What Will He Do With It? (Belford)/Book 1/Chapter 15

by Edward Bulwer-Lytton

CHAPTER XV.

The Historian records the attachment to public business which distinguishes the British Legislator.—Touching instance of the regret which ever in patriotic bosoms attends the neglect of a public duty.

From the dusty height of a rumble-tumble affixed to Lady Selina Vipont's barouche, and by the animated side of Sir Jasper Stollhead, Vance caught sight of Lionel and Sophy at a corner of the spacious green near the Palace. He sighed; he envied them. He thought of the boat, the water, the honey-suckle arbor at the little inn—pleasures he had denied himself—pleasures all in his own way. They seemed still more alluring by contrast with the prospect before him; formal dinner at the Star and Garter, with titled Prymmes, Slowes, and Frosts, a couple of guineas a-head, including light wines, which he did not drink, and the expense of a chaise back by himself. But such are life and its social duties—such, above all, ambition and a career. Who, that would leave a name on his tombstone, can say to his own heart, "Perish, Stars and Garters; my existence shall pass from day to day in honey-suckle arbors?"

Sir Jasper Stollhead interrupted Vance's reverie by an impassioned sneeze—"Dreadful smell of hay!" said the legislator, with watery eyes. "Are you subject to the hay fever? I am! A—tisha—tisha—tisha (sneezing)—country frightfully unwholesome at this time of year. And to think that I ought now to be in the House—in my committee-room—no smell of hay there—most important committee."

Vance (rousing himself). "Ah!—on what?"

Sir Jasper (regretfully). "Sewers!"