Chapter XVI: Part 16

“Lady Lansdowne!” He broke in abruptly, using her name with emphasis, using it with intention. “Once before you came to me. Doubtless you remember. Now, let me say at once, that if your errand to-day be the same, and I think it likely that it is the same——”

“It is not the same,” she replied with emotion which she did not try to hide. “It is not the same! For then there was time. And now there is no time. Let a day, it may be an hour, pass, and at the cost of all you possess you will not be able to buy that which you can still have for nothing!”

“And what is that?” he asked, frowning.

“An easy heart.” He had not looked for that answer, and he started. “Sir Robert,” she continued, rising from her seat, and speaking with even deeper feeling, “forgive her! Forgive her, I implore you. The wrong is past, is done, is over! Your daughter is restored——”

“But not by her!” he cried, taking her up quickly. “Not by her act!” he repeated sternly, “or with her will! And what has she done that I should forgive? I, whose life she blighted, whose pride she stabbed, whose hopes she crushed? Whom she left solitary, wifeless, childless through the years of my strength, the years that she cannot, that no one can give back to me? Through the long summer days that were a weariness, and the dark winter days that were a torpor? Yet—yet I could forgive her, Lady Lansdowne, I could forgive her, I do forgive her that!”

“Sir Robert!”

“That, all that!” he continued, with a gesture and in a tone of bitterness which harmonised but ill with the words he uttered. “All that she ever did amiss to me I forgive her. But—but the child’s wrong, never! Had she relented indeed, at the last, had she of her own motion, of her own free will given me back my daughter, had she repented and undone the wrong, then—but no matter! she did not! She did not one,” he repeated with agitation, “she did not any of these things. And I ask, what has she done that I should forgive her?”

She did not answer him at once, and when she did it was in a tone so low as to be barely audible.

“I cannot answer that,” she said. “But is it the only question? Is there not another question, Sir Robert—not what she has done, or left undone, but what you—forgive me and bear with me—have left undone, or done amiss? Are you—you clear of all spot or trespass, innocent of all blame or erring? When she came to you a young girl, a young bride—and, oh, I remember her, the sunshine was not brighter, she was a child of air rather than of earth, so fair and heedless, so capricious, and yet so innocent!—did you in the first days never lose patience? Never fail to make allowance? Never preach when wisdom would have smiled, never look grave when she longed for lightness, never scold when it had been better to laugh? Did you never forget that she was a score of years younger than you, and a hundred years more frivolous? Or”—Lady Lansdowne’s tone was a mere whisper now—“if you are clear of all offence against her, are you clear of all offence against any, of all trespass? Have you no need to be forgiven, no need, no——”

Her voice died away into silence. She left the appeal unfinished.

Sir Robert paced the room. And other scenes than those on which he had taught himself to brood, other days than those later days of wasted summers and solitary winters, of dulness and decay, rose to his memory. Sombre moods by which it had pleased him—at what a cost!—to make his displeasure known. Sarcastic words, warrant for the facile retort that followed, curt judgments and ill-timed reproofs; and always the sense of outraged dignity to freeze the manner and embitter the tone.

So much, so much which he had forgotten came back to him as he walked the room with averted face! While Lady Lansdowne waited with her hand on the bell. Minutes were passing, minutes; who knew how precious they might be? And with them was passing his opportunity.

He spoke at last. “I will see her,” he said huskily.

And on that Lady Lansdowne performed a last act of kindness. She said nothing, bestowed no thanks. But when Mary entered—pale, yet with that composure which love teaches the least experienced—she was gone. Nor as she drove in all the pomp of her liveries and outriders through Bath, through Corsham, through Chippenham, did those who ran out to watch my lady’s four greys go by, see her face as the face of an angel. But Lady Louisa, flying down the steps to meet her—four at a time and hoidenishly—was taken to her arms, unscolded; and knew by instinct that this was the time to pet and be petted, to confess and be forgiven, and to learn in the stillness of her mother’s room those thrilling lessons of life, which her governess had not imparted, nor Mrs. Fairchild approved.

_But more than wisdom sees, love knows. What eye has scanned the perfume of the rose? Has any grasped the low grey mist which stands Ghost-like at eve above the sheeted lands?_

Meanwhile Sir Robert paused on the threshold of the room—_her_ room, which he had first entered two-and-twenty years before. And as the then and the now, the contrast between the past and the present, forced themselves upon him, what could he do but pause and bow his head? In the room a voice, her voice, yet unlike her voice, high, weak, never ceasing, was talking as from a great distance, from another world; talking, talking, never ceasing. It filled the room. Yet it did not come from a world so distant as he at first fancied, hearing it; a world that was quite aloof. For when, after he had listened for a time in the shadow by the door, his daughter led him forward, Lady Sybil’s eyes took note of their approach, though she recognised neither of them. Her mind was still busy amid the scenes of the riot; twisting and weaving them, it seemed, into a piece with old impressions of the French Terror, made on her mind in childhood by talk heard at her nurse’s knee.

“They are coming! They are coming now,” she muttered, her bright eyes fixed on his. “But they shall not take her. They shall not take her,” she repeated. “Hide behind me, Mary. Hide, child! Don’t tremble! They shan’t take you. One neck’s enough and mine is growing thin. It used not to be thin. But that’s right. Hide, and they’ll not see you, and when I am gone you’ll escape. Hush! Here they are!” And then in a louder tone, “I am ready,” she said, “I am quite ready.”

Mary leant over her.

“Mother!” she cried, unable to bear the scene in silence. “Mother! Don’t you know me?”

“Hush!” the dying woman answered, a look of terror crossing her face. “Hush, child! Don’t speak! I’m ready, gentlemen; I will go with you. I am not afraid. My neck is small, and it will be but a squeeze.” And she tried to raise herself in the bed.

Mary laid gentle hands on her, and restrained her. “Mother,” she said. “Mother! Don’t you know me? I am Mary.”

But Lady Sybil, heedless of her, looked beyond her, with fear and suspicion in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I know you. I know you. I know you. But who is—that? Who is that?”

“My father. It is my father. Don’t you know him?”

But still, “Who is it? Who is it?” Lady Sybil continued to ask. “Who is it?”

Mary burst into tears.

“What does he want? What does he want? What does he want?” the dying woman asked in endless, unreasoning repetition.

Sir Robert had entered the room in the full belief that with the best of wills it would be hard, it would be well-nigh impossible to forgive; to forgive his wife with more than the lips. But when he heard her, weak and helpless as she was, thinking of another; when he understood that she who had done so great a wrong to the child was willing to give up her own life for the child; when he felt the sudden drag at his heart-strings of many an old and sacred recollection, shared only by her, and which that voice, that face, that form brought back, he fell on his knees by the bed.

She shrank from him, terrified. “What does he want?” she repeated.

“Sybil,” he said, in a husky voice, “I want your forgiveness, Sybil, wife! Do you hear me? Will you forgive me? Can you forgive me, late as it is?”

Strange to say, his voice pierced the confusion which filled the sick brain. She looked at him steadily and long; and she sighed, but she did not answer.

“Sybil,” he repeated in a quavering voice. “Do you not know me? Don’t you remember me? I am your husband.”

“Yes, I know,” she muttered.

“This is your daughter.”

She smiled.

“Our daughter,” he repeated. “Our daughter!”

“Mary?” she murmured. “Mary?”

“Yes, Mary.”

She smiled faintly on him. Mary’s head was touching his, but she did not answer. She remained looking at them. They could not tell whether she understood, or was slipping away again. He took her hand and pressed it gently. “Do you hear me?” he said. “If I was harsh to you in the old days, if I made mistakes, if I wronged you, I want you—wife, say that you forgive me.”

“I—forgive you,” she murmured. A faint gleam of mischief, of laughter, of the old Lady Sybil, shone for an instant in her eyes, as if she knew that she had the upper hand. “I forgive you—everything,” she murmured. Yes, for certain now, she was slipping away.

Mary took her other hand. But she did not speak again. And before the watch on the table beside her had ticked many times she had slipped away for good, with that gleam of triumph in her eyes—forgiving.

XXXVII IN THE MOURNING COACH

It is a platitude that the flood is followed by the ebb. In the heat of action, and while its warmth cheered his spirits, Arthur Vaughan felt that he had done something. True, what he had done brought him no nearer to making his political dream a reality. Not for him the promise,

_It shall be thine in danger’s hour To guide the helm of Britain’s power And midst thy country’s laurelled crown To twine a garland all thy own_.

Yet he had done something. He had played the man when some others had not played the man.

But now that the crisis was over, and he had made his last round, now that he had inspected for the last time the patrols over whom he was set, seen order restored on the Welsh Back, and panic driven from Queen’s Square, he owned the reaction. There is a fatigue which one night’s rest fails to banish; and low in mind and tired in body, he felt, when he rose late on Tuesday afternoon, that he had done nothing worth doing; nothing that altered his position in essentials.

For a time, indeed, he had fancied that things were changed. Sir Robert had requested his assistance, and allowed him to share his search; and though it was possible that the merest stranger, cast by fortune into the same adventure, had been as welcome, it was also possible that the Baronet viewed him with a more benevolent eye. And Mary—Mary, too, had flown to his arms as to a haven; but in such a position, amid surroundings so hideous, was that wonderful? Was it not certain that she would have behaved in the same way to the merest acquaintance if he brought her aid and protection?

The answer might be yes or no! What was certain was that it could not avail him. For between him and her there stood more than her father’s aversion, more than the doubt of her affection, more than the unlucky borough, of which he had despoiled Sir Robert. There were her possessions, there was the suspicion which Sir Robert had founded on them—on Mary’s gain and his loss—there was the independence, which he must surrender, and which pride and principle alike forbade him to relinquish.

In the confusion of the night Vaughan had almost forgotten and quite forgiven. Now he saw that the thing, though forgotten, though forgiven, was there. He could not owe all to a man who had so misconstrued him, and who might misconstrue him again. He could not be dependent on one whose views, thoughts, prejudices, were opposed to his own. No, the night and its doing must stand apart. He and she had met, they had parted. He had one memory more, and nothing was changed.

In this mood the fact that the White Lion regarded him as a hero brought him no comfort. Neither the worshipping eyes of the young lady who had tried to dissuade him from going forth on the Sunday, nor the respectful homage which dogged his movements, uplifted him. He had small appetite for his solitary dinner, and was languidly reading the “Bristol Mercury,” when a name was brought up to him, and a letter.

“Gentleman will wait your pleasure, sir,” the man said.

He broke open the letter, and felt the blood rise to his face as his eyes fell on the signature. The few lines were from his cousin, and ran as follows:

“Dear Sir,—I feel it my duty to inform you, as a connection of the family, that Lady Sybil Vermuyden died at five minutes past three o’clock this afternoon. Her death, which I am led to believe could in no event have been long delayed, was doubtless hastened by the miserable occurrences of the last few days.

“I have directed Isaac White to convey this intimation to your hands, and to inform you from time to time of the arrangements made for her ladyship’s funeral, which will take place at Stapylton. I have the honour to be, sir,

“Your obedient servant,

“Robert Vermuyden.”

Vaughan laid the letter down with a groan. As he did so he became aware that Isaac White was in the room. “Halloa, White,” he said. “Is that you?”

White looked at him with unconcealed respect. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Sir Robert bade me wait on you in person without delay. If I may venture,” he continued, “to compliment you on my own account, sir—a very great honour to the family, Mr. Vaughan—in all the west country, I may say——”

Vaughan stopped him, and said something of Lady Sybil’s death; adding that he had never seen her but once.

“Twice, begging your pardon,” White answered, smiling. “Do you remember I met you at Chippenham before the election, Mr. Vaughan? Well, sir, she came up to the coach, and as good as touched your sleeve, poor lady, while I was talking to you. Of course, she knew that her daughter was on the coach.”

“I learned afterwards that Lady Sybil travelled by it that day,” Vaughan replied. Then with a frown he took up the letter. “Of course,” he continued, “I have no intention of attending the funeral.”

“But I think his honour wishes much——”

“There is no possible reason,” Vaughan said doggedly.

“Pardon me, sir,” White answered anxiously. “You are not aware, I am sure, how highly Sir Robert appreciates your gallant conduct yesterday. No one in Bristol can view it in a stronger light. It is a happy thing he witnessed it. He thinks, indeed, that but for you her ladyship would have died in the crowd. Moreover——”

“That’s enough, White,” Vaughan said coldly. “It is not so much what Sir Robert thinks now, too, as what he thought formerly.”

“But indeed, sir, his honour’s opinion of that matter, too——”

“That’s enough, White,” the young gentleman repeated, rising from his seat. He was telling himself that he was not a dog to be kicked away and called to heel again. He would forgive, but he would not return. “I don’t wish to discuss the matter,” he added with an air of finality.

And White did not venture to say more.

He did wisely. For Vaughan, left to himself, had not reflected two minutes before he felt that he had played the churl. To make amends, he called at the house to inquire after the ladies at an hour next morning when they could not be stirring. Having performed that duty, and having learned that no inquiry into the riots would be opened for some days—and also that a proposal to give him a piece of gold plate was under debate at the Commercial Rooms, he fled, pride and love at odds in his breast.

It is possible that in Sir Robert’s heart, also, there was a battle going on. On the eve of the funeral he sat alone in the library at Stapylton, that room in which he had passed so many unhappy hours, and with which the later part of his life seemed bound up. Doubtless, as he sat, he gave solemn thought to the past and the future. The room was no longer dusty, the furniture was no longer shabby; there were fresh flowers on his table; and by his great leather chair, a smaller chair, filled within the last few minutes, had its place. Yet he could not forget what he had suffered there; how he had brooded there. And perhaps he thanked God, amid his more solemn thoughts, that he was not glad that she who had plagued him would plague him no more. All that her friend had urged in her behalf, all that was brightest and best in his memories of her, this generous whim, that quixotic act rose, it may be supposed, before him. And the picture of her fair young beauty, of her laughing face in the bridal veil or under the Leghorn, of her first words to him, of her first acts in her new home! And but that the tears of age flow hardly, it is possible that he would have wept.

Presently—perhaps he was not sorry for it—a knock came at the door and Isaac White entered. He came to take the last instructions for the morrow. A few words settled what remained to be settled, and then, after a little hesitation, “I promised to name it to you, sir,” White said. “I don’t know what you’ll say to it. Dyas wishes to walk with the others.”

Sir Robert winced. “Dyas?” he muttered.

“He says he’s anxious to show his respect for the family, in every way consistent with his opinions.”

“Opinions?” Sir Robert echoed. “Opinions? Good Lord! A butcher’s opinions! Who knows but some day he’ll have a butcher to represent him? Or a baker or a candlestick-maker! If ever they have the ballot, that’ll come with it, White.”

White waited, but as the other said no more, “You won’t forbid him, sir?” he said, a note of appeal in his voice.

“Oh, let him come,” Sir Robert answered wearily. “I suppose,” he continued, striving to speak in the same tone, “you’ve heard nothing from his—Member?”

“From—oh, from Mr. Vaughan, sir? No, sir. But Mr. Flixton is coming.”

Sir Robert muttered something under his breath, and it was not flattering to the Honourable Bob. Then he turned his chair and held his hands over the blaze. “That will do, White,” he said. “That will do.” And he did not look round until the agent had left the room.

But White was certain that even on this day of sad memories, with the ordeal of the morrow before him, Arthur Vaughan’s attitude troubled his patron. And when, twenty-four hours later, the agent’s eyes travelling round the vast assemblage which regard for the family had gathered about the grave, fell upon Arthur Vaughan, and he knew that he had repented and come, he was glad.

The young Member held himself a little apart from the small group of family mourners; a little apart also from the larger company whom respect or social ties had brought thither. Among these last, who were mostly Tories, many were surprised to see Lord Lansdowne and his son. But more, aware of the breach between Mr. Vaughan and his cousin, and of the former’s peculiar position in the borough, were surprised to see him. And these, while their thoughts should have been elsewhere, stole furtive glances at the sombre figure; and when Vaughan left, still alone and without speaking to any, followed his departure with interest. In those days of mutes and crape-coloured staves, mourning cloaks and trailing palls, it was not the custom for women to bury their dead. And Vaughan, when he had made up his mind to come, knew that he ran no risk of seeing Mary.

That he might escape with greater case, he had left his post-chaise at a side-gate of the park. The moment the ceremony was over, he made his way to it, now traversing beds of fallen chestnut and sycamore leaves, now striding across the sodden turf. The solemn words which he had heard, emphasised as they were by the scene, the grey autumn day, the lonely park, and the dark groups threading their way across it, could not hold his thoughts from Mary. She would be glad that he had come. Perhaps it was for that reason that he had come.

He had passed through the gate of the park and his foot was on the step of the chaise, when he heard White’s voice, calling after him. He turned and saw the agent hurrying desperately after him. White’s mourning suit was tight and new and ill made for haste; and he was hot and breathless. For a moment, “Mr. Vaughan! Mr. Vaughan!” was all he could say.

Vaughan turned a reluctant, almost a stern face to him. Not that he disliked the agent, but he thought that he had got clear.

“What is it?” he asked, without removing his foot from the step.

White looked behind him. “Sir Robert, sir,” he said, “has something to say to you. The carriage is following. If you’ll be good enough,” he continued, mopping his face, “to wait a moment!”

“Sir Robert cannot wish to see me at such a time,” Vaughan answered, between wonder and impatience. “He will write, doubtless.”

“The carriage should be in sight,” was White’s answer. As he spoke it came into view; rounding the curve of a small coppice of beech trees, it rolled rapidly down a declivity, and ascended towards them as rapidly.

A moment and it would be here. Vaughan looked uncertainly at his post-boy. He wished to catch the York House coach at Chippenham, and he had little time to spare.

It was not the loss of time, however, that he really had in his mind. But he could guess, he fancied, what Sir Robert wished to say; and he did not deny that the old man was generous in saying it at such a moment, if that were his intention. But his own mind was made up; he could only repeat what he had said to White. It was not a question of what Sir Robert had thought, or now thought, but of what _he_ thought. And the upshot of all his thoughts was that he would not be dependent upon any man. He had differed from Sir Robert once, and the elder had treated the younger man with injustice, and contumely; that might occur again. Indeed, taking into account the difference in their political views in an age when politics counted for much, it was sure to occur again. But his mind was made up that it should not occur to him. Unhappy as the resolution made him, he would be free. He would be his own man. He would remember nothing except that that night had changed nothing.

It was with a set face, therefore, that he watched the carriage draw near. Apparently it was a carriage which had conveyed guests to the funeral, for the blinds were drawn.

“It will save time, if it takes you a mile on your way,” White said, with some nervousness. “I will tell your chaise to follow.” And he opened the door.

Vaughan raised his hat, and stepped in. It was only when the door was closing behind him and the carriage starting anew at a word from White, that he saw that it contained, not Sir Robert Vermuyden, but a lady.

“Mary!” he cried. The name broke from him in his astonishment.

She looked at him with self-possession, and a gentle, unsmiling gravity. She indicated the front seat, and “Will you sit there?” she said. “I can talk to you better, Mr. Vaughan, if you sit there.”

He obeyed her, marvelling. The blind on the side on which she sat was raised a few inches, and in the subdued light her graceful head showed like some fair flower rising from the depth of her mourning. For she wore no covering on her head, and he might have guessed, had he had any command of his thoughts, that she had sprung as she was into the nearest carriage. Amazement, however, put him beyond thinking.

Her eyes met his seriously. “Mr. Vaughan,” she said, “my presence must seem extraordinary to you. But I am come to ask you a question. Why did you tell me six months ago that you loved me if you did not?”

He was as deeply agitated as she was quiet on the surface. “I told you nothing but the truth,” he said.

“No,” she said.

“But yes! A hundred times, yes!” he cried.

“Then you are altered? That is it?”

“Never!” he cried. “Never!”

“And yet—things are changed? My father wrote to you, did he not, three days ago? And said as much as you could look to him to say?”

“He said——”

“He withdrew what he had uttered in an unfortunate moment. He withdrew that which, I think, he had never believed in his heart. He said as much as you could expect him to say?” she repeated, her colour mounting a little, her eyes challenging him with courageous firmness.

“He said,” Vaughan answered in a low voice, “what I think it became him to say.”

“You understood that his feelings were changed towards you?”

“To some extent.”

She drew a deep breath and sat back. “Then it is for you to speak,” she said.

But before, agitated as he was, he could speak, she leant forward again. “No,” she said, “I had forgotten. I had forgotten.” And the slight quivering of her lips, a something piteous in her eyes, reminded him once more, once again—and the likeness tugged at his heart—of the Mary Smith who had paused on the threshold of the inn at Maidenhead, alarmed and abashed by the bustle of the coffee-room. “I had forgotten! It is not my father you cannot forgive—it is I, who am unworthy of your forgiveness? You cannot make allowance,” she continued, stopping him by a gesture, as he opened his mouth to speak, “for the weakness of one who had always been dependent, who had lived all her life under the dominion of others, who had been taught by experience that, if she would eat, she must first obey. You can make no allowance, Mr. Vaughan, for such an one placed between a father, whom it was her duty to honour, and a lover to whom she had indeed given her heart, she knew not why—but whom she barely knew, with whose life she had no real acquaintance, whose honesty she must take on trust, because she loved him? You cannot forgive her because, taught all her life to bend, she could not, she did not stand upright under the first trial of her faith?”

“No!” he cried violently. “No! No! It is not that!”

“No?” she said. “You do forgive her then? You have forgiven her? The more as to-day she is not weak. The earth is not level over my mother’s grave, some may say hard things of me—but I have come to you to-day.”

“God bless you!” he cried.

She drew a deep breath and sat back. “Then,” she said, with a sigh as of relief, “it is for you to speak.”

There was a gravity in her tone, and so complete an absence of all self-consciousness, all littleness, that he owned that he had never known her as she was, had never measured her true worth, had never loved her as she deserved to be loved. Yet—perhaps because it was all that was left to him—he clung desperately to the resolution he had formed, to the position which pride and prudence alike had bidden him to take up.

“What am I to say?” he asked hoarsely.

“Why, if you love me, if you forgive me,” she answered softly, “do you leave me?”

“Can you not understand?”

“In part, I can. But not altogether. Will you explain? I—I think,” she continued with a movement of her flower-like head, that for gentle dignity he had never seen excelled, “I have a right to an explanation.”

“You know of what Sir Robert accused me?”

“Yes.”

“Am I to justify him? You know what was the difference which came between us, which first divided us? And what I thought right then, I still think right. Am I to abandon it? You know what I bore. Am I to live on the bounty of one who once thought so ill of me, and may think as ill again? Of one who, differing from me, punished me so cruelly? Am I to sink into dependence, to sacrifice my judgment, to surrender my political liberty into the hands of one who——”

“Of my father!” she said gravely.

He could not, so reminded, say what he had been going to say, but he assented by a movement of the head. And after an interval of silence, “I cannot,” he cried passionately, “I cannot, even to secure my happiness, run that risk!”

She looked from the window of the carriage, and in a voice which shook a little, “No,” she said, “I suppose not.”

He was silent and he suffered. He dared not meet her eyes. Why had she sought this interview? Why had she chosen to torment him? Ah, if she knew, if she only knew what pain she was inflicting upon him!

But apparently she did not know. For by and by she spoke again. “No,” she said. “I suppose not. Yet have you thought”—and now there was a more decided tremor in her voice—“that that which you surrender is not all there is at stake? Your independence is precious to you, and you have a right, Mr. Vaughan, to purchase it even at the cost of your happiness. But have you a right to purchase it at the cost of another’s? At the cost of mine? Have you thought of my happiness?” she continued, “or only of yours—and of yourself? To save your independence—shall I say, to save your pride?—you are willing to set your love aside. But have you asked me whether I am willing to pay my half of the price? My heavier half? Whether I am willing to set my happiness aside? Have you thought of—me at all?”

If he had not, then, when he saw how she looked at him, with what eyes, with what love, as she laid her hand on his arm, he had been more than man if he had resisted her long! But he still fought with himself, and with her; staring with hard, flushed face straight before him, telling himself that by all that was left to him he must hold.

“I think, I think,” she said gently, yet with dignity, “you have not thought of me.”

“But your father—Sir Robert——”

“He is an ogre, of course,” she cried in a tone suddenly changed. “But you should have thought of that before, sir,” she continued, tears and laughter in her voice. “Before you travelled with me on the coach! Before you saved my life! Before you—looked at me! For you can never take it back. You can never give me myself again. I think that you must take me!”

And then he did not resist her any longer. And the carriage was stayed; and orders were given. And, empty and hugely overpaid, the yellow post-chaise ambled on to Chippenham; and bearing two inside, and a valise on the roof, the mourning coach drove slowly and solemnly back to Stapylton. As it wound its way over the green undulations of the park, the rabbits that ran, and then stopped, cocking their scuts, to look at it, saw nothing strange in it. Nor the fallow-deer of the true Savernake breed, who, before they fled through the dying bracken, eyed it with poised heads. Nay, the heron which watched its approach from the edge of the Garden Pool, and did not even deign to drop a second leg, saw nothing strange in it. Yet it bore for all that the strangest of all earthly passengers, and the strongest, and the bravest, and the fairest—and withal, thank God, the most familiar. For it carried Love. And love the same yet different, love gaunt and grey-haired, yet kind and warm of heart, met it at the door and gave it welcome.

XXXVIII THREADS AND PATCHES

Though England had not known for fifty years an outbreak so formidable or so destructive as that of which the news was laid on men’s breakfast-tables on the Tuesday morning, it had less effect on the political situation than might have been expected. It sent, indeed, a thrill of horror through the nation. And had it occurred at an earlier stage of the Reform struggle, before the middle class had fully committed itself to a trial of strength with the aristocracy, it must have detached many more of the timid and conservative of the Reformers. But it came too late. The die was cast; men’s minds were made up on the one side and the other. Each saw events coloured to his wish. And though Wetherell and Croker, and the devoted band who still fought manfully round those chieftains, called heaven and earth to witness the first-fruits of the tree of Reform, the majority of the nation preferred to see in these troubles the alternative to the Bill—the abyss into which the whole country would be hurled if that heaven-sent measure were not passed.

On one thing, however, all were agreed. The outrage was too great to be overlooked. The law must be vindicated, the lawbreakers must be punished. To this end the Government, anxious to clear themselves of the suspicion of collusion, appointed a special Commission, and sent it to Bristol to try the rioters; and four poor wretches were hanged, a dozen were transported, and many received minor sentences. Having thus, a little late in the day, taught the ignorant that Reform did not spell Revolution after the French pattern, the Cabinet turned their minds to the measure again. And in December they brought in the Third Reform Bill, with the fortunes and passage of which this story is not at pains to deal.

But of necessity the misguided creatures who kindled the fires in Queen’s Square on that fatal Sunday, and swore that they would not leave a gaol standing in England, were not the only men who suffered. Sad as their plight was, there was one whose plight—if pain be measured by the capacity to feel—was sadder. While they were being tried in one part of Bristol, there was proceeding in another part an inquiry charged with deeper tragedy. Not those only who had done the deed, but those who had suffered them to do it, must answer for it. And the fingers of all pointed to one man. The magistrates might escape—the Mayor indeed had done his duty creditably, if to little purpose; for war was not their trade, and the thing at its crisis had become an affair of war. But Colonel Brereton could not shield himself behind that plea: so many had behaved poorly that the need to bring one to book was the greater.

He was tried by court-martial, and among the witnesses was Arthur Vaughan. By reason of his position, as well as of the creditable part he had played, the Member for Chippinge was heard by the Court with more than common attention; and he moved all who listened to him by his painful anxiety to set the accused’s conduct in the best light; to show that what was possible by daylight on the Monday morning might not have been possible on the Sunday night, and that the choice from first to last was between two risks. No question of Colonel Brereton’s courage—for he had served abroad with credit, nay, with honour—entered into the inquiry; and it was proved that a soldier’s duty in such a case was not well defined. But afterwards Vaughan much regretted that he had not laid before the Court the opinion he had formed at the time—that during the crisis of the riots Brereton, obsessed by one idea, was not responsible for his actions. For, sad to say, on the fifth day of the inquiry, sinking under a weight of mental agony which a man of his reserved and melancholy temper was unable to support, the unfortunate officer put an end to his life. Few have paid so dearly for an error of judgment and the lack of that coarser fibre which has enabled many an inferior man to do his duty. The page darkens with his fate, too tragical for such a theme as this. And if by chance these words reach the eye of any of his descendants, theirs be the homage due to the memory of a signal misfortune and an honourable but hapless man.

Of another and greater personage whose life touched Arthur Vaughan’s once and twice, and of whom, with all his faults, it was never said by his worst enemy that he feared responsibility or shunned the post of danger, a brief word must suffice. If Lord Brougham did not live to see that complete downfall of the great Whig houses which he had predicted, he lived to see their power ruinously curtailed. He lived to see their influence totter under the blow which the Repeal of the Corn Laws dealt the landed interest, he lived to see the Reform Bill of 1867, he lived almost to see the _coup de grâce_ given to their leadership by the Ballot Act. And in another point his prophecy came true. As it had been with Burke and Sheridan and Tierney, it was with him. His faults were great, as his merits were transcendent; and presently in the time of his need his highborn associates remembered only the former. They took advantage of them to push him from power; and he spent nearly forty years, the remnant of his long life, in the cold shade of Opposition. The most brilliant, the most versatile, and the most remarkable figure of the early days of the century, whose trumpet voice once roused England as it has never been roused from that day to this, and whose services to education and progress are acknowledged but slightly even now, paid for the phenomenal splendour of his youth by long years spent in a changed and changing world, jostled by a generation forgetful or heedless of his fame. To us he is but the name of a carriage; remembered otherwise, if at all, for his part in Queen Caroline’s trial. While Wetherell, that stout fighter, Tory of the Tories, witty, slovenly, honest man, whose fame was once in all mouths, whose caricature was once in all portfolios, and whose breeches made the fortune of many a charade, is but the shadow of a name.

* * * * *

The year had waned and waxed, and it was June again. At Stapylton the oaks were coming to their full green; the bracken was lifting its million heads above the sod, and by the edge of the Garden Pool the water voles sat on the leaves of the lilies and clean their fur. Arthur Vaughan—strolling up and down with his father-in-law, not without an occasional glance at Mary, recumbent on a seat on the lawn—looked grave.

“I fancy,” he said presently, “that we shall learn the fate of the Bill to-day.”

“Very like, very like,” Sir Robert answered, in an offhand fashion, as if the subject were not to his taste. And he turned about and by the aid of his stick expounded his plan for enlarging the flower garden.

But Vaughan returned to the subject. “If not to-day, to-morrow,” he said. “And that being so, I’ve wanted for some time, sir, to ask you what you wish me to do.”

“To do?”

“As to the seat at Chippinge.”

Sir Robert’s face expressed his annoyance. “I told you—I told you long ago,” he replied, “that I should never interfere with your political movements.”

“And you have kept your word, sir. But as Lord Lansdowne cedes the seat to you for this time, I assume——”

“I don’t know why you assume anything!” Sir Robert retorted irritably.

“I assume only that you will wish me to seek another seat.”

“I certainly don’t wish you to lead an idle life,” Sir Robert answered. “When the younger men of our class do that, when they cease to take an interest in political life, on the one side or the other, our power will, indeed, be ended. Nothing is more certain than that. But for Chippinge, I don’t choose that a stranger should hold a seat close to my own door. You might have known that! For the party, I have taken steps to furnish Mr. Cooke, a man whose opinions I thoroughly approve, with a seat elsewhere; and I have therefore done my duty in that direction. For the rest, the mischief is done. I suppose,” he continued in his driest tones, “you won’t want to bring in another Reform Bill immediately?”

“No, sir,” Vaughan answered gratefully. “Nor do I think that we are so far apart as you assume. The truth is, Sir Robert, that we all fear one of two things, and according as we fear the one or the other we are dubbed Whigs or Tories.”

“What are your two things?”

“Despotism, or anarchy,” Vaughan replied modestly.

Sir Robert sniffed. “You don’t refine enough,” he said, pleased with his triumph. “We all fear despotism; you, the despotism of the one: I, a worse, a more cruel, a more hopeless despotism, the despotism of the many! That’s the real difference between us.”

Vaughan looked thoughtful. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “But—what is that, sir?” He raised his hand. The deep note of a distant gun rolled up the valley from the town.

“The Lords have passed the Bill,” Sir Robert replied. “They are celebrating the news in Chippinge. Well, I am not sorry that my day is done. I give you the command. See only, my boy,” he continued, with a loving glance at Mary, who had risen, and, joined by Miss Sibson, was coming to the end of the bridge to meet them, “see only that you hand it on to others—I do not say as I give it to you, but as little impaired as may be.”

And again, as Mary called to them to know what it was, the sound of the gun rolled up the valley—the knell of the system, good or bad, under which England had been ruled so long. The battle of which Brougham had fired the first shot in the Castle Yard at York was past and won.

_Boom!_

THE END.