Vaughan laughed. It was impossible to resist Bob’s impudent good-humour. He was a fair young man, short, stout, and inclining to baldness, with a loud, hearty voice, and a manner which made those who did not know him for a peer’s son, think of a domestic fowl with a high opinion of itself. He was for ever damning this and praising that with unflagging decision; a man with whom it was impossible to be displeased, and in whom it was next to impossible not to believe. Yet at the mess-table it was whispered that he did not play his best when the pool was large; nor had he ever seen service, save in the lists of love, where his reputation stood high.
His companion, Vaughan saw, was of a different stamp. He was tall and lean, with the air and carriage of a soldier, but with features of a refined and melancholy cast, and with a brooding sadness in his eyes which could not escape the most casual observer. He was somewhat sallow, the result of the West Indian climate, and counted twenty years more than Flixton, for whom his gentle and quiet manner formed an admirable foil. He greeted Vaughan courteously, and the Honourable Bob forced our hero into a seat beside them.
“That’s snug!” he said. “And now mum’s the word, Vaughan. We’ll not ask you what you’re doing here among the nigger-nabobs. It’s clear enough.”
Vaughan explained that the veiled lady was a stranger who had come down in the coach with him, and that, for himself, it was election business which had brought him.
“Old Vermuyden?” returned the Honourable Bob. “To be sure! Man you’ve expectations from! Good old fellow, too. I know him. Go and see him one of these days. Gad, Colonel, if old Sir Robert heard your views he’d die on the spot! D——n the Bill, he’d say! And I say it too!”
“But afterwards?” Brereton returned, drawing Vaughan into the argument by a courteous gesture. “Consider the consequences, my dear fellow, if the Bill does not pass.”
“Oh, hang the consequences!”
“You can’t,” drily. “You can hang men—we’ve been too fond of hanging them—but not consequences! Look at the state of the country; everywhere you will find excitement, and dangerous excitement. Cobbett’s writings have roused the South; the papers are full of rioters and special commission to try them! Not a farmer can sleep for thinking of his stacks, nor a farmer’s wife for thinking of her husband. Then for the North; look at Birmingham and Manchester and Glasgow, with their Political Unions preaching no taxation without representation. Or, nearer home, look at Bristol here, ready to drown the Corporation, and Wetherell in particular, in the Float! Then, if that is the state of things while they still expect the Bill to pass, what will be the position if they learn it is not to pass? No, no! You may shrug your shoulders, but the three days in Paris will be nothing to it.”
“What I say is, shoot!” Flixton answered hotly. “Shoot! Shoot! Put ’em down! Put an end to it! Show ’em their places! What do a lot of d——d shopkeepers and peasants know about the Bill? Ride ’em down! Give ’em a taste of the Float themselves! I’ll answer for it a troop of the 14th would soon bring the Bristol rabble to their senses!”
“I should be sorry to see it tried,” Brereton answered, shaking his head. “They took that line in France last July, and you know the result. You’ll agree with me, Mr. Vaughan, that where Marmont failed we are not likely to succeed. The more as his failure is known. The three days of July are known.”