Chapter XII: Part 12

But the change, slow though genial, like the breaking up of an English frost, came too late to do him much service. With the transfer of the Bill to the House of Lords public interest deserted the Commons. They sat, indeed, through the month of September, to the horror of many a country gentleman, who saw in this the herald of evil days; and they debated after a fashion. But the attendance was sparse, and the thoughts and hopes of all men were in another place. Vaughan saw that for all the reputation he could now make the Dissolution might be come already. And with this, and the emptiness of his heart, from which he could no more put the craving for Mary Vermuyden than he could dismiss her image from the retina of his mind, he was very miserable. The void left by love, indeed, was rendered worse by the void left unsatisfied by ambition. Mary’s haunting face was with him at his rising, went with him to his pillow, her little hand was often on his sleeve, her eyes often pleaded to his. In his lonely rooms he would pace the floor feverishly, savagely, pestering himself with what might have been; kicking the furniture from his path and—and hating her! For the idea of marriage, once closely presented to man or woman, leaves neither unchanged, leaves neither as it found them, however quickly it be put aside.

Still it was not possible for one who sprang from the governing classes, and was gifted with political instincts, to witness the excitement which moved the whole country during those weeks of September and the early days of October, without feeling his own blood stirred; without sharing to some extent the exhilaration with which the adventurous view the approach of adventures. What would the peers do? All England was asking that question. At Crockford’s, in the little supper-room, or at the French Hazard table itself, men turned to put it and to hear the answer. At White’s and Boodle’s, in the hall of the Athenæum, as they walked before Apsley House, or under the gas-lamps of Pall Mall, men asked that question again and again. It shared with Pasta and the slow-coming cholera—which none the less was coming—the chit-chat of drawing-rooms; and with the next prize fight or with ridicule of the New Police, the wrangling debates of every tavern and posthouse. Would the peers throw out the Bill? Would they—would those doting old Bishops in particular—dare to thwart the People’s will? Would they dare to withhold the franchise from Birmingham and Manchester, Leeds and Sheffield? On this husbands took one side, wives the other, families quarrelled. What Croker thought, what Lord Grey threatened, what the Duke had let drop, what Brougham had boasted, how Lady Lyndhurst had sneered, or her husband retorted, what the Queen wished—scraps such as these were tossed from mouth to mouth, greedily received, carried far into the country, and eventually, changed beyond recognition, were repeated in awestruck ears, in county ballrooms and at Sessions.

One member of the Privy Council, who had left his party on the Bill, and whose vote, it was thought, had turned a division, shot himself. And many another, it was whispered, never recovered wholly from the strain of those days.

For far more hung upon the Lords’ decision than the mere fate of the Bill. If they threw it out, what would the Ministry do? And—more momentous still, and looming larger in the minds of men—what would the country do? What would Birmingham and Sheffield, Manchester and Leeds do? What would they do?

Lord Grey, strong in the King’s support, would persevere, said some. He would bring in the Bill again, and create peers in number sufficient to carry it. And Macaulay’s squib was flung from club to club, from meeting to meeting, until it reached the streets:

_What, though new opposed I be_,

_Twenty peers shall carry me!_

_If twenty won’t, thirty will_,

_For I am his Majesty’s bouncing Bill_.

Ay, his Majesty’s Bill, God bless him! His Majesty’s own Bill! Hurrah for Lord Grey! Hurrah for Brougham! Hurrah for Lord John, and down with the Bishops! So the word flew from mouth to mouth, so errand boys yelled it under the windows of London House, in St. James’s Square, and wherever aproned legs might be supposed to meet under the mahogany.

But others maintained that Lord Grey would simply resign, and let the consequences fall on the heads of those who opposed the People’s will. Those consequences, it was whispered everywhere—and not by the timid and the rich only—spelled Revolution! Revolution, red and anarchical, was coming, said many. Was not Scotland ready to rise? Was not the Political Union of Birmingham threatening to pay no taxes? Were not the Political Unions everywhere growling and lashing their sides? The winter was coming, and there would be fires by night and drillings by day, as there had been during the previous autumn. Through the long dark nights there would be fear and trembling, and barring of doors, and waiting for the judgment to come. And then some morning the crackling sound of musketry would awaken Pall Mall and Mayfair, the mob would seize the Tower and Newgate, the streets would run blood and the guillotine would rise in Leicester Square or Finsbury Fields.

So widely were these fears spread—fostered as they were by both parties, by the Tories for the purpose of proving whither Reform was leading the country, by the Whigs to show to what the obstinacy of the borough-mongers was driving it—that few were proof against them. So few, that when the Bill was rejected in the early morning of Saturday, the 8th of October, the Tory peers, from Lord Eldon downwards, though they had not shrunk from doing their duty, could hardly be made to believe that they were at liberty to go to their homes unscathed.

They did so, however. But the first mutterings of the storm soon made themselves heard. Within twenty-four hours the hearts of many failed them for fear. The Funds fell at once. The journals appeared in mourning borders. In many towns the bells were tolled and the shops were shut. The mob of Nottingham rose and burned the Castle and fired the house of an unpopular squire. The mob of Derby besieged the gaol and released the prisoners. At Darlington, Lord Tankerville narrowly escaped with his life; Lord Londonderry was left for dead; no Bishop dared to wear his apron in public. Everywhere rose the cry of “No Taxes!” Finally, the rabble rose in immense numbers, paraded the West End of London, broke the windows of many peers, assaulted others, and were only driven from Apsley House by the timely arrival of the Life Guards. The country, amazed and shaken from end to end, seemed to be already in the grip of rebellion; so that within the week the very Tories hastened to beg Lord Grey to retain office. Even the King, it was supposed, was shaken; and his famous distich—his one contribution to the poetry of the country,

_I consider Dissolution Tantamount to Revolution_,

found admirers for its truth, if not for its beauty.

Such a ferment could not but occupy Vaughan’s mind and divert his thoughts from his own troubles, even from thoughts of Mary. Every day there was news: every day, in the opinion of many, the sky grew darker. But though the rejection of the Bill promised him a second short session, and many who sat for close boroughs chuckled privately over the respite, he was ill-content with a hand-to-mouth life. He saw that the Bill must pass eventually. He did not believe that there would be a revolution. It was clear that his only chance lay in following Wetherell’s advice, and laying his case before one of his chiefs.

Some days after the division he happened on an opportunity. He was walking down Parliament Street when he came on a scene, much of a piece of the unrest of the time. A crowd was pouring out of Downing Street, and in the van of the rabble he espied the tall, ungainly figure of no less a man than Lord Brougham. Abreast of the Chancellor, but keeping himself to the wall as if he desired to dissociate himself from the demonstration, walked another tall figure, also in black, with shepherd’s plaid trousers. A second glance informed Vaughan that this was no other than Mr. Cornelius, who had been present at his interview with Brougham; and accepting the omen, he made up to the Chancellor just as the latter halted to rid himself of the ragged tail, which had, perhaps, been more pleasing to his vanity in the smaller streets.

“My friends,” Brougham cried, checking with his hand the ragamuffins’ shrill attempt at a cheer, “I am obliged to you for your approval; but I beg to bid you good-day! Assemblages such as these are——”

“Disgusting!” Cornelius muttered audibly, wrinkling his nose as he eyed them over his high collar.

“Are apt to cause disorder!” the Chancellor continued, smiling. “Rest assured that your friends, of whom, if I am the highest in office I am not the least in good-will, will not desert you.”

“Hurrah! God bless you, my lord! Hurrah!” cried the tatterdemalions in various tones more or less drunken. And some held out their caps. “Hurrah! If your lordship would have the kindness to——”

“Disgusting!” Cornelius repeated, wheeling about.

Vaughan seized the opportunity to intervene. “May I,” he said, raising his hat and addressing the Chancellor as he turned, “consult you, my lord, for two minutes as you walk?”

Brougham started on finding a gentleman of his appearance at his elbow; and looked as if he were somewhat ashamed of the guise in which he had been detected. “Ah!” he said. “Mr.—Mr. Vaughan? To be sure! Oh, yes, you can speak to me, what can I do for you? It is,” he added, with affected humility, “my business to serve.”

Vaughan looked doubtfully at Mr. Cornelius, who raised his hat. “I have no secrets from Mr. Cornelius,” said the Chancellor pleasantly. And then with a backward nod and a tinge of colour in his cheek, “Gratifying, but troublesome,” he continued. “Eh? Very troublesome, these demonstrations! I often long for the old days when I could walk out of Westminster Hall, with my bag and my umbrella, and no one the wiser!”

“Those days are far back, my lord,” Vaughan said politely.

“Ah, well! Ah, well! Perhaps so.” They were walking on by this time. “I can’t say that since the Queen’s trial I’ve known much privacy. However, it is something that those whom one serves are grateful. They——”

“Cry ‘Hosanna’ to-day,” Cornelius said gruffly, with his eyes fixed steadily before him, “and ‘Crucify him’ tomorrow!”

“Cynic!” said the Chancellor, with unabated good-humour. “But even you cannot deny that they are better employed in cheering their friends than in breaches of the peace? Not that”—cocking his eye at Vaughan with a whimsical expression of confidence—“a little disorder here and there, eh, Mr. Vaughan—though to be deplored, and by no one more than by one in my position—has not its uses? Were there no apprehension of mob-rule, how many borough-mongers, think you, would vote with us? How many waverers, like Harrowby and Wharncliffe, would waver? And how, if we have no little ebullitions here and there, are we to know that the people are in earnest? That they are not grown lukewarm? That Wetherell is not right in his statement—of which he’ll hear more than he will like at Bristol, or I am mistaken—that there is a Tory re-action, an ebb in the tide which so far has carried us bravely? But of course,” he added, with a faint smile, “God forbid that we should encourage violence!”

“Amen!” said Mr. Cornelius. And sniffed in a very peculiar manner.

“But to discern that camomile,” the Chancellor continued gaily, “though bitter to-day makes us better tomorrow, is a different thing from——”

“Administering a dose!” Vaughan laughed, falling into the great man’s humour.

“To be sure. But enough of that. Now I think of it, Mr. Vaughan,” he continued, looking at his companion, “I have not had the pleasure of seeing you since—but I need not remind you of the occasion. You’ve had good cause to remember it! Yes, yes,” he went on with voluble complacency—he was walking as well as talking very fast—“I seldom speak without meaning, or interfere without result. I knew well what would come of it. It was not for nothing, Mr. Vaughan, that I got down our Borough List and asked you if you had no thought of entering the House. The spark—and tinder! For there you are in the House!”

“Yes,” Vaughan replied, astonished at the coolness with which the other unveiled, and even took credit for, the petty intrigue of six months back. “But——”

“But,” Brougham said, taking him up with a quick, laughing glance, “you are not yet on the Treasury Bench? That’s it?”

“No, not yet,” Vaughan answered, good-humouredly.

“Ah, well, time and patience and Bellamy’s chops, Mr. Vaughan, will carry you far, I am sure.”

“It is on that subject—the subject of time—I venture to trouble your lordship.”

The Chancellor’s lumpish but singularly mobile features underwent a change. Caught in a complacent, vain humour, he had forgotten a thing which, with Vaughan’s last words, recurred to him. “Yes?” he said, “yes, Mr. Vaughan?” But the timbre of that marvellously flexible voice with which he boasted that he could whisper so as to be heard to the very door of the House of Commons, was changed. “Yes, what is it, pray?”

“It is time I require,” Vaughan answered. “And, in fine, I have done some service, yeoman service, my lord, and I think that I ought not to be cast aside by the party in whose interest I was returned, and with whose objects I am in sympathy.”

“Cast aside? Tut, tut! What do you mean?”

“I am told that though the borough for which I sit will continue to return one member, I shall not have the support of the party in retaining my seat.”

“Indeed! Indeed!” Brougham answered, “Is it so? I am sorry to hear that.”

“But——”

“Very sorry, Mr. Vaughan.”

“But, with submission, my lord, it is something more than sorrow I seek,” Vaughan answered, too sore to hide his feelings. “You have owned very candidly that I derived from you the impulse which has carried me so far. Is it unreasonable if I venture to turn to you, when advised to see one of the chiefs of my party?”

“Who,” Brougham asked with a quick look, “gave you that advice, Mr. Vaughan?”

“Sir Charles Wetherell.”

“Um!” the Chancellor replied through pinched lips. And he stood, “they had crossed Piccadilly and Berkeley Square, and had reached the corner of Hill Street, where at No. 5, Brougham lived.

“I repeat, my lord,” Vaughan continued, “is it unreasonable if I apply to you in these circumstances, rather——”

“Rather than to one of the whips?” Brougham said drily.

“Yes.”

“But I know nothing of the matter, Mr. Vaughan.”

But Vaughan was in no mood to put up with subterfuges. If the other did not know, he should know. He had been all-powerful, it seemed, to bring him in: was he powerless to keep him in? “There is a compact, I am told,” he said, “under which the seat is to be surrendered—for this turn, at any rate—to my cousin’s nominee.”

Brougham shrugged his shoulders, and looked at Mr. Cornelius. “Dear me, dear me,” he said. “That’s not a thing of which I can approve. Far from it! Far from it! But you must see, Mr. Vaughan, that I cannot meddle in my position with arrangements of that kind. Impossible, my dear sir, it is clearly impossible!”

Vaughan stared; and with some spirit and more temper, “But the spark, my lord! I’m sure you won’t forget the spark?” he said.

For an instant a gleam of fun shone in the other’s eyes. Then he was funereal again. “Before the Bill, and after the Bill, are two things,” he said drily. “Before the Bill all is, all was impure. And in an impure medium—you understand me, I am sure? You are scientific, I remember. But after the Bill—to ask me, who in my humble measure, Mr. Vaughan, may call myself its prime cause—to ask me to infringe its first principles by interposing between the Electors and their rights, to ask me to use an influence which cannot be held legitimate—no, Mr. Vaughan, no!” He shook his head solemnly and finally. And then to Mr. Cornelius, “Yes, I am coming, Mr. Cornelius,” he said. “I know I am late.”

“I can wait,” said Mr. Cornelius.

“But I cannot. Good-day, Mr. Vaughan. Good-day,” he repeated, refusing to see the young man’s ill-humour. “I am sorry that I cannot help you. Or, stay!” he continued, halting in the act of turning away. “One minute. I gather that you are a friend of Sir Charles Wetherell’s?”

“He has been a friend to me,” Vaughan answered sullenly.

“Ah, well, he is going to Bristol to hold his sessions—on the 29th, I think. Go with him. Our fat friend hates me like poison, but I would not have a hair of his head injured. We have been warned that there will be trouble, and we are taking steps to protect him. But an able-bodied young soldier by his side will be no bad thing. And upon my honour,” he continued, eyeing Vaughan with impudent frankness—impudent in view of all that had gone before—“upon my honour, I am beginning to think that we spoiled a good soldier when we—eh!”

“The spark!” Mr. Cornelius muttered grimly.

“Good-day, my lord,” said Vaughan with scant ceremony; his blood was boiling. And he turned and strode away, scarcely smothering an execration. The two, who did not appear to be in a hurry after all, remained looking after him. And presently Mr. Cornelius smiled.

“What amuses you?” Brougham asked, with a certain petulence. For at bottom, and in cases where no rivalry existed, he was good-natured; and in his heart he was sorry for the young man. But then, if one began to think of the pawn’s feelings, the game he was playing would be spoiled. “What is it?”

“I was thinking,” Mr. Cornelius answered slowly, “of purity.” He sniffed. “And the Whigs!”

Meanwhile Arthur Vaughan was striding down Bruton Street with every angry passion up in arms. He was too clever to be tricked twice, and he saw precisely what had happened. Brougham—well, well was he called Wicked Shifts!—reviewing the Borough List before the General Election, had let his eyes fall on Sir Robert’s seats at Chippinge; and looking about, with his customary audacity, for a means of snatching them, had alighted on him—and used him for a tool! Now, he was of no farther use. And, as the loss of his expectations rendered it needless to temporise with him, he was contemptuously tossed aside.

And this was the game of politics which he had yearned to play! This was the party whose zeal for the purity of elections and the improvement of all classes he had shared, and out of loyalty to which he had sacrificed a fortune! He strode along the crowded pavement of Parliament Street—it was the fashionable hour of the afternoon and the political excitement kept London full—his head high, his face flushed. And unconsciously as he shouldered the people to right and left, he swore aloud.

As he uttered the word, regardless in his anger of the scene about him, his fixed gaze pierced for an instant the medley of gay bonnets and smiling faces, moving chariots and waiting footmen, which even in those days filled Parliament Street—and met another pair of eyes.

The encounter lasted for a second only. Then half a dozen heads and a parasol intervened. And then—in another second—he was abreast of the carriage in which Mary Vermuyden sat, her face the prettiest and her bonnet the daintiest—Lady Worcester had seen to that—of all the faces and all the bonnets in Parliament Street that day. The landau in which she sat was stationary at the edge of the pavement; and on the farther side of her reposed a lady of kind face and ample figure.

For an instant their eyes met again; and Mary’s colour, which had fled, returned in a flood of crimson, covering brow and cheeks. She leaned from the carriage and held out her white-gloved hand. “Mr. Vaughan!” she said. And he might have read in her face, had he chosen, the sweetest and frankest appeal. “Mr. Vaughan!”

But the moment was unlucky. The devil had possession of him. He raised his hat and passed on, passed on wilfully. He fancied—afterwards, that is, he fancied—that she had risen to her feet after he had gone by and called him a third time in a voice at which the convenances of Parliament Street could only wink. But he went on. He heard, but he went on. He told himself that all was of a piece. Men and women, all were alike. He was a fool who trusted any, believed in any, loved any.

XXVIII ONCE MORE, TANTIVY!

Vaughan had been sore at heart before the meeting in Parliament Street. After that meeting he was in a mood to take any step which promised to salve his self-esteem. The Chancellor, Lord Lansdowne, Sir Robert, and—and Mary, all, he told himself, were against him. But they should not crush him. He would prove to them that he was no negligible quantity. Parliament was prorogued; the Long Vacation was far advanced; the world, detained beyond its time, was hurrying out of town. He, too, would go out of town; and he would go to Chippinge. There, in defiance alike of his cousin and the Bowood interest, he would throw himself upon the people. He would address himself to those whom the Bill enfranchised, he would appeal to the future electors of Chippinge, he would ask them whether the will of their great neighbours was to prevail, and the claims of service and of gratitude were to go for nothing. Surely at this time of day the answer could not be adverse!

True, the course he proposed matched ill with the party notions which still prevailed. It was a complete breach with the family traditions in which he had been reared. But in his present mood Vaughan liked his plan the better for this. Henceforth he would be iron, he would be adamant! And only by a little thing did he betray that under the iron and under the adamant he carried an aching heart. When he came to book his place, deliberately, wilfully, he chose to travel by the Bath road and the White Lion coach, though he could have gone at least as conveniently by another coach and another route. Thus have men ever, since they first felt the pangs of love, rejoiced to press the dart more deeply in the wound.

A dark October morning was brooding over the West End when he crossed Piccadilly to take his place outside the White Horse Cellar. Now, as on that distant day in April, when the car of rosy-fingered love had awaited him ignorant, the coaches stood one behind the other in a long line before the low-blind windows of the office. But how different was all else! To-day the lamps were lighted and flickered on wet pavements, the streets were windy and desolate, the day had barely broken above the wet roofs, and on all a steady rain was falling. The watermen went to and fro with sacks about their shoulders, and the guards, bustling from the office with their waybills and the late parcels, were short of temper and curt of tongue. The shivering passengers, cloaked to the eyes in boxcoats and wrap-rascals, climbed silently and sullenly to the roof, and there sat shrugging their shoulders to their ears. Vaughan, who had secured a place beside the driver, cast an eye on all, on the long dark vista of the street, on the few shivering passers; and he found the change fitting. Let it rain, let it blow, let the sun rise niggardly behind a mask of clouds! Let the world wear its true face! He cared not how discordantly the guard’s horn sounded, nor how the coachman swore at his cattle, nor how the mud splashed up, as two minutes after time they jostled and rattled and bumped down the slope and through the dingy narrows of Knightsbridge.

Perhaps to please him, the rain fell more heavily as the light broadened and the coach passed through Kensington turnpike. The passengers, crouching inside their wraps, looked miserably from under dripping umbrellas on a wet Hammersmith, and a wetter Brentford. Now the coach ploughed through deep mud, now it rolled silently over a bed of chestnut or sycamore leaves which the first frost of autumn had brought down. Swish, swash, it splashed through a rivulet. It was full daylight now; it had been daylight an hour. And, at last, joyous sight, pleasant even to the misanthrope on the box-seat, not far in front, through a curtain of mist and rain, loomed Maidenhead—and breakfast.

The up night-coach, retarded twenty minutes by the weather, rattled up to the door at the same moment. Vaughan foresaw that there would be a contest for seats at the table, and, without waiting for the ladder, he swung himself to the ground, and entered the house. Hastily doffing his streaming overcoats, he made for the coffee-room, where roaring fires and a plentiful table awaited the travellers. In two minutes he was served, and isolated by his gloomy thoughts and almost unconscious of the crowded room and the clatter of plates, he was eating his breakfast when his next-door neighbour accosted him.

“Beg your pardon, sir,” he said in a meek voice. “Are you going to Bristol, sir?”

Vaughan looked at the speaker, a decent, clean-shaven person in a black high-collared coat, and a limp white neck-cloth. The man’s face seemed familiar to him, and instead of answering the question, Vaughan asked if he knew him.

“You’ve seen me in the Lobby, sir,” the other answered, fidgeting in his humility. “I’m Sir Charles Wetherell’s clerk, sir.”

“Ah! To be sure!” Vaughan replied. “I thought I knew your face. Sir Charles opens the Assizes to-morrow, I understand?”

“Yes, sir, if they will let him. Do you think that there is much danger, sir?”

“Danger?” Vaughan answered with a smile. “No serious danger.”

“The Government did not wish him to go, sir,” the other rejoined with an air of mystery.

“Oh, I don’t believe that,” Vaughan said.

“Well, the Corporation didn’t, for certain, sir,” the man persisted in a low voice. “They wanted him to postpone the Assizes. But he doesn’t know what fear is, sir. And now the Government’s ordered troops to Bristol, and I’m afraid that’ll make ’em worse. They’re so set against him for saying that Bristol was no longer for the Bill. And they’re a desperate rough lot, sir, down by the Docks!”

“So I’ve heard,” Vaughan said. “But you may be sure that the authorities will see that Sir Charles is well guarded!”

The clerk said nothing to that, although it was clear that he was far from convinced, or easy. And Vaughan returned to his thoughts. But by and by it chanced that as he raised his eyes he met those of a girl who was passing his table on her way from the room; and he remembered with a sharp pang how Mary had passed his table and looked at him, and blushed; and how his heart had jumped at the sight. Why, there was the very waiting-maid who had gone out with her! And there, where the April sun had shone on her through the window, she had sat! And there, three places only from his present seat, he had sat himself. Three seats only—and yet how changed was all! The unmanly tears rose very near to his eyes as he thought of it.

He sat so long brooding over this, in that mood in which a man recks little of time, or of what befalls him, that the guard had to summon him. And even then, as he donned his coats, with the “boots” fussing about him, and the coachman grumbling at the delay, his memory was busy with that morning. There, in the porch, he had stood and heard the young waterman praise her looks! And there Cooke had stood and denounced the Reform placard! And there——

“Let go!” growled the coachman, losing patience a last. “The gentleman’s not coming!”

“I’m coming,” he answered curtly. And crossing the pavement in two strides, he swung himself up hand over hand, as the stableman released the horses. The coach started as his foot left the box of the wheel. And something else started—furiously.

His heart. For in the place behind the coachman, in the very seat which Mary Smith had occupied on that far-off April morning, sat Mary Vermuyden! For an infinitely small fraction of a second, as he turned himself to drop into his seat, his eyes swept her face. The rain had ceased to fall, the umbrellas were furled; for that infinitely short space his eyes rested on her features. Then his back was turned to her.

Her eyes had been fixed elsewhere, her face had been cold—she had not seen him. So much, in the confused pounding rush of his thoughts, as he sat tingling in every inch of his frame, he could remember; but nothing else except that in lieu of the plain Quaker-like dress which Mary Smith had worn—oh, dress to be ever remembered!—she was wearing rich furs, with a great muff and a small hat of sable, and was Mary Smith no longer.

Probably she had been there from the start, seated behind him under cover of the rain and the umbrellas. If so—and he remembered that that seat had been occupied when he got to his place—she had perceived his coming, had seen him mount, had been aware of him from the first. She could see him now, watch every movement, read his self-consciousness in the stiff pose of his head, perceive the rush of colour which dyed his ears and neck.

And he was planted there, he could not escape. And he suffered. Asked beforehand, he would have said that his uppermost feeling in such circumstances would be resentment. But, in fact, he could think of nothing except that meeting in Parliament Street, and the rudeness with which he had treated her. If he had not refused to speak to her, if he had not passed her by, rejecting her hand with disdain, he might have been his own master now; he would have been free to speak, or free to be silent, as he pleased. And she who had treated him so ill would have been the one to suffer. But, as it was, he was hot all over. The intolerable _gêne_ of the situation rested on him and weighed him down.

Until the coachman called his attention to a passing waggon, and pointed out a something unusual in its make; which broke the spell and freed his thoughts. After that he began to feel a little of the wonder which the coincidence demanded. How came she in the same seat, on the same coach on which she had travelled before. He could not bring himself to look round and meet her eyes. But he remembered that a man-servant, doubtless in attendance on her, shared the hind seat with the clerk who had spoken to him; and the middle-aged woman who sat with her was doubtless her maid. Still, he knew Sir Robert well enough to be sure that he would not countenance her journeying, even with this attendance, on a public vehicle; and therefore, he argued, she must be doing it without Sir Robert’s knowledge, and probably in pursuance of some whim of her own. Could it be that she, too, wished to revive the bitter-sweet of recollection, the memory of that April day? And, to do so, had gone out of her way to travel on this cold wet morning on the same coach, which six months before had brought them together?

If so, she must love him in spite of all. And in that case, what must her feelings have been when she saw him take his place? What, when she knew that she would not taste the bitter-sweet alone, but in his company? What, when she foresaw that, through the day she would not pass a single thing of all those well-remembered things, that milestone which he had pointed out to her, that baiting-house of which she had asked the name, that stone bridge with the hundred balustrades which they had crossed in the gloaming—her eyes would not alight on one of these, without another heart answering to every throb of hers, and another breast aching as hers ached.

At that thought a subtle attraction, almost irresistible, drew him to her, and he could have cried to her, under the pain of separation. For it was all true. Before his eyes those things were passing. There was the milestone which he had pointed out to her. And there the ruined inn. And here were the streets of Reading opening before them, and the Market Place, and the Bear Inn, where he had saved her from injury, perhaps from death.

* * * * *

They were out of the town, they were clear of the houses, and he had not looked, he had not been able to look at her. Her weakness, her inconstancy deserved their punishment: but for all her fortune, to recover all that he had lost and she had gained, he would not have looked at her there. Yet, while the coach changed horses in the Square before the Bear, he had had a glimpse of her—reflected in the window of a shop; and he had marked with greedy eyes each line of her figure and seen that she had wound a veil round her face and hat, so that, whatever her emotions, she might defy curious eyes. And yet, as far as he was concerned, she had done it in vain. The veil could not hide the agitation, could not hide the strained rigidity of her pose, or the convulsive force with which one hand gripped the other in her lap.

Well, that was over, thank God! For he had as soon seen a woman beaten. The town was behind them; Newbury was not far in front. And now with shame he began to savour a weak pleasure in her presence, in her nearness to him, in the thought that her eyes were on him and her thoughts full of him, and that if he stretched out his hand he could touch her; that there was that between them, that there must always be that between them, which time could not destroy. The coach was loaded, but for him it carried her only: and for Mary he was sure that he filled the landscape were it as wide as that which, west of Newbury, reveals to the admiring traveller the whole wide vale of the Kennet. He thrilled at the thought; and the coachman asked him if he were cold. But he was far from cold; he knew that she too trembled, she, too, thrilled. And a foolish exultation possessed him. He had hungry thoughts of her nearness, and her beauty; and insane plans of snatching her to his breast when she left the coach, and covering her with kisses though a hundred looked on. He might suffer for it, he would deserve to suffer for it, it would be an intolerable outrage. But he would have kissed her, he would have held her to his heart. Nothing could undo that.

Yet it was only in fancy that he was reckless, for still he did not dare to look at her. And when they came at last to Marlborough, and drew up at the door of the Castle Inn, where west-bound travellers dined, he descended hurriedly and went into the coffee-room to secure a place in a corner, whence he might see her enter without meeting her eyes.

But she did not enter the house, soon or late. And a vain man might have thought that she was not only bent on doing everything which she had done on the former journey, but that it was not without intention that she remained alone on the coach, exposed to his daring—if he chose to dare. Not a few indeed, of his fellow-passengers, wandered out before the time, and on the pretence of examining the façade of the handsome old house, shot sidelong glances at the young lady, who, wrapped in her furs and veiled to the throat, sat motionless in the keen October air. But Vaughan was not of these; nor was he vain. When he found that she did not come in, he decided that she would not meet him, that she remained on the coach rather than sit in his company; and forgetting the overture in Parliament Street, he remembered only her fickleness and weakness. He fell to the depths. She had never loved him, never, never!

On that he almost made up his mind to stay there; and to go on by the next coach. His presence must be hateful to her, a misery, a torment, he told himself. It was bad enough to force her to remain exposed to the weather while others dined; it would be monstrous to go on and continue to make her wretched.

But, before the time for leaving came, he changed his mind, and he went out, feeling cowed and looking hard. He could not mount without seeing her out of the corner of his eye; but the veil masked all, and left him no wiser. The sun had burst through the clouds, and the sky above the curving line of the downs was blue. But the October air was still chilly, and he heard the maid fussing about her, and wrapping her up more warmly. Well, it mattered little. At Chippenham, the carriage with its pomp of postillions and outriders—Sir Robert was particular about such things—would meet her; and he would see her no more.

His pride weakened at that thought. She could never be anything to him now; he had no longer the least notion of kissing her. But at Chippenham, before she passed out of his life, he would speak to her. Yes, he would speak. He did not know what he would say, but he would not part from her in anger. He would tell her that, and bid her good-bye. Later, he would be glad to remember that they had parted in that way, and that he had forgiven!

While he thought of it they fell swiftly from the lip of the downs, and rattling over the narrow bridge and through the stone-built streets of Calne, were out again on the Bath road. After that, though they took Black Dog hill at a slow pace, they seemed to be at Chippenham in a twinkling. Before he could calm his thoughts the coach was rattling between houses, and the wide straggling street was opening before them, and the group assembled in front of the Angel to see the coach arrive was scattering to right and left.

A glance told him that there was no carriage-and-four in waiting. And because his heart was jumping so foolishly he was glad to put off the moment of speaking to her. She would go into the house to wait for the carriage, and when the coach, with its bustle and its many eyes, had gone its way, he would be able to speak to her.

Accordingly, the moment the coach stopped he descended and hastened into the house. He sent out the “boots” for his valise and betook himself to the bar-parlour, where he called for something and jested cheerily with the smiling landlady, who came herself to attend upon him. He kept his back to the door which Mary must pass to ascend the stairs, for well he knew the parlour of honour to which she would be ushered. But though he listened keenly for the rustle of her skirts, a couple of minutes passed and he heard nothing.

“You are not going on, sir?” the landlady asked. She knew too much of the family politics to ask point-blank if he were going to Chippinge.

“No,” he replied; “no, I”—his attention wandered—“I am not.”

“I hope we may have the honour of keeping you tonight, sir?” she said.

“Yes, I”—was that the coach starting?—“I think I shall stay the night.” And then, “Sir Robert’s carriage is not here?” he asked, setting down his glass.

“No, sir. But two gentlemen have just driven in from Sir Robert’s in a chaise. They are posting to Bath. One’s Colonel Brereton, sir. The other’s a young gentleman, short and stout. Quite the gentleman, sir, but that positive, the postboy told me, and talkative, you’d think he was the Emperor of China! That’s their chaise coming out of the yard now, sir.”

A thought, keen as a knife-stab, darted through Vaughan’s mind. In three strides he was out of the bar-parlour, in three more he was at the door of the Angel.

The coach was in the act of starting, the ostlers were falling back, the guard was swinging himself up; and Mary Vermuyden was where he had left her, in the place behind the coachman. And in the box-seat, the very seat which he had vacated, was Bob Flixton, settling himself in his wraps and turning to talk to her.

Vaughan let fall a word which we will not chronicle. It was true, then! They were engaged! Doubtless Flixton had come to meet her, and all was over. Fan-fa-ra! Fan-fa-ra! The coach was growing small in the distance. It veered a little, a block of houses hid it, Vaughan saw it again. Then in the dusk of the October evening the descent to the bridge swallowed it, and he turned away miserable.

He walked a little distance from the door that his face might not be seen. He did not tell himself that, because the view grew misty before his eyes, he was taking the blow contemptibly; he told himself only that he was very wretched, and that she was gone. It seemed as if so much had gone with her; so much of the hope and youth and fortune, and the homage of men, which had been his when he and she first saw the streets of Chippenham together and he alighted to talk to Isaac White, and mounted again to ride on by her side.

He was standing with his back to the inn thinking of this—and not bitterly, but in a broken fashion—when he heard his name called, and he turned and saw Colonel Brereton striding after him.

“I thought it was you,” Brereton said. But though he had not met Vaughan for some months, and the two had liked one another, he spoke with little cordiality, and there was a vague look in his face. “I was not sure,” he added.

“You came with Flixton?” Vaughan said, speaking, on his side also, rather dully.

“Yes, and meant to go on with him. But there’s no counting on men in love,” Brereton continued with more irritation than the occasion seemed to warrant. “He saw his charmer on the coach, and a vacant seat—and I may find my way to Bath as I can.”

“They are to be married, I hear?” Vaughan said in the same dull tone and with his face averted.

“I don’t know,” Brereton answered sourly. “What I do know is that I’m not best pleased that he has left me. I heard Sir Charles Wetherell was sleeping at your cousin’s last evening, and I posted there to see him about the arrangements for his entry. But I missed him. He’s gone to Bath for this evening. Well, I took Flixton with me because I didn’t know Sir Robert and he did, and he’s supposed to be playing aide-de-camp to me. But a fine aide-de-camp he’s like to prove, if this is the way he treats me. You know Wetherell opens the Assizes at Bristol tomorrow?”

“Yes, I saw his clerk on my way here.”

“There’ll be trouble, Vaughan!”

“Really?”

“Ay, really! And bad trouble! I wish it was over.” He passed his hand across his brow.

“I heard something of it in London,” Vaughan answered.

“Not much, I’ll wager,” Brereton rejoined, with a brusqueness which betrayed his irritation. “They don’t know much, or they wouldn’t be sending me eighty sabres to keep order in a city of a hundred thousand people! Enough, you see, to anger, and not enough to intimidate! It’s just plain madness. It’s madness. But I’ve made up my mind! I’ve made up my mind!” he repeated, speaking in a tone which betrayed the tenseness of his nerves. “Not a man will I show if I can help it! Not a man! And not a shot will I fire, whatever comes of it! I’ll be no butcherer of innocent folk.”

“I hope nothing will come of it,” Vaughan answered, interested in spite of himself. “You’re in command, sir, of course?”

“Yes, and I wish to heaven I were not! But there, there!” he continued, pulling himself up as if he kept a watch on himself and feared that he had said too much. “Enough of my business. What are you doing here?”

“Well, I was going to Chippinge.”

“Come to Bath with me! I shall see Wetherell, and you know him. You may be of use to me. There’s half the chaise at your service, and I will tell you about it, as we go.”

Vaughan at that moment cared little where he went, and after the briefest hesitation, he consented. A few minutes later they started together. It happened that as they drove in the last of the twilight over the long stone bridge, an open car drawn by four horses and containing a dozen rough-looking men overtook them and raced them for a hundred yards.

“There’s another!” Brereton said, rising with an oath and looking after it. “I was told that two had gone through!”

“What is it? Who are they?” Vaughan asked, leaning out on his side to see.

“Midland Union men, come to stir up the Bristol lambs!” Brereton answered. “They may spare themselves the trouble,” he continued bitterly. “The fire will need no poking, I’ll be sworn!”

And brought back to the subject, he never ceased from that moment to talk of it. It was plain to anyone who knew him that a nervous excitability had taken the place of his usual thoughtfulness. Long before they reached Bath, Vaughan was sure that, whatever his own troubles, there was one man in the world more unhappy than himself, more troubled, less at ease; and that that man sat beside him in the chaise.

He believed that Brereton exaggerated the peril. But if his fears were well-based, then he agreed that the soldiers sent were too few.

“Still a bold front will do much!” he argued.

“A bold front!” Brereton replied feverishly. “No, but management may! Management may. They give me eighty swords to control eighty thousand people! Why, it’s my belief”—and he dropped his voice and laid his hand on his companion’s arm,—“that the Government wants a riot! Ay, by G—d, it is! To give the lie to Wetherell and prove that the country, and Bristol in particular, is firm for the Bill!”

“Oh, but that’s absurd!” Vaughan answered; though he recalled what Brougham had said.

“Absurd or not, nine-tenths of Bristol believe it,” Brereton retorted. “And I believe it! But I’ll be no butcher. Besides, do you see how I am placed? If in putting down this riot which is in the Government interest, and is believed to be fostered by them, I exceed my duty by a jot, I am a lost man! A lost man! Now do you see?”

“I can’t think it’s as bad as that,” Vaughan said.

XXIX AUTUMN LEAVES

Miss Sibson paused to listen, but heard nothing. And disappointed, and with a sigh, she spread a clean handkerchief over the lap of her gown and helped herself to part of a round of buttered toast.

“She’ll not come,” she muttered. “I was a fool to think it! An old fool to think it!” And she bit viciously into the toast.

It was long past her usual tea-time, yet she paused a second time to listen, before she raised her first cup of tea to her lips. A covered dish which stood on a brass trivet before the bright coal fire gave forth a savoury smell, and the lamplight which twinkled on sparkling silver and old Nantgarw, discovered more than the tea-equipage. The red moreen curtains were drawn before the windows, a tabby cat purred sleepily on the hearth; in all Bristol was no more cosy or more cheerful scene. Yet Miss Sibson left the savoury dish untouched, and ate the toast with less than her customary appetite.

“I shall set,” she murmured, “‘The Deceitfulness of Riches’ for the first copy when the children return. And for the second ‘Fine Feathers Make Fine Birds!’ And”—she continued with determination, though there was no one to be intimidated—“for the third, ‘There’s No Fool Like an Old Fool!’”

She had barely uttered the words when she set down her cup. The roll of distant wheels had fallen on her ears. She listened for a few seconds, then she rose in haste and rang the bell. “Martha,” she said when the maid appeared, “are the two warming-pans in the bed?”

“To be sure, Ma’am.”

“And well filled?” Miss Sibson spoke suspiciously.

“The sheets are as nigh singeing as you’d like, Ma’am,” the maid answered. “You can smell ’em here! I only hope,” she continued, with a quaver in her voice, “as we mayn’t smell fire before long!”

“Smell fiddlesticks!” Miss Sibson retorted. Then “That will do,” she continued. “I will open the door myself.”

When she did so the lights of the hackney-coach which had stopped before the house disclosed first Mary Vermuyden in her furs, standing on the step; secondly, Mr. Flixton, who had placed himself as near her as he dared; and thirdly and fourthly, flanking them at a distance of a pace or two, a tall footman and a maid.

“Good gracious!” Miss Sibson exclaimed, dismay in her tone.

“Yes,” Mary answered, almost crying. “They would come! I said I wished to come alone. Good-night, Mr. Flixton!”

“Oh, but I—I couldn’t think of leaving you like this!” the Honourable Bob answered. He had derived a minimum of satisfaction from his ride on the coach, for Mary had shown herself of the coldest. And if he was to part from her here he might as well have travelled with Brereton. Besides, what the deuce was afoot? What was she doing here?

“And Baxter is as bad,” Mary said plaintively. “As for Thomas——”

“Beg pardon, Ma’am,” the man said, touching his hat, “but it is as much as my place is worth.”

The maid, a woman of mature years, said nothing, but held her ground, the image of stolid disapproval. She knew Miss Sibson. But Bristol was strange to her; and the dark windy square, with its flickering lights, its glimpses of gleaming water and skeleton masts, and its unseen but creaking windlasses, seemed to her, fresh from Lady Worcester’s, a most unfitting place for her young lady.

Miss Sibson cut the knot after her own fashion. “Well, I can’t take you in,” she said bluffly. “This gentleman,” pointing to Mr. Flixton, “will find quarters for you at the White Lion or the Bush. And your mistress will see you to-morrow. Thomas, bring in your young lady’s trunk. Good-night, sir,” she added, addressing the Honourable Bob. “Miss Vermuyden will be quite safe with me.”

“Oh, but I say, Miss Sibson!” he remonstrated. “You can’t mean to take the moon out of the sky like this, and leave us in the dark? Miss Vermuyden——”

“Good-night,” Mary said, not a whit placated by the compliment. And she slipped past Miss Sibson into the passage.

“Oh, but it’s not safe, you know!” he cried. “You’re not a hundred yards from the Mansion House here. And if those beggars make trouble to-morrow—positively there’s no knowing what will happen!”

“We can take care of ourselves, sir,” Miss Sibson replied curtly. “Good-night, sir!” And she shut the door in his face.

The Honourable Bob glared at it for a time, but it remained closed and dark. There was nothing to be done save to go. “D——n the woman!” he cried. And he turned about.

It was something of a shock to him to find the two servants still at his elbow, patiently regarding him. “Where are we to go, sir?” the maid asked, as stolid as before.

“Go?” cried he, staring. “Go? Eh? What? What do you mean?”

“Where are we to go, sir, for the night? If you’ll please to show us, sir. I’m a stranger here.”