“Yes, bribed, sir. But let me tell you,” Vaughan went on, allowing the

bitterness which he had been feeling to appear, “let me tell you, Sir

Robert, that if not only my future, but my present, if my all, were at

stake—I should resent such an offer as an insult!”

Sir Robert took a step towards the bell and stopped.

“An insult!” Vaughan repeated firmly. “As great an insult as I should

inflict upon you, if I were unwise enough to do the errand I was asked

to do a week ago—by a cabinet minister. And offered you, Sir Robert,

here in your own house, a peerage conditional on your support of the

Bill!”

“A peerage?” Sir Robert’s eyes seemed to be starting from his head. “A

peerage! Conditional on my——”

“Yes, sir, conditional on your renunciation of those opinions which you

honestly hold as I honestly hold mine!” Vaughan repeated coolly. “I

will make the offer if you wish it.”

Wetherell rose ponderously. “See here!” he said. “Listen to me, will

you, you two! You, Vermuyden, as well as the young man. You will both

be sorry for what you are saying now! Listen to me! Listen to me, man!”

But the baronet was already tugging at the bell-rope. He was no longer

red; he was white with anger. And not without reason. This

whipper-snapper, this pettifogging lad, just out of his teens, to talk

to him of peerages, to patronise him, to offer him—to—to——

For a moment he stammered and could not speak. At last, “Enough!

Enough, sir; leave my house!” he cried, shaking from head to foot with

passion, and losing for the first time in many years his self-control.

“Leave my house,” he repeated furiously, “and never set foot in it

again! Not a pound, and not a penny will you have of mine! Never!

Never! Never!”

Vaughan smiled, “Very good, sir,” he said, shrugging his shoulders.

“Your fortune is your own. But——”

“Begone, sir! Not another word, but go!”

Vaughan raised his eyebrows, bowed in a ceremonious fashion to

Wetherell, and nodded to White, who stood petrified and gaping. Then he

walked slowly through that room and the next, and with one backward

smile—vanished.

And this time, as he passed through the hall, narrowly missing Flixton

who was leaving the dining-room, there could be no doubt that the

breach was complete, that the small cordiality which had existed

between the two men was at an end. The Bill, which had played so many

mischievous tricks, severed so many old friends, broken the ties of so

many years, had dealt no one a more spiteful blow than it had dealt

Arthur Vaughan.

XVII

THE CHIPPINGE ELECTION

The great day on which the Borough of Chippinge was to give its vote,

Aye or No, Reform or No Reform, the Rule of the Few or the Rule of the

Many, was come; and in the large room on the first floor of the White

Lion were assembled a score of persons deeply interested in the issue.

Those who had places at the three windows were gazing on what was going

forward in the space below; and it was noticeable that while the two or

three who remained in the background talked and joked, these were

silent; possibly because the uproar without made hearing difficult. The

hour was early, the business of the day was to come, but already the

hub-bub was indescribable. Nor was that all; every minute some missile,

a much enduring cabbage-stalk, or a dead cat in Tory colours, rose to a

level with the windows, hovered, and sank—amid a storm of groans or

cheers. For the most part, indeed, these missiles fell harmless. But

that the places of honour at the windows were not altogether places of

safety was proved by a couple of shattered panes, as well as by the

sickly hue of some among the spectators.

Nearly all who had attended the Vermuyden dinner were in the room. But,

for certain, things which had worn one aspect across the mahogany, wore

another now. At the table old and young had made light of the shoving

and mauling and drubbing through which they had forced their way to the

good things before them; they had even made a jest of the bit of a rub

they were likely to have on the polling day. Now, the sight of the

noisy crowd which filled the open space, from the head of the High

Street to the wall of the Abbey, and from the Vineyard east of it,

almost to the West Port—made their bones ache. They looked, even the

boldest, at one another. The heart of Dewell, the barber, was in his

boots; the rector stared aghast; and Mowatt, the barrister, Arthur

Vaughan’s ill-found friend, wished for once that he was on the vulgar

side.

True, the doors of the White Lion were guarded by a sturdy phalanx of

Vermuyden lads; mustered with what difficulty and kept together by what

arguments, White best knew. But what were two or three score, however

faithful, and however strong, against the hundreds and thousands who

swayed and cheered and groaned before the Inn? Who swarmed upon the old

town-cross until they hid every inch of the crumbling stonework; who

clung to every niche and buttress of the Abbey; and from whose mass as

from a sea the solitary church spire rose like some lighthouse cut off

by breakers? Who, here, forgetful of their Wiltshire birth cheered the

Birmingham tub-thumper to the echo, and there, roared stern assent to

the wildest statements of the Political Union?

True, a dozen banners and thrice as many flags gave something of a

festive air to the scene. But the timid who tried to draw solace from

these retreated appalled by the daring “Death or Freedom!” inscribed on

one banner: or the scarcely less bold “The Sovereign People,” which

bellied above the clothiers. The majority of the placards bore nothing

worse than the watchword of the party: “The Bill, the whole Bill, and

nothing but the Bill!” or “Retrenchment and Reform!” or—in reference to

the King—“God bless the two Bills!” But for all that, Dewell, the

barber—and some more who would not have confessed it—wished the day

well over and no bones broken! A great day for Chippinge, but a day on

which many an old score was like to be paid, many a justice to hear the

commonalty’s opinion of him, many a man who had thriven under the old

rule, to read the writing on the wall!

Certainly nothing like the spectacle visible from the White Lion

windows had been seen in Chippinge within living memory. The Abbey,

indeed, which had seen the last of the mitred Abbots pass out—shorn of

his strength, and with weeping townsfolk about him in lieu of belted

knights—that pile, stately in its ruin, which had witnessed a

revolution greater even than this which impended, and more tragic,

might have viewed its pair, might have seen its precincts seethe as

they seethed now. But no living man. Nor did those who scanned the

crowd from the White Lion find aught to lessen its terrors. There were,

indeed, plenty of decent, respectable people in the crowd, who, though

they were set on gaining their rights, had no notion of violence. But

wood burns when it is kindled: and here at the corner of the Heart and

Hand, the Whig headquarters, was a spark like to light the fire—Boston,

the bruiser, and a dozen of his fellows; men who were, one and all, the

idols of the yokels who stood about them and stared. Pybus, who had

brought them hither, was not to be seen; he was weaving his spells in

the Heart and Hand. But Mr. Williams, White-Hat Williams, the richest

man in Chippinge, who, voteless, had only lived of late to see this

day—he was here at the head of his clothmen, and as fierce as the

poorest. And half-a-dozen lesser men there were of the same kind;

sallow Blackford, the Methodist, the fugleman of every dissenter within

ten miles; and two or three small lawyers whom the landlords did not

employ, and two or three apothecaries who were in the same case. With

these were one or two famished curates, with Sydney Smith for their

warranty, and his saying about Dame Partington’s Mop and the Atlantic

on their lips; and a sprinkling of spouters from the big towns—men who

had the glories of Orator Hunt and William Cobbett before their eyes.

And everywhere, working in the mass like yeast, moved a score of bitter

malcontents—whom the old system had bruised under foot—poachers whom

Sir Robert had jailed, or the lovers of maids as frail as fair, or

labourers whom the Poor Laws had crushed—a score of malcontents whose

grievances long muttered in pothouses now flared to light and cried for

vengeance. In a word, there were the elements of mischief in the crowd:

and under the surface an ugly spirit. Even the most peaceable were

grim, knowing it was now or never. So that the faces at the White Lion

windows grew longer as their owners gazed and listened.

“I don’t know what’s come to the people!” the Rector bawled, turning

about to make himself heard by his neighbour. “Eh, what?”

“I’d like to see Lord Grey hung!” answered Squire Rowley, his face

purple. “And Lord Lansdowne with him! What do you say, sir?” to

Sergeant Wathen.

“Fortunate a show of hands don’t carry it!” the Sergeant cried,

shrugging his shoulders with an assumption of easiness.

“Carry it? Of course we’ll carry it!” the Squire replied wrathfully. “I

suppose two and two still make four!”

Isaac White, who was whispering with a man in a corner of the room,

wished that he was sure of that; or, rather, that three and two made

six. But the Squire was continuing. “Bah!” he cried in disgust. “Give

these people votes? Look at ’em! Look at ’em, sir! Votes indeed! Votes

indeed! Give ’em oakum, I say!”

He forgot that nine-tenths of those below were as good as the voters at

his elbow, who were presently to return two members for Chippinge. Or

rather, it did not occur to him, good old Tory as he was, and

convinced,

_’Twas the Jacobins brought every mischief about_,

that Dewell’s vote was Dewell’s, or Annibal’s Annibal’s.

Meanwhile, “I wish we were safe at the hustings!” young Mowatt shouted

in the ear of the man who stood in front of him.

The man chanced to be Cooke, the other candidate. He turned. “At the

hustings?” he said irascibly. “Do you mean, sir, that we are expected

to fight our way through that rabble?”

“I am afraid we must,” Mowatt answered.

“Then it—has been d——d badly arranged!” retorted the outraged Cooke,

who never forgot that as he paid well for his seat it ought to be a

soft one. “Go through this mob, and have our heads broken?”

The faces of those who could hear him grew longer. “And it wants only

five minutes of ten,” complained a third. “We ought to be going now.”

“D——n me, but suppose they don’t let us go!” cried Cooke. “Badly

arranged! I should think it is, sir! D——d badly arranged! The hustings

should have been on this side.”

But hitherto the hustings had been at Chippinge a matter of form, and

it had not occurred to anyone to alter their position—cheek by jowl

with the Whig headquarters, but divided by seventy yards of seething

mob from the White Lion. However, White, on an appeal being made to

him, put a better face on the matter. “It’s all right, gentlemen,” he

said, “it’s all right! If they have the hustings, we have the returning

officer, and they can do nothing without us. I’ve seen Mr. Pybus, and I

have his safe conduct for our party to go to the hustings.”

But it is hard to satisfy everybody, and at this there was a fresh

outcry. “A safe conduct?” cried the Squire, redder about the gills than

before. “For shame, sir! Are we to be indebted to the other side for a

safe conduct! I never heard of such a thing!”

“I quite agree with you,” cried the Rector. “Quite! I protest, Mr.

White, against anything of the kind.”

But White was unmoved. “We’ve got to get our voters there,” he said.

“Sir Robert will be displeased, I know, but——”

“Never was such a thing heard of!”

“No, sir, but never was such an election,” White answered with spirit.

“Where is Sir Robert?”

“He’ll be here presently,” White replied. “He’ll be here presently.

Anyway, gentlemen,” he continued, “we had better be going down to the

hall. In a body, gentlemen, if you please, and voters in the middle.

And keep together, if you please. A little shouting,” he added

cheerfully, “breaks no bones. We can shout too!”

The thing was unsatisfactory, and without precedent; nay, humiliating.

But there seemed to be nothing else for it. As White said, this

election was not as other elections; Bath was lost, and Bristol, too,

it was whispered; the country was gone mad. And so, frowning and

ill-content, the magnates trooped out, and led by White began to

descend the stairs. There was much confusion, one asking if the

Alderman was there, another demanding to see Sir Robert, here a man

grumbling about White’s arrangements, there a man silent over the

discovery, made perhaps for the first time, that here was like to be an

end of old Toryism and the loaves and the fishes it had dispensed.

In the hall where the party was reinforced by a crowd of their smaller

supporters a man plucked White’s sleeve and drew him aside. “She’s out

now!” he whispered. “Pybus has left two with him and they won’t leave

him for me. But if you went and ordered them out there’s a chance

they’d go, and——”

“The doctor’s not there?”

“No, and Pillinger’s well enough to come, if you put it strong. He’s

afraid of his wife and they’ve got him body and soul, but——”

White cast a despairing eye on the confusion about him. “How can I

come?” he muttered. “I must get these to the poll first.”

“Then you’ll never do it!” the man retorted. “There’ll be no coming and

going, to-day, Mr. White, you take it from me. Now’s the time while

they’re waiting for you in front. You can slip out at the back and

bring him in and take him with you. It’s the only way, so help me!

They’re in that temper we’ll be lucky if we’re all alive to-morrow!”

The man was right; and White knew it, yet he hesitated. If he had had

an _aide_ fit for the task, the thing might be done. But to go

himself—he on whom everything fell! He reflected. Possibly Arthur

Vaughan might not vote for the enemy after all. But if he did, Sir

Robert would poll only five to six, and be beaten! Unless he polled

Pillinger, when the returning officer’s vote, of which he was sure,

would give him the election. Pillinger’s vote, therefore, was vital;

everything turned upon it. And he determined to go. His absence would

only cause a little delay, and he must risk that. He slipped away.

He was missed at once, and the discovery redoubled the confusion. One

asked where he was, and another where Sir Robert was; while Cooke in

tones louder and more irritable than was prudent found fresh fault, and

wished to heaven that he had never seen the place. Long accustomed to

one-sided contests of which both parties knew the issue, the Tory

managers were helpless; they were aware that the hour had struck, and

that they were expected, but without White they were uncertain how to

act. Some cried that White had gone on, and that they should follow;

some that Sir Robert was to meet them at the hustings, others that they

might as well be home as waiting there! While the babel without

deafened and distracted them. At last, without order given, they found

themselves moving out.

Their reception did not clear their brains. Such a roar of execration

as greeted them had never been heard in Chippinge: the hair on Dewell,

the barber’s, head stood up, the Alderman’s checks grew pale, Cooke

dropped his cane, the stoutest flinched. Changed indeed were the times

from those a year or two past when their exit had been greeted by

sycophantic cheers, or, at worst, by a little good-humoured jesting!

Now the whole multitude in the open, not in one part, but in every

part, knew as by instinct of their setting forth, brandished on the

instant a thousand arms at them, deafened them with a thousand voices,

demanded monotonously “The Bill! The Bill!” Nor had the demonstration

stopped there, but for the intervention of a body of a hundred Whig

stalwarts who, posting themselves on the flanks of the derided

procession, conferred on its slow march an ignoble safety.

No wonder that many a one who found himself thus guarded rubbed his

eyes. The times were changed indeed! No more despotism of Squire and

Parson, no more monopoly of places, no more nominated members, no more

elections that did but mock men who had no share in them, no more

“Cripples,” no more snug jobs! The Tories might agree with Mr. Fudge

_That this passion for roaring had come in of late

Since the rabble all tried for a voice in the State_,

and foretell the ruinous outcome of it. But the thing was, the

many-headed, the many-handed had them in its grip. They must go meekly,

or not at all; with visions of French fish-fags and guillotines before

their eyes, and wondering, most of them—as they tried to show a bold

front, tried to wave their banners and give some answering shout to the

sea that beat upon them—how they would get home again with whole skins!

Perhaps there was only one of them who never had that thought; though

he, alone of them all, was unaware of the precautions taken for his

safety. That was Sir Robert Vermuyden, the master of all, the patron,

the Borough-monger! Attended by Bob Flixton, who had come with him from

Bristol to see the fun—and whose voice it will be remembered Vaughan

had overheard at Stapylton the evening before—and by two or three other

guests, he had entered the White Lion from the rear; arriving in time

to fall in—somewhat surprised at his supporters’ precipitation—at the

tail of the procession. The moment he was recognised by the crowd he

was greeted with a roar of “Down with the Borough-monger!” that fairly

appalled his companions. But he faced it calmly, imperturbably,

quietly; a little paler, a little prouder, and a little sterner perhaps

than usual, but with a gleam in his eyes that had not been seen in them

for years. For answer to all he smiled with a curling lip: and it is

probable that as much as any hour in his life he enjoyed this hour,

which put him to the test before those over whom he had ruled so long.

His caste might be passing, the days of his power might be numbered,

the waves of democracy might be rising about the system in which he

believed the safety of England to lie; but no man should see him

falter. No veteran of the old noblesse in days which Sir Robert could

remember had gone to his fate more proudly than the English patrician

was prepared to go to his, ay, and though worse than the guillotine

awaited him.

His contemptuous attitude, his fearless bearing, impressed the crowd,

appreciative at bottom, of courage. And presently, where he turned his

cold, smiling eyes they gaped instead of hissing: and one here and

there under the magic of his look doffed hat or carried hand to

forehead, and henceforth was mute. And so great is the sympathy of all

parts of a mob that this silence spread quickly, mysteriously, at last,

wholly. So that when he, last of his party, stepped on the hustings,

there was for a moment a complete stillness; a stillness of

expectation, while he looked round; such a stillness as startled the

leaders of the opposition. It could not be—it could not be, that after

all, the old lion would prove too much for them!

White-Hat Williams roared aloud in his rage. “Up hats and shout, lads,”

he yelled, “or by G—d the d——d Tories will do us after all! Are you

afraid of them, you lubbers! Shout, lads, shout!”

XVIII

THE CHIPPINGE ELECTION (Continued)

The beast that was in the crowd answered to the spur. “Ye’ve robbed us

long enough, ye old rascal!” a harsh Midland voice shrieked over the

heads of the throng. “We’ll have our rights now, you blood-sucker!” And

“Boo! Boo!” the lower elements of the mob broke forth. And then in

stern cadence, “The Bill! The Bill! The Bill!”

“Out of Egypt, and out of the House of Bondage!” shrieked a Methodist

above the hub-bub.

“Ay, ay!”

“Slaves no longer!”

“No! No! No!”

“Hear that, ye hoary tyrant!” in a woman’s shrill tones. “Who jailed my

man for a hare?”

A roar of laughter which somewhat cleared the air followed this. Sir

Robert smiled grimly.

The hustings, a mere wooden platform, raised four feet above the

ground, rested against the Abbey gateway. It was closed at the rear and

at each end; but in front it was guarded only by a stout railing. And

so public was it, and so exposed its dangerous eminence, that the more

timid of the unpopular party were no sooner upon it than they yearned

for the safe obscurity of the common level. Of the three booths into

which the interior was divided, the midmost was reserved for the

returning officer and his staff.

Bob Flixton, who kept close to Sir Robert’s elbow, looked down on the

sea of jeering faces. “I tell you what it is,” he said. “We’re going to

have a confounded row!”

Mowatt, at some distance from him, was of the same opinion, but

regarded the outlook differently. “It’s my belief,” he muttered, “that

we shall all be murdered.”

And “D——n the Bill!” the old Squire ejaculated. “The people are off

their heads! Jack as good as his master, and better too!”

These four, with the candidates, were in the front row. The Rector, the

Alderman, and one or two of the neighbouring gentry shared the honour;

and faced as well as they could the hooting and yelling, and the

occasional missile. In the front of the other booth were White-Hat

Williams and Blackford, the minister, Mr. Wrench, the candidate,

wreathed in smiles, a pair of Whig Squires from the Bowood side, a

curate of the same colour, Pybus—and Arthur Vaughan!

A thrill ran through Sir Robert’s supporters when they saw his young

kinsman on the other side; actually on the other side and arrayed

against them. Their hearts, already low, sank a peg lower. Of evil

omens this seemed the worst; sunk is the cause the young desert! And

many were the curious eyes that searched the renegade’s features and

strove to read his thoughts.

But in vain. His head high, his face firmly composed, Vaughan looked

stonily before him. Nor was it possible to say whether he was really

unmoved, was stolidly indifferent, or merely masked agitation. Sir

Robert on his side never looked at him, nor betrayed any sense of his

presence. But he knew. He knew! And with the first bitter presage of

defeat—for he was not a man to be intimidated by noise—he repeated his

vow: “Not a pound, nor a penny! Never! Never!” This public

renunciation, this wanton defiance—he would never forgive it!

Henceforth, it must be war to the knife between them. No thousands, no

compensation, no compromise! As the young man was sowing, so he should

reap. He who, in its darkest hour not only insulted but abandoned his

family, what punishment was too severe for him?

Vaughan could make a good guess at the proud autocrat’s feelings: and

he averted his eyes with care. The proceedings here opened, and he

listened laughingly; until midway in the reading of some document which

no one heeded—the crowd jeering and flouting merrily—he caught a new

note in the turmoil. The next moment he was conscious of a swirling

movement among those below him, there was a rush of the throng to his

right, and he looked quickly to see what it meant.

A man—one of a group of three or four who appeared to be trying to push

their way through the crowd—was being hustled and flung to and fro amid

jeers and taunts. He was striving to gain the hustings, but was still

some way from it; and his chance of reaching it with his clothes on his

back seemed small. Vaughan saw so much; then the man lost his temper,

and struck a blow. It was returned—and then, not till then, Vaughan saw

that the man was Isaac White. He cried “Shame!”—and had passed one leg

over the barriers to go to the rescue, when he saw that another was

before him. Sir Robert’s tall, spare figure was down among the

crowd—which opened instinctively before his sharp command. His eyes,

his masterful air still had power; the press opened instinctively

before his sharp command. He had reached White, had extricated him, and

turned to make good his retreat, when it seemed to strike the more

brutal element in the crowd—mostly strangers to him—that here was the

prime enemy of the cause, on foot amongst them, at their mercy! A rush

was made at his back. He turned undaunted, White and two more at his

side; the rabble recoiled. But when he wheeled again, a second rush was

made, and they were upon him, and hustled him before he could turn. A

man with a long stick struck off his hat, another—a lout with a cockade

of amber and blue, the Whig colours—tried to trip him up. He stumbled,

at the same moment a third man knocked White down.

“Yah! Down with him!” roared the crowd, “Down with the Borough-monger!”

But Vaughan, who had anticipated rather than seen the stumble, was over

the rail, and cleaving the crowd, was at his side. He reached him a

little in front of Bob Flixton, who had descended to the rescue from

the other end of the booth. Vaughan hurled back the man who had tripped

Sir Robert and who was still trying to throw him down; and the sight of

the amber and blue which the new champion wore checked the assailants,

and gave White time to rise.

Vaughan was furious. “Back, you cowards!” he cried fiercely. “Would you

murder an old man? Shame on you! Shame!”

“Ay, you bullies!” cried Flixton, hitting one on the jaw very

neatly—and completely disposing of that one for the day. “Back with

you!”

As Vaughan spoke, half-a-dozen of his Tory supporters surrounded the

baronet and bore him back out of danger. Though Sir Robert was

undaunted, he was shaken; and breathing quickly, he let his hand rest

for support on the nearest shoulder. It was Vaughan’s, and the next

instant he saw that it was; and he withdrew the hand as if he had let

it rest on a hot iron.

“Mr. Flixton,” he said—and the words reached a dozen ears at least,

“your arm, if you please? I would rather be without this gentleman’s

assistance.”

Vaughan’s face flamed. But neither the words nor the action took him

unawares. He stepped back with dignity, slightly touched his hat, and

so returned to his side of the hustings.

But he was wounded and very angry. Alone of his party he had

intervened—and this was his reward. When Pybus pushed his way to his

side and stooped to his ear, talking quickly and earnestly, he did not

repel him.

Episode as it was, the affray startled Sir Robert’s friends: and White

in particular took it very seriously. If violence of this sort was to

rule, if even Sir Robert’s person was not respected, he saw that he

would not be able to bring his voters to the poll. They would run some

risk of losing their lives, and one or two for certain would not dare

to vote. The thing must be stopped, and at once. With this in view he

made his way to the passage at the back of the hustings, which was

common to all three booths, and heated and angry—his lip was cut by the

blow he had received—he called for Pybus. But the press at the back of

the hustings was great, and one of White-Hat Williams’s foremen, who

blocked the gangway, laughed in his face.

“I want to speak to Pybus,” said White, glaring at the man, who on

ordinary days would have touched his hat to him.

“Then want’ll be your master,” the other retorted, with a wink. And

when White tried to push by him, the man gave him the shoulder.

“Let me pass,” White foamed. No thought of Cobbett now, had the agent!

These miserable upstarts, their insolence, their certainty of triumph

fired his blood. “Let me pass!” he repeated.

“See you d——d first!” the other answered bluntly. “Your game’s up, old

cock! Your master has held the pit long enough, but his time’s come.”

“If you don’t——”

“If you put your nose in here, we’ll pitch you over the rail!” the

other declared.

White almost had a fit. Fortunately White-Hat Williams himself appeared

at this moment: and White appealed to him.

“Mr. Williams,” he said, “is this your safe conduct?”

“I gave none,” with a grin.

“Pybus did.”

“Ay, for your party! But if you choose to straggle in one by one, we

can’t be answerable for every single voter,” with a wink. “Nor for any

of you getting back again! No, no, White.

“_Beneath the ways of Ministers, and it’s the truth I tell, You’ve

bought us very cheap, good White, and you’ve sold us very well!_

But that’s over! That’s at an end to-day! But—what’s this?”

This, was Sir Robert stepping forward to propose his candidates: or

rather, it was the roar, mocking and defiant, which greeted his attempt

to do so. It was a roar that made speech impossible. No doubt, among

the crowd which filled the space through which he had driven so often

with his four horses, the great man, the patron, the master of all,

there were some who still respected, and more who feared him; and many

who would not have insulted him. For if he had used his power stiffly,

he had not used it ill. But there were also in the crowd men whose

hearts were hot against the exclusiveness which had long effaced them;

who believed that freedom or slavery hung on the issue of this day; who

saw the prize of a long and bitter effort at stake, and were set on

using every intimidation, ay, and every violence, if victory could not

be had without them. And, were the others many or few, these swept them

away, infected them with recklessness, gave that stern and mocking ring

to the roar which continued and thwarted Sir Robert’s every effort to

make himself heard.

He stood long facing them, waiting, and never blenching. But after a

while his lip curled and his eyes looked disdain on the mob below him:

such disdain as the old Duke in after days hurled at the London rabble,

when for answer to their fulsome cheers he pointed to the iron shutters

of Apsley House. Sir Robert Vermuyden had done something, and thought

that he had done more, for the men who yelped and snarled and snapped

at him. According to his lights, acting on his maxim, all for the

people and nothing by the people, he had treated them generously,

granted all he thought good for them, planned for them, wrought for

them. He had been master, but no task-master. He had indeed illustrated

the better side of that government of the many by the few, of the unfit

by the fit, with which he honestly believed the safety and the

greatness of his country to be bound up.

And this was their return! No wonder that, seeing things as he saw

them, he felt a bitter contempt for them. Freedom? Such freedom as was

good for them, such freedom as was permanently possible—they had. And

slavery? Was it slavery to be ruled, wisely and firmly, by a class into

which they might themselves rise, a class which education and habit had

qualified to rule. In his mind’s eye, as he looked down on this

fretting, seething mass, he saw that which they craved granted, and he

saw, too, the outcome; that most cruel of all tyrannies, the tyranny of

the many over the few, of the many who have neither a heart to feel nor

a body to harm!

Once, twice, thrice one of his supporters thrust himself forward, and

leaning on the rail, appealed with frantic gestures for silence, for a

hearing, for respect. But each in turn retired baffled. Not a word in

that tempest of sound was audible. And no one on the other side

intervened. For they were pitiless. They in the old days had suffered

the same thing: and it was their turn now. Even Vaughan stood with

folded arms and a stern face: feeling the last contempt for the howling

rabble before him, but firmly determined to expose himself to no second

slight. At length Sir Robert saw that it was hopeless, shrugged his

shoulders with quiet scorn, and shouting the names of his candidates in

a clerk’s ear, put on his hat, and stood back.

The old Squire seconded him in dumb show.

Then the Sergeant stood forward to state his views. He grasped the rail

with both hands and waited, smiling blandly. But he might have waited

an hour, he might have waited until night. The leaders for the Bill

were determined to make their power felt. They were resolved that not a

word on the Tory side should be heard. The Sergeant waited, and after a

time, still smiling blandly, bowed and stood back.

It was Mr. Cooke’s turn. He advanced. “Shout, and be hanged to you!” he

cried, apoplectic in the face. An egg flew within a yard of him, and

openly shaking his fist at the crowd he retired amid laughter.

Then White-Hat Williams, who had looked forward to this as to the

golden moment of his life and had conned his oration until he knew its

thunderous periods by heart, stepped forward to nominate the Whig

candidates. He took off his hat; and as if that had been the signal for

silence, such a stillness fell on all that his voice rang above the

multitude like a trumpet.

“Gentlemen,” he said, and smiling looked first to the one side and then

to the other. “Gentlemen——”

Alas, he smiled too soon. The Tories grasped the situation, and,

furious at the reception which had fallen to the lot of their leaders,

determined that if they were not heard, no one should be heard. Before

he could utter another word they broke into rabid bellowings, and what

their shouts lacked in volume they made up in ill-will. In a twinkling

they drowned White-Hat Williams’s voice; and now who so indignant as

the Whigs? In thirty seconds half-a-dozen single combats were

proceeding in front of the Tory booth, blood flowed from as many noses,

and amid a terrific turmoil respectable men and justices of the peace

leant across the barriers and shook their fists and flung frenzied

challenges broadcast.

All to no purpose. The Tories, though so much the weaker party, though

but one to eight, could not be silenced. After making three or four

attempts to gain a hearing White-Hat Williams saw that he must reserve

his oration: and with a scowl he shouted his names into the ear of the

clerk.

“Who? Who did he say?” growled the Squire, panting with rage and hoarse

with shouting. His face was crimson, his cravat awry, he had lost his

hat. “Who? Who?”

“Wrench and—one moment, sir!”

“Eh? Who do you say?”

“I couldn’t hear! One moment, sir! Oh, yes! Wrench and Vaughan!”

“Vaughan?” old Rowley cried with a profane oath. “Impossible!”

But it was not impossible! Though so great was the surprise, so

striking the effect upon Sir Robert’s supporters that for a few seconds

something like silence supervened. The serpent! The serpent! Here was a

blow indeed—in the back!

Then as Blackford, the Methodist, rose to second the nomination, the

storm broke out anew and more furiously than before. “What?” foamed the

Squire, “be ruled by a rabble of grinning, yelling monkeys? By gad,

I’ll leave the country first! I—I hope someone will shoot that young

man! I wish I’d never shaken his hand! By G—d, I’m glad my father is in

his grave! He’d never ha’ believed this! Never! Never!”

And from that time until the poll was declared open—in dumb show—not a

word was audible.

Then at last the shouting of the rival bands sank to a confused babel

of jeers, abuse, and laughter. Exhausted men mopped their faces,

voiceless men loosened their neck-cloths, the farthest from the

hustings went off to drink, and there was a lull until the sound of a

drum and fife announced a new event, and forth from the Heart and Hand

advanced a procession of five led by the accursed Dyas.

They were the Whig voters and they marched proudly to the front of the

polling-booth, the mob falling back on either side to give them place.

Dyas flung his hat into the booth. “Wrench and Vaughan!” he cried in a

voice which could be heard in the White Lion. “And I care not who knows

it!”

They put to him the bribery oath. “I can take it,” he answered.

“Swallow it yourselves, if you can!”

“You should know the taste, Jack,” cried a sly friend: and for a moment

the laugh was against him.

One by one—the process was slow in those days—they voted. “Five for

Wrench and Vaughan.” Wrench rose and bowed to each as he retired.

Arthur Vaughan took no notice.

Sir Robert’s voters looked at one another uneasily. They had the day

before them, but—and then he saw the look, and, putting White and his

remonstrances on one side, he joined them, bade them follow him, and

descended before them. He would ask no man to do what he would not do

himself.

But the moment his action was understood, the moment the men were seen

behind him, there was a yell so fierce and a movement so threatening,

that on the lowest step of the hustings he stood bareheaded, raised his

hand for silence and for a wonder was obeyed. In a clear, loud voice:

“Do you expect to terrify me,” he cried, “either by threats or

violence? Let any man look in my face and see if it change colour? Let

him come and lay his hand on my heart and feel if it beats the quicker.

Keep my voters from the poll and you stultify your own, for there will

be no election. Make way then, and let them pass to their duty!”

And the crowd made way; and Arthur Vaughan felt a reluctant pang of

admiration. The five were polled; the result so far, five for each of

the candidates.

There remained to poll only Arthur Vaughan and Pillinger of the Blue

Duck, if he could be brought up by the Tories. If neither of these

voted the Returning Officer would certainly give the casting vote for

Sir Robert’s candidates—if he dared.

Isaac White believed that he would not dare, and for some time past the

agent had been in covert talk with Pybus at the back of the hustings,

two or three of the friends of each masking the conference. Now he drew

aside his employer who had returned in safety to his place; and he

conferred with him. But for a time it was clear that Sir Robert would

not listen to what he had to say. He looked pale and angry, and

returned but curt answers. But White persisted, holding him by the

sleeve.

“Mr. Vaughan—bah, what a noise they make—does not wish to vote,” he

explained. “But in the end he will, sir, it is my opinion, and that

will give it to them unless we can bring up Pillinger—which I doubt,

sir. Even if we do, it is a tie——”

“Well? Well?” Sir Robert struck in, eyeing him sternly. “What more do

we want? The Returning Officer——”

“He will not dare,” White whispered, “and if he does, sir, it is my

belief he will be murdered. More, if we win they will rush the booth

and destroy the books. They have as good as told me they will stick at

nothing. Believe me, sir,” he continued earnestly, “better than one and

one we can’t look for now. And better one than none!”

But it was long before Sir Robert would be persuaded. No, defeat or

victory, he would fight to the last! He would be beholden to the other

side for nothing! White, however, was an honest man and less afraid of

his master than usual: and he held to it. And at length the reflection

that the bargain would at least shut out his kinsman prevailed with Sir

Robert, and he consented.

He was too chivalrous to return on his own side the man whose success

would fill his pockets. He elected for Wathen and never doubted that

the Bowood interest would return their first love, Wrench. But when the

landlord of the Blue Duck was brought up by agreement to vote for a

candidate on either side, Pillinger voted by order for Wathen and

Vaughan.

“There’s some d——d mistake!” shrieked the Squire, as the words reached

his ears.

But there was no mistake, and to the silent disgust of the Tories and

amid the frantic cheering of the Whigs, the return was made in favour

of Sergeant John Wathen, and Arthur Vermuyden Vaughan, esquire. Loud

and long was the cheering: the air was black with caps. But when the

crowd sought for the two to chair them according to immemorial custom,

only the Sergeant could be found, and he with great prudence declined

the honour.

XIX

THE FRUITS OF VICTORY

Arthur Vaughan could write himself Member of Parliament. The plaudits

of the Academic and the mimic contests of the Debating Club were no

longer for him. Fortune had placed within his grasp the prize of which

he had often dreamt; and henceforth all lay open to him. But, as a

contemporary in a letter written on a like occasion says, he had gone

through innumerable horrors to reach the goal. And the moment the

result was known and certain he slipped away from his place, and from

the oppressive good-wishes of his new and uncongenial friends—the

Williamses and the Blackfords; and shutting himself up in his rooms at

the White Lion, where his entrance was regarded askance, he set himself

to look the future in the face.

He could not blame himself for the past, for he had done nothing of

which he was ashamed. He had been put by circumstances in a false

position, but he had freed himself frankly and boldly; and every candid

man must acknowledge that he could not have done otherwise than he had.

Yet he was aware that his conduct was open to misconstruction. Some,

even on his own side, would say that he had gone to Chippinge prepared

to support his kinsman; and that then, tempted by the opportunity of

gaining the seat for himself, he had faced about. Few would believe the

truth—that twenty-four hours before the election he had declined to

stand. Still fewer would believe that in withdrawing his “No,” he had

been wholly moved by the offer which Sir Robert had made to him and the

unworthy manner in which he had treated him.

Yet that was the truth; and so entirely the truth, that but for that

offer he would have resigned the seat even now. For he had no mind to

enter the House under a cloud. He knew that to do so was to endanger

the boat in which his fortunes were embarked. But in face of that offer

he could not withdraw. Sir Robert, Wetherell, White, all would believe

that he had resigned, not on the point of honour, but for a bribe, and

because the bribe, refused at first, grew larger the longer he eyed it.

So, for good or evil, his mind was made up. And for a few minutes,

while the roar of the mob applauding him rose to his windows, he was

happy. He was a member of the Commons’ House. He stood on that

threshold on which Harley and St. John, Walpole the wise, and the

inspired Cornet, Pitt and Fox, spoiled children of fortune, Castlereagh

the illogical, and Canning

_Born with an ancient name of little worth,

And disinherited before his birth_,

and many another had stood; knowing no more than he knew what fortune

had in womb for them, what of hushed silence would one day mark their

rising, what homage of loyal hearts and thundering feet would hang upon

their words. As their fortunes his might be; to sway to tears or

laughter, to a nation’s weal or woe, the men who ruled; to know his

words were fateful, and yet to speak with no uncertain voice; to give

the thing he did not deign to wear, and make the man whom he must

follow after, ay,

_To fall as Walpole and to fail as Pitt!_

this, all this might be his, if he were worthy! If the dust of that

arena knew no better man!

His heart rose on the wave of thought and he felt himself fit for all,

equipped for all. He owned no task too hard, no enterprise too high.

Nor did he fall from the clouds until he remembered the change in his

fortunes, and bethought him that henceforth he must depend upon

himself. The story would be sifted, of course, and its truth or

falsehood be made clear. But whatever use Sir Robert might have deigned

to make of it, Vaughan did not believe that he would have stooped to

invent it. And if it were true, then all the importance which had

attached to himself as the heir to a great property, all the

privileges, all the sanctity of coming wealth, were gone.

But with them the responsibilities of that position were gone also. The

change might well depress his head and cloud his heart. He had lost

much which he could hardly hope to win for himself. Yet—yet there were

compensations.

He had passed through much in the last twenty-four hours; and, perhaps

for that reason, he was peculiarly open to emotion. In the thought that

henceforth he might seek a companion where he pleased, in the

remembrance that he had no longer any tastes to consult but his own,

any prejudices to respect save those which he chose to adopt, he found

a comfort at which he clutched eagerly and thankfully. The world which

shook him off—he would no longer be guided by its dictates! The race,

strenuous and to the swift, ay, to the draining of heart and brain, he

would not run it alone, uncheered, unsolaced—merely because while

things were different he had walked by a certain standard of conduct!

If he was now a poor man he was at least free! Free to take the one he

loved into the boat in which his fortunes floated, nor ask too closely

who were her forbears. Free to pursue his ambition hand in hand with

one who would sweeten failure and share success, and who in that life

of scant enjoyment and high emprise to which he must give himself,

would be a guardian angel, saving him from the spells of folly and

pleasure!

He might please himself now, and he would. Flixton might laugh, the men

of the 14th might laugh. And in Bury Street he might have winced. But

in Mecklenburgh Square, where he and she would set up their modest

tent, he would not care.

He could not go to Bristol until the morrow, for he had to see Pybus,

but he would write and tell her of his fortunes and ask her to share

them. The step was no sooner conceived than attempted. He sat down and

took pen and paper, and with a glow at his heart, in a state of

generous agitation, he prepared to write.

But he had never written to her, he had never called her by her name.

And the difficulty of addressing her overwhelmed him. In the end, after

sitting appalled by the bold and shameless look of “Dear Mary,”

“Dearest Mary,” and of addresses warmer than these, he solved the

difficulty, after a tame and proper fashion by writing to Miss Sibson.

And this is what he wrote:

“Dear Madame,

“At the interview which I had with you on Saturday last, you were good

enough to intimate that if I were prepared to give an affirmative

answer to a question which you did not put into words, you would permit

me to see Miss Smith. I am now in a position to give the assurance as

to my intentions which you desired, and trust that I may see Miss Smith

on my arrival in Bristol to-morrow.

“Believe me to remain, Madame,

“Truly yours,

“Arthur V. Vaughan.”

And all his life, he told himself, he would remember the use to which

he had put his first frank!

That night the toasting and singing, drunkenness and revelry of which

the borough was the scene, kept him long waking. But eleven o’clock on

the following morning saw him alighting from a chaise at Bristol, and

before noon he was in Queen’s Square.

For the time at least he had put the world behind him. And it was in

pure exultation and the joyous anticipation of what was to come that he

approached the house. He came, a victor from the fight; nor, he

reflected, was it every suitor who had it in his power to lay such

offerings at the feet of his mistress. In the eye of the world, indeed,

he was no longer what he had been; for the matchmaking mother he had

lost his value. But he had still so much to give which Mary had not, he

could still so alter the tenor of her life, he could still so lift her

in the social scale, those hopes which she was to share still flew on

pinions so ambitious—ay, to the very scattering of garters and

red-ribbons—that his heart was full of the joy of giving. He must not

be blamed if he felt as King Cophetua when he stooped to the

beggar-maiden, or as the Lord of Burleigh when he woo’d the farmer’s

daughter. After all, he did but rejoice that she had so little and he

had so much; that he could give and she could grace.

When he came to the house he paused a moment in wonder that when all

things were altered, his prospects, views, plans, its face rose

unchanged. Then he knocked boldly; the time for hesitation was past. He

asked for Miss Smith—thinking it likely that he would have to wait

until the school rose at noon. The maid, however, received him as if

she expected him, and ushered him at once into a room on the left of

the entrance. He stood, holding his hat, waiting, listening; but not

for long. The door had scarcely closed on the girl before it opened

again, and Mary Smith came in. She met his eyes, and started, blushed a

divine rosy-red and stood wide-eyed and uncertain, with her hand on the

door.

“Did you not expect me?” he said, taken aback on his side. For this was

not the Mary Smith with whom he travelled on the coach; nor the Mary

Smith with whom he had talked in the Square. This was a Mary Smith, no

less beautiful, but gay and fresh as the morning, in dainty white with

a broad blue sash, with something new, something of a franker bearing

in her air. “Did you not expect me?” he repeated gently, advancing a

step towards her.

“No,” she murmured, and she stood blushing before him, blushing more

deeply with every second. For his eyes were beginning to talk, and to

tell the old tale.

“Did not Miss Sibson get my letter?” he asked gently.

“I think not,” she murmured.

“Then I have all—to do,” he said nervously. It was—it was certainly a

harder thing to do than he had expected. “Will you not sit down,

please,” he pleaded. “I want you to listen to me.”

For a moment she looked as if she would flee instead. Then she let him

lead her to a seat.

He sat down within reach of her. “And you did not know that it was I?”

he said, feeling the difficulty increase with every second.

“No.”

“I hope,” he said, hesitating, “that you are glad that it is?”

“I am glad to see you again—to thank you,” she murmured. But while her

blushes and her downcast eyes seemed propitious to his suit, there was

something—was it, could it be a covert smile hiding at the corners of

her little mouth?—some change in her which oppressed him, and which he

did not understand. One thing he did understand, however: that she was

more beautiful, more desirable, more intoxicating than he had pictured

her. And his apprehensions grew upon him, as he paused tongue-tied,

worshipping her with his eyes. If, after all, she would not? What if

she said, “No”? For what, now he came to measure them beside her, were

those things he brought her, those things he came to offer, that career

which he was going to ask her to share? What were they beside her

adorable beauty and her modesty, the candour of her maiden eyes, the

perfection of her form? He saw their worthlessness; and the bold phrase

with which he had meant to open his suit, the confident, “Mary, I am

come for you,” which he had repeated so often to the rhythm of the

chaise-wheels, that he was sure he would never forget it, died on his

lips.

At last, “You speak of thanks—it is to gain your thanks I am come,” he

said nervously. “But I don’t ask for words. I want you to think as—as

highly as you can of what I did for you—if you please! I want you to

believe that I saved your life on the coach. I want you to think that I

did it at great risk to myself. I want you,” he continued hurriedly,

“to exaggerate a hundredfold—everything I did for you. And then I want

you to think that you owe all to a miser, who will be content with

nothing short of—of immense interest, of an extortionate return.”

“I don’t think that I understand,” she answered in a low tone, her

cheeks glowing. But beyond that, he could not tell aught of her

feelings; she kept her eyes lowered so that he could not read them, and

there were, even in the midst of her shyness, an ease and an aloofness

in her bearing, which were new to him and which frightened him. He

remembered how quickly she had on other occasions put him in his place;

how coldly she had asserted herself. Perhaps, she had no feeling for

him. Perhaps, apart from the incident in the coach, she even disliked

him!

“You do not understand,” he said unsteadily, “what is the return I

want?”

“No-o,” she faltered.

He stood up abruptly, and took a pace or two from her. “And I hardly

dare tell you,” he said. “I hardly dare tell you. I came to you, I came

here as brave as a lion. And now, I don’t know why, I am frightened.”

She—astonishing thing!—leapt the gulf for him. Possibly the greater

distance at which he stood gave her courage. “Are you afraid,” she

murmured, moving her fingers restlessly, and watching them, “that you

may change your mind again?”

“Change my mind?” he ejaculated, not for the moment understanding her.

So much had happened since his collision with Flixton in the Square.

“As that gentleman—said you were in the habit of doing.”

“Ah!”

“It was not true?”

“True?” he exclaimed hotly. “True that I—that I——”

“Changed your mind?” she said with her face averted. “And not—not only

that, sir?”

“What else?” he asked bitterly.

“Talked of me—among your friends?”

“A lie! A miserable lie!” he cried on impulse, finding his tongue

again. “But I will tell you all. He saw you—that first morning, you

remember, and never having seen anyone so lovely, he intended to make

you the object of—of attentions that were unworthy of you. And to

protect you I told him that I was going—to make you my wife.”

“Is that what you mean to-day?” she asked faintly.

“Yes.”

“But you did not mean it then?” she answered—though very gently. “It

was to shield me you said it?”

He looked at her, astonished at her insight and her boldness. How

different, how very different was this from that to which he had looked

forward! At last, “I think I meant it,” he said gloomily. “God knows I

mean it now! But that evening,” he continued, seeing that she still

waited with averted face for the rest of his explanation, “he

challenged me at dinner before them all, and I,” he added jerkily, “I

was not quite sure what I meant—I had no mind that you should be made

the talk of the—of my friends——”

“And so—you denied it?” she said gently.

He hung his head. “Yes,” he said.

“I think I—I understand,” she answered unsteadily. “What I do not

understand is why you are here to-day. Why you have changed your mind

again. Why you are now willing that I should be—the talk of your

friends, sir.”

He stood, the picture of abasement. Must he acknowledge his doubts and

his hesitation, allow that he had been ashamed of her, admit that he

had deemed the marriage he now sought, a mésalliance? Must he open to

her eyes those hours of cowardly vacillation during which he had walked

the Clifton Woods weighing _I would_ against _I dare not?_ And do it in

face of that new dignity, that new aloofness which he recognised in her

and which made him doubt if he had an ally in her heart.

More, if he told her, would she understand? How should she, bred so

differently, understand how heavily the old name with its burden of

responsibilities, how heavily the past with its obligations to duty and

sacrifice, had weighed upon him! And if he told her and she did not

understand, what mercy had he to expect from her?

Still, for a moment he was on the point of telling her: and of telling

her also why he was now free to please himself, why, rid of the burden

with the inheritance, he could follow his heart. But the tale was long

and roundabout, she knew nothing of the Vermuydens, of their

importance, or his expectations, or what he had lost or what he had

gained. And it seemed simpler to throw himself on her mercy. “Because I

love you!” he said humbly. “I have nothing else to say.”

“And you are sure that you will not change your mind again?”

There was that in her voice, though he could not see her face, which

brought him across two squares of the carpet as if she had jerked him

with a string. In a second he was on his knees beside her, and had laid

a feverish hand on hers. “Mary,” he cried, “Mary!” seeking to look up

into her face, “you will! You will! You will let me take you? You will

let me take you from here! I cannot offer you what I once thought I

could, but I have enough, and, you will?” There was a desperate

supplication in his voice; for close to her, so close that his breath

was on her cheek, she seemed, with her half-averted face and her

slender figure, so dainty a thing, so delicate and rare, that he could

hardly believe that she could ever be his, that he could be so lucky as

to possess her, that he could ever take her in his arms. “You will? You

will?” he repeated, empty of all other words.

She did not speak, she could not speak. But she bowed her head.

“You will?”

She turned her eyes on him then; eyes so tender and passionate that

they seemed to draw his heart, his being, his strength out of him.

“Yes,” she whispered shyly. “If I am allowed.”

“Allowed? Allowed?” he cried. How in a moment was all changed for him!

“I would like to see——” And then breaking off—perhaps it was her fault

for leaning a little towards him—he did that which he had thought a

moment before that he would never dare to do. He put his arm round her

and drew her gently and reverently to him until—for she did not

resist—her head lay on his shoulder. “Mine!” he murmured, “Mine! Mine!

Mary, I can hardly believe it. I can hardly think I am so blest.”

“And you will not change?” she whispered.

“Never! Never!”

They were silent. Was she thinking of the dark night, when she had

walked lonely and despondent to her new and unknown home? Or of many

another hour of solitary depression, spent in dull and dreary

schoolrooms, while others made holiday? Was he thinking of his doubts

and fears, his cowardly hesitation? Or only of his present monstrous

happiness? No matter. At any rate, they had forgotten the existence of

anything outside the room, they had forgotten the world and Miss

Sibson, they were in a Paradise of their own, such as is given to no

man and to no woman more than once, they were a million miles from

Bristol City, when the sound made by the opening door surprised them in

that posture. Vaughan turned fiercely to see who it was, to see who

dared to trespass on their Eden. He looked, only looked, and he sprang

to his feet, amazed. He thought for a moment that he was dreaming, or

that he was mad.

For on the threshold, gazing at them with a face of indescribable

astonishment, rage and incredulity, was Sir Robert Vermuyden. Sir

Robert Vermuyden, the one last man in the world whom Arthur Vaughan

would have expected to see there!

XX

A PLOT UNMASKED

For a few moments the old man and the young man gazed at one another,

alike in this only that neither found words equal to his feelings.

While Mary, covered with confusion, blushing for the situation in which

she had been found, could not hold up her head. It was Sir Robert who

at last broke the silence in a voice which trembled with passion.

“You viper!” he said. “You viper! You would sting me—here also.”

Vaughan stared at him, aghast. The intrusion was outrageous, but

astonishment rather than anger was the young man’s first feeling. “Here

also?” he repeated, as if he thought that he must have heard amiss.

“_I_ sting you? What do you mean? Why have you followed me?” And then

more warmly, “How dare you, sir, spy on me?” And he threw back his head

in wrath.

The old man, every nerve and vein in his lean, high forehead swollen

and leaping, raised his cane and shook it at him. “Dare? Dare?” he

cried, and then for very rage his voice failed him.

Vaughan closed his eyes and opened them again. “I am dreaming,” he

said. “I must be dreaming. Are you Sir Robert Vermuyden? Is this house

Miss Sibson’s school? Are we in Bristol? Or is it all—but first, sir,”

recalling abruptly and with indignation the situation in which he had

been surprised, and raising his tone, “how come you here? I have a

right to know that!”

“How come I here?”

“Yes! How come you here, sir?”

“You ask me! You ask me!” Sir Robert repeated, as if he could not

believe his ears. “How I come here! You scoundrel! You scoundrel!”

Vaughan started under the lash of the word. The insult was gratuitous,

intolerable! No relationship, no family tie could excuse it. No wonder

that the astonishment and irritation which had been his first feelings,

gave way to pure anger. Sir Robert might be this or that. He might

have, or rather, he might have had certain rights. But now all that was

over, the relationship was a thing of the past. And to suppose that he

was still to suffer the old gentleman’s interference, to put up with

his insults, to permit him in the presence of a young girl, his

promised wife, to use such language as he was using, was out of the

question. Vaughan’s face grew dark.

“Sir Robert,” he said, “you are too old to be called to account. You

may say, therefore, what you please. But not—not if you are a

gentleman—until this young lady has left the room.”

“This—young—lady!” Sir Robert gasped in an indescribable tone: and with

the cane quivering in his grasp he looked from Vaughan to the girl.

“Yes,” Vaughan answered sternly. “That young lady! And do not let me

hear you call her anything else, sir, for she has promised to be my

wife.”

“You lie!” the baronet cried, the words leaping from his lips.

“Sir Robert!”

“My daughter—promised to be your wife! My—my——”

“Your daughter!”

“Hypocrite!” Sir Robert retorted, flinging the word at him. “You knew

it! You knew it!”

“Your daughter?”

“Ay, that she was my daughter!”

“Your daughter!”

This time the words fell from Arthur Vaughan in a whisper. And he

stood, turned to stone. His daughter? Sir Robert’s daughter? The

girl—he tried desperately to clear his mind—of whom Wetherell had told

the story, the girl whom her mother had hidden away, while in Italy,

the girl whose reappearance in life had ousted him or was to oust him

from his inheritance? Mary Smith—was that girl! His daughter!

But no! The blood leapt back to his heart. It was impossible, it was

incredible! The coincidence was too great, too amazing. His reason

revolted against it. And “Impossible!” he cried in a louder, a bolder

tone—though fear underlay its confidence. “You are playing with me! You

must be jesting!” he repeated angrily.

But the elder man, though his hand still trembled on his cane and his

face was sallow with rage, had regained some control of himself.

Instead of retorting on Vaughan—except by a single glance of withering

contempt—he turned to Mary. “You had better go to your room,” he said,

coldly but not ungently. For how could he blame her, bred amid such

surroundings, for conduct that in other circumstances had irritated him

indeed? For conduct that had been unseemly, unmaidenly, improper. “You

had better go to your room,” he repeated. “This is no fit place for you

and no fit discussion for your ears. I am not—the fault is not with

you, but it will be better if you leave us.”

She was rising, too completely overwhelmed to dream of refusing, when

Vaughan interposed. “No,” he said with a gleam of defiance in his eyes.

“By your leave, sir, no! This young lady is my affianced wife. If it be

her own wish to retire, be it so. But if not, there is no one who has

the right to bid her go or stay. You”—checking Sir Robert’s wrathful

rejoinder by a gesture—“you may be her father, but before you can

exercise a father’s rights you must make good your case.”

“Make good my case!” Sir Robert ejaculated.

“And when you have made it good, it will still be for her to choose

between us,” Vaughan continued with determination. “You, who have never

played a father’s part, who have never guided or guarded, fostered or

cherished her—do not think, sir, that you can in a moment arrogate to

yourself a father’s authority.”

Sir Robert gasped. But the next moment he took up the glove so boldly

flung down. He pointed to the door, and with less courtesy than the

occasion demanded—but he was sore pressed by his anger, “Leave the

room, girl,” he said.

“Do as you please, Mary,” Vaughan said.

“Go!” cried the baronet, stung by the use of her name. “Stay!” said

Vaughan.

Infinitely distressed, infinitely distracted by this appeal from the

one, from the other, from this side, from that, she turned her swimming

eyes on her lover. “Oh, what,” she cried, “what am I to do?”

He did not speak, but he looked at her, not doubting what she would do,

nor conceiving it possible that she could prefer to him, her lover,

whose sweet professions were still honey in her ears, whose arm was

still warm from the pressure of her form—that she could prefer to him,

a father who was no more than the shadow of a name.

But he did not know Mary yet, either in her strength or her weakness.

Nor did he consider that her father was already more than a name to

her. She hung a moment undecided and wretched, drooping as the white

rose that hangs its head in the first shower. Then she turned to the

elder man, and throwing her arms about his neck hung in tears on his

breast. “You will be good to him, sir,” she whispered passionately.

“Oh, forgive him! Forgive him, sir!”

“My dear——”

“Oh, forgive him, sir!”

Sir Robert smoothed her hair with a caressing hand, and with pinched

lips and bright eyes looked at his adversary over her head. “I would

forgive him,” he said, “I could forgive him—all but this! All but this,

my dear! I could forgive him had he not tricked you and deceived you,

cozened you and flattered you—into this! Into the belief that he loves

you, while he loves only your inheritance! Or that part,” he added

bitterly, “of which he has not already robbed you!”

“Sir Robert,” Vaughan said, “you have stooped very low. But it will not

avail you.”

“It has availed me so far,” the baronet retorted. With confidence he

was regaining also command of himself.

Vaughan winced. In proportion as the other recovered his temper, he

lost his.

“It will avail me still farther,” Sir Robert continued exultantly,

“when my daughter understands, as she shall understand, sir, that when

you came here to-day, when you stole a march on me, as you thought, and

proposed marriage to her behind my back, you knew all that I knew!

Knew, sir, that she was my daughter, knew that she was my heiress, knew

that she ousted you, knew that by a marriage with her, and by that

only, you could regain all that you had lost!”

“It is a lie!” Vaughan cried, stung beyond endurance. He was pale with

anger.

“Then refute it!” Sir Robert said, clasping the girl, who had

involuntarily winced at the word, more closely to him. “Refute it, sir!

Refute it!”

“It is absurd! It—it needs no refutation!” Vaughan cried.

“Why?” Sir Robert retorted. “I state it. I am prepared to prove it! I

have three witnesses to the fact!”

“To the fact that I——”

“That you knew,” Sir Robert replied. “Knew this lady to be my daughter

when you came here this morning—as well as I knew it myself.”

Vaughan returned his look in speechless indignation. Did the man really

believe in a charge, which at first had seemed to be mere vulgar abuse.

It was not possible! “Sir Robert,” he said, speaking slowly and with

dignity, “I never did you harm by word or deed until a day or two ago.

And then, God knows, perforce and reluctantly. How then can you lower

yourself to—to such a charge as this?”

“Do you deny then,” the baronet replied with contemptuous force, “do

you dare to deny—to my face, that you knew?”

Vaughan stared. “You will say presently,” he replied, “that I knew her

to be your daughter when I made her acquaintance on the coach a week

ago. At a time when you knew nothing yourself.”

“As to that I cannot say one way or the other,” Sir Robert rejoined. “I

do not know how nor where you made her acquaintance. But I do know that

an acquaintance so convenient, so coincident, could hardly be the work

of chance!”

“Good G—d! Then you will say also that I knew who she was when I called

on her the day after, and again two days after that—while you were

still in ignorance?”

“I have said,” the baronet answered with cold decision, “that I do not

know how you made, nor why you followed up your acquaintance with her.

But I have, I cannot but have my suspicions.”

“Suspicions? Suspicions?” Vaughan cried bitterly. “And on suspicion,

the base issue of prejudice and dislike——”

“No, sir, no!” Sir Robert struck in. “Though it may be that if I knew

who introduced you to her, who opened this house to you, and the rest,

I might find ground for more than suspicion! The schoolmistress might

tell me somewhat, and—you wince, sir! Ay,” he continued in a tone of

triumph. “I see there is something to be learned! But it is not upon

suspicion that I charge you to-day! It is upon the best of grounds. Did

you not before my eyes and in the presence of two other witnesses,

read, no farther back than the day before yesterday, in the

drawing-room of my house, the whole story of my daughter’s movements up

to her departure from London for Bristol! With the name of the school

to which she was consigned? Did you not, sir? Did you not?”

“Never! Never!”

“What?” The astonishment in Sir Robert’s voice was so real, so

unfeigned, that it must have carried conviction to any listener.

Vaughan passed his hand across his brow; and Mary, who had hitherto

kept her face hidden, shivering under the stroke of each harsh word—for

to a tender heart what could be more distressing than this strife

between the two beings she most cherished?—raised her head

imperceptibly. What would he answer? Only she knew how her heart beat;

how sick she was with fear; how she shrank from that which the next

minute might unfold!

And yet she listened.

“I—I remember now,” Vaughan said—and the consternation he felt made

itself heard in his voice. “I remember that I looked at a paper——”

“At a paper!” Sir Robert cried in a tone of withering contempt. “At a

detailed account, sir, of my daughter’s movements down to her arrival

at Bristol! Do you deny that?” he continued grimly. “Do you deny that

you perused that account?”

Vaughan stood for a moment with his hand pressed to his brow. He

hesitated. “I remember taking a paper in my hands,” he said slowly, his

face flushing, as the probable inference from his words occurred to

him. “But I was thinking so much of the disclosure you had made to me,

and of the change it involved—-to me, that——”

“That you took no interest in the written details!” Sir Robert cried in

a tone of bitter irony.

“I did not.”

“You did not read a word, I suppose?”

“I did not.”

Before the baronet could utter the sneer which was on his lips, Mary

interposed. “I—I would like to go,” she murmured. “I feel rather

faint!”

She detached herself from her father’s arm as she spoke, and with her

face averted from her lover, she moved uncertainly towards the door.

She had no wish to look on him. She shrank from meeting his shamed

eyes. But something, either the feeling that she would never see him

again, and that this was the end of her maiden love, or the desperate

hope that even at this last moment he might explain his admission—and

those facts, “confirmation strong as hell” which she knew, but which

Sir Robert did not know—one or other of these feelings made her falter

on the threshold, made her turn. Their eyes met.

He stepped forward impulsively. He was white with pain, his face rigid.

For what pain is stronger than the pang of innocence accused?

“One moment!” he said, in an unsteady voice. “If we part so, Mary, we

part indeed! We part forever! I said awhile ago that you must choose

between us. And you have chosen—it seems,” he continued unsteadily.

“Yet think! Give yourself, give me a chance. Will you not believe my

word?” And he held out his arms to her. “Will you not believe that when

I came to you this morning I thought you penniless? I thought you the

unknown schoolmistress you thought yourself a week ago! Will you not

trust me when I say that I never connected you with the missing

daughter? Never dreamed of a connection? Why should I?” he added, in

growing agitation as the words of his appeal wrought on himself. “Why

should I? Or why do you in a moment think me guilty of the meanest, the

most despicable, the most mercenary of acts?”

He was going to take her hand, but Sir Robert stepped between them,

grim as fate and as vindictive. “No!” he said. “No! No more! You have

given her pain enough, sir! Take your dismissal and go! She has

chosen—you have said it yourself!”

He cast one look at Sir Robert, and then, “Mary,” he asked, “am I to

go?”

She was leaning, almost beside herself, against the door. And oh, how

much of joy and sorrow she had known since she crossed the threshold. A

man’s embrace, and a man’s treachery. The sweetness of love and the

bitterness of—reality!

“Mary!” Vaughan repeated.

But the baronet could not endure this. “By G—d, no!” he cried,

infuriated by the other’s persistence, and perhaps a little by fear

that the girl would give way. “You shall not soil her name with your

lips, sir! You shall torture her no longer! You have your dismissal!

Take it and go!”

“When she tells me with her own lips to go,” Vaughan answered doggedly,

“I will go. Not before!” For never had she seemed more desirable to

him. Never, though contempt of her weakness wrestled with his love, had

he wanted her more. Except that seat in the House which had cost him so

dearly, she was all he had left. And it did not seem possible that she

whom he had held so lately in his arms, she who had confessed her love

for him, with whom he had vowed to share his life and his success, his

lot good or bad—it did not seem possible that she could really believe

this miserable, this incredible, this impossible thing of him! She

could not! Or, if she could, he was indeed mistaken in her. “I shall

go,” he repeated coldly, “and I shall not return.”

And Mary had not believed it of him, had she known him longer or

better; had she known him as girls commonly know their lovers. But his

wooing had been short, we know: and we know, too, the distrust of men

in which she had been trained. He had taken her by storm, stooping to

her from the height of his position, having on his side her poverty and

loneliness, her inexperience and youth. Now all these things, and her

ignorance of his world weighed against him. Was it to be supposed,

could it be credited that he, who had come to her bearing her mother’s

commendation, knew nothing, though he was her kinsman? That he, who

after plain hesitation and avowed doubt, laid all at her feet as soon

as her father was prepared to acknowledge her—still sought her in

ignorance? That he, who had read her story in black and white, still

knew nothing?

No, she could not believe it. But it was a bitter thing to know that he

did not love her, that he had not loved her! That he had come to her

for gain! She must speak if it were only to escape, only to save

herself from—from collapse. She yearned for nothing now so much as to

be alone in her room.

“Good-bye,” she muttered, with averted eyes and pallid lips. “I—I

forgive you. Good-bye.”

And she opened the door with groping fingers; and still, still looking

away from him lest she should break down, she went out.

He drew a deep breath as she passed the threshold; and his eyes did not

leave her. But he did not speak. Nor did Sir Robert Vermuyden until his

daughter’s step, light as thistledown that morning, and now uncertain

and lagging, passed out of hearing, and—and at last a door closed on

the floor above.

Then the elder man looked at the other. “Are you not going?” he said

with stern meaning. “You have robbed me of my borough, sir—I give you

joy of your cleverness. But you shall not rob me of my daughter!”

“I wonder which you love the better!” Vaughan snarled. And with the

vicious gibe he took his hat and went.

XXI

A MEETING OF OLD FRIENDS

It was September. The House elected in those first days of May was four

months old, and already it had fulfilled the hopes of the country.

Without a division it had decreed the first reading, and by a majority

of one hundred and thirty-six, the second reading of the People’s Bill;

that Bill by which the preceding House slaying, had been slain. New

members were beginning to lose the first gloss of their enthusiasm; the

youngest no longer ogled the M.P. on their letters, nor franked for the

mere joy of franking. But the ministry still rode the flood tide of

favour, Lord Grey was still his country’s pride, and Brougham a hero.

It only remained to frighten the House of Lords, and in particular

those plaguy out-of-date fellows, the Bishops, into passing the Bill;

and the battle would be won,

_The streets be paved with mutton pies_,

_Potatoes eat like pine!_

And, in fine, everyone would live happily ever afterwards.

To old Tories of the stamp of Sir Robert Vermuyden, the outlook was

wholly dark. But it is not often that public care clouds private joy;

and had Eldon been prime minister, with Wetherell for his Chancellor,

the grounds of Stapylton could hardly have worn a more smiling aspect

than they presented on the fine day in early September, which Sir

Robert had chosen for his daughter’s first party. The abrupt addition

of a well-grown girl to a family of one is a delicate process. It is

apt to open the door to scandal. And a little out of discretion, and

more that she, who was now the apple of his eye, might not wear her

wealth with a difference, nor lack anything of the mode, he had not

hastened the occasion. A word had been dropped here and there—with

care; the truth had been told to some, the prepossessions of others had

been consulted. But at length the day was come on which she must stand

by his side and receive the world of Wiltshire.

And she had so stood for more than an hour of this autumn afternoon;

with such pride on his side as was fitting, and such blushes on hers as

were fitting also. Now, the prime duty of reception over, and his

company dispersed through the gardens, Sir Robert lingered with one or

two of his intimates on the lawn before the house. In the hollow of the

park hard by, stood the ample marquee in which his poorer neighbours

were presently to feed; gossip had it that Sir Robert was already at

work rebuilding his political influence. Near the tent, Hunt the

Slipper and Kiss in the Ring were in progress, and Moneymusk was being

danced to the strains of the Chippinge church band; the shrill voices

of the rustic youth proving that their first shyness was wearing off.

Within the gardens, a famous band from Bath played the new-fashioned

quadrilles turn about with Moore’s Irish Melodies; and a score of the

fair, gorgeous as the dragon-flies which darted above the water,

meandered delicately up and down the sward; or escorted by gentlemen in

tightly strapped white trousers and blue coats—or in Wellington frocks,

the latest mode—appeared and again disappeared among the elms beside

the Garden Pool. In the background, the house, adorned and refurnished,

winked with all its windows at the sunshine, gave forth from all its

doors the sweet scent of flowers, throbbed to the very recesses of the

haunted wing with small talk and light laughter, the tap of sandalled

feet and the flirt of fans.

Sir Robert thanked his God as he looked upon it all. And five years

younger in face and more like the Duke than ever, he listened, almost

purring, to the praises of his new-found darling. The odds had been

great that with such a breeding, she had been coarse or sly, common or

skittish. And she was none of these things, but fair as a flower,

slender as Psyche, sweet-eyed as a loving woman, dainty and virginal as

the buds of May! And withal gentle and kind and obedient—above all,

obedient. He could not thank God enough, as he read in the eyes of

young men and old women, what they thought of her. And he was thanking

Him, though in outward seeming he was attentive to an old friend’s

prattle, when his eyes fell on a carriage and four which, followed by

two outriders, was sweeping past the marquee and breasting the gentle

ascent to the house. All who were likely to arrive in such state, the

Beauforts, Suffolks, Methuens, were come; the old Duke of Beaufort,

indeed, and his daughter-in-law were gone again. So Sir Robert stared

at the approaching carriage, wondering whom it might contain.

“They are the Bowood liveries,” said his friend, who had longer sight.

“I thought they had gone to town for the Coronation.”

Sir Robert too had thought so. Indeed, though he had invited the

Lansdownes upon the principle, which even the heats attending the

Reform Bill did not wholly abrogate, that family friendships were above

party—he had been glad to think that he would not see the spoliators.

The trespass was too recent, the robbery too gross! Ay, and the times

too serious.

Here they were, however; Lady Lansdowne, her daughter, and a small

gentleman with a merry eye and curling locks. And Sir Robert repressed

a sigh, and advanced four or five paces to meet them. But though he

sighed, no one knew better what became a host; and his greeting was

perfect. One of his bitterest flings at Bowood painted it as the common

haunt of fiddlers and poets, actors and the like. But he received her

ladyship’s escort, who was no other than Mr. Moore of Sloperton, and of

the Irish Melodies, with the courtesy which he would have extended to

an equal; nor when Lady Lansdowne sent her girl to take tea under the

poet’s care did he let any sign of his reprobation appear. Those with

whom he had been talking had withdrawn to leave him at liberty, and he

found himself alone with Lady Lansdowne.

“We leave for Berkeley Square to-morrow, for the Coronation on the

8th,” she said, playing with her fan in a way which would have betrayed

to her intimates that she was not at ease. “I had many things to do

this morning in view of our departure and I could not start early. You

must accept our apologies, Sir Robert.”

“It was gracious of your ladyship to come at all,” he said.

“It was brave,” she replied, with a gleam of laughter in her eyes. “In

fact, though I bear my lord’s warmest felicitations on this happy

event, and wreathe them with mine, Sir Robert——”

“I thank your ladyship and Lord Lansdowne,” he said formally.

“I do not think that I should have ventured,” she continued with

another glint of laughter, “did I not bear also an olive branch.”

He bowed, but waited in silence for her explanation.

“One of a—a rather delicate nature,” she said. “Am I permitted, Sir

Robert, to—to speak in confidence?”

He did not understand and he sought refuge in compliments. “Permitted?”

he said, with the gallant bow of an old beau. “All things are permitted

to so much——”

“Hush!” she said. “But there! I will take you at your word. You know

that the Bill—there is but one Bill now-a-days—is in Committee?”

He frowned, disliking the subject. “I don’t think,” he said, “that any

good can come of discussing it, Lady Lansdowne.”

“I think it may,” she replied, with a confidence which she did not

feel, “if you will hear me. It is whispered that there is a question in

Committee of one of the doomed boroughs. One, I am told, Sir Robert,

hangs between schedule A and schedule B; and that borough is Chippinge.

Those who know whisper Lord Lansdowne that ultimately it will be

plucked from the burning, and will be found in schedule B. Consequently

it will retain one member.”

Sir Robert’s thin face turned a dull red. So the wicked Whigs, who had

drawn the line of disfranchisement at such a point as to spare their

pet preserves, their Calne and Bedford and the like, had not been able

with all their craft to net every fish. One had evaded the mesh, and by

Heavens, it was Chippinge! Chippinge, though shorn of its full glory,

would still return one member. He had not hoped, he had not expected

this. Now

_Non omnis moriar, multaque pars mei

Vitabit Libitinam!_

he thought with jubilation. And then another thought darted through his

mind and changed his joy to chagrin. A seat had been left to Chippinge.

But why? That Arthur Vaughan, that his renegade cousin, might continue

to fill it, might continue to hold it, under his nose and to his daily,

hourly, his constant mortification. By Heaven, it was too much! They

had said well, who said that an enemy’s gift was to be dreaded. But he

would fight the seat, at the next election and at every election,

rather than suffer that miserable person, miserable on so many

accounts, to fill it at his will. And after all the seat was saved; and

no one could tell the future. The lasting gain might outlive the

temporary vexation.

So, after frowning a moment, he tried to smooth his brow. “And your

mission, Lady Lansdowne,” he said politely, “is to tell me this?”

“In part,” she said, with hesitation, for the course, of his feelings

had been visible in his countenance. “But also——”

“But also—and in the main,” he answered with a smile, “to make a

proposition, perhaps?”

“Yes.”

He thought of the most obvious proposition, and he spoke in pursuance

of his thought. “Then forgive me if I speak plainly,” he said. “Whether

the borough lose one member or both, whether it figure in schedule B,

or in schedule A, cannot affect my opposition to the Bill! If you have

it in commission, therefore, to make any proposal, based on a contrary

notion, I cannot listen even to your ladyship.”

“I have not,” she answered with a smile. “Sir Robert Vermuyden’s

malignancy is too well known. Yet I am the bearer of a proposition.

Suppose the Bill to become law, and I am told that it will surely

become law, can we not avoid future conflict, and—I will not say future

ill-will, for God knows there is none on our side, Sir Robert—but

future friction, by an agreement? Of course it will not be possible to

nominate members in the future as in the past. But for some time to

come whoever is returned for Chippinge must be returned by your

influence, or by my lord’s.”

He coughed drily. “Possibly,” he said.

“In view of that,” she continued, flirting her fan, as she watched his

face—his manner was not encouraging, “and for the sake of peace between

families, and a little, perhaps, because I do not wish Kerry to be

beggared by contested elections, can we not now, while the future is on

the lap of the gods——”

“In Committee,” Sir Robert corrected with a grave bow.

She laughed pleasantly. “Well,” she allowed, “perhaps it is not quite

the same thing. But no matter! Whoever the Fates in charge, can we

not,” with her head on one side and a charming smile, “make a treaty of

peace?”

“And what,” Sir Robert asked with urbane sarcasm, “becomes of the

rights of the people in that case, Lady Lansdowne? And of the purity of

elections? And of the new and independent electors whom my lord has

brought into being? Must we not think of these things?”

She looked for an instant rather foolish. Then she rallied, and with a

slightly heightened colour, “In good time, we must,” she replied. “But

for the present it is plain that they will not be able to walk without

assistance.”

“What?” it was on the tip of his tongue to answer. “The new and

independent electors? Not walk without assistance? Oh, what a change is

here!” But he forbore. He said instead—but with the faintest shade of

irony, “Without _our_ assistance, I think you mean, Lady Lansdowne?”

“Yes. And that being so, why should we not agree, my lord and you—to

save Kerry’s pocket shall I say—to bring forward a candidate

alternately?”

Sir Robert shook his head gravely. He would fight.

“Allowing to you, Sir Robert, as the owner of the influence hitherto

dominant in the borough, the first return.”

“The first return—after the Bill passes?”

“Yes.”

That was a different thing. That was another thing altogether. A gleam

of satisfaction shone for an instant under the baronet’s bushy

eyebrows. The object he had most at heart was to oust his treacherous

cousin. And here was a method, sure and safe: more safe by far than any

contest under the new Bill?

“Well I—I cannot say anything at this moment,” he said, at last, trying

to hide his satisfaction. “These heats once over I do not see—your

ladyship will pardon me—why my influence should not still predominate.”

It was Lady Lansdowne’s turn. “And things be as before?” she answered.

“No, Sir Robert, no. You forget those rights of the people which you

were so kind as to support a moment ago. Things will not be as before.

But—but perhaps I shall hear from you? Of course it is not a matter

that can be settled, as in the old days, by our people.”

“You shall certainly hear,” he said, with something more than courtesy.

“In the meantime——”

“I am dying to see your daughter,” she answered. “I am told that she is

very lovely. Where is she?”

“A few minutes ago she was in the Elm Walk,” Sir Robert answered, a

slight flush betraying his gratification. “I will send for her.”

But her ladyship would not hear of this; nor would she suffer him to

leave his post to escort her. “Here’s la belle Suffolk coming to take

leave of you,” she said. “And I know my way.”

“But you will not know her,” Sir Robert answered.

Lady Lansdowne let her parasol sink over her shoulder. “I think I

shall,” she said with a glance of meaning, “if she is like her mother.”

And without waiting to see the effect of her words, she moved away. It

was said of old time of Juno, that she walked a Goddess confessed. And

of Lady Lansdowne as she moved slowly across the sunny lawn before the

church, her dainty skirts trailing and her parasol inclined, it might

with equal justice have been said, that she walked a great lady, of

that day when great ladies still were,

_Nor mill nor mart had mocked the guinea’s stamp_.

Whether she smiled on this person or bowed to that, or with a slighter

movement acknowledged the courtesy of those who, without claiming

recognition made respectful way for her, a gracious ease and a quiet

nonchalance were in all her actions. The deeper emotions seemed as far

from her as were Hodge and Joan playing Kiss in the Ring. But her last

words to Sir Robert had reacted on herself, and as she crossed the

rustic bridge, she paused a moment to gaze on the water. The band was

playing the air of “She is far from the Land,” and tears rose to her

eyes as she recalled the past and pictured scene after scene, absurd or

pathetic in the career of the proud beauty who had once queened it

here, whose mad pranks and madder sayings had once filled these

shrubberies with mirth or chagrin, and whose child she was about to

see.

She sighed, as she resumed her course, unable even now to blame Lady

Sybil as her conduct to her child deserved. But where was the child?

Not on the walk under the elms, which was deserted in favour of the

more lively attractions of the park. Lady Lansdowne looked this way and

that; at length availing herself of the solitude, she paced the walk to

its end. Thence a short path which she well remembered, led to the

kennels; and rather to indulge her sentiment and recall the days when

she was herself young, and had been intimate here, than because she

expected to meet Mary, she took this path. She had not followed it a

dozen steps, and was hesitating whether to go on or return, the strains

of Moore’s melody were scarcely blurred by the intervening laurels,

when a tall dark-robed figure stepped with startling abruptness from

the shrubbery, and stood before her.

“Louisa,” said the stranger. And she raised her veil. “Don’t you know

me?”

“Sybil!”

“Yes, Sybil!” the other answered curtly. And then as if something in

Lady Lansdowne’s tone had wounded her, “Why not?” she continued,

raising her head proudly. “My name came easily enough to your

ladyship’s lips once! And I am not aware that I have done anything to

deprive me of the right to call my friends by their names, be they whom

they may!”

“No, no! But——”

“But you meant it, Louisa!” the other retorted with energy. “Or is it

that you find me so changed, so old, so worn, so altered from her you

once knew, that it astonishes you to trace in this face the features of

Sybil Matching!”

“You are changed,” the other answered kindly. “I fear you have been

ill?”

“I am ill. I am more, I am dying. Not here, nor to-day, nor

to-morrow——”

Lady Lansdowne interrupted her. “In that sense,” she said gently, “we

are all dying.” But though she said it, the change in Lady Sybil’s

appearance did indeed shock her; almost as much as her presence in that

place amazed her.

“I have but three months to live,” Lady Sybil answered feverishly; and

her sunken cheeks and bright eyes, which told of some hidden disease,

confirmed her words. “I am dying in that sense! Do you hear? But I dare

say,” with a flash of her old levity, “it is my presence here that

shocks you? You are thinking what Vermuyden would say if he turned the

corner behind you, and found us together!” And, as Lady Lansdowne, with

a nervous start, looked over her shoulder, with the old recklessness,

“I’d like—I’d like to see his face, my dear, and yours, too, if he

found us. But,” she continued, with an abrupt change to impassioned

earnestness, “it’s not to see you that I came to-day! Don’t think it!

It’s not to see you that I’ve been waiting for two hours past. I want

to see my girl! I am going to see her, do you hear! You must bring her

to me!”

“Sybil!”

“Don’t contradict me, Louisa,” she cried peremptorily. “Haven’t I told

you that I am dying? Don’t you hear what I say! Am I to die and not see

my child? Cruel woman! Heartless creature! But you always were! And

cold as an icicle!”

“No, indeed, I am not! And I think you should see her,” Lady Lansdowne

answered, in no little distress. How could she not be distressed by the

contrast between this woman plainly and almost shabbily dressed—for the

purpose perhaps of evading notice—and with illness stamped on her face,

and the brilliant, harum-scarum Lady Sybil, with whom her thoughts had

been busy a few minutes before? “I think you ought to see her,” she

repeated in a soothing tone. “But you should take the proper steps to

do so. You——”

“You think—yes, you do!” Lady Vermuyden retorted with fierce

energy—“you think that I have treated her so ill that I have no right

to see her! That I cannot care to see her! But you do not know how I

was tried! How I was suspected, how I was watched! What wrongs I

suffered! And—and I never meant to hide her for good. When I died, she

would have come home. And I had a plan too—but never mind that—to right

her without Vermuyden’s knowledge and in his teeth. I saw her on a

coach one day along with—what is it?”

“There is someone coming,” Lady Lansdowne said hurriedly. Her ladyship

indeed was in a state of great apprehension. She knew that at any

moment she might be found, perhaps by Sir Robert: and the thought of

the scene which would follow—aware as she was of the exasperation of

his feelings—appalled her. She tried to temporise. “Another time,” she

said. “I think someone is coming now. See me another time and I will do

what I can.”

“No!” the other broke in, her face flushing with sudden anger. “See

you, Louisa? What do I care for seeing you? It is my girl I wish to

see, that I’m come to see, that I’m going to see! I’m her mother, fetch

her to me! I have a right to see her, and I will see her! I demand her!

If you do not go for her——”

“Sybil! Sybil!” Lady Lansdowne cried, thoroughly alarmed by her

friend’s violence. “For Heaven’s sake be calm!”

“Calm?” Lady Vermuyden answered. “Do you cease to dictate to me, and do

as I bid you! Go, and fetch her, or I will go myself and claim her

before all his friends. He has no heart. He never had a heart! It’s

sawdust,” with a hysterical laugh. “But he has pride and I’ll trample

on it! I’ll tread it in the mud—if you don’t fetch her! Are you going,

Miss Gravity? We used to call you Miss Gravity, I remember. You were

always,” with a faint sneer, “a bit of a prude, my dear!”

Miss Gravity! What long-forgotten trifles, what thoughts of youth the

nickname brought back to Lady Lansdowne’s recollection. What wars of

maidens’ wits, and half-owned jealousies, and light resentments, and

sunny days of pique and pleasure! Her heart, never anything but soft,

under the mask of her great-lady’s manner, waxed sore and pitiful. Yet

how was she to do the other’s bidding? How could she betray Sir

Robert’s confidence? How——

Someone was coming—really coming this time. She looked round.

“I’ll give you five minutes!” Lady Sybil whispered. “Five minutes,

Louisa! Remember!”

And when Lady Lansdowne turned again to her, she had vanished among the

laurels.

XXII

WOMEN’S HEARTS

Lady Lansdowne walked slowly away in a state of perplexity, from which

the monotonous lilt of the band which was now playing quadrille music

did nothing to free her. Whether Sybil Vermuyden were dying or not, it

was certain that she was ill. Disease had laid its hand beyond

mistaking on that once beautiful face; the levity and wit which had

formerly dazzled beholders now gleamed but fitfully and with such a

ghastly light as the corpse candle gives forth. The change was great

since Lady Lansdowne had seen her in the coach at Chippenham; and it

might well be that if words of forgiveness were to be spoken, no time

was to be lost. Old associations, a mother’s feelings for a mother,

pity, all urged Lady Lansdowne to compliance with her request; nor did

the knowledge that the woman, who had once queened it so brilliantly in

this place, was now lurking on the fringe of the gay crowd, athirst for

a sight of her child, fail to move a heart which all the jealousies of

a Whig coterie had not hardened or embittered.

Unluckily the owner of that heart felt that she was the last person who

ought to interfere. It behoved her, more than it behoved anyone, to

avoid fresh ground of quarrel with Sir Robert. Courteously as he had

borne himself on her arrival, civilly as he had veiled the surprise

which her presence caused him, she knew that he was sore hurt by his

defeat in the borough. And if those who had thwarted him publicly were

to intervene in his private concerns, if those who had suborned his

kinsman were now to tamper with his daughter, ay, or were to incur a

suspicion of tampering, she knew that his anger would know no bounds.

She felt, indeed, that it would be justified.

She had to think, too, of her husband, who had sent her with the

olive-branch. He was a politic, long-sighted man; who, content with the

solid advantage he had gained, had no mind to push to extremity a

struggle which must needs take place at his own door. He would be

displeased, seriously displeased, if her mission, in place of closing,

widened the breach.

And yet—and yet her heart ached for the woman, who had never wholly

lost a place in her affections. And there was this. If Lady Sybil were

thwarted no one was more capable of carrying out her threat and of

taking some violent step, which would make matters a hundred times

worse, alike for Sir Robert and his daughter.

While she weighed the matter, Lady Lansdowne found herself back at the

rustic bridge. She was in the act of stepping upon it—still deep in

thought—when her eyes encountered those of a young couple who were

waiting at the farther end to give her passage. She looked a second

time; and she stood. Then, smiling, she beckoned to the girl to come to

her. Meanwhile, a side-thought, born of the conjunction of the two

young people, took form in her mind. “I hope that may come to nothing,”

she reflected.

Possibly it was for this reason, that when the man would have come

also, she made it clear that the smile was not for him. “No, Mr.

Flixton,” she said, the faintest possible distance in her tone. “I do

not want you. I will relieve you of your charge.”

And when Mary, timid and blushing, had advanced to her, “My dear,” she

said, holding out both her hands, and looking charmingly at her, “I

should have known you anywhere.” And she drew her to her and kissed

her. “I am Lady Lansdowne. I knew your mother, and I hope that you and

my daughter will be friends.”

The mention of her mother increased Mary’s shyness. “Your ladyship is

very kind,” she murmured. She did not know that her embarrassment was

so far from hurting her, that the appeal in her eyes went straight to

the elder woman’s heart.

“I mean to be kind at any rate,” Lady Lansdowne answered, smiling on

the lovely face before her. And then, “My dear,” she said, “have they

told you that you are very beautiful? More beautiful, I think, than

your mother was: I hope”—and she did not try to hide the depth of her

feelings—“that you may be more happy.”

The girl’s colour faded at this second reference to her mother; made,

she could not doubt, with intention. Her father, even while he had

overwhelmed her with benefits, even while he had opened this new life

to her with a hand full of gifts, had taught her—tacitly or by a word

at most—that that name was the key to a Bluebeard’s chamber; that it

must not be used. She knew that her mother lived; she guessed that she

had sinned against her husband; she understood that she had wronged her

child. But she knew no more: and with this, since this at the least she

must know, Sir Robert would have had her content.

And yet, to speak correctly, she did know more. She knew that the

veiled lady who had intervened at long intervals in her life must have

been her mother. But she felt no impulse of affection towards that

woman—whom she had not seen. Her heart went out instead to a shadowy

mother who walked the silent house at sunset, whose skirts trailed in

the lonely passages, of whose career of wild and reckless gaiety she

had vague hints here and there. It was to this mother, radiant and

young, with the sheen of pearls in her hair, and the haunting smile,

that she yearned. She had learned in some subtle way that the vacant

place over the mantel in the hall which her own portrait by Maclise was

to fill, had been occupied by her mother’s picture. And dreaming of the

past, as what young girl alone in that stately house would not, she had

seen her come and go in the half lights, a beautiful, spoilt child of

fashion. She had traced her up and down the wide polished stairway,

heard the tap of her slender sandal on the shining floors, perceived in

long-closed chambers the fading odours of her favourite scent. And in a

timid, frightened way she had longed to know her and to love her, to

feel her touch on her hair and give her pity in return.

It is possible that she might have dwelt more intimately on Lady

Sybil’s fate, possible that she might have ventured on some line of her

own in regard to her, if her new life had been free from preoccupation;

if there had not been with her an abiding regret, which clouded the

sunniest prospects. But love, man’s love, woman’s love, is the most

cruel of monopolists: it tramples on the claims of the present, much

more of the absent. And if the novelty of Mary’s new life, the many

marvels to which she must accustom herself, the new pleasures, the new

duties, the strange new feeling of wealth—if, in fine, the necessity of

orientating herself afresh in relation to every person and

everything—was not able to put thoughts of her lover from her mind, the

claims of an unknown mother had an infinitely smaller chance of

asserting themselves.

But now at that word, twice pronounced by Lady Lansdowne, the girl

stood ashamed and conscience-stricken. “You knew my mother?” she

faltered.

“Yes, my dear,” the elder woman answered gravely. “I knew her very

well.”

The gravity of the speaker’s tone presented a new idea to Mary’s mind.

“She is not happy?” she said slowly.

“No.”

With that word Lady Lansdowne looked over her shoulder; conscience

makes cowards, and her nervousness communicated itself to Mary. A

possibility, at which the girl had never glanced, presented itself, and

so abruptly that all the colour left her face. “She is not here?” she

said.

“Yes, she is here. And—don’t be frightened, my dear!” Lady Lansdowne

continued earnestly. “But listen to me! A moment ago I thought of

throwing you in her way without your knowledge. But, since I have seen

you, I have your welfare at heart, as well as hers. And I must, I ought

to tell you, that I do not think your father would wish you to see her.

I think that you should know this; and that you should decide for

yourself—whether you will see her. Indeed, you must decide for

yourself,” she repeated, her eyes fixed anxiously on the girl’s face.

“I cannot take the responsibility.”

“She is unhappy?” Mary asked, looking most unhappy herself.

“She is unhappy, and she is ill.”

“I ought to go to her? You think so? Please—your ladyship, will you

advise me?”

Lady Lansdowne hesitated. “I cannot,” she said.

“But—there is no reason,” Mary asked faintly, “why I should not go to

her?”

“There is no reason. I honestly believe,” Lady Lansdowne repeated

solemnly, “that there is no reason—except your father’s wish. It is for

you to say how far that, which should weigh with you in all other

things, shall weigh with you in this.”

Suddenly a burning colour dyed Mary’s face. “I will go to her,” she

cried impulsively. She had been weak once, she had been weak! And how

she had suffered for that weakness! But she would be strong now. “Where

is she, if you please?” she continued bravely. “Can I see her at once?”

“She is in the path leading to the kennels. You know it? No, you need

not take leave of me, child! Go, and,” Lady Lansdowne added with

feeling, “God forgive me if I have done wrong in sending you!”

“You have not done wrong!” Mary cried, an unwonted spirit in her tone.

And, without taking other leave, she turned and went—though her limbs

trembled under her. She was going to her mother! To her mother! Oh,

strange, oh, impossible thought!

Yet, engrossing as was that thought, it could not quite oust fear of

her father and of his anger. And the blush soon died; so that the

whiteness of her cheeks when she reached the Kennel Path was a poor set

off for the ribbons that decked her muslin robe. What she expected,

what she wished or feared or hoped she could never remember. What she

saw, that which awaited her, was a woman, ill, and plainly clad, with

only the remains of beauty in her wasted features; but withal cynical

and hard-eyed, and very, very far from the mother of her day-dreams.

Such as she was the unknown scanned Mary with a kind of scornful

amusement. “Oh,” she said, “so this is what they have made of Miss

Vermuyden? Let me look at you, girl?” And laying her hands on Mary’s

shoulders she looked long into the tearful, agitated face. “Why, you

are like a sheet of paper!” she continued, raising the girl’s chin with

her finger. “I wonder you dared to come with Sir Robert saying no! And,

you little fool,” she continued in a swift spirit of irritation, “as

soon not come at all, as look at me like that! You’ve got my chin and

my nose, and more of me than I thought. But God knows where you got

your hare’s eyes! Are you always frightened?”

“No, Ma’am, no!” she stammered.

“No, Ma’am? No, goose!” Lady Sybil retorted, mimicking her. “Why, ten

kings on ten thrones had never made me shake as you are shaking! Nor

twenty Sir Roberts in twenty passions! What is it you are afraid of?

Being found with me?”

“No!” Mary cried. And, to do her justice, the emotion with which Lady

Sybil found fault was as much a natural agitation, on seeing her

mother, as fear on her own account.

“Then you are afraid of me?” Lady Sybil rejoined. And again she

twitched the girl’s face to the light.

Mary was amazed rather than afraid: but she could not say that. And she

kept silence.

“Or is it dislike of me?” the mother continued—a slight grimace, as of

pain, distorting her face. “You hate me, I suppose? You hate me?”

“Oh, no, no!” the girl cried in distress.

“You do, Miss!” And with no little violence she pushed Mary from her.

“You set down all to me, I suppose! I’ve kept you from your own, that’s

it! I am the wicked mother, worse than a step-mother, who robbed you of

your rights! And made a beggar of you and would have kept you a beggar!

I am she who wronged you and robbed you—the unnatural mother! And you

never ask,” she went on with fierce, impulsive energy, “what I

suffered? How I was wronged! What I bore! No, nor what I meant to

do—with you!”

“Indeed, indeed——”

“What I meant to do, I say!” Lady Sybil repeated violently. “At my

death—and I am dying, but what is that to you?—all would have been

told, girl! And you would have got your own. Do you believe me?” she

added passionately, advancing a step in a manner almost menacing. “Do

you believe me, girl?”

“I do, I do!” Mary cried, inexpressibly pained by the other’s

vehemence.

“I’ll swear it, if you like! But I hoped that he—your father—would die

first and never know! He deserved no better! He deserved nothing of me!

And then you’d have stepped into all! Or better still—do you remember

the day you travelled to Bristol? It’s not so long ago that you need

forget it, Miss Vermuyden! I was in the coach, and I saw you, and I saw

the young man who was with you. I knew him, and I told myself that

there was a God after all, though I’d often doubted it, or you two

would not have been brought together! I saw another way then, but you’d

have parted and known nothing, if,” she continued, laughing recklessly,

“I had not helped Providence, and sent him with a present to your

school! But—why, you’re red enough now, girl! What is it?”

“He knew?” Mary murmured, with an effort. “You told him who I was,

Ma’am?”

“He knew no more than a doll!” Lady Sybil answered. “I told him

nothing, or he’d have told again! I know his kind. No, I thought to get

all for you and thwart Vermuyden, too! I thought to marry his heir to

the little schoolmistress—it was an opera touch, my dear, and beyond

all the Tremaynes and Vivian Greys in the world! But there, when all

promised well, that slut of a maid went to my husband, and trumped my

trick!”

“And Mr.—Mr. Vaughan,” Mary stammered, “had no knowledge—who I was?”

“Mr.—Mr. Vaughan!” Lady Sybil repeated, mocking her, “had no knowledge?

No! Not a jot, not a tittle! But what?” she went on, in a tone of

derision, “Sits the wind there, Miss Meek? You’re not all milk and

water, bread and butter and backboard, then, but have a spice of your

mother, after all? Mr.—Mr. Vaughan!” again she mimicked her. “Why, if

you were fond of the man, didn’t you say so?”

Mary, under the fire of those sharp, hard eyes, could not restrain her

tears. But, overcome as she was, she managed in broken words to explain

that her father had forbidden it.

“Oh, your father, was it?” Lady Sybil rejoined. “He said ‘No,’ and no

it was! And the lord of my heart and the Man of Feeling is dismissed in

disgrace! And now we weep in secret and the worm feeds on our damask

cheek!” she ran on in a tone of raillery, assumed perhaps to hide a

deeper feeling. “I suppose,” she added shrewdly, “Sir Robert would have

you think that Vaughan knew who you were, and was practising on you?”

“Yes.”

“And you dismissed him at papa’s command, eh? That was it, was it?”