Chapter II: Part 2

Brougham looked at him with a gleam of ferocity in his brilliant eyes. “Ay,” he said, “I did. And by that act,” he continued, stretching his long arms to their farthest extent, “mark you, mark you, never forget it, I avenged all—not only all I may suffer at their hands, but all that every slave who ever ground in their mill has suffered, the slights, the grudged meticulous office, the one finger lent to shake—all, all! I went into the prison-house, but when I did so I laid my hands upon the pillars. And their house falls, falls. I hear it—I hear it falling even now about their ears. They may throw me aside. But the house is falling, and the great Whig families—pouf!—they are not in the heaven above, or in the earth beneath, or in the water that is under the earth. You call Reform their stalking-horse? Ay, but it is into their own Troy that they have dragged it; and the clatter of strife which you hear is the death-knell of their power. They have let in the waves of the sea, and dream fondly that they can say where they shall stop and what they shall not touch. They may as well speak to the tide when it flows; they may as well command the North Sea in its rage; they may as well bid Hume be silent, or Wetherell be sane. You say I am spent, Cornelius; and so I am, it may be. I know not. But this I know. Never again will the families say ‘Go!’ and he goeth, and ‘Do!’ and he doeth, as in the old world that is passing—passing even at this minute, passing with the Bill. No,” he continued, flinging out his arms with passion; “for when they thought to fool me, and to shut me dumb among dumb things behind the gilded wires, I knew—I knew that I was dragging down their house upon their heads.”

Mr. Cornelius stared at him. “By G—d!” he said, “I believe you are right. I believe that you are a cleverer man than I thought you were.”

III TWO LETTERS

The Hall was empty when Vaughan came forth; and as the young man strode down its echoing length there was nothing save his own footsteps on the pavement to distract his mind from the scene in which he had taken part. He was excited and a little uplifted, as was natural. The promises made, if they were to be counted as promises, were of the vague and indefinite character which it is as easy to evade as to fulfil. But the Chancellor had spoken to him as to an equal and treated him as one who had but to choose a career to succeed in it, and to win the highest prizes which it could bestow. This was flattering; nor was it to a young man who had little experience of the world, less flattering to be deemed the owner of a stake in the country, and a person through whom offers of the most confidential and important character might be properly made.

He walked to his rooms in Bury Street with a pleasant warmth at his heart. And at the Academic that evening, where owing to the events of the day there was a fuller house than had ever been known, and a fiercer debate, he championed the Government and upheld the dissolution in a speech which not only excelled his previous efforts, but was a surprise to those who knew him best. Afterwards he recognised that his peroration had been only a paraphrase of Brougham’s impassioned “Light! More Light!” and that the whole owed more than he cared to remember to the same source. But, after all, why not? It was not to be expected that he could at once rise to the heights of the greatest of living orators. And it was much that he had made a hit; that as he left the room he was followed by all eyes.

Nor did a qualm worthy of the name trouble him until the morning of the 27th, five days later—a Wednesday. Then he found beside his breakfast plate two letters bearing the postmark of Chippinge.

“What’s afoot?” he muttered. But he had a prevision before he broke the seal of the first. And the contents bore out his fears. The letter ran thus:

“Stapylton, Chippinge.

“Dear Sir—I make no apology for troubling you in a matter in which your interest is second only to mine and which is also of a character to make apology beside the mark. It has not been necessary to require your presence at Chippinge upon the occasion of former elections. But the unwholesome ferment into which the public mind has been cast by the monstrous proposals of Ministers has nowhere been more strongly exemplified than here, by the fact that, for the first time in half a century, the right of our family to nominate the members for the Borough is challenged. Since the year 1783 no serious attempt has been made to disturb the Vermuyden interest. And I have yet to learn that—short of this anarchical Bill, which will sweep away all the privileges attaching to property—such an attempt can be made with any chance of success.

“I am informed nevertheless that Lord Lansdowne, presuming on a small connection in the Corporation, intends to send at least one candidate to the poll. Our superiority is so great that I should not, even so, trouble you to be present, were it not an object to discourage these attempts by the exhibition of our full strength, and were it not still more important to do so at a time when the existence of the Borough itself is at stake.

“Isaac White will apprise you of the arrangements to be made and will keep you informed of all matters which you should know. Be good enough to let Mapp learn the day and hour of your arrival, and he will see that the carriage and servants meet the coach at Chippenham. Probably you will come by the York House. It is the most convenient.

“I have the honour to be

“Your sincere kinsman,

“Robert Vermuyden.

“To Arthur Vermuyden Vaughan, Esquire, “17 Bury Street, St. James’s.”

Vaughan’s face grew long, and his fork hung suspended above his plate, as he perused the old gentleman’s epistle. When all was read he laid it down, and whistled. “Here’s a fix!” he muttered. And he thought of his speech at the Academic; and for the first time he was sorry that he had made it. “Here’s a fix!” he repeated. “What’s to be done?”

He was too much disturbed to go on with his breakfast, and he tore open the other letter. It was from Isaac White, his cousin’s attorney and agent. It ran thus:

“High Street, Chippinge,

“April 25, 1831.

“_Chippinge Parliamentary Election_.

“Sir.—I have the honour to inform you, as upon former occasions, that the writ in the above is expected and that Tuesday the 3rd day of May will be appointed for the nomination. It has not been needful to trouble you heretofore, but on this occasion I have reason to believe that Sir Robert Vermuyden’s candidates will be opposed by nominees in the Bowood Interest, and I have therefore, honoured Sir, to intimate that your attendance will oblige.

“The Vermuyden dinner will take place at the White Lion on Monday the 2nd, when the voters and their friends will sit down at 5 P. M. The Alderman will preside, and Sir Robert hopes that you will be present. The procession to the Hustings will leave the White Lion at ten on Tuesday the 3d, and a poll, if demanded, will be taken after the usual proceedings.

“Any change in the order of the arrangements will be punctually communicated to you.

“I have the honour to be, Sir,

“Your humble obedient servant,

“Isaac White.

“Arthur V. Vaughan, Esq., (late H.M.’s 14th Dragoons),

“17 Bury Street, London.”

Vaughan flung the letter down and resumed his breakfast moodily. It was a piece of shocking ill-fortune, that was all there was to be said.

Not that he really regretted his speech! It had committed him a little more deeply, but morally he had been committed before. It is a poor conscience that is not scrupulous in youth; and he was convinced, or almost convinced, that if he had never seen the Chancellor he would still have found it impossible to support Sir Robert’s candidates.

For he was sincere in his support of the Bill; a little because it flattered his intellect to show himself above the prejudices of the class to which he belonged; more, because he was of an age to view with resentment the abuses which the Bill promised to sweep away. A Government truly representative of the people, such as this Bill must create, would not tolerate the severities which still disgraced the criminal law. It would not suffer the heartless delays which made the name of Chancery synonymous with ruin. Under it spring-guns and man-traps would no longer scare the owner from his own coverts. The poor would be taught, the slave would be freed. Above all, whole classes of the well-to-do would no longer be deprived of a voice in the State. No longer would the rights of one small class override the rights of all other classes.

He was at an age, in a word, when hope invites to change; and he was for the Bill. “Ay, by Jove, I am!” he muttered, casting the die in fancy, “and I’ll not be set down! It will be awkward! It will be odious! But I must go through with it!”

Still, he was sorry. He sprang from the class which had profited by the old system—that system under which some eight-score men returned a majority of the House of Commons. He had himself the prospect of returning two members. He could, therefore enter, to a degree—at times to a greater degree than he liked,—into the feelings with which the old-fashioned and the interested, the prudent and the timid, viewed a change so great and so radical. But his main objection was personal. He hated the necessity which forced him to cross the wishes and to trample on the prejudices of an old man whom he regarded with respect, and even with reverence: a solitary old man, the head of his family, to whom he owed the very vote he must withhold; and who would hardly, even by the logic of facts, be brought to believe that one of his race and breeding could turn against him.

Still it must be done; the die was cast. The sooner, therefore, it was done, the better. He would go down to Stapylton at once, while his courage was high; and he would tell Sir Robert. Then, whatever came of it, he would have nothing with which to reproach himself. In the heat of resolve he felt very brave and very virtuous; and the moment he rose from breakfast he went to the coach office, and finding that the York House, the fashionable Bath, coach was full for the following day, he booked an outside seat on the Bristol White Lion Coach, which also passed through Chippenham. From Chippenham, Chippinge is distant a short nine miles.

That evening proved to be memorable; for the greater part of London was illuminated by the Reformers in honour of the Dissolution; not without rioting and drunkenness, violence on the part of the mob, and rage on the side of the minority. When Vaughan passed through the streets before six next morning, on his way to the White Horse Cellars, traces of the night’s work still remained; and where the early sun fell on them showed ugly and grisly and menacing enough. A moderate reformer might well have blenched at the sight, and questioned—as many did question—whither this was tending. But Vaughan was late; the coach, one out of three which were waiting to start, was horsed. He had only eyes, as he came hurriedly up, for the seat he had reserved behind the coachman.

It was empty, and so far his fears were vain. But it annoyed him to find that his next-door neighbour was a young lady travelling alone. She had the seat on the near side.

He climbed up quickly, and to reach his place had to pass before her. The space between the seat and the coachman’s box was narrow, and as she rose to allow him to pass she glanced up. Their eyes met; Vaughan raised his hat in mute apology, and took his seat. He said no word. But a miracle had happened, as miracles do happen, when the world is young. In his mind, as he sat down, he was not repeating, “What a nuisance!” but was saying, “What eyes! What a face! And, oh, heaven, what beauty! What blush-rose cheeks! What a lovely mouth!”

_For ’twas from eyes of liquid blue_

_A host of quivered Cupids flew_,

_And now his heart all bleeding lies_

_Beneath the army of the eyes_.

He gazed gravely at the group of watermen and night-birds who stood in the roadway below waiting to see the coach start. And apparently he was unmoved. Apparently he was the same Arthur Vermuyden Vaughan who had passed round the boot of the coach to reach the ladder and his place. But he was not the same. His thoughts were no longer querulous, full of the haste he had made, and the breakfast he had to make; but of a pair of gentle eyes which had looked for one instant into his, of a modest face, sweet and shy, of a Quaker-like bonnet that ravished as no other bonnet had ever ravished the most susceptible!

He was still gazing at the group of loiterers, without seeing them, when he became aware that an elderly woman plainly but respectably dressed, who was standing by the forewheel of the coach, was looking up at him, and trying to attract his attention. Seeing that she had caught his eye she spoke:

“Gentleman! Gentleman!” she said—but in a restrained voice, as if she did not wish to be generally heard. “The young lady’s address! Please say that she’s not left it! For the laundress!”

He turned and made sure that there was only one of the sex on the coach. Then—to be honest, not without a tiny flutter at his heart—he addressed his neighbour. “Pardon me,” he said “but there is someone below who wants your address.”

She turned her eyes on him and his heart gave a perceptible jump. “My address?” she echoed in a voice as sweet as her face. “I think that there must be some mistake.” And then for a moment she looked at him as if she doubted his intentions.

The doubt was intolerable. “It’s for the laundress,” he said. “See, there she is!”

The girl rose to look over the side of the coach and perforce leant across him. He saw that she had the slenderest waist and the prettiest figure—he had every opportunity of seeing. Then the coach started with a jerk, and if she had not steadied herself by laying her hand on his shoulder, she must have relapsed on his knees. As it was she fell back safely into her seat. She blushed.

“I beg your pardon,” she said.

But he was looking back. He had his eye on the woman, who remained in the roadway, pointing after the coach and apparently asking a bystander some question respecting it—perhaps where it stopped. “There she is!” he exclaimed. “The woman with the umbrella! She is pointing after us.”

His neighbour looked back but made nothing of it. “I know no one in London,” she said a little primly—but with sweet primness—“except the lady at whose house I stayed last night. And she is not able to leave the house. It must be a mistake.” And with a gentle reserve which had in it nothing of coquetry, she turned her face from him.

Tantivy! Tantivy! Tantivy! They were away, bowling down the slope of broad empty Piccadilly with the four nags trotting merrily, and the April sun gilding the roofs of the houses, and falling aslant on the verdure of the Green Park. Then merrily up the rise to Hyde Park Corner, where the new Grecian Gates looked across at the equally new arch on Constitution Hill; and where Apsley House, the residence of “the Duke,” hiding with its new coat of Bath stone the old brick walls, peeped through the trees at the statue of Achilles, erected ten years back in the Duke’s honour.

But, alas! what was this? Wherefore the crowd that even at this early hour was large enough to fill the roadway and engage the attention of the New Police? Vaughan looked and saw that every blind in Apsley House was lowered, and that more than half of the windows were shattered. And the little French gentleman who, to the coachman’s disgust, had taken the box-seat, saw it too; nay, had seen it before, for he had come that way to the coach office. He pointed to the silent, frowning mansion, and snapped his fingers.

“That is your reward for your Vellington!” he cried, turning in his excitement to the two behind him. “And his lady, I am told, she lie dead behind the broken vindows! They did that last night, your _canaille!_ But he vill not forget! And when the refolution come—bah—he vill have the iron hand! He vill be the Emperor and he vill repay!”

No one answered; they treated him with silent British scorn. But they one and all stared back at the scene, at the grim blind house in the early sunshine, and the gaping crowd—as long as it remained in sight. And some, no doubt, pondered the sight. But who, with a pretty face beside him and a long day’s drive before him, a drive by mead and shining river, over hill and down, under the walls of grey churches and by many a marketplace and cheery inn-yard—who would long dwell on changes past or to come? Or fret because in the womb of time might lie that “refolution” of which the little Frenchman spoke?

IV TANTIVY! TANTIVY! TANTIVY!

The White Lion coach was a light coach carrying only five passengers outside, and merrily it swept by Kensington Church, whence the travellers had a peep of Holland House—home of the Whigs—on their right. And then in a twinkling they were swinging through Hammersmith, where the ale-houses were opening and lusty girls were beginning to deliver the milk. They passed through Turnham, through Brentford, awakening everywhere the lazy with the music of their horn. They saw Sion House on their left, and on their right had a glimpse of the distant lawns of Osterley—the seat of Lady Jersey, queen of Almack’s, and the Holland’s rival. Thence they travelled over Hounslow Heath, and by an endless succession of mansions and lawns and orchards rich at this season with apple blossom, and framing here and there a view of the sparkling Thames.

Vaughan breathed the air of spring and let his eyes dwell on scene after scene; and he felt that it was good to be young and to sit behind fast horses. He stole a glance at his neighbour and judged by the brightness of her eyes, her parted lips and rapt expression, that she felt with him. And he would have said something to her, but he could think of nothing worthy of her. At last:

“It’s a beautiful morning,” he ventured, and cursed his vapidity.

But she did not seem to find bathos in the words. “It is, indeed!” she answered with an enthusiasm which showed that she had forgotten her doubts of him. “And,” she added simply, “I have not been on a coach since I was a child!”

“Not on a coach?” he cried in astonishment.

“No. Except on the Clapham Stage. And that is not a coach like this!”

“No, perhaps it is not,” he said. And he thought of her, and—oh, Lord!—of Clapham! And yet after all there was something about her, about her grey, dove-like dress and her gentleness, which smacked of Clapham. He wondered who she was and what she was; and he was still wondering when she turned her eyes on him, and, herself serenely unconscious, sent a tiny shock through him.

“I enjoy it the more,” she said, “because I—I am not usually free in the morning.”

“Oh, yes!”

He could say no more; not another word. It was the stupidest thing in the world, but he was tongue-tied. Seeing, however, that she had turned from him and was absorbed in the view of Windsor rising stately amid its trees, he had the cleverness to steal a glance at the neat little basket which nestled at her feet. Surreptitiously he read the name on the label.

Mary Smith

Miss Sibson’s

Queen’s Square, Bristol.

Mary Smith! Just Mary Smith! For the moment—it is not to be denied—he was sobered by the name. It was not a romantic name. It was anything but high-sounding. The author of “Tremayne” or “De Vere,” nay, the author of “Vivian Grey”—to complete the trio of novels which were in fashion at the time—would have turned up his nose at it. But what did it matter? He desired no more than to make himself agreeable for the few hours which he and this beautiful creature must pass together—in sunshine and with the fair English landscape gliding by them. And that being so, what need he reck what she called herself or whence she came. It was enough that under her modest bonnet her ears were shells and her eyes pure cornflowers, and that a few pleasant words, a little April dalliance—if only that Frenchman would cease to peep behind him and grin—would harm neither the one nor the other.

But opportunities let slip do not always recur. As he turned to address her they rose the ascent of Maidenhead Bridge, had on either hand a glimpse of the river framed in pale green willows, and halted with sweating horses before the King’s Arms. The boots advanced, amid a group of gazers, and reared a ladder against the coach. “Half an hour for breakfast, gentlemen!” he cried briskly. And through the windows of the inn the travellers had a view of a long table whereat the passengers on the up night-coach were already feasting.

Our friends hastened to descend, but not so fast that Vaughan failed to note the girl’s look of uncertainty, almost of distress. He guessed that she was not at ease in a scene so bustling and so new to her. And the thought gave him the courage that he needed.

“Will you allow me to find you a place at the table?” he said. “I know this inn and they know me. Guard, the ladder here!” And he took her hand—oh, such a little, little hand!—and aided her in her descent.

“Will you follow me?” he said. And he made way for her through the knot of starers who cumbered the doorway. But once in the coffee-room he had, cunning fellow, an inspiration. “Find this lady a seat!” he commanded one of the attendant damsels. And when he had seen her seated and the coffee set before her, he took himself deliberately to the other end of the room. But whether he did so out of pure respect for her feelings, or because he thought—and hugged himself on the thought—that he would be missed, he did not himself know. Nor was he so much a captive, though he counted how many rolls she ate, and looked a dozen times to see if she looked at him, as to be unable to make an excellent breakfast.

The cheery, noisy throng at the tables, the brisk coming and going of the servants, the smell of hot coffee, the open windows, and the sunshine outside—where the fresh team of the up night-coach were already tossing their heads impatiently—he wondered how it all struck her, new to such scenes and to this side of life. And then while he wondered he saw that she had risen from the table and was going out with one of the waiting-maids. To reach the door she had to pass near him; and, oh bliss, her eyes found him—and she blushed. She blushed, ye heavens! He saw it clearly, and he sat thinking about it until, though the coach was not due to start for another five minutes and he might count on the guard summoning him, he was taken with fear lest some one should steal his seat. And he hurried out.

She was alone on the top of the coach, and a youthful waterman, one of the crowd of loiterers below, was making eyes at her to the delight of his companions. When Vaughan came forth, “I’d like to be him,” the wag said, winking with vulgar gusto. And the bystanders grinned at the good-looking young man who stood in the doorway buttoning up his box-coat. The position might soon have become embarrassing to her if not to him; but in the nick of time the eye of an inside passenger, who had followed him through the doorway, alighted on a huge placard which hung behind the coach.

“Take that down!” the stranger cried loudly and pompously. And in a moment all eyes were upon him. He prodded with his umbrella at the offending bill. “Do you hear me? Take it down, sir,” he repeated, turning to the guard. He was a portly man, reddish about the gills. “Take it down, sir, or I will! It is disgraceful! I shall report this conduct to your employers.”

The guard hesitated. “It don’t harm you, sir,” he pleaded, anxious, it was clear, to propitiate a man who would presently be good for half a crown.

“Don’t harm me?” the choleric gentleman retorted. “Don’t harm me? What’s that to do with it? What right—what right have you, man, to put party filth like that on a public vehicle in which I pay to ride? ‘The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!’ D—n the Bill, sir!” with violence. “Take it down! Take it down at once!” he repeated, as if his order closed the matter.

The guard frowned at the placard, which bore, largely printed, the legend which the gentleman found so little to his taste. He rubbed his head. “Well, I don’t know, sir,” he said. And then—the crowd about the coach was growing—he looked at the driver. “What do you say, Sammy?” he asked.

“Don’t touch it,” growled the driver, without deigning to turn his head.

“You see, sir, it is this way,” the guard ventured civilly. “Mr. Palmer has a Whig meeting at Reading to-day and the town will be full. And if we don’t want rotten eggs and broken windows—we’ll carry that!”

“I’ll not travel with it!” the stout gentleman answered positively. “Do you hear me, man? If you don’t take it down I will!”

“Best not!” cried a voice from the little crowd about the coach. And when the angry gentleman turned to see who spoke, “Best not!” cried another behind him. And he wheeled about again, so quickly that the crowd laughed. This raised his wrath to a white heat.

He grew purple. “I shall have it taken down!” he said. “Guard, remove it!”

“Don’t touch it,” growled the driver—one of a class noted in that day for independence and surly manners. “If the gent don’t choose to travel with it, let him stop here and be d—d!”

“Do you know,” the insulted passenger cried, “that I am a Member of Parliament?”

“I’m hanged if you are!” coachee retorted. “Nor won’t be again!”

The crowd roared at this repartee. The guard was in despair. “Anyway, we must go on, sir,” he said. And he seized his horn. “Take your seats, gents! Take your seats!” he cried. “All for Reading! I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve to think of the coach.”

“And the horses!” grumbled the driver. “Where’s the gent’s sense?”

They all scrambled to their seats except the ex-member. He stood, bursting with rage and chagrin. But at the last moment, when he saw that the coach would really go without him, he swallowed his pride, plucked open the coach-door, and amid the loud jeers of the crowd, climbed in. The driver, with a chuckle, bade the helpers let go, and the coach swung cheerily away through the streets of Maidenhead, the merry notes of the horn and the rattle of the pole-chains drowning the cries of the gutter-boys.

The little Frenchman turned round. “You vill have a refolution,” he said solemnly. “And the gentleman inside he vill lose his head.”

The coachman, who had hitherto looked askance at Froggy, as if he disdained his neighbourhood, now squinted at him as if he could not quite make him out. “Think so?” he said gruffly. “Why, Mounseer?”

“I have no doubt,” the Frenchman answered glibly. “The people vill have, and the nobles vill not give! Or they vill give a leetle—a leetle! And that is the worst of all. I have seen two refolutions!” he continued with energy. “The first when I was a child—it is forty years! My bonne held me up and I saw heads fall into the basket—heads as young and as lofly as the young Mees there! And why? Because the people would have, and the King, he give that which is the worst of all—a leetle! And the trouble began. And then the refolution of last year—it was worth to me all that I had! The people would have, and the Polignac, our Minister—who is the friend of your Vellington—he would not give at all! And the trouble began.”

The driver squinted at him anew. “D’you mean to say,” he asked, “that you’ve seen heads cut off?”

“I have seen the white necks, as white and as small as the Mees there; I have seen the blood spout from them; bah! like what you call pump! Ah, it was ogly, it was very ogly!”

The coachman turned his head slowly and with difficulty, until he commanded a full view of Vaughan’s pretty neighbour; at whom he gazed for some seconds as if fascinated. Then he turned to his horses and relieved his feelings by hitting one of the wheelers below the trace; while Vaughan, willing to hear what the Frenchman had to say, took up the talk.

“Perhaps here,” he said, “those who have will give, and give enough, and all will go well.”

“Nefer! Nefer!” the Frenchman answered positively. “By example, the Duke whose château we pass—what you call it—Jerusalem House?”

“Sion House,” Vaughan answered, smiling. “The Duke of Northumberland.”

“By example he return four members to your Commons House. Is it not so? And they do what he tell them. He have this for his nefew, and that for his niece, and the other thing for his _maître d’hôtel!_ And it is he and the others like him who rule the country! Gives he up all that? To the _bourgeoisie?_ Nefer! Nefer!” he continued with emphasis. “He will be the Polignac! They will all be the Polignacs! And you will have a refolution. And by-and-by, when the _bourgeoisie_ is frightened of the _canaille_ and tired of the blood-letting, your Vellington he will be the Emperor. It is as plain as the two eyes in the face! So plain for me, I shall not take off my clothes the nights!”

“Well, King Billy for me!” said the driver. “But if he’s willing, Mounseer, why shouldn’t the people manage their own affairs?”

“The people! The people! They cannot! Your horses, will they govern themselves? Will you throw down the reins and leave it to them, up hill, down hill? The people govern themselves Bah!” And to express his extreme disgust at the proposition, the Frenchman, who had lost his all with Polignac, bent over the side and spat into the road. “It is no government at all!”

The driver looked darkly at his horses as if he would like to see them try it on. “I am afraid,” said Vaughan, “that you think we are in trouble either way then, whether the Tories give or withhold?”

“Eizer way! Eizer way!” the Frenchman answered _con amore_. “It is fate! You are on the edge of the what you call it—_chute!_ And you must go over! We have gone over. We have bumped once, twice! We shall bump once, twice more, _et voilà_—Anarchy! Now it is your turn, sir. The government has to be—shifted—from the one class to the other!”

“But it may be peacefully shifted?”

The little Frenchman shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “I have nefer seen the government shifted without all that that I have told you. There will be the guillotine, or the barricades. For me, I shall not take off my clothes the nights!”

He spoke with a sincerity so real and a persuasion so clear that even Vaughan was a little shaken, and wondered if those who watched the game from the outside saw more than the players. As for the coachman:

“Dang me,” he said that evening to his cronies in the tap of the White Lion at Bristol, “if I feel so sure about this here Reform! We want none of that nasty neck-cutting here! And if I thought Froggy was right I’m blest if I wouldn’t turn Tory!”

And for certain the Frenchman voiced what a large section of the timid and the well-to-do were thinking. For something like a hundred and fifty years a small class, the nobility and the greater gentry, turning to advantage the growing defects in the representation—the rotten boroughs and the close corporations—had ruled the country through the House of Commons. Was it to be expected that the basis of power could be shifted in a moment? Or that all these boroughs and corporations, in which the governing class were so deeply interested, could be swept away without a convulsion; without opening the floodgates of change, and admitting forces which no man could measure? Or, on the other side, was it likely that, these defects once seen and the appetite of the middle class for power once whetted, their claims could be refused without a struggle from which the boldest must flinch? No man could say for certain, and hence these fears in the air. The very winds carried them. They were being discussed in that month of April not only on the White Lion coach, not on the Bath road only, but on a hundred coaches, and a hundred roads over the length and breadth of England. Wherever the sway of Macadam and Telford extended, wherever the gigs of “riders” met, or farmers’ carts stayed to parley, at fair and market, sessions and church, men shook their heads or raised their voices in high debate; and the word _Reform_ rolled down the wind!

Vaughan soon overcame his qualms; for his opinions were fixed. But he thought that the subject might serve him with his neighbour, and he addressed her.

“You must not let them alarm you,” he said. “We are still a long way, I fancy, from guillotines or barricades.”

“I hope so,” she answered. “In any case I am not afraid.”

“Why, if I may ask?”

She glanced at him with a gleam of humour in her eyes. “Little shrubs feel little wind,” she murmured.

“But also little sun, I fear,” he replied.

“That does not follow,” she said, without raising her eyes again. “Though it is true that I—I am so seldom free in a morning that a journey such as this, with the sunshine, is like heaven to me.”

“The morning is a delightful time,” he said.

“Oh!” she cried, as if she now knew that he felt with her. “That is it! The afternoon is different.”

“Well, fortunately, you and I have—much of the morning left.”

She made no reply to that, and he wondered in silence what was the employment which filled her mornings and fitted her to enjoy with so keen a zest this early ride. The Gloucester up-coach was coming to meet them, the guard tootling merrily on his horn, and a blue and yellow flag—the Whig colours—flying on the roof of the coach, which was crowded with smiling passengers. Vaughan saw the girl’s eyes sparkle as the two coaches passed one another amid a volley of badinage; and demure as she was, he was sure that she had a store of fun within. He wished that she would remove her cheap thread gloves that he might see if her hands were as white as they were small. She was no common person, he was sure of that; her speech was correct, though formal, and her manner was quiet and refined. And her eyes—he must make her look at him again!

“You are going to Bristol?” he said. “To stay there?”

Perhaps he threw too much feeling into his voice. At any rate the tone of her answer was colder. “Yes,” she said, “I am.”

“I am going as far as Chippenham,” he volunteered.

“Indeed!”

There! He had lost all the ground he had gained. She thought him a possible libertine, who aimed at putting himself on a footing of intimacy with her. And that was the last thing—confound it, he meant that to do her harm was the last thing he had in his mind.

It annoyed him that she should think anything of that kind. And he cudgelled his brain for a subject at once safe and sympathetic, without finding one. But either she was not so deeply offended as he fancied, or she thought him sufficiently punished. For presently she addressed him; and he saw that she was ever so little embarrassed.

“Would you please to tell me,” she said, in a low voice, “how much I ought to give the coachman?”

Oh. bless her! She did not think him a horrid libertine. “You?” he said audaciously. “Why nothing, of course.”

“But—but I thought it was usual?”

“Not on this road,” he answered, lying resolutely. “Gentlemen are expected to give half a crown, others a shilling. Ladies nothing at all. Sam,” he continued, rising to giddy heights of invention, “would give it back to you, if you offered it.”

“Indeed!” He fancied a note of relief in her tone, and judged that shillings were not very plentiful. Then, “Thank you,” she added. “You must think me very ignorant. But I have never travelled.”

“You must not say that,” he returned. “Remember the Clapham Stage!”

She laughed at the jest, small as it was; and her laugh gave him the most delicious feeling—a sort of lightness within, half exhilaration, half excitement. And of a sudden, emboldened by it, he was grown so foolhardy that there is no knowing what he would not have said, if the streets of Reading had not begun to open before them and display a roadway abnormally thronged.

For Mr. Palmer’s procession, with its carriages, riders, and flags, was entering ahead of them; and the train of tipsy rabble which accompanied it blocked King Street, and presently brought the coach to a stand. The candidate, lifting his cocked hat from time to time, was a hundred paces before them and barely visible through a forest of flags and banners. But a troop of mounted gentry in dusty black, and smiling dames in carriages—who hardly masked the disgust with which they viewed the forest of grimy hands extended to them to shake—were under the travellers’ eyes, and showed in the sunlight both tawdry and false. Our party, however, were not long at ease to enjoy the spectacle. The crowd surrounded the coach, leapt on the steps, and hung on to the boot. And presently the noise scared the horses, which at the entrance to the marketplace began to plunge.

“The Bill! The Bill!” cried the rabble. And with truculence called on the passengers to assent. “You lubbers,” they bawled, “shout for the Bill! Or we’ll have you over!”

“All right! All right!” replied Sammy, controlling his horses as well as he could. “We’re all for the Bill here! Hurrah!”

“Hurrah! Palmer for ever, Tories in the river!” cried the mob. “Hurrah!”

“Hurrah!” echoed the guard, willing to echo anything. “The Bill for ever! But let us pass, lads! Let us pass! We’re for the Bear, and we’ve no votes.”

“Britons never will be slaves!” shrieked a drunken butcher as the marketplace opened before them. The space was alive with flags and gay with cockades, and thronged by a multitude, through which the candidate’s procession clove its way slowly. “We’ll have votes now! Three cheers for Lord John!”

“Hurrah! Hurrah!”

“And down with Orange Peel!” squeaked a small tailor in a high falsetto.

The roar of laughter which greeted the sally startled the horses afresh. But the guard had dropped down by this time and fought his way to the head of one of the leaders; and two or three good-humoured fellows seconded his efforts. Between them the coach was piloted slowly but safely through the press; which, to do it justice, meant only to exercise the privileges which the Election season brought with it.

V ROSY-FINGERED DAWN

“_Beaucoup de bruit, pas de mal!_” Vaughan muttered in his neighbour’s ear; and saw with as much surprise as pleasure that she understood.

And all would have gone well but for the imprudence of the inside passenger who had distinguished himself by his protest against the placard. The coach was within a dozen paces of the Bear, the crowd was falling back from it, the peril, if it had been real, seemed past, the most timid was breathing again, when he thrust out his foolish head, and flung a taunt—which those on the roof could not hear—at the rabble.

Whatever the words, their effect was disastrous. A bystander caught them up and repeated them, and in a trice half-a-dozen louts flung themselves on the door and strove to drag it open, and get at the man; while others, leaning over their shoulders, aimed missiles at the inside passengers.

The guard saw that more than the glass of his windows was at stake; but he could do nothing. He was at the leaders’ heads. And the passengers on the roof, who had risen to their feet to see the fray, were as helpless. Luckily the coachman kept his head and his reins. “Turn ’em into the yard!” he yelled. “Turn ’em in!”

The guard did so, almost too quickly. The frightened horses wheeled round, and, faster than was prudent, dashed under the low arch, dragging the swaying coach after them.

There was a cry of “Heads! Heads!” and then, more imperatively, “Heads! Stoop! Stoop!”

The warning was needed. The outsides were on their feet engrossed in the struggle at the coach door. And so quickly did the coach turn that—though a score of spectators in the street and on the balcony of the inn saw the peril—it was only at the last moment that Vaughan and the two passengers at the back, men well used to the road, caught the warning, and dropped down. And it was only at the very last moment that Vaughan felt rather than saw that the girl was still standing. He had just time, by a desperate effort, and amid a cry of horror—for to the spectators she seemed to be already jammed between the arch and the seat—to drag her down. Instinctively, as he did so, he shielded her face with his arm; but the horror was so near that, as they swept under the low brow, he was not sure that she was safe.

He was as white as she was, when they emerged into the light again. But he saw that she was safe, though her bonnet was dragged from her head; and he cried unconsciously, “Thank God! Thank God!” Then, with that hatred of a scene which is part of the English character, he put her quickly back into her seat again, and rose to his feet, as if he wished to separate himself from her.

But a score of eyes had seen the act; and however much he might wish to spare her feelings, concealment was impossible.

“Christ!” cried the coachman, whose copper cheeks were perceptibly paler. “If your head’s on your shoulders, Miss, it is to that young gentleman you owe it. Don’t you ever go to sleep on the roof of a coach again! Never! Never!”

“Here, get a drop of brandy!” cried the landlady, who, from one of the doors flanking the archway, had seen all. “Do you stay where you are, Miss,” she continued, “and I’ll send it up to you.”

Then amid a babel of exclamations and a chorus of blame and praise, the ladder was brought, and Vaughan made haste to descend. A waiter tripped out with the brown brandy and water on a tray; and the young lady, who had not spoken, but had remained, sitting white and still, where Vaughan had placed her, sipped it obediently. Unfortunately the landlady’s eyes were sharp; and as Vaughan passed her to go into the house—for the coach must be driven up the yard and turned before they could set off again—she let fall a cry.

“Lord, sir!” she said, “your hand is torn dreadful! You’ve grazed every bit of skin off it!”

He tried to silence her; and failing, hurried into the house. She fussed after him to attend to him; and Sammy, who was not a man of the most delicate perceptions, seized the opportunity to drive home his former lesson. “There, Miss,” he said solemnly, “I hope that’ll teach you to look out another time! But better his hand than your head. You’d ha’ been surely scalped!”

The girl, a shade whiter than before, did not answer. And he thought her, for so pretty a wench, “a right unfeelin’ un!”

Not so the Frenchman. “I count him a very locky man!” he said obscurely. “A very locky man.”

“Well,” the coachman answered with a grunt, “if you call that lucky——”

“_Vraiment! Vraiment!_ But I—alas!” the Frenchman answered with an eloquent gesture, “I have lost my all, and the good fortunes are no longer for me!”

“Fortunes!” the coachman muttered, looking askance at him. “A fine fortune, to have your hand flayed! But where’s”—recollecting himself—“where’s that there fool that caused the trouble! D—n me, if he shall go any further on my coach. I’d like to double-thong him, and it’d serve him right!”

So when the ex-M.P. presently appeared, Sammy let go his tongue to such purpose that the political gentleman; finding himself in a minority of one, retired into the house and, with many threats of what he would do when he saw the management, declined to go on.

“And a good riddance of a d—d Tory!” the coachman muttered. “Think all the world’s made for them! Fifteen minutes he’s cost us already! Take your seats, gents, take your seats! I’m off!”

Vaughan, with his hand hastily bandaged, was the last to come out. He climbed as quickly as he could to his place, and, without looking at his neighbour, he said some common-place word. She did not reply, and they swept under the arch. For a moment the sight of the thronged marketplace diverted him. Then he looked at her, and he saw that she was trembling.

If he was not quite so wise as the Frenchman, having had no _bonnes fortunes_ to speak of, he had, nevertheless, keen perceptions. And he guessed that the girl, between her maiden shyness and her womanly gratitude, was painfully placed. It could not be otherwise. A girl who had spent her years, since childhood, within the walls of a school at Clapham, first as genteel apprentice, and then as assistant; who had been taught to consider young men as roaring lions with whom her own life could have nothing in common, and from whom it was her duty to guard the more giddy of her flock; who had to struggle at once with the shyness of youth, the modesty of her sex, and her inexperience—above all, perhaps with that dread of insult which becomes the instinct of lowly beauty—how was she to carry herself in circumstances so different from any which she had ever imagined? How was she to express a tithe of the feelings with which her heart was bursting, and which overwhelmed her as often as she thought of the hideous death from which he had snatched her?

She could not; and with inborn good taste she refrained from the commonplace word, the bald acknowledgment, in which a shallow nature might have taken refuge. On his side, he guessed some part of this, and discerned that if he would relieve her he must himself speak. Accordingly, when they had left the streets behind them and were swinging merrily along the Newbury Road, he leant towards her.

“May I beg,” he said in a low voice, “that you won’t think of what has happened? The coachman would have done as much, and scolded you! I happened to be next you. That was all.”

In a strangled voice, “But your hand,” she faltered. “I fear—I——” She shuddered, unable to go on.

“It is nothing!” he protested. “Nothing! In three days it will be well!”

She turned her eves on him, eyes which possessed an eloquence of which their owner was unconscious. “I will pray for you,” she murmured. “I can do no more.”

The pathos of her simple gratitude was such that Vaughan could not laugh it off. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “We shall then be more than quits.” And having given her a few moments in which to recover herself, “We are nearly at Speenhamland,” he resumed cheerfully. “There is the George and Pelican! It’s a great baiting-house for coaches. I am afraid to say how much corn and hay they give out in a day. They have a man who does nothing else but weigh it out.” And so he chattered on, doing his utmost to talk of indifferent matters in an indifferent tone.

She could not repulse him after what had passed. And now and then, by a timid word, she gave him leave to talk. Presently he began to speak of things other than those under their eyes, and when he thought that he had put her at her ease, “You understand French?” he said looking at her suddenly.

“I spoke it as a child,” she answered. “I was born abroad. I did not come to England until I was nine.”

“To Clapham?”

“Yes. I have been employed in a school there.”

Prudently he hastened to bring the talk back to the road again. And she took courage to steal a look at him when his eyes were elsewhere. He seemed so strong and gentle and courteous; this unknown creature which she had been taught to fear. And he was so thoughtful of her! He could throw so tender a note into his voice. Beside d’Orsay or Alvanley—but she had never heard of them—he might have passed muster but tolerably; but to her he seemed a very fine gentleman. She had a woman’s eye for the fineness of his linen, and the smartness of his waistcoat—had not Sir James Graham, with his chest of Palermo stuffs, set the seal of Cabinet approval on fancy waistcoats? Nor was she blind to the easy carriage of his head, and his air of command.

And there she caught herself up: reflecting with a blush that it was by the easy path of thoughts such as these that the precipice was approached; that so it was the poor and pretty let themselves be led from the right road. Whither was she travelling? In what was this to end? She trembled. And if they had not at that moment swung out of Savernake Forest and sighted the red roofs of Marlborough, lying warm and sung at the foot of the steep London Hill, she did not know what she should have done, since she could not repulse him.

They rattled in merry style through the town, the leaders cantering, the bars swinging, the guard tootling, the sun shining; past a score of inn signs before which the heavy stages were baiting; past the two churches, while all the brisk pleasantness of this new, this living world, appealed to her to go its way. Ta-ra-ra! Ta-ra-ra! Swerving to the right they pulled up bravely, with steaming horses, before the door of the far-famed Castle Inn. Ta-ra-ra! Ta-ra-ra! “Half an hour for dinner, gentlemen!”

“Now,” said Vaughan, thinking that all was well, or rather declining to think of anything but her shy glances and the delightful present. “You must cut my meat for me!”

She did not reply, and he saw that her eyes went to the basket at her feet. He guessed that she wished to avoid the expense of dining. “Or, perhaps, you are not coming in?” he said.

“I did not intend to do so,” she replied. “I suppose,” she continued timidly, “that I may stay here?”

“Certainly. You have something with you?”

“Yes.”

He nodded pleasantly and left her; and she remained in her seat. As she ate, the target for many a sly glance of admiration, she was divided between gratitude and self-reproach; now thinking of him with a quickened heart, now taking herself to task for her weakness. The result was that when he strode out, confident and at ease, and looked up at her with laughing eyes, she blushed furiously—to her own unspeakable mortification.