The neighbourhood knew that he and Lady Sybil—he had married the

beautiful daughter of the last Earl of Portrush—had parted under

circumstances which came near to justifying divorce. Some held that he

had divorced her; but in those days an Act of Parliament was necessary,

and no such Act stood on the Statute-book. Many thought that he ought

to have divorced her. And while the people who knew that she still

lived and still plagued him were numerous, few save Isaac White were

aware that it was because his marriage had been made and marred at

Bowood—and not purely out of principle—that Sir Robert opposed the very

name of Lansdowne, and would have wasted a half of his fortune to wreck

his great neighbour’s political power.

Not that his Tory principles were not strong. During five Parliaments

he had filled one of his own seats, and had spoken from time to time

after a dignified fashion, with formal gestures and a copious

sprinkling of classical allusions. The Liberal Toryism of Canning had

fallen below his ideal, but he had continued to sit until the betrayal

of the party by Peel and the Duke—on the Catholic Claims—drove him from

the House in disgust, and thenceforth Warren’s Hotel, his residence

when in town, saw him but seldom. He had fancied then that nothing

worse could happen; that the depths were plumbed, and that he and those

who thought with him might punish the traitor and take no harm. With

the Duke of Cumberland, the best hated man in England—which was never

tired of ridiculing his moustachios—Eldon, Wetherell, and the

ultra-Tories, he had not rested until he had seen the hated pair flung

from office; nor was any man more surprised and confounded when the

result of the work began to show itself. The Whigs, admitted to power

by this factious movement, and after an exile so long that Byron could

write of them—

_Naught’s permanent among the human race

Except the Whigs not getting into place_

—brought in no mild and harmless measure of reform, promising little

and giving nothing, such as foe and friend had alike expected; but a

measure of reform so radical that O’Connell blessed it, and Cobbett

might have fathered it: a measure which, if it passed, would sweep away

Sir Robert’s power and the power of his class, destroy his borough, and

relegate him to the common order of country squires.

He was at first incredulous, then furious, then aghast. To him the Bill

was not only the doom of his own influence but the knell of the

Constitution. Behind it he saw red revolution and the crash of things.

Lord Grey was to him Mirabeau, Lord John was Lafayette, Brougham was

Danton; and of them and of their kind, when they had roused the

many-headed, he was sure that the end would be as the end of the

Gironde.

He was not the less furious, not the less aghast, when the moderates of

his party pointed out that he had himself to thank for the catastrophe.

From the refusal to grant the smallest reform, from the refusal to

transfer the franchise of the rotten borough of Retford to the

unrepresented city of Birmingham—a refusal which he had urged his

members to support—the chain was complete; for in consequence of that

refusal Mr. Huskisson had left the Duke’s Cabinet. The appointment of

Mr. Fitzgerald to fill his seat had rendered the Clare election

necessary. O’Connell’s victory at the Clare election had converted Peel

and the Duke to the necessity of granting the Catholic Claims. That

conversion had alienated the ultra-Tories, and among these Sir Robert.

The opposition of the ultra-Tories had expelled Peel and the Duke from

power—which had brought in the Whigs—who had brought in the Reform

Bill.

_Hinc illæ lacrimæ!_ For, in place of the transfer of the franchise of

one rotten borough to one large city—a reform which now to the most

bigoted seemed absurdly reasonable—here were sixty boroughs to be swept

away, and nearly fifty more to be shorn of half their strength, a

Constitution to be altered, an aristocracy to be dethroned!

And Calne, Lord Lansdowne’s pocket borough, was spared!

Sir Robert firmly believed that the limit had been fixed with an eye to

Calne. They who framed the Bill, sitting in wicked, detestable

confabulation, had fixed the limit of Schedule B so as to spare Calne

and Tavistock—_Arcades ambo_, Whig boroughs both. Or why did they just

escape? In the whole matter it was this, strangely enough, which

troubled him most sorely. For the loss of his own borough—if the worst

came to the worst—he could put up with it. He had no children, he had

no one to come after him except Arthur Vaughan, the great-grandson of

his grandmother. But the escape of Calne, this clear proof of the

hypocrisy of the righteous Grey, the blatant Durham, the whey-faced

Lord John, the demagogue Brougham—this injustice kept him in a state of

continual irritation.

He was thinking of this as he paced slowly up and down the broad walk

beside the Garden Pool, at Stapylton—a solitary figure dwarfed by the

great elms. The placid surface of the pool, which mirrored the shaven

lawns beyond it and the hoary church set amidst the lawns, the silence

about him, broken only by the notes of song-birds or a faint yelp from

the distant kennels, the view over the green undulations of park and

covert—all vainly appealed to him to-day, though on summer evenings his

heart took sad and frequent leave of them. For that which threatened

him every day jostled aside for the present that which must happen one

day. The home of his fathers might be his for some years yet, but shorn

of its chief dignity, of its pride, its mastery; while Calne—Calne

would survive, to lift still higher the fortunes of those who had sold

their king and country, and betrayed their order.

Daily a man and horse awaited the mail-coach at Chippenham that he

might have the latest news; and, seeing a footman hurrying towards him

from the house, he supposed that the mail was in. But when the man,

after crossing the long wooden bridge which spanned the pool,

approached with no diminution of speed, he remembered that it was too

early for the post; and hating to be disturbed in his solitary

reveries, he awaited the servant impatiently.

“What it is?” he asked.

“If you please, Sir Robert, Lady Lansdowne’s carriage is at the door.”

Only Sir Robert’s darkening colour betrayed his astonishment. He had

made his feelings so well known that none but the most formal

civilities now passed between Stapylton and Bowood.

“Who is it?”

“Lady Lansdowne, Sir Robert. Her ladyship bade us say that she wishes

to see you urgently, sir.” The man, as well as the master, knew that

the visit was unusual.

The baronet was a proud man, and he bethought him that the

drawing-rooms, seldom used and something neglected, were not in the

state in which he would wish his enemy’s wife to see them. “Where have

you put her ladyship?” he asked.

“In the hall, Sir Robert.”

“Very good. I will come.”

The man hastened away over the bridge, and Sir Robert followed, more at

leisure, but still quickly. When he had passed the angle of the church

which stood in a line with the three blocks of building, connected by

porticos, which formed the house, and which, placed on a gentle

eminence, looked handsomely over the park, he saw that a carriage with

four greys ridden by postillions and attended by two outriders stood

before the main door. In the carriage, her face shaded by the large

Tuscan hat of the period, sat a young lady reading. She heard Sir

Robert’s footstep, and looked up, and in some embarrassment met his

eyes.

He removed his hat. “It is Lady Louisa, is it not?” he said, looking

gravely at her.

“Yes,” she said; and she smiled prettily at him.

“Will you not go into the house?”

“Thank you,” she replied, with a faint blush; “I think my mother wishes

to see you alone, Sir Robert.”

“Very good.” And with a bow, cold but perfectly courteous, he turned

and passed up the broad, shallow steps, which were of the same

time-tinted lichen-covered stone as the rest of the building. Mapp, the

butler, who had been looking out for him, opened the door, and he

entered the hall.

In his heart, which was secretly perturbed, was room for the wish that

he had been found in other than the high-buttoned gaiters and breeches

of his country life. But he suffered no sign of that or of his more

serious misgivings to appear, as he advanced to greet the still

beautiful woman, who sat daintily warming one sandalled foot at the red

embers on the hearth. She was far from being at ease herself. Warnings

which her husband had addressed to her at parting recurred and

disturbed her. But it is seldom that a woman of the world betrays her

feelings, and her manner was perfect as he bent low over her hand.

“It is long,” she said gently, “much longer than I like to remember,

Sir Robert, since we met.”

“It is a long time,” he answered gravely; and when she had reseated

herself he sat down opposite her.

“It is an age,” she said slowly; and she looked round the hall, with

its panelled walls, its deep window-seats, and its panoply of fox-masks

and antlers, as if she recalled the past, “It is an age,” she repeated.

“Politics are sad dividers of friends.”

“I fear,” he replied, in a tone as cold as courtesy permitted, “that

they are about to be greater dividers.”

She looked at him quickly, with appeal in her eyes. “And yet,” she

said, “we saw more of you once.”

“Yes.” He was wondering much, behind the mask of his civility, what had

drawn her hither. He knew that it could be no light, no passing matter

which had brought her over thirteen miles of Wiltshire roads to call

upon a man with whom intercourse had been limited, for years past, to a

few annual words, a formal invitation as formally declined, a measured

salutation at race or ball. She must have a motive, and a strong one.

It was only the day before that he had learned that Lord Lansdowne

meant to drop his foolish opposition at Chippinge; was it possible that

she was here to make a favour of this? And perhaps a bargain? If that

were her errand, and my lord had sent her, thinking to make refusal

less easy, Sir Robert felt that he would know how to answer. He waited.

VII

THE WINDS OF AUTUMN

Lady Lansdowne looked pensively at the tapering sandal which she held

forward to catch the heat. “Time passes so very, very quickly,” she

said with a sigh.

“With some,” Sir Robert answered. “With others,” he bowed, “it stands

still.”

His gallantry did not deceive her. She knew it for the salute which

duellists exchange before the fray, and she saw that if she would do

anything she must place herself within his guard. She looked at him

with sudden frankness. “I want you to bear with me for a few minutes,

Sir Robert,” she said in a tone of appeal. “I want you to remember that

we were once friends, and, for the sake of old days, to believe that I

am here to play a friend’s part. You won’t answer me? Very well. I do

not ask you to answer me.” She pointed to the space above the mantel.

“The portrait which used to hang there?” she said. “Where is it? What

have you done with it? But there, I said I would not ask, and I am

asking!”

“And I will answer!” he replied. This was the last, the very last thing

for which he had looked; but he would show her that he was not to be

overridden. “I will tell you,” he repeated. “Lady Lansdowne, I have

destroyed it.”

“I do not blame you,” she rejoined. “It was yours to do with as you

would. But the original—no, Sir Robert,” she said, staying him

intrepidly—she had taken the water now, and must swim—“you shall not

frighten me! She was, she is your wife. But not yours, not your

property to do with as you will, in the sense in which that picture—but

there, I am blaming where I should entreat. I——”

He stayed her by a peremptory gesture. “Are you here—from her?” he

asked huskily.

“I am not.”

“She knows?”

“No, Sir Robert, she does not.”

“Then why,”—there was pain, real pain mingled with the indignation in

his tone—“why, in God’s name, Madam, have you come?”

She looked at him with pitying eyes. “Because,” she said, “so many

years have passed, and if I do not say a word now I shall never say it.

And because—there is still time, but no more than time.”

He looked at her fixedly. “You have another reason,” he said. “What is

it?”

“I saw her yesterday. I was in Chippenham when the Bristol coach

passed, and I saw her face for an instant at the window.”

He breathed more quickly; it was evident that the news touched him

home. But he would not blench nor lower his eyes. “Well?” he said.

“I saw her for a few seconds only, and she did not see me. And of

course—I did not speak to her. But I knew her face, though she was

changed.”

“And because”—his voice was harsh—“you saw her for a few minutes at a

window, you come to me?”

“No, but because her face called up the old times. And because we are

all growing older. And because she was—not guilty.”

He started. This was getting within his guard with a vengeance. “Not

guilty?” he cried in a tone of extreme anger. And he rose. But as she

did not move he sat down again.

“No,” she replied firmly. “She was not guilty.”

His face was deeply red. For a moment he looked at her as if he would

not answer her, or, if he answered, would bid her leave his house.

Then, “If she had been,” he said grimly, “guilty, Madam, in the sense

in which you use the word, guilty of the worst, she had ceased to be my

wife these fifteen years, she had ceased to bear my name, ceased to be

the curse of my life!”

“Oh, no, no!”

“It is yes, yes!” And his face was dark. “But as it was, she was guilty

enough! For years”—he spoke more rapidly as his passion grew—“she made

her name a byword and dragged mine in the dirt. She made me a

laughing-stock and herself a scandal. She disobeyed me—but what was her

whole life with me, Lady Lansdowne, but one long disobedience? When she

published that light, that foolish book, and dedicated it to—to that

person—a book which no modest wife should have written, was not her

main motive to harass and degrade me? Me, her husband? While we were

together was not her conduct from the first one long defiance, one long

harassment of me? Did a day pass in which she did not humiliate me by a

hundred tricks, belittle me by a hundred slights, ape me before those

whom she should not have stooped to know, invite in a thousand ways the

applause of the fops she drew round her? And when”—he rose, and paced

the room—“when, tried beyond patience by what I heard, I sent to her at

Florence and bade her return to me, and cease to make herself a scandal

with that person, or my house should no longer be her home, she

disobeyed me flagrantly, wilfully, and at a price she knew! She went

out of her way to follow him to Rome, she flaunted herself in his

company, ay, and flaunted herself in such guise as no Englishwoman had

been known to wear before! And after that—after that——”

He stopped, proud as he was, mastered by his feelings; she had got

within his guard indeed. For a while he could not go on. And she,

picturing the old days which his passionate words brought back, days

when her children had been infants, saw, as it had been yesterday, the

young bride, beautiful as a rosebud and wild and skittish as an Irish

colt—and the husband staid, dignified, middle-aged, as little in

sympathy with his captive’s random acts and flighty words as if he had

spoken another tongue.

Thus yoked, and resisting the lightest rein, the young wife had shown

herself capable of an infinity of folly. Egged on by the plaudits of a

circle of admirers, she had now made her husband ridiculous by childish

familiarities: and again, when he found fault with these, by airs of

public offence, which covered him with derision. But beauty’s sins are

soon forgiven; and fretting and fuming, and leading a wretched life, he

had yet borne with her, until something which she chose to call a

passion took possession of her. “The Giaour” and “The Corsair” were all

the rage that year; and with the publicity with which she did

everything she flung herself at the head of her soul’s affinity; a

famous person, half poet, half dandy, who was staying at Bowood.

The world which knew her decided that the affair was more worthy of

laughter than of censure, and laughed immoderately. But to the

husband—the humour of husbands is undeveloped—it was terrible. She

wrote verses to the gentleman, and he to her; and she published, with

ingenuous pride, the one and the other. Possibly this or the laughter

determined the admirer. He fled, playing the innocent Æneas; and her

lamentations, crystallising in the shape of a silly romance which made

shop-girls weep and great ladies laugh, caused a separation between the

husband and wife. Before this had lasted many months the illness of

their only child brought them together again; and when, a little later,

the doctors advised a southern climate, Sir Robert reluctantly

entrusted the girl to her. She went abroad with the child, and the

parents never met again.

Lady Lansdowne, recalling the story, could have laughed with her mind

and wept with her heart; scenes so absurd under the leafy shades of

Bowood or Lacock jostled the tragedy; and the ludicrous—with the

husband an unwilling actor in it—so completely relieved the pathetic!

But her bent towards laughter was short. Sir Robert, unable to bear her

eyes, had turned away; and she must say something.

“Think,” she said gently, “how young she was!”

“I have thought of it a thousand times!” he retorted. “Do you suppose,”

turning on her with harshness, “that there is a day on which I do not

think of it!”

“So young!”

“She had been three years a mother!”

“For the dead child’s sake, then,” she pleaded with him, “if not for

hers.”

“Lady Lansdowne!” There were both anger and pain in his voice as he

halted and stood before her. “Why do you come to me? Why do you trouble

me? Why? Is it because you feel yourself—responsible? Because you know,

because you feel, that but for you my home had not been left to me

desolate? Nor a foolish life been ruined?”

“God forbid!” she said solemnly. And in her turn she rose in agitation;

moved for once out of the gracious ease and self-possession of her

life, so that in the contrast there was something unexpected and

touching. “God forbid!” she repeated. “But because I feel that I might

have done more. Because I feel that a word from me might have checked

her, and it was not spoken. True, I was young, and it might have made

things worse—I do not know. But when I saw her face at the window

yesterday—and she was changed, Sir Robert—I felt that I might have been

in her place, and she in mine!” Her voice trembled. “I might have been

lonely, childless, growing old; and alone! Or again, if I had done

something, if I had spoken as I would have another speak, were the case

my girl’s, she might have been as I am! Now,” she added tremulously,

“you know why I came. Why I plead for her! In our world we grow hard,

very hard; but there are things which touch us still, and her face

touched me yesterday—I remembered what she was.” She paused a moment,

and then, “After long years,” she continued softly, “it cannot be hard

to forgive; and there is still time. She did nothing that need close

your door, and what she did is forgotten. Grant that she was foolish,

grant that she was wild, indiscreet, what you will—she is alone now,

alone and growing old, Sir Robert, and if not for her sake, for the

sake of your dead child——”

He stopped her by a peremptory gesture, but for the moment he seemed

unable to speak. At length, “You touch the wrong chord,” he said

hoarsely. “It is for the sake of my dead child I shall never, never

forgive her! She knew that I loved it. She knew that it was all to me.

It grew worse! Did she tell me? It was in danger; did she warn me? No!

But when I heard of her disobedience, of her folly, of things which

made her a byword, and I bade her return, or my house should no longer

be her home, then, then she flung the news of the child’s death at me,

and rejoiced that she had it to fling. Had I gone out then and found

her in the midst of her wicked gaiety, God knows what I should have

done! I did try to go. But the Hundred Days had begun, I had to return.

Had I gone, and learned that in her mad infatuation she had neglected

the child, left it to servants, let it fade, I think—I think, Madam, I

should have killed her!”

Lady Lansdowne raised her hands. “Hush! Hush!” she said.

“I loved the child. Therefore she was glad when it died, glad that she

had the power to wound me. Its death was no more to her than a weapon

with which to punish me! There was a tone in her letter—I have it

still—which betrayed that. And, therefore—therefore, for the child’s

sake, I will never forgive her!”

“I am sorry,” she murmured in a voice which acknowledged defeat. “I am

very sorry.”

He stood for a moment gazing at the blank space above the fireplace;

his head sunk, his shoulders brought forward. He looked years older

than the man who had walked under the elms. At length he made an effort

to speak in his usual tone. “Yes,” he said, “it is a sorry business.”

“And I,” she said slowly, “can do nothing.”

“Nothing,” he replied. “Time will cure this, and all things.”

“You are sure that there is no mistake?” she pleaded. “That you are not

judging her harshly?”

“There is no mistake.”

Then she saw the hopelessness of argument and held out her hand.

“Forgive me,” she said simply. “I have given you pain, and for nothing.

But the old days were so strong upon me—after I saw her—that I could

not but come. Think of me at least as a friend, and forgive me.”

He bowed low over her hand, but he gave her no assurance. And seeing

that he was mastering his agitation, and fearing that if he had leisure

to think he might resent her interference, she wasted no time in

adieux. She glanced round the well-remembered hall—the hall once smart,

now shabby—in which she had seen the flighty girl play many a mad

prank. Then she turned sorrowfully to the door, more than suspecting

that she would never pass through it again.

He had rung the bell, and Mapp, the butler, and the two men were in

attendance. But he handed her to the carriage himself, and placed her

in it with old-fashioned courtesy, and with the same scrupulous

observance stood bareheaded until it moved away. None the less, his

face by its set expression betrayed the nature of the interview; and

the carriage had scarcely swept clear of the grounds and entered the

park when Lady Louisa turned to her mother.

“Was he very angry?” she asked, eager to be instructed in the mysteries

of that life which she was entering.

Lady Lansdowne essayed to snub her. “My dear,” she said, “it is not a

fit subject for you.”

“Still, mother dear, you might tell me. You told me something, and it

is not fair to turn yourself into Mrs. Fairchild in a moment. Besides,

while you were with him I came on a passage so beautiful, and so pat,

it almost made me cry.”

“My dear, don’t say ‘pat,’ say ‘apposite.’”

“Then apposite, mother,” Lady Louisa answered. “Do you read it. There

it is.”

Lady Lansdowne sniffed, but suffered the book to be put into her hand.

Lady Louisa pointed with enthusiasm to a line. “Is it a case like that,

mother?” she asked eagerly.

_But never either found another

To free the hollow heart from paining.

They stood aloof, the scars remaining,

Like cliffs which had been rent asunder.

A dreary sea now flows between,

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,

Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been_.

The mother handed the book back to the daughter without looking at her.

“No,” she said; “I don’t think it is a case like that.”

But a moment later she wiped her eyes furtively, and then she told her

daughter more, it is to be feared, than Mrs. Fairchild would have

approved.

* * * * *

Sir Robert, when they were gone, went heavily to the library, a

panelled room looking to the back, in which it was his custom to sit.

For many years he had passed some hours of every day, when he was at

home, in that room; and until now it had never occurred to his mind

that it was dull or shabby. But it was old Mapp’s habit to lower the

blinds for his master’s after-luncheon nap, and they were still down;

and the half light which filtered in was like the sheet which rather

accentuates than hides the sharp features of the dead. The faded

engravings and the calf-bound books which masked the walls, the

escritoire, handsome and massive, but stained with ink and strewn with

dog’s eared accounts, the leathern-covered chair long worn out of shape

by his weight, the table beside it with yesterday’s “Standard,” two or

three volumes of the “Anti-Jacobin,” and the “Quarterly,” a month old

and dusty—all to his opened eyes wore a changed aspect. They spoke of

the slow decay of years, unchecked by a woman’s eye, a woman’s hand.

They told of the slow degradation of his lonely life. They indicated a

like change in himself.

He stood a few moments on the hearth, looking about him with a shocked,

pained face. The months and the years had passed irrevocably, while he

sat in that chair, poring in a kind of lethargy over those books,

working industriously at those accounts. Asked, he had answered that he

was growing old, and grown old. But he had never for a moment

comprehended, as he comprehended now, that he was old. He had never

measured the difference between this and that; between those days

troubled by a hundred annoyances, vexations, cares, when in spite of

all he had lived, and these days of sullen stagnancy and mere

vegetation.

He found the room, he found the reflection, intolerable. And he went

out, took with an unsteady hand his garden hat and returned to that

broad walk under the elms beside the pool which was his favourite

lounge. Perhaps he fancied that the wonted scene would deaden the pain

of memory and restore him to his wonted placidity. But his thoughts had

been too violently broken. His hands shook, hid lip trembled with the

tearless passion of later life. And when his agitation began to die

down and something like calmness supervened, this did but enable him to

feel more keenly the pangs, not of remorse, but of regret; of bitter,

unavailing regret for all the things of which the woman who had lain on

his bosom had robbed his life.

Stapylton stood in a side valley projected among the low green hills

which fringe the vale of the Wiltshire Avon. From where he stood all

within sight, the gentle downs above the house, the arable land which

fringed them, the rich pastures below—all, mill and smithy and inn,

snug farm and thatched cottage, called him lord. Nay, from the south

end of the pool, where a wicket gave entrance to the park—whence also a

side view of the treble front of the house could be obtained—the spire

of Chippinge church was visible, rising from its ridge in the Avon

alley; and to the base of that spire all was his, all had been his

father’s and his grandfather’s. But not an acre, not a rood, would be

his child’s.

This was no new thought. It was a thought that had saddened him on many

and many a summer evening when the shadow of the elms lay far across

the sward, and the silence of the stately house, the pale water, the

far-stretching farms whispered of the passing of the generations, of

the passage of time, of the inevitable end. Where he walked his father

had walked; and soon he would go whither his father had gone. And the

heir would walk where he walked, listen to the same twilight

carollings, hear the first hoot of the distant owl.

_Cedes coemptis saltibus, el domo

Villaque, flavus quam Tiberis lavit_,

_Cedes, et exstructis in altum_

_Divitiis potietur heres_.

But no heir of his blood. No son of his. No man of the Vermuyden name.

And for that he had to thank her.

It was this which to-day gave the old thought new poignancy. For that

he had to thank her. Truly, in the words wrung from him by the

bitterness of his feelings, she had left his house unto him desolate.

If even the little girl had lived, the child would have succeeded; and

that had been something, that had been much. But the child was dead;

and in his heart he laid her death at his wife’s door. And a stranger,

or one in essentials a stranger, the descendant by a second marriage of

his grandmother, Katherine Beckford, was the heir.

Presently the young man would succeed and the old chattels would be

swept away to cottage or lumber-room. The old horses would be shot, the

old dogs would be hanged, the old servants discharged, perhaps the very

trees under which he walked and which he loved would be cut down. The

house, the stables, the kennels, all but the cellars would be

refurnished; and in the bustle and glitter of the new _régime_, begun

in the sunshine, the twilight of his own latter days would be forgotten

in a month.

_We die and are forgotten, ’tis Heaven’s decree,

And thus the lot of others will be the lot of me!_

Sunday by Sunday he had read those lines on the grave of a kinsman, a

man whom he had known. He had often repeated them, he could as soon

forget them as his prayers. To-day the old memories and the old times,

which Lady Lansdowne had made to rise from the dead, gave them a new

meaning and a new bitterness.

VIII

A SAD MISADVENTURE

Arthur Vaughan was not a little relieved by the tidings which Isaac

White had conveyed to him at Chippenham. The news freed him from a duty

which did not appear the less distasteful because it was no longer

inevitable. To cast against Sir Robert the vote which he owed to Sir

Robert must have exposed him to odium, whatever the matter at stake.

But at this election, at which the issue was, aye or no, was the

borough to be swept away or not, to vote “aye” was an act from which

the least sensitive must have shrunk, and which the most honest must

have performed with reluctance. Add the extreme exasperation of public

feeling, of which every day and every hour brought to light the most

glaring proofs, and he had been fortunate indeed if he had not incurred

some general blame as well as the utmost weight of Sir Robert’s

displeasure.

He was spared all this, and he was thankful. Yet, when he rose on the

morning after his arrival at Bristol, his heart was not as light as a

feather. On the contrary, as he looked from the window of the White

Lion into the bustle of Broad Street, he yawned dolefully; admitting

that life, and particularly the prospect before him, of an immediate

return to London, was dull. Why go back? Why stay here? Why do

anything? The Woolsack? Bah! The Cabinet? Pooh! They were but gaudy

baits for the shallow and the hard-hearted. Moreover, they were so

distant, so unattainable, that pursuit of them seemed the merest

moonshine; more especially on this fine April morning, made for nothing

but a coach ride through an enchanted country, by the side of the

sweetest face, the brightest eyes, the most ravishing figure, the

prettiest bonnet that ever tamed the gruffest of coachmen.

Heigh-ho! If it were all to do over again how happy would he be! How

happy had he been, and not known it, the previous morning! It was

pitiful to think of him in his ignorance, with that day, that blissful

day, before him.

Well, it was over. And he must return to town. For he would play no

foolish tricks. The girl was not in his rank in life, and he could not

follow her without injury to her. He was no preacher, and he had lived

for years among men whose lives, if not worse than the lives of their

descendants, wore no disguise; who, if they did not sin more, sinned

more openly. But he had a heart, and to mar an innocent life for his

pleasure had shocked him; even if the girl’s modesty and self-respect,

disclosed by a hundred small things, had not made the notion of

wronging her abhorrent. None the less he took his breakfast in a kind

of dream, whispered “Mary!” three times in different tones, and, being

suddenly accosted by the waiter, was irritable.

With all this he was wise enough to know his own weakness, and that the

sooner he was out of Bristol the better. He sent to the Bush office to

book a place by the midday coach to town; and then only, when he had

taken the irrevocable step, he put on his hat to kill the intervening

time in Bristol.

Unfortunately, as he crossed the hall, intending to walk towards

Clifton, he heard himself named; and turning, he saw that the speaker

was the lady in black, and wearing a veil, whom he had remarked walking

up and down beside the coach, while the horses were changing at

Marshfield.

“Mr. Vaughan?” she said.

He raised his hat, much surprised. “Yes,” he answered. He fancied that

she was inspecting him very closely through her veil. “I am Mr.

Vaughan.”

“Pardon me,” she continued—her voice was refined and low—“but they gave

me your name at the office. I have something which belongs to the lady

who travelled with you yesterday, and I am anxious to restore it.”

He blushed; nor could he have repressed the blush if his life had hung

upon it. “Indeed?” he murmured. His confusion did not permit him to add

another word.

“Doubtless it was left in the coach,” the lady explained, “and was

taken to my room with my luggage. Unfortunately I am leaving Bristol at

once, within a few minutes, and I cannot myself return it. I shall be

much obliged if you will see that she has it safely.”

She spoke as if the thing were a matter of course. But Vaughan had now

recovered himself. “I would with pleasure,” he said; “but I am myself

leaving Bristol at midday, and I really do not know how—how I can do

it.”

“Then perhaps you will arrange the matter,” the lady replied in a tone

of displeasure. “I have sent the parcel to your room and I have not

time to regain it. I must go at once. There is my maid! Good morning!”

And with a distant bow she glided from him, and disappeared through the

nearest doorway.

He stood where she had left him, looking after her in bewilderment. For

one thing he was sure that she was a stranger, and yet she had

addressed him in the tone of one who had a right to be obeyed. Then how

odd it was! What a coincidence! He had made up his mind to end the

matter, to go and walk the Hot Wells like a good boy; and this happened

and tempted him!

Yes, tempted him.

He would—— But he could not tell what he would do until he had seen if

the parcel were really in his room. The parcel! The mere thought that

it was hers sent a foolish thrill through him. He would go and see, and

then——

But he was interrupted. There were people standing or sitting round the

hall, a low-ceiled, dark wainscoted room, with sheaves of way-bills

hung against the square pillars, and theatre notices flanking the bar

window. As he turned to seek his rooms a hand gripped his arm and

twitched him round, and he met the grinning face of a man in his old

regiment, Bob Flixton, commonly called the Honourable Bob.

“So I’ve caught you, my lad,” said he. “This is mighty fine. Veiled

ladies, eh? Oh, fie! fie!”

Vaughan, innocent as he was, was a little put out. But he answered

good-humouredly, “What brought you here, Flixton?”

“Ay, just so! Very unlucky, ain’t it?” grinning. “Fear I’ll cut you

out, eh? You’re a neat artist, I must say.”

“I don’t know the good lady from Eve!”

“Tell that to—— But here, let me make you known to Brereton,” hauling

him towards a gentleman who was seated in one of the window recesses.

“Old West Indian man, in charge of the recruiting district, and a good

fellow, but a bit of a saint! Colonel,” he rattled on, as they joined

the gentleman, “here’s Vaughan, once of ours, become a counsellor, and

going to be Lord Chancellor. As to the veiled lady, mum, sir, mum!”

with an exaggerated wink.

Vaughan laughed. It was impossible to resist Bob’s impudent

good-humour. He was a fair young man, short, stout, and inclining to

baldness, with a loud, hearty voice, and a manner which made those who

did not know him for a peer’s son, think of a domestic fowl with a high

opinion of itself. He was for ever damning this and praising that with

unflagging decision; a man with whom it was impossible to be

displeased, and in whom it was next to impossible not to believe. Yet

at the mess-table it was whispered that he did not play his best when

the pool was large; nor had he ever seen service, save in the lists of

love, where his reputation stood high.

His companion, Vaughan saw, was of a different stamp. He was tall and

lean, with the air and carriage of a soldier, but with features of a

refined and melancholy cast, and with a brooding sadness in his eyes

which could not escape the most casual observer. He was somewhat

sallow, the result of the West Indian climate, and counted twenty years

more than Flixton, for whom his gentle and quiet manner formed an

admirable foil. He greeted Vaughan courteously, and the Honourable Bob

forced our hero into a seat beside them.

“That’s snug!” he said. “And now mum’s the word, Vaughan. We’ll not ask

you what you’re doing here among the nigger-nabobs. It’s clear enough.”

Vaughan explained that the veiled lady was a stranger who had come down

in the coach with him, and that, for himself, it was election business

which had brought him.

“Old Vermuyden?” returned the Honourable Bob. “To be sure! Man you’ve

expectations from! Good old fellow, too. I know him. Go and see him one

of these days. Gad, Colonel, if old Sir Robert heard your views he’d

die on the spot! D——n the Bill, he’d say! And I say it too!”

“But afterwards?” Brereton returned, drawing Vaughan into the argument

by a courteous gesture. “Consider the consequences, my dear fellow, if

the Bill does not pass.”

“Oh, hang the consequences!”

“You can’t,” drily. “You can hang men—we’ve been too fond of hanging

them—but not consequences! Look at the state of the country; everywhere

you will find excitement, and dangerous excitement. Cobbett’s writings

have roused the South; the papers are full of rioters and special

commission to try them! Not a farmer can sleep for thinking of his

stacks, nor a farmer’s wife for thinking of her husband. Then for the

North; look at Birmingham and Manchester and Glasgow, with their

Political Unions preaching no taxation without representation. Or,

nearer home, look at Bristol here, ready to drown the Corporation, and

Wetherell in particular, in the Float! Then, if that is the state of

things while they still expect the Bill to pass, what will be the

position if they learn it is not to pass? No, no! You may shrug your

shoulders, but the three days in Paris will be nothing to it.”

“What I say is, shoot!” Flixton answered hotly. “Shoot! Shoot! Put ’em

down! Put an end to it! Show ’em their places! What do a lot of d——d

shopkeepers and peasants know about the Bill? Ride ’em down! Give ’em a

taste of the Float themselves! I’ll answer for it a troop of the 14th

would soon bring the Bristol rabble to their senses!”

“I should be sorry to see it tried,” Brereton answered, shaking his

head. “They took that line in France last July, and you know the

result. You’ll agree with me, Mr. Vaughan, that where Marmont failed we

are not likely to succeed. The more as his failure is known. The three

days of July are known.”

“Ay, by the Lord,” the Honourable Bob cried. “The revolution in France

bred the whole of this trouble!”

“The mob there won, and the mob here know it. In my opinion,” Brereton

continued, “conciliation is our only card, if we do not want to see a

revolution.”

“Hang your conciliation! Shoot, I say!”

“What do you think, Mr. Vaughan?”

“I think with you, Colonel Brereton,” Vaughan answered, “that the only

way to avoid such a crisis as has befallen France is to pass the Bill,

and to set the Constitution on a wider basis by enlisting as large a

number as possible in its defence.”

“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” from Flixton.

“On the other hand,” Vaughan continued, “I would put down the

beginnings of disorder with a strong hand. I would allow no

intimidation, no violence. The Bill should be passed by argument.”

“Argument? Why, d——n me, intimidation is your argument!” the Honourable

Bob struck in, with more acuteness than he commonly evinced. “Pass the

Bill or we’ll loose the dog! At ’em, Mob, good dog! At ’em! That’s your

argument!” triumphantly. “But I’ll be back in a minute.” And he left

them.

Vaughan laughed. Brereton, however, seemed to be unable to take the

matter lightly. “Do you really mean, Mr. Vaughan,” he said, “that if

there were trouble, here, for instance, you would not hesitate to give

the order to fire?”

“Certainly, sir, if it could not be put down with the cold steel.”

The Colonel shook his head despondently. “I don’t think I could,” he

said. “I don’t think I could. You have not seen war, and I have. And it

is a fearful thing. Bad enough abroad, infinitely worse here. The first

shot—think, Mr. Vaughan, of what it might be the beginning! What

hundreds and thousands of lives might hang upon it! How many scores of

innocent men shot down, of daughters made fatherless!” He shuddered.

“And to give such an order on your own responsibility, when the first

volley might be the signal for a civil war, and twenty-four hours might

see a dozen counties in a blaze! It is horrible to think of! Too

horrible! It’s too much for one man’s shoulders! Flixton would do it—he

sees no farther than his nose! But you and I, Mr. Vaughan—and on one’s

own judgment, which might be utterly, fatally wrong! My God, no!”

“Yet there must be a point,” Vaughan replied, “at which such an order

becomes necessary; becomes mercy!”

“Ay,” Brereton answered eagerly; “but who is to say when that point is

reached; and that peaceful methods can do no more? Or, granted that

they can do no more, that provocation once given, your force is

sufficient to prevent a massacre! A massacre in such a place as this!”

Vaughan saw that the idea had taken possession of the other’s mind,

and, aware that he had distinguished himself more than once on foreign

service, he wondered. It was not his affair, however; and “Let us hope

that the occasion may not arise,” he said politely.

“God grant it!” Brereton replied. And then again, to himself and more

fervently, “God grant it!” he muttered. The shadow lay darker on his

face.

Vaughan might have wondered more, if Flixton had not returned at that

moment and overwhelmed him with importunities to dine with him the next

evening. “Gage and Congreve of the 14th are coming from Gloucester,” he

said, “and Codrington and two or three yeomanry chaps. You must come.

If you don’t, I’ll quarrel with you and call you out! It’ll do you good

after the musty, fusty, goody-goody life you’ve been leading.

Brereton’s coming, and we’ll drink King Billy till we’re blind!”

Vaughan hesitated. He had taken his place on the coach, but—but after

all there was that parcel. He must do something about it. It seemed to

be his fate to be tempted, yet—what nonsense that was! Why should he

not stay in Bristol if he pleased?

“You’re very good,” he said at last. “I’ll stay.”

Yet on his way to his room he paused, half-minded to go. But he was

ashamed to change his mind again, and he strode on, opened his door,

and saw the parcel, a neat little affair, laid on the table.

It bore in a clear handwriting the address which he had seen on the

basket at Mary Smith’s feet. But, possibly because an hour of the

Honourable Bob’s company had brushed the bloom from his fancy, it moved

him little. He looked at it with something like indifference, felt no

inclination to kiss it, and smiled at his past folly as he took it up

and set off to return it to its owner. He had exaggerated the affair

and his feelings; he had made much out of little, and a romance out of

a chance encounter. He could smile now at that which had moved him

yesterday. Certainly:

_Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart_,

_’Tis woman’s whole existence; man may range_

_The Court, camp, Church, the vessel and the mart_,

_Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange_

_Pride, fame, ambition to fill up his heart_.

And the Honourable Bob, with his breezy self-assertion, had brought

this home to him and, with a puff of everyday life, had blown the

fantasy away.

He was still under this impression when he reached Queen’s Square, once

the pride of Bristol, and still, in 1831, a place handsome and well

inhabited. Uniformly and substantially built, on a site surrounded on

three sides by deep water, it lay, indeed, rather over-near the quays,

of which, and of the basins, it enjoyed a view through several

openings. But in the reign of William IV. merchants were less averse

from living beside their work than they are now. The master’s eye was

still in repute, and though many of the richest citizens had migrated

to Clifton, and the neighbouring Assembly Rooms in Prince’s Street had

been turned into a theatre, the spacious square, with its wide lawn,

its lofty and umbrageous elms, its colony of rooks, and, last of all,

its fine statue of the Glorious and Immortal Memory, was still the

abode of many respectable people. In one corner stood the Mansion

House; a little further along the same side the Custom House; and a

third public department, the Excise, also had offices here.

The Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace, on College Green, stood, as the

crow flies, scarce a bow-shot from the Square; on which they looked

down from the westward, as the heights of Redcliffe looked down on it

from the east. But marsh as well as water divided the Square from these

respectable neighbours; nor, it must be owned, was this the only

drawback. The centre of the city’s life, but isolated on three sides by

water, the Square was as easily reached from the worse as from the

better quarters, and owing to the proximity of the Welsh Back, a

coasting quay frequented by the roughest class, it was liable in times

of excitement to abrupt and boisterous inroads.

Vaughan entered the Square by Queen Charlotte Street, and had traversed

one half of its width when his nonchalance failed him. Under the elms,

in the corner which he was approaching, were a dozen children. They

were at play, and overlooking them from a bench, with their backs to

him, sat two young persons, the one in that mid-stage between childhood

and womanhood when the eyes are at their sharpest and the waist at its

thickest, the other, Mary Smith.

The colour rose to his brow, and to his surprise he found that he was

not indifferent. Nor was the discovery that the back of her head and an

inch of the nape of her neck had this effect upon him the worst. He had

to ask himself what, if he was not indifferent, he was doing there,

sneaking on the skirts of a ladies’ school. What were his intentions,

and what his aim? For to healthy minds there is something distasteful

in the notion of an intrigue connected, ever so remotely, with a girls’

school. Nor are conquests gained on that scene laurels of which even a

Lothario is over-proud. If Flixton saw him, or some others of the

gallant Fourteenth!

And yet, in the teeth of all this, and under the eyes of all Queen’s

Square, he must do his errand. And sheepish within, brazen without, he

advanced and stood beside her. She heard his step, and, unsuspicious as

the youngest of her flock, looked up to see who came—looked, and saw

him standing within a yard of her, with the sunshine falling through

the leaves on his wavy, fair hair. For the twentieth part of a second

he fancied a glint of glad surprise in her eyes. Then, if anything

could have punished him, it was the sight of her confusion; it was the

blush of distress which covered her face as she rose to her feet.

Oh, cruel! He had pursued her, when to pursue was an insult! He had

followed her when he should have known that in her position a breath of

scandal was ruin! And oh, the round eyes of the round-faced child

beside her!

“I must apologise,” he murmured humbly, “but I am not trespassing upon

you without a cause. I—I think that this is yours.” And rather lamely,

for the distress in her face troubled him, he held out the parcel.

She put her hand behind her, and as stiffly as Miss Sibson—of the

Queen’s Square Academy for Young Ladies of the Genteel and Professional

Classes—could have desired. “I do not understand, sir,” she said. She

was pale and red by turns, as the round eyes saw.

“You left this in the coach.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You left this in the coach,” he repeated, turning very red himself.

Was it possible that she meant to repudiate her own property because he

brought it? “It is yours, is it not?”

“No.”

“It is not!” in incredulous astonishment.

“No.”

“But I am sure it is,” he persisted. Confound it, this was a little

overdoing modesty! He had no desire to eat the girl! “You left it

inside the coach, and it has your address upon it. See!” And he tried

to place it in her hands.

But she drew back with a look of reprobation of which he would not have

believed her eyes capable. “It is not mine, sir,” she said. “Be good

enough to leave us!” And then, drawing herself up, mild creature as she

was, “You are intruding, sir,” she said.

Now, if Vaughan had really been guilty of approaching her upon a

feigned pretext, he had certainly retired on that with his tail between

his legs. But being innocent, and both incredulous and angry, he stood

his ground, and his eyes gave back some of the reproach which hers

darted.

“I am either mad or it is yours,” he said stubbornly, heedless of the

ring of staring children who, ceasing to play, had gathered round them.

“It bears your name and address, and it was left in the coach by which

you travelled yesterday. I think, Miss Smith, you will be sorry

afterwards if you do not take it.”

She fancied that his words imported a bribe; and in despair of ridding

herself of him, or in terror of the tale which the children would tell,

she took her courage in both hands. “You say that it is mine?” she

said, trembling visibly.

“Certainly I do,” he answered. And again he held it out to her.

But she did not take it. Instead, “Then be good enough to follow me,”

she replied, with something of the prim dignity of the school-mistress.

“Miss Cooke, will you collect the children and bring them into the

house?”

And, avoiding his eyes, she led the way across the road to the door of

one of the houses. He followed, but reluctantly, and after a moment of

hesitation. He detested the scene which he now foresaw, and bitterly

regretted that he had ever set foot inside Queen’s Square. To be

suspected of thrusting an intrigue upon a little schoolmistress, to be

dragged, with a pack of staring, chattering children in his train,

before some grim-faced duenna—he, a man of years and affairs, with whom

the Chancellor of England did not scorn to speak on equal terms! It was

hateful; it was an intolerable position. Yet to turn back, to say that

he would not go, was to acknowledge himself guilty. He wished—he wished

to heaven that he had never seen the girl. Or at least that he had had

the courage, when she first denied the thing, to throw the parcel on

the seat and go.

It was not an heroic frame of mind; but neither was the position

heroic. And something may be forgiven him in the circumstances.

Fortunately the trial was short. She opened the door of the house, and

on the threshold he found himself face to face with a tall, bulky

woman, with a double chin, and an absurdly powdered nose, who wore a

cameo of the late Queen Charlotte on her ample bosom. Miss Sibson had

viewed the encounter from an upper window, and her face was a picture

of displeasure, slightly tempered by powder.

“What is this?” she asked, in an intimidating voice. “Miss Smith, what

is this, if you please?”

Perhaps Mary, aware that her place was at stake, was desperate. At any

rate she behaved with a dignity which astonished Vaughan. “This

gentleman, Madam,” she explained, speaking with firmness though her

face was on fire, “travelled with me on the coach yesterday. A few

minutes ago he appeared and addressed me, and insisted that the—the

parcel he carries is mine, and that I left it in the coach. It is not

mine, and I have not seen it before.”

Miss Sibson folded her arms upon her ample person. The position was not

altogether new to her.

“Sir,” she said, eying the offender majestically, “have you any

explanation to offer—of this extraordinary conduct?”

He had, indeed. As clearly as his temper permitted he told his tale,

his tone half ironical, half furious.

When he paused, “Who do you say gave it to you?” Miss Sibson asked in a

deep voice.

“I do not know her name. A lady who travelled in the coach.”

Miss Sibson’s frown grew even deeper. “Thank you,” she replied, “that

will do. I have heard enough, and I understand. I understand, sir. Be

good enough to leave the house.”

“But, Madam——”

“Be good enough to leave the house,” she repeated. “That is the door,”

pointing to it. “That is the door, sir! Any apology you may wish to

make, you can make by letter to me. To me, you understand! I think one

were not ill-fitting!”

He lost his temper altogether at that, and he flung the parcel with

violence, and with a violent word, on a chair. “Then at any rate I

shall not take that, for it’s not mine!” he cried. “You may keep it,

Madam!”

And he flung out, his retreat hampered and made humiliating by the

entrance of the pupils, who, marshalled by the round-eyed one, and all

round-eyed themselves, blocked the doorway at that unlucky moment. He

broke through them without ceremony, though they represented the most

respectable families in Bristol, and with his head bent he strode

wrathfully across the Square.

To be turned out of a girls’ boarding-school! To be shown the door like

some wretched philandering schoolboy, or a subaltern in his first

folly! He, the man of the world, of experience, of ambition! The man

with a career! He was furious.

“The little cat!” he cried as he went. “I wish I had never seen her

face! What a fool, what a fool I was to come!”

Unheroic words and an unheroic mood. But though there were heroes

before Agamemnon, it is not certain that there were any after George

the Fourth. At any rate, any who, like that great man, were heroic

always and in all circumstances.

Probably Vaughan would have forgiven the little cat had he known that

she was at that moment weeping very bitterly, with her face plunged

into the pillow of her not over-luxurious bed. For she was young, and a

woman. And because, in her position, the name of love was taboo;

because to her the admiring look, which to a more fortunate sister was

homage, was an insult; because the _petits soins_, the flower, the

note, the trifle that to another were more precious than jewels, were

not for her, it did not follow that she was not flesh and blood, that

she had not feeling, affection, passion. True, the pang was soon

deadened, for habit is strong. True, the bitter tears were soon dried,

for employers like not gloomy looks. True, she soon cried shame on her

own discontent, for she was good as gold. And yet to be debarred, in

the tender springtime, from the sweet scents, the budding blooms, the

gay carols, to have but one April coach-ride in a desert of days, is

hard—is very hard. Mary Smith, weeping on her hopeless pillow—not

without thought of the cruel arch stooping to crush her, the cruel fate

from which he had snatched her, not without thought of her own

ingratitude, her black ingratitude—felt that it was hard, very hard.

IX

THE BILL FOR GIVING EVERYBODY EVERYTHING!

It is difficult to describe and impossible to exaggerate the heat of

public feeling which preceded the elections of ’31. Four-fifths of the

people of this country believed that the Bill—from which they expected

so much that a satirist has aptly given it the title at the head of

this chapter—had been defeated in the late House by a trick. That trick

the King, God bless him, had punished by dissolving the House. It

remained for the people to show their sense of the trick by returning a

very different House; such a House as would not only pass the Bill, but

pass it by a majority so decisive that the Lords, and particularly the

Bench of Bishops, whose hostility was known, would not dare to oppose

the public will.

But as no more than a small proportion of these four-fifths had votes,

they were forced to act, if they would make their will obeyed,

indirectly; in one place by the legitimate pressure of public opinion,

in another by bribery, in a third by intimidation, in a fourth, and a

fifth, and a sixth by open violence; everywhere by the unspoken threat

of revolution. And hence arose the one good, sound, and firm argument

against the Bill which the Tory party enjoyed.

One or two of their other arguments are not without interest, if only

as the defence set up for a system so anomalous as to seem to us

incredible—a system under which Gatton, with no inhabitants, returned

two members, and Sheffield, with something like a hundred thousand

inhabitants, returned none; under which Dunwich, long drowned under the

North Sea, returned two members, and Birmingham returned none; under

which the City of London returned four and Lord Lonsdale returned nine;

under which Cornwall, with one-fourth of the population of Lancashire,

returned thrice as many representatives; under which the South vastly

outweighed the North, and land mightily outweighed all other property.

Moreover, in no two boroughs was the franchise the same. One man lived

in a hovel and had a vote; his neighbour lived in a mansion and had no

vote. Frequently the whole of the well-to-do townsfolk were voteless.

Then, while any man with five thousand pounds might buy a seat, nor see

the face of a single elector, on the other hand, the poll might be kept

open for fifteen days, and a single county election might cost two

hundred thousand pounds. Bribery, forbidden in theory, was permitted in

practice. The very Government bribed under the rose, and it was

humorously said that all that a man’s constituents required was to be

satisfied of the _impurity_ of his intentions!

An anomalous system; yet its defenders had something to say for it.

First, that narrow as the franchise seemed, every class found somewhere

in England its mouthpiece. At Preston, where all could vote who slept

in the borough the previous night, the poorest class; in the

potwalloping boroughs where a fireplace gave a vote, the next class; in

a city like Westminster, the ratepayers; in the counties, the

freeholders; in the universities, the clergy. And so on, the argument

being that the very anomalies of the system provided a mixed

representation without giving the masses a preponderant voice.

Secondly, they said that it insured a House of ability, by enabling

young men of parts, but small means, to obtain seats. Those who put

this forward flourished a long list of statesmen who had come in for

nomination boroughs. It began with Pitt and ended with Macaulay—a

feather plucked from the enemy’s wing; and Burke stood for much in it.

It became one of the commonplaces of the struggle.

The third contention was of greater weight. It was that, with all its

abuses, the old system had worked well. This argument, too, had its

commonplace. The proverb, _stare super antiquas vias_, was thundered

from a thousand platforms, coupled with copious references to the

French wars, and to the pilot who had weathered the storm. This was the

argument of the old, and the rich, and the timid—of those who clung to

top-boots in the daytime and to pantaloons in the evening. But as the

struggle progressed it came to be merged in the one sound argument to

which reference has been made.

“If you do not pass the Bill,” said the Whigs, “there will be a

revolution.”

“Possibly,” the Tories rejoined. “And whom have we to thank for that?

Who, using the French Revolution of last July as a fulcrum, have

unsettled the whole country? And now, having disturbed everything, tell

us that we must grant to force what is not due to reason? You! But if

the Bill is to pass, not because it is a good Bill, but because the mob

desire it, where will this end? Pass Bills out of fear, and where will

you end? Presently there will arise a ranting adventurer, more violent

than Brougham, a hoary schemer more unscrupulous than Grey, an angry

boy, outscolding Durham, a pedant more bloodless than Lord John, an

honest fanatic blinder than Althorp! And when _they_ threaten _you_

with the terrors of the mob, what will you say?”

To which the Whigs could only reply that the people must be trusted;

and—and that the Bill must pass, or not only coronets but crowns would

be flying.

Dry arguments nowadays; but in those days alive, and to the party on

its defence—the party which found itself thrust against the wall, that

its pockets might be emptied—of vital interest. From scores of

platforms candidates, leaning forward, bland and smiling, with one hand

under the coat-tails and the other gently pumping, pumping, pumping,

enunciated them—old hands these; or, red in the face, thundered them,

striking fist into palm and overawing opposition; or, hopeless amid the

rain of dead cats and stale eggs, muttered them in a reporter’s ear,

since the hootings of the crowd made other utterance impossible. But

ever as the contest went on, the smiling candidate grew rarer; for day

by day the Tories, seeing their cause hopeless, seeing even Whigs, such

as Sir Thomas Acland in Devonshire and Mr. Wilson Patten in Lancashire,

cast out if they were lukewarm, grew more desperate, cried more loudly

on high heaven, asserted more frantically that justice was dead on the

earth. All this, while those who believed that the Bill was going to

give everything to everybody pushed their advantage without mercy. Many

a borough which had not known a contest for a generation, many a

county, was fought and captured. No Tory felt safe; no bargain, though

signed and sealed, held good; no patron, though he had held his income

from his borough as secure as any part of his property, could say that

his voters would dare to go to the poll.

This last was the apprehension in the mind of Isaac White, Sir Robert

Vermuyden’s agent, as on the day after Lady Lansdowne’s visit he drove

his gig and fast-trotting cob up the avenue. The treble front of the

house looked down on him from its gentle eminence; its windows blinked

in the afternoon sunshine, and the mellow tints of the stone harmonised

with the russet bloom which in April garbs the poplar and the

later-bursting trees. Tradition said that the second baronet had built

a wing for each of his two sons. After the death of the elder, however,

the east wing had been devoted to kitchens and offices, and the west to

a splendid hospitality. In these days the latter wing was so seldom

used that it had almost fallen into decay. Laurels grew up before the

side windows and darkened them, and bats lived in the dry chimneys. The

rooms above stairs were packed with the lumber of the last century,

with the old wig-boxes, the old travelling-trunks, the old

harpsichords, even an old sedan chair; while the lower rooms, swept and

bare, and hung with flat, hard portraits, enjoyed an evil reputation in

the servants’ quarters, where many a one could tell of skirts that

rustled unseen, and dead feet that trod the polished floors.

But to Isaac White all this was nought. He had seen the house in every

aspect; and to-day his mind was filled with other things—with votes and

voters, with some anxiety on his own account and more on his patron’s.

What would Sir Robert say if aught went wrong at Chippinge? True, the

loss of the borough seemed barely possible; it had been held securely

for many years. But the times were so stormy, public feeling ran so

high, the mob was so rough, that nothing seemed impossible, in view of

the stress to which the soundest candidates were exposed. If Mr. Bankes

stood to fail in Dorset, if Mr. Duncombe had small chance in Yorkshire,

if Sir Edward Knatchbull was a lost man in Kent, if Mr. Hart Davies was

no better in Bristol, if no man but an out-and-out Reformer could count

on success, who was safe?

White’s grandfather, his father, he himself had lived and thriven by

the system which he saw tottering to its fall. He belonged to it, he

was part of it; did he not mark his allegiance to it by wearing

top-boots in the daytime and shorts in full dress? And he was

prepared—were it only out of gratitude to the ladder by which he had

risen—to stand by it and by his patron to the last. But, strange

anomaly, White was at heart a Cobbett man. His sneaking sympathies

were, in his own despite, with the class from which he sprang. He saw

commons filched from the poor, while the labourers fell on the rates.

He saw large taxes wrung from the country to be spent in the town. He

saw the severity of the laws, and especially the game laws. He saw

absentee rectors and starving curates. He saw the dumb impotence of

nine-tenths of the people; and he felt that the system under which

these things had grown up was wrong. But wrong or right, he was part of

it, he was pledged to it; and all the theories in the world, and all

the “Political Registers” which he digested of an evening, would not

induce him to betray it.

Notwithstanding, he feared that in the matter of the borough he had not

been quite so wide-awake as became him; or Pybus, the Bowood man, would

not have stolen a march upon him. His misgivings grew as he came in

sight of the door, and saw Sir Robert on the flight of steps which led

to it. Apparently the baronet had seen him, for as White drove up a

servant appeared to lead the mare to the stables.

Sir Robert looked her over as she was led away. “The grey looks well,

White,” he said. She was of his breeding.

“Yes, Sir Robert. Give me a good horse and they may have the

new-fangled railroads that like them. But I am afraid, sir——”

“One moment!” The servant was out of hearing, and the baronet’s tone,

as he caught White up, betrayed agitation. “Who is that looking over

the Lower Wicket, White?” he continued. “She has been there a quarter

of an hour, and—and I can’t make her out.”

His tone surprised White, who looked and saw at a distance of a hundred

paces the figure of a woman leaning on the wicket-gate nearest the

stables. She was motionless, and he had not looked many seconds before

he caught the thought in Sir Robert’s mind. “He’s heard,” he reflected,

“that her ladyship is in the neighbourhood, and it has alarmed him.”

“I cannot see at this distance, sir,” he answered prudently, “who it

is.”

“Then go and ask her her business,” Sir Robert said, as indifferently

as he could. “She has been there a long time.”

White went, a little excited himself; but half-way to the woman, who

continued to gaze at the house as if unconscious of his approach, he

discovered that, whoever she was, she was not Lady Sybil. She was

stout, middle-aged, plain; and he took a curt tone with her when he

came within earshot. “What are you doing here?” he said. “That’s the

way to the servants’ hall.”

The woman looked at him. “You don’t know me, Mr. White?” she said.

He looked hard in return. “No,” he answered bluntly, “I don’t.”

“Ah, well, I know you,” she replied. “More by token——”

He cut her short. “Have you any message?” he asked.

“If I have, I’ll give it myself,” she retorted drily. “Truth is, I’m in

two minds about it. What you have, you have, d’you see, Mr. White; but

what you’ve given ain’t yours any more. Anyway——”

“Anyway,” impatiently, “you can’t stay here!”

“Very good,” she replied, “very good. As you are so kind, I’ll take a

day to think of it.” And with a cool nod she turned her back on the

puzzled White, and went off down the park towards the town.

He went back to Sir Robert. “She’s a stranger, sir,” he said; “and, I

think, a bit gone in the head. I could make nothing of her.”

Sir Robert drew a deep breath. “You’re sure she was a stranger?” he

said.

“She’s no one I know, sir. After one of the men, perhaps.”

Sir Robert straightened himself. He had spent a bad ten minutes gazing

at the distant figure. “Just so,” he said. “Very likely. And now what

is it, White?”

“I’ve bad news, sir, I’m afraid,” the agent said, in an altered tone.

“What is it?”

“It’s that d——d Pybus, sir! I’m afraid that, after all——”

“They’re going to fight?”

“I’m afraid, Sir Robert, they are.”

The old gentleman’s eyes gleamed. “Afraid, sir, afraid?” he cried. “On

the contrary, so much the better. It will cost me some money, but I can

spare it; and it will cost them more, and nothing for it. Afraid? I

don’t understand you.”

The agent, standing on the step below him, coughed dubiously. “Well,

sir,” he said, “what you say is reasonable. But——”

“But! But what?”

“There is so much excitement in the country at this time——”

“So much greediness in the country,” Sir Robert retorted, striking his

stick upon the stone steps. “So much unscrupulousness, sir; so many

liars promising, and so many fools listening; so much to get, and so

many who would like it! There’s all that, if you please; but for

excitement, I don’t know”—with a severe look—“what you mean, or what it

has to do with us.”

“I am afraid, sir, there is bad news from Devon, where it is said our

candidate is retiring.”

“A good man, but weak; neither one side nor the other.”

“And from Dorset, sir, where they say Mr. Bankes will be beaten.”

“I’ll not believe it,” Sir Robert answered positively. “I’ll never

believe it. Mr. Bankes beaten in Dorset! Absurd! Why do you listen to

such tales? Why do you listen? By G—d, White, what is the matter with

you? Or how does it touch us if Mr. Bankes is beaten? Nine votes to

four! Nine will still be nine, and four four, if he be beaten. When you

can make four to be more than nine you may come whining to me!”

White coughed. “Dyas, the butcher——”

“What of him?”

“Well, Sir Robert, I am afraid he has been getting some queer notions.”

“Notions?” the baronet echoed in astonishment.

“He has been listening to someone, and—and thinks he has views on the

Bill.”

Sir Robert exploded. “Views!” he cried. “Views! The butcher with views!

Why, damme, White, you must be mad! Mad! Since when have butchers taken

to politics, or had views?”

“I don’t know anything about that, sir,” White mumbled.

Sir Robert struck his stick fiercely on a step. “But I do! I do! And I

know this,” he continued, “that for twenty years he’s had thirty pounds

a year to vote as I tell him. By gad, I never heard such a thing in my

life! Never! You don’t mean to tell me that the man thinks the vote’s

his own to do what he likes with?”

“I am afraid,” the agent admitted reluctantly, “that that is what he’s

saying, sir.”

Sir Robert’s thin face turned a dull red. “I never heard of such

impudence in all my life,” he said, “never! A butcher with views! And

going to vote for them! Why, damme,” he continued, with angry sarcasm,

“we’ll have the tailors, the bakers, and the candlestickmakers voting

their own way next. Good G—d! What does the man think he’s had thirty

pounds a year for for all these years, if not to do as he is bid?”

“He’s behaving very ill, sir,” White said, severely, “very ill.”

“Ill!” Sir Robert cried; “I should think he was, the scoundrel!” And he

foamed over afresh, though we need not follow him. When he had cooled

somewhat, “Well,” he said, “I can turn him out, and that I’ll do, neck

and crop! By G—d, I will! I’ll ruin him. But there, it’s the big rats

set the fashion and the little ones follow it. This is Spinning Jenny’s

work. I wish I had cut off my hand before I voted for him. Well, well,

well!” And he stood a moment in bitter contemplation of Sir Robert

Peel’s depravity. It was nothing that Sir Robert was sound on reform.

By adopting the Catholic side on the claims he—he, whose very nickname

was Orange Peel—had rent the party. And all these evils were the

result!

The agent coughed.

Sir Robert, who was no fool, looked sharply at him. “What!” he said

grimly. “Not another renegade?”

“No, sir,” White answered timidly. “But Thrush, the pig-killer—he’s one

of the old lot, the Cripples, that your father put into the

corporation——”

“Ay, and I wish I had kept them cripples.” Sir Robert growled. “All

cripples! My father was right, and I was a fool to think better men

would do as well, and do us credit. In his time there were but two of

the thirteen could read and write; but they did as they were bid. They

did as they were bid. And now—well, man, what of Thrush?”

“He was gaoled yesterday by Mr. Forward, of Steynsham, for assault.”

“For how long?”

“For a fortnight, sir.”

Sir Robert nearly had a fit. He reared himself to his full height, and

glared at White. “The infernal rascal!” he cried. “He did it on

purpose!”

“I’ve no doubt, sir, that it determined them to fight,” the agent

answered. “With Dyas they are five. And five to seven is not such—such

odds that they may not have some hope of winning.”

“Five to seven!” Sir Robert repeated; and at an end of words, at an end

of oaths, could only stare aghast. “Five to seven!” he muttered.

“You’re not going to tell me—there’s something more.”

“No, sir, no; that’s the worst,” White answered, relieved that his tale

was told. “That’s the worst, and may be bettered. I’ve thought it well

to postpone the nomination until Wednesday the 4th, to give Sergeant

Wathen a better chance of dealing with Dyas.”

“Well, well!” Sir Robert muttered. “It has come to that. It has come to

dealing with such men as butchers, to treating them as if they had

minds to alter and views to change. Well, well!”

And that was all Sir Robert could say. And so it was settled; the

Vermuyden dinner for the 2nd, the nomination and polling for the 4th.

“You’ll let Mr. Vaughan know,” Sir Robert concluded. “It’s well we can

count on somebody.”

X

THE QUEEN’S SQUARE ACADEMY FOR YOUNG LADIES

Miss Sibson sat in state in her parlour in Queen’s Square. Rather more

dignified of mien than usual, and more highly powdered of nose, the

schoolmistress was dividing her attention between the culprit in the

corner, the elms outside—between which fledgeling rooks were making

adventurous voyages—and the longcloth which she was preparing for the

young ladies’ plain-sewing; for in those days plain-sewing was still

taught in the most select academies. Nor, while she was thus engaged in

providing for the domestic training of her charges, was she without

assurance that their minds were under care. The double doors which

separated the schoolroom from the parlour were ajar, and through the

aperture one shrill voice after another could be heard, raised in

monotonous perusal of Mrs. Chapone’s “Letters to a Young Lady upon the

Improvement of the Mind.”

Miss Sibson wore her best dress, of black silk, secured half-way down

the bodice by the large cameo brooch. But neither this nor the reading

in the next room could divert her attention from her duties.

“The tongue,” she enunciated with great clearness, as she raised the

longcloth in both hands and carefully inspected it over her glasses,

“is an unruly member. Ill-nature,” she continued, slowly meting off a

portion, and measuring a second portion against it, “is the fruit of a

bad heart. Our opinions of others”—this with a stern look at Miss

Hilhouse, fourteen years old, and in disgrace—“are the reflections of

ourselves.”

The young lady, who was paying with the backboard for a too ready wit,

put out the unruly member, and, narrowly escaping detection, looked

inconceivably sullen.

“The face is the mirror to the mind,” Miss Sibson continued

thoughtfully, as she threaded a needle against the light. “I hope, Miss

Hilhouse, that you are now sorry for your fault.”

Miss Hilhouse maintained a stolid silence. Her shoulders ached, but she

was proud.

“Very good,” said Miss Sibson placidly; “very good! With time comes

reflection.”

Time, a mere minute, brought more than reflection. A gentleman walked

quickly across the fore-court to the door, the knocker fell sharply,

and Miss Hilhouse’s sullenness dropped from her. She looked first

uncomfortable, then alarmed. “Please, may I go now?” she muttered.

Wise Miss Sibson paid no heed. “A gentleman?” she said to the maid who

had entered. “Will I see him? Procure his name.”

“Oh, Miss Sibson,” came from the corner in an agonised whisper, “please

may I go?” Fourteen standing on a stool with a backboard could not bear

to be seen by the other sex.

Miss Sibson looked grave. “Are you sincerely sorry for your fault?” she

asked.

“Yes.”

“And will you apologise to Miss Smith for your—your gross rudeness?”

“Ye-es.”

“Then go and do so,” Miss Sibson replied; “and close the doors after

you.”

The girl fled. And simultaneously Miss Sibson rose, with a mixture of

dignity and blandness, to receive Arthur Vaughan. The schoolmistress of

that day who had not manner at command had nothing; for deportment

ranked among the essentials. And she was quite at her ease. The same

could not be said of the gentleman. But that his pride still smarted,

but that the outrage of yesterday was fresh, but that he drew a savage

satisfaction from the prospect of the apologies he was here to receive,

he had not come. Even so, he had told himself more than once that he

was a fool to come; a fool to set foot in the house. He was almost sure

that he had done more wisely had he burned the letter in which the

schoolmistress informed him that she had an explanation to offer—and so

had made an end.

But if in place of meeting him with humble apologies, this confounded

woman were going to bear herself as if no amends were due, he had

indeed made a mistake.

Yet her manner said almost as much as that. “Pray be seated, sir,” she

said; and she indicated a chair.

He sat down stiffly, and glowered at her. “I received your note,” he

said.

She smoothed her ample lap, and looked at him more graciously. “Yes,”

she said, “I was relieved to find that the unfortunate occurrence of

yesterday was open to another explanation.”

“I have yet,” he said curtly, “to hear the explanation.” Confound the

woman’s impudence!

“Exactly,” she said slowly. “Exactly. Well, it turns out that the

parcel you left behind you when you”—for an instant a smile broke the

rubicund placidity of her face—“when you retired so hurriedly contained

a pelisse.”

“Indeed?” he said drily.

“Yes; and a letter.”

“Oh?”

“Yes; a letter from a lady who has for some years taken an interest in

Miss Smith. The pelisse proved to be a gift from her.”

“Then I fail to see——”

“Exactly,” Miss Sibson interposed blandly, indeed too blandly. “You

fail to see why you came to be selected as the bearer? So do I. Perhaps

you can explain that.”

“No,” he answered shortly. “Nor is that my affair. What I fail to see,

Madam, is why Miss Smith did not at once suspect that the present came

from the lady in question.”

“Because,” Miss Sibson replied, “the lady was not known to be in this

part of England; and because you, sir, maintained that Miss Smith had

left the parcel in the coach.”

“I maintained what I was told.”

“But it was not the fact. However, let that pass.”

“No,” Vaughan retorted, with some warmth. “For it seems to me, Madam,

very extraordinary that in a matter which was capable of so simple an

explanation you should have elected to insult a stranger—a stranger

who——”

“Who was performing no more than an office of civility, you would say?”

“Precisely.”

“Well—yes.” Miss Sibson spoke slowly, and was silent for a moment after

she had spoken. Then, somewhat abruptly, “You are an usher, I think,”

she said, “at Mr. Bengough’s?”

Vaughan almost jumped in his chair. “I, Madam?” he cried. “Certainly

not!”

“Not at Mr. Bengough’s?”

“Certainly not!” he repeated, with indignation. Was the woman mad? An

usher? Good heavens!

“I know your name,” she said slowly. “But——”

“I came from London the day before yesterday. I am staying at the White

Lion, and I am late of the 14th Dragoons.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh, indeed,” she said. “Is that so? Well,”

rubbing a little of the powder from her nose with a needlecase, and

looking at him very shrewdly, “I think,” she continued, “that that is

the answer to your question.”

Vaughan stared.

“I do not understand you,” he said.

“Then I must speak more plainly. Were you an usher at Mr. Bengough’s

your civility—civility, I think you called it?—to my assistant had

passed very well, Mr. Vaughan. But the civility of a gentleman, late of

the 14th Dragoons, fresh from London, and staying at the White Lion, to

a young person in Miss Smith’s position is apt, as in this case—eh?—to

lead to misconstruction.”

“You do me an injustice!” he said, reddening to the roots of his hair.

“Possibly, possibly,” Miss Sibson said. But on that, without warning,

she gave way to a fit of silent laughter, which caused her portly form

to shake like a jelly. It was a habit with her, attributed by some to

her private view of Mrs. Chapone’s famous letters on the improvement of

the mind; by others, to that knowledge of the tricks and turns of her

sex with which thirty years of schoolkeeping had endowed her.

No doubt the face of rueful resentment with which Arthur Vaughan

regarded her did not shorten the fit. But at last, “Young gentleman,”

she said, “you do not deceive me! You did not come here to-day merely

to hear an old woman make an apology.”

He tried to maintain an attitude of dignified surprise. But her jolly

laugh, her shrewd red face were too much for him. His eyes fell. “Upon

my honour,” he said, “I meant nothing.”

She shook with fresh laughter. “It is just of that I complain, sir,”

she said.

“You can trust me.”

“I can trust Miss Smith,” she retorted, shaking her head. “Her I know,

though our acquaintance is of the shortest. Still, I know her from top

to toe. You, young gentleman, I don’t know. Mind,” she continued, with

good-nature, “I don’t say that you meant any harm when you came to-day.

But I’ll wager you thought that you’d see her.”

Vaughan laughed out frankly. Her humour had conquered him. “Well,” he

said audaciously, “and am I not to see her?”

Miss Sibson looked at him, and rubbed a little more powder from her

nose. “Umph!” she said doubtfully. “If I knew you I’d know what to say

to that. A pretty girl, eh?” she added with her head on one side.

He smiled.

“And a good one! And if you were the usher at Mr. Bengough’s I’d ask no

more, but I’d send for her. But——”

She stopped. Vaughan said nothing, but a little out of countenance

looked at the floor.

“Just so, just so,” Miss Sibson said, as quietly as if he had answered

her. “Well, I am afraid I must not send for her.”

He looked at the carpet. “I have seen so little of her,” he said.

“And I daresay you are a man of property?”

“I am independent.”

“Well, well, there it is.” Miss Sibson smoothed out the lap of her silk

dress.

“I do not think,” he said, in some embarrassment, “that five minutes’

talk would hurt her.”

“Umph!”

He laughed—an awkward laugh. “Come, Miss Sibson,” he said. “Let us have

the five minutes, and let us both have the chance.”

She looked out of the window, and rubbed her glasses reflectively.

“Well,” she said at length, as if she had not quite made up her mind,

“I will be quite frank with you, Mr. Vaughan. I did not intend to be

so, but you have met me half-way, and I believe you to be a gentleman.

The truth is, I should not have gone as far with you as I have

unless”—she looked at him suddenly—“I had had a character of you.”

“Of me?” he cried in astonishment.

“Yes.”

“From Miss Smith?”

Miss Sibson smiled at his simplicity. “Oh, no,” she said; “you are

going to see the character.” And with that the schoolmistress drew from

her workbox a small slip of paper, which she unfolded and gave to him.

“It is from the lady,” she said, “who made use of you yesterday.”

He took it in much astonishment. On the inner side of the paper, which

was faintly scented, he read a dozen words in a fine handwriting:

“Mary Smith, from her fairy godmother. The bearer may be trusted.”

Vaughan stared at the paper in undiminished surprise. “I don’t

understand,” he said. “Who is the lady, and what does she know of me?”

“I cannot tell you, nor can Miss Smith,” Miss Sibson replied. “Who,

indeed, has seen her only twice or thrice, at long intervals, and has

not heard her name. But Miss Smith’s education—she has never known her

parents—was defrayed, I presume, by this godmother. And once a year

Miss Smith has been in the habit of receiving a gift, of some value to

a young person in her position, accompanied by a few words in that

handwriting.”

Vaughan stared. “And,” he said, “you draw the inference that—that——”

“I draw no inference,” Miss Sibson replied drily, “save that I have

authority from—shall I say her godmother—to trust you farther than I

should have trusted you. That is the only inference I draw. But I have

one thing to add,” she continued. “Miss Smith did not enter my

employment in an ordinary way. My late assistant left me abruptly.

While I was at a loss an attorney of character in this city called on

me and said that a client desired to place a young person in safe

hands; that she was a trained teacher, and must live by teaching, but

that care was necessary, since she was very young, and had more than

her share of good looks. He hinted, Mr. Vaughan, at the inference which

you, I believe, have already drawn. And—and that is all.”

Vaughan looked thoughtfully at the carpet.

Miss Sibson waited awhile. At last: “The point is,” she said shrewdly,

“do you still wish to have the five minutes?”

Arthur Vaughan hesitated. He knew that he ought, that it was his duty,

to say “No.” But something in the woman’s humorous eye challenged him,

and recklessly—for the gratification of a moment—he said: “Yes, if you

please, I will see her.”

“Very good, very good,” Miss Sibson answered slowly. She had not been

blind to the momentary hesitation. “Then I will send her to you to make

her apologies. Only be kind enough to remember that she does not know

that you have seen that slip of paper.”

He assented, and with a good-natured nod Miss Sibson rose and went

heavily from the room. Not for nothing was she held in Bristol a woman

of sagacity, whose game of whist it was a pleasure to watch; nor

without reason had that attorney of character, of whom we have heard,

chosen her _in custodiam puellæ_.

Vaughan waited, and to be frank, his heart beat more quickly than

usual. He knew that he was doing a foolish thing, though he had refused

to commit himself; and an unworthy thing, though Miss Sibson, perhaps

for her own reasons, had winked at it. He knew that he had no right to

see the girl if he did not mean her well; and how could he mean her

well when he had no intention of marrying her? For, for a man with his

career in prospect to marry a girl in her position—to say nothing of

the stigma which no doubt lay upon her birth—was a folly of which none

but boys and old men were capable.

He listened, ill at ease, already repenting. The voices in the next

room, reduced to a faint murmur by the closed doors, ceased. She was

being told. She was being sent to him. He coloured. Yes, he was ashamed

of himself. He rose and went to the window, and wished that he had said

“No”; that he had taken himself off. What was he doing here at his time

of life—the most sane and best balanced time of life—in this girls’

school? It was unworthy of him.

The door opened, and he forgot his unworthiness, he forgot all. The

abnormal attraction, allurement, charm, call it what you will, which

had overcome him when she turned her eyes on him on the coach overcame

him again—and tenfold. He thought that it must lie in her eyes, gentle

as a dove’s. And yet he did not know. He had not seen her indoors

before, and her hair gathered in a knot at the back of her head was a

Greek surprise to him; while her blushes, the quivering of her mouth,

her figure slender but full of grace, and high-girdled after the mode

of the day—all, all were so perfect, so enticing, that he knew not

where the magic lay.

But magic there was. And such magic that though he had prepared

himself, and though the last thing in his thoughts was to insult her,

he forgot himself. As she paused, her hand still resting on the door,

her face downcast and distressed, “Good G—d,” he cried, “how beautiful

you are!”

And she saw that he meant no insult, that the words burst from him

spontaneously. But not the less for that was their effect on her. She

turned white, her very heart seeming to stop, she appeared to be about

to swoon. While he, forgetting all but her shrinking beauty, devoured

her with his eyes.

Until he remembered himself. Then he turned from her to the window.

“Forgive me!” he cried. “I did not know what I said. You came on me so

suddenly; you looked so beautiful——”

He stopped; he could not go on.

And she was trembling from head to foot; but she made an effort to

escape back to the commonplace. “I came,” she stammered—it was clear

that she hardly knew what she was saying—“Miss Sibson told me to come

to say that I—I was sorry, sir, that I—I misjudged you yesterday.”

“Yesterday? Yesterday?” he cried, almost angrily. “Bah, it is an age

since yesterday!”

She could make no answer to that, though she knew well what he meant.

If she answered him it was only by suffering him to gaze at her in an

eloquent silence—a silence in which his eyes cried again and again,

“How beautiful you are!” While her eyes, downcast, under trembling

lashes, her heart beaten down, defenceless, cried only for “Quarter,

quarter!”

They were yards apart. The table, and on it Miss Sibson’s squat workbox

and a pile of longcloth, was between them. Miss Sibson herself could

have desired nothing more proper. And yet—

_Farewell, farewell, my faithless shield,

Thy lord at length is forced to yield.

Vain, vain is every outward care,

The foe’s within and triumphs there!_

It was all over. In her ears would ring for ever his words of

worship—the cry of the man to the woman, “How beautiful you are!” She

would thrill with pleasure when she thought of them, and burn with

shame, and never, never, never be the same again! And for him, with

that cry forced from him, love had become present, palpable, real, and

the idea of marriage real also; an idea to be withstood, to be

combated, to be treated as foolish, Byronic, impossible. But an idea

which would not leave him any more than the image of her gentle beauty,

indelibly stamped on his brain, would leave him. He might spend some

days or some weeks in doubt and wretchedness. But from that moment the

odds were against him—he was young, and passion had never had her way

with him—as seriously against him as against the army that with spies

and traitors in its midst moves against an united foe.

Not a word that was _convenant_ had passed between them, though so much

had passed, when a hasty footstep crossed the forecourt, and stopped at

the door. The knocker fell sharply twice, and recalled them to

realities.

“I—I must go,” she faltered, wresting herself from the spell of his

eyes. “I have said what I—I hope you understand, and I—it is time I

went.” How her heart was beating!

“Oh, no, no!”

“Yes, I must go!”

Too late! A loud voice in the passage, a heavy step, announced a

visitor. The door flew open, and there entered, pushing the startled

maid aside, the Honourable Bob Flixton, at the height of his glory,

loud, impudent, and unabashed.

“Run to earth, my lad!” he cried boisterously. “Run to earth! Run——”

He broke off, gaping, as his eyes fell upon poor Mary, who, in making

way for him, had partly hidden herself behind the door. He whistled

softly, in great amazement, and “Hope I don’t intrude,” he continued.

And he grinned; while Vaughan, looking blackest thunder at him, could

find no words that were adequate. To think that this loud-voiced,

confident fool, the Don Giovanni of the regiment, had stumbled on his

pearl!

“Well, well, well!” the Honourable Bob resumed, casting down his eyes

as if he were shocked. And again: “I hope I don’t intrude,” he

continued—it was the parrot cry of that year. “I didn’t know. I’ll take

myself off again”—he whistled low—“as fast as I can.”

But Vaughan felt that to let him go thus, to spread the tale with a

thousand additions and innuendoes, was worst of all. “Wait, if you

please,” he said, with a note of sternness in his tone. “I am coming

with you, Flixton. Good-morning, Miss Smith.”

“See here, won’t you introduce me?” cried the irrepressible Bob.

“No!” Vaughan answered curtly, and without staying to reflect. “You

will kindly tell Miss Sibson, Miss Smith, that I am obliged, greatly

obliged to her. Now come, Flixton! I have done my business, and we are

not wanted here.”

“I come reluctantly,” said Bob, allowing himself to be dragged out, but

not until he had cast a last languishing look at the beauty. And on the

doorstep, “Sly dog, sly dog!” he said. “To think that in Bristol, where

pretty girls are as scarce as mushrooms in March, there should be such

an angel! Damme, an angel! And you the discoverer. It beats all!”

“Shut up,” Vaughan answered angrily. “You know nothing about it!” And

then, still more sourly, “See here, Flixton, I take it ill of you

following me here. It was too cool, I say.”

But the Honourable Bob was not quick to quarrel. “I saw you go in, dear

chap,” he cried heartily. “I wanted to tell you that the hour of dinner

was changed. See? Did my own errand, and coming back thought I’d—truth

was, I fancied you’d some little game on hand.”

“Nothing of the kind!”

The Honourable Bob stopped. “Honour bright? Honour bright?” he repeated

eagerly. “Mean to say, Vaughan, you’re not on the track of that little

filly?”

Vaughan scowled. “Not in the way you mean,” he said sternly. “You make

a mistake. She’s a good girl.”

Flixton winked. “Heard that before, my lad,” he said, “more than once.

From my grandmother. I’ll take my chance of that.”

Vaughan in his heart would have been glad to fall upon him and pommel

him. But there were objections to that course. On the other hand, his

feelings had cooled in the last few minutes, and he was far from

prepared to announce offhand that he was going to marry the beauty. So

“No, you will not, Flixton,” he said. “Let it go! Do you hear? The fact

is,” he continued, in some embarrassment, “I’m in a sort of fiduciary

relation to the young lady, and—and I am not going to see her played

with. That’s the fact.”

“Fiduciary relation?” the Honourable Bob retorted, in perplexity. “What

the deuce is that? Never heard of it! D’you mean, man, that you

are—eh?—related to her? Of course, if so——”

“No, I am not related to her.”

“Then——”

“But I’m not going to see her made a fool of, that’s all!”

An idea struck the Honourable Bob. He stared. “See here,” he said in a

tone of horror, “you ain’t—you ain’t thinking of marrying her?”

Vaughan’s cheeks burned. “May be, and may be not,” he said curtly. “But

either way, it is my business!”

“But surely you’re not! Man alive!”

“It is my business, I say!”

“Of course, of course, if it is as bad as that,” Flixton answered with

a grin. “But—hope I don’t intrude, Vaughan, but ain’t you making a bit

of a fool of yourself? What’ll old Vermuyden say, eh?”

“That’s my business too!” Vaughan answered haughtily.

“Just so, just so; and quite enough for me. All I say is—if you are not

in earnest yourself, don’t play the dog in the manger!”

XI

DON GIOVANNI FLIXTON

In the political world the last week of April and the first week of May

of that year were fraught with surprises. It is probable that they saw

more astonished people than are to be found in England in an ordinary

twelvemonth. The party which had monopolised power for half a century,

and to that end and the advancement of themselves, their influence,

their friends, and their dependants, had spent the public money,

strained the law, and supported the mob, were incredibly, nay, were

bitterly surprised when they saw all these engines turned against them;

when they found dependants falling off and friends growing cold; above

all, when they found that rabble, which they had so often directed,

aiming its yells and brickbats against their windows.

But it is unlikely that any Tory of them all was more surprised by the

change in the political aspect than Arthur Vaughan—when he came to

think of it—by the position in which he had put himself. Certainly he

had taken no step that was not revocable. He had said nothing positive;

his honour was not engaged. But he had said a good deal. On the spur of

the moment, moved by the strange attraction which the girl had for him,

he had spoken after a fashion which only farther speech could justify.

And then, not content with that, as if fortune were determined to make

sport of his discretion, he had been led by another impulse—call it

generosity, call it jealousy, call it what you will—to say more to Bob

Flixton than he had said to her.

He had done this who had hitherto held himself a little above the

common run of men. Who had chalked out his career and never doubted

that he had the strength to follow it. Who had not been content to

wait, idle and dissipated, for a dead man’s shoes, but in the pride of

a mind which he believed to be the master of his passions had set his

face towards the high prizes of the senate and the forum. He, who if he

could not be Fox, would be Erskine. Who would be anything, in a word,

except the empty-headed man of pleasure, or the plain dullard satisfied

to sit in a corner with a little.

He, who had planned such a future, now found himself on the brink—ay,

on the very point—of committing as foolish an act as the most

thoughtless could commit. He was proposing to marry a girl below him in

station, still farther below him in birth, whom he had only known three

days, whom he had only seen three times! And all because she had

beautiful eyes, and looked at him—Heavens, how she had looked at him!

He went hot as he pictured her with her melting eyes, hanging towards

him a little as the ivy inclines to the oak. And then he turned cold.

And cold, he considered what he was going to do!

Of course he was not going to marry her.

No doubt he had said to her more than he had the right to say. But his

honour was not engaged. The girl was not the worse for him; even if

that which he had read in her eyes were true, she would get over it as

quickly as he would. But marry her, give way to a feeling doubtless

evanescent, let himself be swayed by a fancy at which he would laugh a

year later—no! No! He was not so weak. He had not only his career to

think of, but the family honours which would be his one day. What would

old Vermuyden say if he impaled a baton sinister with the family arms,

added a Smith to the family alliances, married the nameless, penniless

teacher in a girls’ school?

No, of course, he was not going to marry her. He had said what he had

said to the Honourable Bob merely to shield her from a Don Juan. He had

not meant it. He would go for a long fatiguing walk and put the notion

and the girl out of his head, and come back cured of his folly, and

make a merry night of it with the old set. And to-morrow—no, the morrow

was Sunday—on Monday he would return to London and to all the chances

which the changing political situation must open to an ambitious man.

He regretted that he had not taken the Chancellor’s hint and sought for

a seat in the House.

But the solitary ramble in the valley of the Avon, which was a

hundredfold more beautiful in those days than in these, because less

spoiled by the hand of man, a ramble by the Logwood Mills, with their

clear-running weedy stream, by King’s Weston and Leigh Woods—such a

ramble, tuneful with the songs of birds and laden with the scents of

spring, may not be the surest cure for that passion, which

_is not to be reasoned down or lost_

_In high ambition or a thirst for greatness!_

At any rate he returned uncured, and for the first part of the

Honourable Bob’s dinner was wildly merry. After that, and suddenly, he

fell into a moody silence which his host was not the last to note.

Fortunately with the removal of the cloth and the first brisk journey

of the decanters came news. A waiter brought it. Hart Davies, the Tory

candidate for Bristol, and for twenty years its popular member, had

withdrawn, seeing his chance hopeless. The retirement was unexpected,

and it caused so much surprise that the party could think of nothing

else. Nine-tenths of those present were Tories, and Flixton proposed

that they should sally forth and vent their feelings by smashing the

windows of the Bush, the Radical headquarters; a feat performed many a

time before with no worse consequences than a broken head or two. But

Colonel Brereton set his foot sharply on the proposal.

“I’ll put you under arrest if you do,” he said. “I’m senior officer of

the district, and I’ll not have it, Flixton! Do you think that this is

the time, you madmen,” he continued, looking round the table and

speaking with indignation, “to provoke the rabble, and get the throats

of half Bristol cut?”

“Oh, come, Colonel, it is not as bad as that!” Flixton remonstrated.

“You don’t know how bad it is,” Brereton answered, his brooding eyes

kindling. And he developed anew his fixed idea that the forces of

disorder, once provoked, were irresistible; that the country was at

their mercy, and that only by humouring them, a course suggested also

by humanity, could the storm be weathered.

The company consisted, for the most part, of reckless young subalterns

flushed with wine. They listened out of respect to his rank, but they

winked and grinned behind his back; until, half conscious of ridicule,

he grew angry. On ordinary occasions Flixton would have been the worst

offender. But he had the grace to remember that the Colonel was his

guest, and he sought to turn the subject.

“Come, come!” he cried, hammering the table and pushing the bottle.

“Let the Colonel alone. For Heaven’s sake shelve the cursed Bill! I’m

sick of it! It’s the death of all fun and jollity. I’ll give you a

sentiment: ‘The Fair when they are Kind, and the Kind when they are

Fair.’ Fill up! Fill up, all, and drink it!”

They echoed the toast in various tones, sober or fuddled. And some

began to grow excited. A glass was shattered and flung noisily into the

fire. A new one was called for, also noisily.

“Now, Bill,” Flixton continued to his right-hand neighbour, “it’s your

turn! Give us something spicy!” And he hammered the table. “Captain

Codrington’s sentiment.”

“Let’s have a minute!” pleaded the gentleman assailed.

“Not a minute,” boisterously. “See, the table’s waiting for you!

Captain Codrington’s sentiment!”

Men of small genius kept a written list, and committed some lines to

memory before dinner. The Captain was one of these. But the call on him

was sudden, and he sought, with an agonised mind, for one which would

seem in the least degree novel. At last, with a sigh of relief, “_Maids

and Missuses!_” he cried.

“Ay, ay, Maids and Missuses!” the Honourable Bob echoed, raising his

glass. “And especially,” he whispered, calling his neighbour’s

attention to Vaughan by a shove, “schoolmissuses! Schoolmissuses, my

lad! Here, Vaughan,” he continued aloud, “you must drink this, and no

heeltaps!”

Vaughan caught his name and awoke from a reverie. “Very good,” he said,

raising his glass. “What is it?”

“Maids and Missuses!” the Honourable Bob replied, with a wink at his

neighbour. And then, incited by the fumes of the wine he had taken, he

rose to his feet and raised his glass. “Gentlemen,” he said,

“gentlemen!”

“Silence,” they cried. “Silence! Silence for Bob’s speech.”

“Gentlemen,” he resumed, a spark of malice in his eyes, “I’ve a piece

of news to give you! It’s news that—that’s been mighty slyly kept by a

gentleman here present. Devilish close he’s kept it, I’ll say that for

him! But he’s a neat hand that can bamboozle Bob Flixton, and I’ve run

him to earth, run him to earth this morning and got it out of him.”

“Hear! Hear! Bob! Go on, Bob; what is it?” from the company.

“You are going to hear, my Trojans! And no flam! Gentlemen, charge your

glasses! I’ve the honour to inform you that our old friend and

tiptopper, Arthur Vaughan, otherwise the Counsellor, has got himself

regularly put up, knocked down, and sold to as pretty a piece of the

feminine as you’ll see in a twelvemonth! Prettiest in Bristol, ’pon

honour,” with feeling, “be the other who she may! Regular case of—” and

in irresistibly comic accents, with his head and glass alike tilted, he

drolled,

“_There first for thee my passion grew_,

_Sweet, sweet Matilda Pottingen;_

_Thou wast the daughter of my tu_-

_tor, law professor at the U_-

_niversity of Göttingen!_

’Niversity of Göttingen! Don’t laugh, gentlemen! It’s so! He’s entered

on the waybill, book through to matrimony, and”—the Honourable Bob was

undoubtedly a little tipsy—“and it only remains for us to give him a

good send-off. So charge your glasses, and——”

Brereton laid his hand on his arm. He was sober and he did not like the

look on Vaughan’s disgusted face. “One moment, Flixton,” he said; “is

this true, Mr. Vaughan?”

Vaughan’s brow was as black as thunder. He had never dreamt that, drunk

or sober, Flixton would be guilty of such a breach of confidence. He

hesitated. Then, “No!” he said.

“It’s not true?” Codrington struck in. “You are not going to be

married, old chap?”

“No!”

“But, man,” Flixton hiccoughed, “you told me so—or something like

it—-only this morning.”

“You either misunderstood me,” Vaughan answered, in a tone so distinct

as to be menacing, “for you have said far more than I said. Or, if you

prefer it, I’ve changed my mind. In either case it is my business! And

I’ll trouble you to leave it alone!”

“Oh, if you put it—that way, old chap?”

“I do put it that way!”

“And any way,” Brereton said, interposing hurriedly, “this is no time

for marrying! I’ve told you boys before, and I tell you again——”

And he plunged into a fresh argument on the old point. Two or three

joined issue, grinning. And Vaughan, as soon as attention was diverted

from him, slipped away.

He was horribly disgusted, and sunk very low in his own eyes. He

loathed what he had done. He had not, indeed, been false to the girl,

for he had given her no promise. He had not denied her, for her name

had not been mentioned. And he had not gone back on his resolution, for

he had never formed one seriously. Yet in a degree he had done all

these things. He had played a shabby part by himself and by the girl.

He had been meanly ashamed of her. And though his conduct had followed

the lines which he had marked out for himself, he hoped that he might

never again feel so unhappy, and so poor a thing, as he felt as he

walked the streets and cursed his discretion.

Discretion! Cowardice was the right name for it. Because the girl, the

most beautiful, pure, and gentle creature on whom his eyes had ever

rested, was called Mary Smith, and taught in a school, he disavowed her

and turned his back on her.