LITMIR.BIZ

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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."

      "Ay, by the Lord," the Honourable Bob cried. "The revolution in France bred the whole of this trouble!"

      "The mob there won, and the mob here know it. In my opinion," Brereton continued, "conciliation is our only card, if we do not want to see a revolution."

      "Hang your conciliation! Shoot, I say!"

      "What do you think, Mr. Vaughan?"

      "I think with you, Colonel Brereton," Vaughan answered, "that the only way to avoid such a crisis as has befallen France is to pass the Bill, and to set the Constitution on a wider basis by enlisting as large a number as possible in its defence."

      "Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" from Flixton.

      "On the other hand," Vaughan continued, "I would put down the beginnings of disorder with a strong hand. I would allow no intimidation, no violence. The Bill should be passed by argument."

      "Argument? Why, d-n me, intimidation is your argument!" the Honourable Bob struck in, with more acuteness than he commonly evinced. "Pass the Bill or we'll loose the dog! At 'em, Mob, good dog! At 'em! That's your argument!" triumphantly. "But I'll be back in a minute." And he left them.

      Vaughan laughed. Brereton, however, seemed to be unable to take the matter lightly. "Do you really mean, Mr. Vaughan," he said, "that if there were trouble, here, for instance, you would not hesitate to give the order to fire?"

      "Certainly, sir, if it could not be put down with the cold steel."

      The Colonel shook his head despondently. "I don't think I could," he said. "I don't think I could. You have not seen war, and I have. And it is a fearful thing. Bad enough abroad, infinitely worse here. The first shot-think, Mr. Vaughan, of what it might be the beginning! What hundreds and thousands of lives might hang upon it! How many scores of innocent men shot down, of daughters made fatherless!" He shuddered. "And to give such an order on your own responsibility, when the first volley might be the signal for a civil war, and twenty-four hours might see a dozen counties in a blaze! It is horrible to think of! Too horrible! It's too much for one man's shoulders! Flixton would do it-he sees no farther than his nose! But you and I, Mr. Vaughan-and on one's own judgment, which might be utterly, fatally wrong! My God, no!"

      "Yet there must be a point," Vaughan replied, "at which such an order becomes necessary; becomes mercy!"

      "Ay," Brereton answered eagerly; "but who is to say when that point is reached; and that peaceful methods can do no more? Or, granted that they can do no more, that provocation once given, your force is sufficient to prevent a massacre! A massacre in such a place as this!"

      Vaughan saw that the idea had taken possession of the other's mind, and, aware that he had distinguished himself more than once on foreign service, he wondered. It was not his affair, however; and "Let us hope that the occasion may not arise," he said politely.

      "God grant it!" Brereton replied. And then again, to himself and more fervently, "God grant it!" he muttered. The shadow lay darker on his face.

      Vaughan might have wondered more, if Flixton had not returned at that moment and overwhelmed him with importunities to dine with him the next evening. "Gage and Congreve of the 14th are coming from Gloucester," he said, "and Codrington and two or three yeomanry chaps. You must come. If you don't, I'll quarrel with you and call you out! It'll do you good after the musty, fusty, goody-goody life you've been leading. Brereton's coming, and we'll drink King Billy till we're blind!"

      Vaughan hesitated. He had taken his place on the coach, but-but after all there was that parcel. He must do something about it. It seemed to be his fate to be tempted, yet-what nonsense that was! Why should he not stay in Bristol if he pleased?

      "You're very good," he said at last. "I'll stay."

      Yet on his way to his room he paused, half-minded to go. But he was ashamed to change his mind again, and he strode on, opened his door, and saw the parcel, a neat little affair, laid on the table.

      It bore in a clear handwriting the address which he had seen on the basket at Mary Smith's feet. But, possibly because an hour of the Honourable Bob's company had brushed the bloom from his fancy, it moved him little. He looked at it with something like indifference, felt no inclination to kiss it, and smiled at his past folly as he took it up and set off to return it to its owner. He had exaggerated the affair and his feelings; he had made much out of little, and a romance out of a chance encounter. He could smile now at that which had moved him yesterday. Certainly:

      Man's love is of man's life a thing apart,

      'Tis woman's whole existence; man may range

      The Court, camp, Church, the vessel and the mart,

      Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange

      Pride, fame, ambition to fill up his heart.

      And the Honourable Bob, with his breezy self-assertion, had brought this home to him and, with a puff of everyday life, had blown the fantasy away.

      He was still under this impression when he reached Queen's Square, once the pride of Bristol, and still, in 1831, a place handsome and well inhabited. Uniformly and substantially built, on a site surrounded on three sides by deep water, it lay, indeed, rather over-near

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