Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
"My Novel" — Volume 12
CHAPTER XXIII
Once then, grappling manfully with the task he had undertaken, and constraining himself to look on what Riccabocca would have called "the southern side of things," whatever there was really great in principle or honourable to human nature, deep below the sordid details and pitiful interests apparent on the face of the agitated current, came clear to his vision. The ardour of those around him began to be contagious: the generous devotion to some cause apart from self, which pervades an election, and to which the poorest voter will often render sacrifices that may be called sublime; the warm personal affection which community of zeal creates for the defender of beloved opinions,—all concurred to dispel that indifference to party politics, and counteract that disgust of their baser leaven, which the young poet had first conceived. He even began to look with complacency, for itself, on a career of toil and honours strange to his habitual labours and intellectual ambition. He threw the poetry of idea within him (as poets ever do) into the prose of action to which he was hurried forward. He no longer opposed Dick Avenel when that gentleman represented how detrimental it would be to his business at Screwstown if he devoted to his country the time and the acumen required by his mill and its steamengine; and how desirable it would be, on all accounts, that Leonard Fairfield should become the parliamentary representative of the Avenels. "If, therefore," said Dick, "two of us cannot come in, and one must retire, leave it to me to arrange with the Committee that you shall be the one to persist. Oh, never fear but what all scruples of honour shall be satisfied. I would not for the sake of the Avenels have a word said against their representative."
"But," answered Leonard, "if I grant this, I fear that you have some intention of suffering the votes that your resignation would release to favour Leslie at the expense of Egerton."
"What the deuce is Egerton to you?"
"Nothing, except through my gratitude to his friend Lord L'Estrange."
"Pooh! I will tell you a secret. Levy informs me privately that L'Estrange will be well satisfied if the choice of Lansmere fall upon Leslie instead of Egerton; and I think I convinced my Lord—for I saw him in London—that Egerton would have no chance, though Leslie might."
"I must think that Lord L'Estrange would resist to the utmost any attempt to prefer Leslie—whom he despises—to Egerton, whom he honours. And, so thinking, I too would resist it, as you may judge by the speeches which have so provoked your displeasure."
"Let us cut short a yarn of talk which, when it comes to likings and dislikings, might last to almighty crack: I'll ask you to do nothing that Lord L'Estrange does not sanction. Will that satisfy you?"
"Certainly, provided I am assured of the sanction."
And now, the important day preceding the poll, the day in which the candidates were to be formally nominated, and meet each other in all the ceremony of declared rivalship, dawned at last. The town-hall was the place selected for the occasion; and before sunrise, all the streets were resonant with music, and gay with banners.
Audley Egerton felt that he could not—without incurring some just sarcasm on his dread to face the constituency he had formerly represented, and by the malcontents of which he had been burned in effigy—absent himself from the townhall, as he had done from balcony and hostel. Painful as it was to confront Nora's brother, and wrestle in public against all the secret memories that knit the strife of the present contest with the anguish that recalled the first,—still the thing must be done; and it was the English habit of his life to face with courage whatever he had to do.
CHAPTER XXIV
The chiefs of the Blue party went in state from Lansmere Park; the two candidates in open carriages, each attended with his proposer and seconder. Other carriages were devoted to Harley and Levy, and the principal members of the Committee. Riccabocca was seized with a fit of melancholy or cynicism, and declined to join the procession. But just before they started, as all were assembling without the front door, the postman arrived with his welcome bag. There were letters for Harley, some for Levy, many for Egerton, one for Randal Leslie.
Levy, soon hurrying over his own correspondence, looked, in the familiar freedom wherewith he usually treated his particular friends, over Randal's shoulder.
"From the squire?" said he. "Ah, he has written at last! What made him delay so long? Hope he relieves your mind?"
"Yes," cried Randal, giving way to a joy that rarely lighted up his close and secret countenance,—"yes, he does not write from Hazeldean,—not there when my letter arrived, in London, could not rest at the Hall,—the place reminded him too much of Frank;—went again to town, on the receipt of my first letter concerning the rupture of the marriage, to see after his son, and take up some money to pay off his post-obit. Read what he says:—
"'So, while I was about a mortgage—never did I guess that I should be the man to encumber the Hazeldean estate—I thought I might as well add L20,000 as L10,000 to the total. Why should you be indebted at all to that Baron Levy? Don't have dealings with money- lenders. Your grandmother was a Hazeldean; and from a Hazeldean you shall have the whole sum required in advance for those Rood lands,— good light soil some of them. As to repayment, we'll talk of that later. If Frank and I come together again, as we did of old, why, my estates will be his some day, and he'll not grudge the mortgage, so fond as he always was of you; and if we don't come together, what do I care for hundreds or thousands, either more or less? So I shall be down at Lansmere the day after to-morrow, just in the thick of your polling. Beat the manufacturer, my boy, and stick up for the land. Tell Levy to have all ready. I shall bring the money down in good bank-notes, and a brace of pistols in my coat pocket to take care of them in ease robbers get scent of the notes and attack me on the road, as they did my grandfather sixty years ago, come next Michaelmas. A Lansmere election puts one in mind of pistols. I once fought a duel with an officer in his Majesty's service, R.N., and had a ball lodged in my right shoulder, on account of an election at Lansmere; but I have forgiven Audley his share in that transaction. Remember me to him kindly. Don't get into a duel yourself; but I suppose manufacturers don't fight,—not that I blame them for that—far from it.'"
The letter then ran on to express surprise, and hazard conjecture, as to the wealthy marriage which Randal had announced as a pleasing surprise to the squire.
"Well," said Levy, returning the letter, "you must have written as cleverly as you talk, or the squire is a booby indeed."
Randal smiled, pocketed his letter, and responding to the impatient call of his proposer, sprang lightly into the carriage.
Harley, too, seemed pleased with the letters delivered to himself, and now joined Levy, as the candidates drove slowly off.
"Has not Mr. Leslie received from the squire an answer to that letter of which you informed me?"
"Yes, my Lord, the squire will be here to-morrow."
"To-morrow? Thank you for apprising me; his rooms shall be prepared."
"I suppose he will only stay to see Leslie and myself, and pay the money."
"Aha! Pay the money. Is it so, then?"
"Twice the sum, and, it seems, as a gift, which Leslie only asked as a loan. Really, my Lord, Mr. Leslie is a very clever man; and though I am at your commands, I should not like to injure him. With such matrimonial prospects, he could be a very powerful enemy; and if he succeed in parliament, still more so."
"Baron, these gentlemen are waiting for you. I will follow by myself."
CHAPTER XXV
In the centre of the raised platform in the town-hall sat the mayor. On either hand of that dignitary now appeared the candidates of the respective parties,—to his right, Audley Egerton and Leslie; to his left, Dick Avenel and Leonard.
The place was as full as it could hold. Rows of grimy faces peeped in, even from the upper windows outside the building. The contest was one that created intense interest, not only from public principles, but local passions. Dick Avenel, the son of a small tradesman, standing against the Right Honourable Audley Egerton, the choice of the powerful Lansmere aristocratic party,—standing, too, with his nephew by his side; taking, as he himself was wont to say, "the tarnation Blue Bull by both its oligarchical horns!"—there was a pluck and gallantry in the very impudence of the attempt to convert the important borough—for one member of which a great earl had hitherto striven, "with labour dire and weary woe" into two family seats for the House of Avenel and the triumph of the Capelocracy.
This alone would have excited all the spare passions of a country borough; but, besides this, there was the curiosity that attached to the long-deferred public appearance of a candidate so renowned as the ex-minister,—a man whose career had commenced with his success at Lansmere, and who now, amidst the popular tempest that scattered his colleagues, sought to refit his vessel in the same harbour from which it had first put forth. New generations had grown up since the name of Audley Egerton had first fluttered the dovecotes in that Corioli. The questions that had then seemed so important were, for the most part, settled and at rest. But those present who remembered Egerton in the former day, were struck to see how the same characteristics of bearing and aspect which had distinguished his early youth revived their interest in the mature and celebrated man. As he stood up for a few moments, before he took his seat beside the mayor, glancing over the assembly, with its uproar of cheers and hisses, there was the same stately erectness of form and steadfastness of look, the same indefinable and mysterious dignity of externals, that imposed respect, confirmed esteem, or stilled dislike. The hisses involuntarily ceased.
The preliminary proceedings over, the proposers and seconders commenced their office.
Audley was proposed, of course, by the crack man of the party,—a gentleman who lived on his means in a white house in the High Street, had received a University education, and was a cadet of a "County Family." This gentleman spoke much about the Constitution, something about Greece and Rome; compared Egerton with William Pitt, also with Aristides; and sat down, after an oration esteemed classical by the few, and pronounced prosy by the many. Audley's seconder, a burly and important maltster, struck a bolder key. He dwelt largely upon the necessity of being represented by gentlemen of wealth and rank, and not by "upstarts and adventurers." (Cheers and groans.) "Looking at the candidates on the other side, it was an insult to the respectability of Lansmere to suppose its constituents could elect a man who had no pretensions whatever to their notice, except that he had once been a little boy in the town, in which his father kept a shop,—and a very noisy, turbulent, dirty little boy he was!" Dick smoothed his spotless shirt-front, and looked daggers, while the Blues laughed heartily, and the Yellows cried "Shame!" "As for the other candidate on the same side, he [the maltster] had nothing to say against him.—He was, no doubt, seduced into presumption by his uncle and his own inexperience. It was said that that candidate, Mr. Fairfield, was an author and a poet; if so, he was unknown to fame, for no bookseller in the town had ever even heard of Mr. Fairfield's works. Then it was replied Mr. Fairfield had written under another name. What would that prove? Either that he was ashamed of his name, or that the works did him no credit. For his part, he [the maltster] was an Englishman; he did not like anonymous scribblers; there was something not right in whatever was concealed. A man should never be afraid to put his name to what be wrote. But grant that Mr. Fairfield was a great author and a great poet, what the borough of Lansinere wanted was, not a member who would pass his time in writing sonnets to Peggy or Moggy, but a practical man of business,—a statesman,—such a man as Mr. Audley Egerton, a gentleman of ancient birth, high standing, and princely fortune. The member for such a place as Lansmere should have a proper degree of wealth." ("Hear, hear!" from the Hundred and Fifty Hesitators, who all stood in a row at the bottom of the hall; and "Gammon!" "Stuff!" from some revolutionary but incorruptible Yellows.) Still the allusion to Egerton's private fortune had considerable effect with the bulk of the audience, and the maltster was much cheered on concluding. Mr. Avenel's proposer and seconder—the one a large grocer, the other the proprietor of a new shop for ticketed prints, shawls, blankets, and counterpanes,— a man, who, as he boasted, dealt with the People for ready money, and no mistake, at least none that he ever rectified—next followed. Both said much the same thing. Mr. Avenel had made his fortune by honest industry, was a fellow-townsman, must know the interests of the town better than strangers, upright public principles, never fawn on governments, would see that the people had their rights, and cut down army, navy, and all other jobs of a corrupt aristocracy, etc. Randal Leslie's proposer, a captain on half-pay, undertook a long defence of army and navy, from the unpatriotic aspersions of the preceding speakers, which defence diverted him from the due praise of Randal, until cries of "Cut it short," recalled him to that subject; and then the topics he selected for eulogium were "amiability of character, so conspicuous in the urbane manners of his young friend;" "coincidence in the opinions of that illustrious statesman with whom he was conjoined;" "early tuition in the best principles; only fault, youth,—and that was a fault which would diminish every day." Randal's seconder was a bluff yeoman, an outvoter of weight with the agricultural electors. He was too straightforward by half,—adverted to Audley Egerton's early desertion of questions espoused by landed interest, hoped he had had enough of the large towns; and he (the yeoman) was ready to forgive and forget, but trusted that there would be no chance of burning their member again in effigy. As to the young gentleman, whose nomination he had the pleasure to second, did not know much about him; but the Leslies were an old family in the neighbouring county, and Mr. Leslie said he was nearly related to Squire Hazeldean,—as good a man as ever stood upon shoe leather. He (the yeoman) liked a good breed in sheep and bullocks; and a good breed in men he supposed was the same thing. He (the yeoman) was not for abuses,—he was for King and Constitution. He should have no objection, for instance, to have tithes lowered, and the malt-tax repealed,—not the least objection. Mr. Leslie seemed to him a likely young chap, and uncommon well-spoken; and, on the whole, for aught he (the yeoman) could see, would do quite as well in parliament as nine-tenths of the gentlemen sent there. The yeoman sat down, little cheered by the Blues, much by the Yellows, and with a dim consciousness that somehow or other he had rather damaged than not the cause of the party he had been chosen to advocate. Leonard was not particularly fortunate in his proposer, a youngish gentleman, who, having tried various callings, with signal unsuccess, had come into a small independence, and set up for a literary character. This gentleman undertook the defence of poets, as the half- pay captain had undertaken that of the army and navy; and after a dozen sentences spoken through the nose, about the "moonlight of existence," and "the oasis in the desert," suddenly broke down, to the satisfaction of his impatient listeners. This failure was, however, redeemed by Leonard's seconder, a master tailor, a practised speaker and an earnest, thinking man, sincerely liking and warmly admiring Leonard Fairfield. His opinions were delivered with brief simplicity, and accompanied by expressions of trust in Leonard's talents and honesty, that were effective, because expressed with feeling.
These preparatory orations over, a dead silence succeeded, and Audley Egerton arose.
At the first few sentences, all felt they were in the presence of one accustomed to command attention, and to give to opinions the weight of recognized authority. The slowness of the measured accents, the composure of the manly aspect, the decorum of the simple gestures,—all bespoke and all became the minister of a great empire, who had less agitated assemblies by impassioned eloquence, than compelled their silent respect to the views of sagacity and experience. But what might have been formal and didactic in another was relieved in Egerton by that air, tone, bearing of gentleman, which have a charm for the most plebeian audience. He had eminently these attributes in private life; but they became far more conspicuous whenever he had to appear in public. The "senatorius decor" seemed a phrase coined for him.
Audley commenced with notice of his adversaries in that language of high courtesy which is so becoming to superior station, and which augurs better for victory than the most pointed diatribes of hostile declamation. Inclining his head towards Avenel, he expressed regret that he should be opposed by a gentleman whose birth naturally endeared him to the town, of which he was a distinguished native, and whose honourable ambition was in itself a proof of the admirable nature of that Constitution, which admitted the lowliest to rise to its distinctions, while it compelled the loftiest to labour and compete for those honours which were the most coveted, because they were derived from the trust of their countrymen, and dignified by the duties which the sense of responsibility entailed. He paid a passing but generous compliment to the reputed abilities of Leonard Fairfield; and alluding with appropriate grace to the interest he had ever taken in the success of youth striving for place in the van of the new generation that marched on to replace the old, he implied that he did not consider Leonard as opposed to himself, but rather as an emulous competitor for a worthy prize with his "own young and valued friend, Mr. Randal Leslie." "They are happy at their years!" said the statesman, with a certain pathos. "In the future they see nothing to fear, in the past they have nothing to defend. It is not so with me." And then, passing on to the vague insinuations or bolder charges against himself and his policy proffered by the preceding speakers, Audley gathered himself up, and paused; for his eye here rested on the Reporters seated round the table just below him; and he recognized faces not unfamiliar to his recollection when metropolitan assemblies had hung on the words which fell from lips then privileged to advise a king. And involuntarily it occurred to the ex-minister to escape altogether from this contracted audience,—this election, with all its associations of pain,—and address himself wholly to that vast and invisible Public, to which those Reporters would transmit his ideas. At this thought his whole manner gradually changed. His eye became fixed on the farthest verge of the crowd; his tones grew more solemn in their deep and sonorous swell. He began to review and to vindicate his whole political life. He spoke of the measures he had aided to pass, of his part in the laws which now ruled the land. He touched lightly, but with pride, on the services he had rendered to the opinions he had represented. He alluded to his neglect of his own private fortunes; but in what detail, however minute, in the public business committed to his charge, could even an enemy accuse him of neglect? The allusion was no doubt intended to prepare the public for the news that the wealth of Audley Egerton was gone. Finally, he came to the questions that then agitated the day; and made a general but masterly exposition of the policy which, under the changes he foresaw, he should recommend his party to adopt.
Spoken to the motley assembly in that town-hall, Audley's speech extended to a circle of interest too wide for their sympathy. But that assembly he heeded not,—he forgot it. The reporters understood him, as their flying pens followed words which they presumed neither to correct nor to abridge. Audley's speech was addressed to the nation,—the speech of a man in whom the nation yet recognized a chief, desiring to clear all misrepresentation from his past career; calculating, if life were spared to him, on destinies higher than he had yet fulfilled; issuing a manifesto of principles to be carried later into power, and planting a banner round which the divided sections of a broken host might yet rally for battle and for conquest. Or perhaps, in the deeps of his heart (not even comprehended by reporters, nor to be divined by the public), the uncertainty of life was more felt than the hope of ambition; and the statesman desired to leave behind him one full vindication of that public integrity and honour, on which, at least, his conscience acknowledged not a stain.
"For more than twenty years," said Audley, in conclusion, "I have known no day in which I have not lived for my country. I may at times have opposed the wish of the People,—I may oppose it now; but, so far as I can form a judgment, only because I prefer their welfare to their wish. And if—as I believe—there have been occasions on which, as one amongst men more renowned, I have amended the laws of England, confirmed her safety, extended her commerce, upheld her honour, I leave the rest to the censure of my enemies, and [his voice trembled] to the charity of my friends."
Before the cheers that greeted the close of this speech were over, Richard Avenel arose. What is called "the more respectable part" of an audience—namely, the better educated and better clad, even on the Yellow side of the question—winced a little for the credit of their native borough, when they contemplated the candidate pitted against the Great Commoner, whose lofty presence still filled the eye, and whose majestic tones yet sounded in the ear. But the vast majority on both sides, Blue and Yellow, hailed the rise of Dick Avenel as a relief to what, while it had awed their attention, had rather strained their faculties. The Yellows cheered and the Blues groaned; there was a tumultuous din of voices, and a reel to and fro of the whole excited mass of unwashed faces and brawny shoulders. But Dick had as much pluck as Audley himself; and by degrees, his pluck and his handsome features, and the curiosity to hear what he had to say, obtained him a hearing; and that hearing Dick having once got, he contrived to keep. His self-confidence was backed by a grudge against Egerton, that attained to the elevation of malignity. He had armed himself for this occasion with an arsenal of quotations from Audley's speeches, taken out of Hansard's Debates; and, garbling these texts in the unfairest and most ingenious manner, he contrived to split consistency into such fragments of inconsistency—to cut so many harmless sentences into such unpopular, arbitrary, tyrannical segments of doctrine—that he made a very pretty case against the enlightened and incorruptible Egerton, as shuffler and trimmer, defender of jobs, and eulogist of Manchester massacres, etc. And all told the more because it seemed courted and provoked by the ex-minister's elaborate vindication of himself. Having thus, as he declared, "triumphantly convicted the Right Honourable Gentleman out of his own mouth," Dick considered himself at liberty to diverge into what he termed "the just indignation of a freeborn Briton;" in other words, into every variety of abuse which bad taste could supply to acrimonious feeling. But he did it so roundly and dauntlessly, in such true hustings style, that for the moment, at least, he carried the bulk of the crowd along with him sufficiently to bear down all the resentful murmurs of the Blue Committee men, and the abashed shakes of the head with which the more aristocratic and well-bred among the Yellows signified to each other that they were heartily ashamed of their candidate. Dick concluded with an emphatic declaration that the Right Honourable Gentleman's day was gone by; that the people had been pillaged and plundered enough by pompous red-tapists, who only thought of their salaries, and never went to their offices except to waste the pen, ink, and paper which they did not pay for; that the Right Honourable Gentleman had boasted he had served his country for twenty years. Served his country!—he should have said served her out! (Much laughter.) Pretty mess his country was in now. In short, for twenty years the Right Honourable Gentleman had put his hands into his country's pockets. "And I ask you," bawled Dick, "whether any of you are a bit the better for all that he has taken out of them!" The Hundred and Fifty Hesitators shook their heads. "Noa, that we ben't!" cried the Hundred and Fifty, dolorously. "You hear THE PEOPLE!" said Dick, turning majestically to Egerton, who, with his arms folded on his breast, and his upper lip slightly curved, sat like "Atlas unremoved,"—"you hear THE PEOPLE! They condemn you and the whole set of you. I repeat here what I once vowed on a less public occasion, 'As sure as my name is Richard Avenel, you shall smart for'—Dick hesitated—'smart for your contempt of the just rights, honest claims, and enlightened aspirations of your indignant countrymen. The schoolmaster is abroad, and the British Lion is aroused!'"
Dick sat down. The curve of contempt had passed from Egerton's lip; at the name of Avenel, thus harshly spoken, he had suddenly shaded his face with his hand.
But Randal Leslie next arose, and Audley slowly raised his eyes, and looked towards his /protege/ with an expression of kindly interest. What better /debut/ could there be for a young man warmly attached to an eminent patron who had been coarsely assailed,—for a political aspirant vindicating the principles which that patron represented? The Blues, palpitating with indignant excitement, all prepared to cheer every sentence that could embody their sense of outrage, even the meanest amongst the Yellows, now that Dick had concluded, dimly aware that their orator had laid himself terribly open, and richly deserved (more especially from the friend of Audley Egerton) whatever punishing retort could vibrate from the heart of a man to the tongue of an orator. A better opportunity for an honest young /debutant/ could not exist; a more disagreeable, annoying, perplexing, unmanageable opportunity for Randal Leslie, the malice of the Fates could not have contrived. How could he attack Dick Avenel,—he who counted upon Dick Avenel to win his election? How could he exasperate the Yellows, when Dick's solemn injunction had been, "Say nothing to make the Yellows not vote for you"? How could he identify himself with Egerton's policy, when it was his own policy to make his opponents believe him an unprejudiced, sensible youth, who would come all right and all Yellow one of these days? Demosthenes himself would have had a sore throat worse than when he swallowed the golden cup of Harpalus, had Demosthenes been placed in so cursed a fix. Therefore Randal Leslie may well be excused if he stammered and boggled, if he was appalled by a cheer when he said a word in vindication of Egerton, and looked cringing and pitiful when he sneaked out a counter civility to Dick. The Blues were sadly disappointed, damped; the Yellows smirked and took heart. Audley Egerton's brows darkened. Harley, who was on the platform, half seen behind the front row, a quiet listener, bent over and whispered dryly to Audley, "You should have given a lesson beforehand to your clever young friend. His affection for you overpowers him!"
Audley made no rejoinder, but tore a leaf out of his pocketbook, and wrote, in pencil, these words, "Say that you may well feel embarrassed how to reply to Mr. Avenel, because I had especially requested you not to be provoked to one angry expression against a gentleman whose father and brother-in-law gave the majority of two by which I gained my first seat in parliament; then plunge at once into general politics." He placed this paper in Randal's hand, just as that unhappy young man was on the point of a thorough breakdown. Randal paused, took breath, read the words attentively, and amidst a general titter; his presence of mind returned to him; he saw a way out of the scrape, collected himself, suddenly raised his head, and in tones unexpectedly firm and fluent, enlarged on the text afforded to him,—enlarged so well that he took the audience by surprise, pleased the Blues by an evidence of Audley's generosity, and touched the Yellows by so affectionate a deference to the family of their two candidates. Then the speaker was enabled to come at once to the topics on which he had elaborately prepared himself, and delivered a set harangue, very artfully put together,—temporizing it is true, and trimming, but full of what would have been called admirable tact and discretion in an old stager who did not want to commit himself to anybody or to anything. On the whole, the display became creditable, at least as an evidence of thoughtful reserve, rare in a man so young; too refining and scholastic for oratory, but a very good essay,—upon both sides of the question. Randal wiped his pale forehead and sat down, cheered, especially by the lawyers present, and self-contented. It was now Leonard's turn to speak. Keenly nervous, as men of the literary temperament are, constitutionally shy, his voice trembled as he began. But he trusted, unconsciously, less to his intellect than his warm heart and noble temper; and the warm heart prompted his words, and the noble temper gradually dignified his manner. He took advantage of the sentences which Audley had put into Randal's mouth, in order to efface the impression made by his uncle's rude assault. "Would that the Right Honourable Gentleman had himself made that generous and affecting allusion to the services which he had deigned to remember, for, in that case, he [Leonard] was confident that Mr. Avenel would have lost all the bitterness which political contest was apt to engender in proportion to the earnestness with which political opinions were entertained. Happy it was when some such milder sentiment as that which Mr. Egerton had instructed Mr. Leslie to convey, preceded the sharp encounter, and reminded antagonists, as Mr. Leslie had so emphatically done, that every shield had two sides, and that it was possible to maintain the one side to be golden, without denying the truth of the champion who asserted the other side to be silver." Then, without appearing to throw over his uncle, the young speaker contrived to insinuate an apology on his uncle's behalf, with such exquisite grace and good feeling, that he was loudly cheered by both parties; and even Dick did not venture to utter the dissent which struggled to his lips.
