power and the power of his class, destroy his borough, and relegate him to the common order of country squires.
He was at first incredulous, then furious, then aghast. To him the Bill was not only the doom of his own influence but the knell of the Constitution. Behind it he saw red revolution and the crash of things. Lord Grey was to him Mirabeau, Lord John was Lafayette, Brougham was Danton; and of them and of their kind, when they had roused the many-headed, he was sure that the end would be as the end of the Gironde.
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?"
"Lady Lansdowne, Sir Robert. Her ladyship bade us say that she wishes to see you urgently, sir." The man, as well as the master, knew that the visit was unusual.
The baronet was a proud man, and he bethought him that the drawing-rooms, seldom used and something neglected, were not in the state in which he would wish his enemy's wife to see them. "Where have you put her ladyship?" he asked.
"In the hall, Sir Robert."
"Very good. I will come."
The man hastened away over the bridge, and Sir Robert followed, more at leisure, but still quickly. When he had passed the angle of the church which stood in a line with the three blocks of building, connected by porticos, which formed the house, and which, placed on a gentle eminence, looked handsomely over the park, he saw that a carriage with four greys ridden by postillions and attended by two outriders stood before the main door. In the carriage, her face shaded by the large Tuscan hat of the period, sat a young lady reading. She heard Sir Robert's footstep, and looked up, and in some embarrassment met his eyes.
He removed his hat. "It is Lady Louisa, is it not?" he said, looking gravely at her.
"Yes," she said; and she smiled prettily at him.
"Will you not go into the house?"
"Thank you," she replied, with a faint blush; "I think my mother wishes to see you alone, Sir Robert."
"Very good." And with a bow, cold but perfectly courteous, he turned and passed up the broad, shallow steps, which were of the same time-tinted lichen-covered stone as the rest of the building. Mapp, the butler, who had been looking out for him, opened the door, and he entered the hall.
In his heart, which was secretly perturbed, was room for the wish that he had been found in other than the high-buttoned gaiters and breeches of his country life. But he suffered no sign of that or of his more serious misgivings to appear, as he advanced to greet the still beautiful woman, who sat daintily warming one sandalled foot at the red embers on the hearth. She was far from being at ease herself. Warnings which her husband had addressed to her at parting recurred and disturbed her. But it is seldom that a woman of the world betrays her feelings, and her manner was perfect as he bent low over her hand.
"It is long," she said gently, "much longer than I like to remember, Sir Robert, since we met."
"It is a long time," he answered gravely; and when she had reseated herself he sat down opposite her.
"It is an age," she said slowly; and she looked round the hall, with its panelled walls, its deep window-seats, and its panoply of fox-masks and antlers, as if she recalled the past, "It is an age," she repeated. "Politics are sad dividers of friends."
"I fear," he replied, in a tone as cold as courtesy permitted, "that they are about to be greater dividers."
She looked at him quickly, with appeal in her eyes. "And yet," she said, "we saw more of you once."
"Yes." He was wondering much, behind the mask of his civility, what had drawn her hither. He knew that it could be no light, no passing matter which had brought her over thirteen miles of Wiltshire roads to call upon a man with whom intercourse had been limited, for years past, to a few annual words, a formal invitation as formally declined, a measured salutation at race or ball. She must have a motive, and a strong one. It was only the day before that he had learned that Lord Lansdowne meant to drop his foolish opposition at Chippinge; was it possible that she was here to make a favour of this? And perhaps a bargain? If that were her errand, and my lord had sent her, thinking to make refusal less easy, Sir Robert felt that he would know how to answer. He waited.
VII
THE WINDS OF AUTUMN
