door of the Hall, a few paces to the westward. He had no hope that he would now be able to perform the errand on which he had set forth; for the Chancellor, for certain, would have other fish to fry and other people to see. But he thought that he would leave a card with the usher, so that Lord Brougham might know that he had not failed to come, and might make a fresh appointment if he still wished to see him.
Of the vast congeries of buildings which then encased St. Stephen's Chapel and its beautiful but degraded cloisters, little more than the Hall is left to us. The Hall we have, and in the main in the condition in which the men of that generation viewed it; as Canning viewed it, when with death in his face he paced its length on Peel's arm, and suspecting, perhaps, that they two would meet no more, proved to all men the good-will he bore his rival. Those among us whose memories go back a quarter of a century, and who can recall its aspect in term-time, with three score barristers parading its length, and thrice as many suitors and attorneys darting over its pavement-all under the lofty roof which has no rival in Europe-will be able to picture it as Vaughan saw it when he entered. To the bustle attending the courts of law was added on this occasion the supreme excitement of the day. In every corner, on the steps of every court, eager groups wrangled and debated; while above the hubbub of argument and the trampling of feet, the voices of ushers rose monotonously, calling a witness or enjoining order.
Vaughan paused beside the cake-stall at the door and surveyed the scene. As he stood, one of two men who were pacing near saw him, and with a whispered word left his companion and came towards him.
"Mr. Vaughan," he said, extending his hand with bland courtesy, "I hope you are well. Can I do anything for you? We are dissolved, but a frank is a frank for all that-to-day."
"No, I thank you," Vaughan answered. "The truth is, I had an appointment with the Chancellor for this afternoon. But I suppose he will not see me now."
The other's eyebrows met, with the result that his face looked less bland. He was a small man, with keen dark eyes and bushy grey whiskers, and an air of hawk-like energy which sixty years had not tamed. He wore the laced coat of a sergeant at law, powdered on the shoulders, as if he had but lately and hurriedly cast off his wig. "Good G-d!" he said. "With the Chancellor!" And then, pulling himself up, "But I congratulate you. A student at the Bar, as I believe you are, Mr. Vaughan, who has appointments with the Chancellor, has fortune indeed within his grasp."
Vaughan laughed. "I fear not," he said. "There are appointments and appointments, Sergeant Wathen. Mine is not of a professional nature."
Still the sergeant's face, do what he would, looked grim. He had his reasons for disliking what he heard. "Indeed!" he said drily. "Indeed! But I must not detain you. Your time," with a faint note of sarcasm, "is valuable." And with a civil salutation the two parted.
Wathen went back to his companion. "Talk of the Old One!" he said. "Do you know who that is?"
"No," the other answered. They had been discussing the coming election. "Who is it?"
"One of my constituents."
His friend laughed. "Oh, come," he said. "I thought you had but one, sergeant-old Vermuyden."
"Only one," Wathen answered, his eyes travelling from group to group, "who counts; or rather, who did count. But thirteen who poll. And that's one of them." He glanced frowning in the direction which Vaughan had taken. "And what do you think his business is here, confound him?"
"What?"
"An appointment with old Wicked Shifts."
"With the Chancellor? Pheugh!"
"Ay," the sergeant answered morosely, "you may whistle. There's some black business on foot, you may depend upon it. And ten to one it's about my seat. He's a broom," he continued, tugging at the whiskers which the late King had stamped with the imprimatur of fashion, "that will make a clean sweep of us if we don't take care. Whatever he does, there's something behind it. Some bedchamber plot, or some intrigue to get A. out and put B. in. If it was a charwoman's place he wanted, he'd not ask for it and get it. That wouldn't please him. But he'd tunnel and tunnel and tunnel-and so he'd get it."
"Still," the other replied, with secret amusement-for he had no seat, and the woes of our friends, especially our better-placed friends, have their comic side-"I thought that you had a safe thing, Wathen? That old Vermuyden's nomination at Chippinge was as good as an order on the Bank of England?"
"It was," Wathen answered drily. "But with the country wild for the Bill, there's no saying what may happen anywhere. Safe!" he continued, with a snarl. "Was there ever a safer seat than Westbury? Or a man who had a place in better order than old Lopes, who owned it, and died last month; taken from the evil to come, Jekyll said, for he never could have existed in a world without rotten boroughs! It's not far from Chippinge, so I know-know it well. And I tell you his system was beautiful-beautiful! Yet when Peel was there-after he had rattled on the Catholic Claims and been thrown out at Oxford, Lopes made way for him, you remember? – he would not have got in, no, by G-d, he wouldn't have got in if there had been a man against him. And the state in which the country was then, though there was a bit of a Protestant cry, too, wasn't to compare with what it will be now. That man" – he shook his fist stealthily in the direction of the Chancellor's Court-"has lighted a fire in England that will never be put out till it has consumed King, Lords, and Commons-ay, every stick and stone of the old Constitution. You take my word for it. And to think-to think," he added still more savagely, "that it is the Whigs have done this. The Whigs! who own more than half the land in the country; who are prouder and stiffer than old George the Third himself; who wouldn't let you nor me into their Cabinet to save our lives. By the Lord," he concluded with gusto, "they'll soon learn the difference!"
"In the meantime-there'll be dead cats and bad eggs flying, you think?"
Wathen groaned. "If that were the end of it," he said, "I'd not mind."
"Still, with it all, you are pretty safe, I suppose?"
"With that fellow closeted with the Chancellor? No, no!"
"Who is the young spark!" the other asked carelessly. "He looked a decentish kind of fellow. A little of the prig, perhaps."
"He's that!" Wathen answered. "A d-d prig. What's more, a cousin of old Vermuyden's. And what's worse, his heir. That's why they put him in the corporation and made him one of the thirteen. Thought the vote safe in the family, you see? And cheaper?" He winked. "But there's no love lost between him and old Sir Robert. A bed for a night once a year, and one day in the season among the turnips, and glad to see your back, my lad! That's about the position. Now I wonder if Brougham is going to try-but Lord! there's no guessing what is in that man's head! He's fuller of mischief than an egg of meat!"
The other was about to answer when one of the courts, in which a case of some difficulty had caused a late sitting, discharged its noisy, wrangling, perspiring crowd. The two stepped aside to avoid the evasion, and did not résumé their talk. Wathen's friend made his way out by the main door near which they had been standing; while the sergeant, with looks which mirrored the gloom that a hundred Tory faces wore on that day, betook himself to the robing-room. There he happened upon another unfortunate. They fell to talking, and their talk ran naturally upon the Chancellor, upon old Grey's folly in letting himself be led by the nose by such a rogue; finally, upon the mistakes of their own party. They differed on the last topic, and in that natural and customary state we may leave them.
II
THE SPIRIT OF THE STORM
The Court of Chancery, the preserve for nearly a quarter of a century of Eldon and Delay, was the farthest from the entrance on the right-hand side of the Hall-a situation which
