He was not the less furious, not the less aghast, when the moderates of his party pointed out that he had himself to thank for the catastrophe. From the refusal to grant the smallest reform, from the refusal to transfer the franchise of the rotten borough of Retford to the unrepresented city of Birmingham—a refusal which he had urged his members to support—the chain was complete; for in consequence of that refusal Mr. Huskisson had left the Duke’s Cabinet. The appointment of Mr. Fitzgerald to fill his seat had rendered the Clare election necessary. O’Connell’s victory at the Clare election had converted Peel and the Duke to the necessity of granting the Catholic Claims. That conversion had alienated the ultra-Tories, and among these Sir Robert. The opposition of the ultra-Tories had expelled Peel and the Duke from power—which had brought in the Whigs—who had brought in the Reform Bill.
Hinc illæ lacrimæ! For, in place of the transfer of the franchise of one rotten borough to one large city—a reform which now to the most bigoted seemed absurdly reasonable—here were sixty boroughs to be swept away, and nearly fifty more to be shorn of half their strength, a Constitution to be altered, an aristocracy to be dethroned!
And Calne, Lord Lansdowne’s pocket borough, was spared!
Sir Robert firmly believed that the limit had been fixed with an eye to Calne. They who framed the Bill, sitting in wicked, detestable confabulation, had fixed the limit of Schedule B so as to spare Calne and Tavistock—Arcades ambo, Whig boroughs both. Or why did they just escape? In the whole matter it was this, strangely enough, which troubled him most sorely. For the loss of his own borough—if the worst came to the worst—he could put up with it. He had no children, he had no one to come after him except Arthur Vaughan, the great-grandson of his grandmother. But the escape of Calne, this clear proof of the hypocrisy of the righteous Grey, the blatant Durham, the whey-faced Lord John, the demagogue Brougham—this injustice kept him in a state of continual irritation.
He was thinking of this as he paced slowly up and down the broad walk beside the Garden Pool, at Stapylton—a solitary figure dwarfed by the great elms. The placid surface of the pool, which mirrored the shaven lawns beyond it and the hoary church set amidst the lawns, the silence about him, broken only by the notes of song-birds or a faint yelp from the distant kennels, the view over the green undulations of park and covert—all vainly appealed to him to-day, though on summer evenings his heart took sad and frequent leave of them. For that which threatened him every day jostled aside for the present that which must happen one day. The home of his fathers might be his for some years yet, but shorn of its chief dignity, of its pride, its mastery; while Calne—Calne would survive, to lift still higher the fortunes of those who had sold their king and country, and betrayed their order.
Daily a man and horse awaited the mail-coach at Chippenham that he might have the latest news; and, seeing a footman hurrying towards him from the house, he supposed that the mail was in. But when the man, after crossing the long wooden bridge which spanned the pool, approached with no diminution of speed, he remembered that it was too early for the post; and hating to be disturbed in his solitary reveries, he awaited the servant impatiently.
“What it is?” he asked.
“If you please, Sir Robert, Lady Lansdowne’s carriage is at the door.”
Only Sir Robert’s darkening colour betrayed his astonishment. He had made his feelings so well known that none but the most formal civilities now passed between Stapylton and Bowood.
“Who is it?”