with a shaking hand to the towers of the Abbey, which rose against the blue, beatified by the morning sunshine. “If I said ‘batter down those walls, undig the dead, away with every hoary thing of time, the present and the future are enough, and we, the generation that burns the mummies, which three thousand years have spared—we are wiser than all our forbears—’ what would you say? You would call me mad. Yet what are you doing? Ay, you, you among the rest! The building that our fathers built, patiently through many hundred years, adding a little here and strengthening there, the building that Hampden and Shrewsbury and Walpole, Chatham and his son, and Canning, and many others tended reverently, repairing here and there, as time required, you, you, who think you know more than all who have gone before you, hurry in ruin to the ground! That you may build your own building, built in a day, to suit the day, and to perish with the day! Oh, mad, mad, mad! Ay,
“Hostis habet muros; ruit alta a culmine Troja.
Sat patriæ Priamoque datum; si Pergama linquâ.
Defendi possent, etiam, hoc defensa fuissent!”
His voice quavered on the last accent, his chin sank on his breast. He turned wearily and resumed his course. When Vaughan, who did not venture to address him again, parted from him in silence at the door of his house, the fat man’s pendulous lip quivered, and a single tear ran down his cheek.
XXVII
WICKED SHIFTS
It was with a lighter heart that Vaughan walked on to Bury Street. There were still, it seemed, faith and honour in the world, and some men who could be trusted. But if he expected much to come of this, if he expected to be received with an ovation on his next appearance at Westminster, he was doomed to disappointment. Wetherell’s defence convinced those who heard it; and in time, no doubt, passing from mouth to mouth, would improve the young Member’s relations, not only on the floor of the House, but in the lobbies and at Bellamy’s. But the English are not dramatic. They have no love for scenes. And no one of those whose silence or whose catcalls had wronged him thought fit to take his hand in cold blood and ask his pardon; nor did any Don Quixote cast down his glove in Westminster Hall and offer to do battle with his traducers. The manner of one man became a shade more cordial; another spoke where he would have nodded. And if Vaughan had risen at this time to speak on any question which he understood he would have been heard upon his merits.