“Yes.”
“Reform Member?”
Vaughan eyed him narrowly. “If you are one of my constituents,” he said drily, “I will answer that question.”
“I am not one,” the man rejoined, with a little less confidence. “But it’s my business, nevertheless, to warn you, Mr. Vaughan, in your own interests, that the part you have been taking here will not commend you to them! You have been handling the people very roughly, I am told. Very roughly! Now, I am Mr. Here——”
“You may be Mr. Here or Mr. There,” Vaughan said, cutting him short—but very quietly. “But if you say another word to me, I will throw you through that door for your impudence! That is all. Now—have you any more to say?”
The man tried to carry it off. For there was sniggering behind him. But Vaughan’s blood was up, the agitator read it in the young man’s eye, and being a man of words, not deeds, he fell back. Vaughan went up to bed.
XXXI
SUNDAY IN BRISTOL
It was far from Vaughan’s humour to play the bully, and before he had even reached his bedroom, which looked to the back, he repented of his vehemence. Between that and the natural turmoil of his feelings he lay long waking; and twice, in a stillness which proclaimed that all was well, he heard the Bristol clocks tell the hour. After all, then, Brereton had been right! For himself, had the command been his, he would have adopted more strenuous measures. He would have tried to put fear into the mob before the riot reached its height. And had he done so, how dire might have been the consequences! How many homes might at this moment be mourning his action, how many innocent persons be suffering pain and misery!
Whereas Brereton, the strong, quiet man, resisting importunity, shunning haste, keeping his head where others wavered, had carried the city through its trouble, with scarce the loss of a single life. Truly he was one whom
Non civium ardor prava jubentium,