Vaughan soon overcame his qualms; for his opinions were fixed. But he thought that the subject might serve him with his neighbour, and he addressed her.
"You must not let them alarm you," he said. "We are still a long way, I fancy, from guillotines or barricades."
"I hope so," she answered. "In any case I am not afraid."
"Why, if I may ask?"
She glanced at him with a gleam of humour in her eyes. "Little shrubs feel little wind," she murmured.
"But also little sun, I fear," he replied.
"That does not follow," she said, without raising her eyes again. "Though it is true that I-I am so seldom free in a morning that a journey such as this, with the sunshine, is like heaven to me."
"The morning is a delightful time," he said.
"Oh!" she cried, as if she now knew that he felt with her. "That is it! The afternoon is different."
"Well, fortunately, you and I have-much of the morning left."
She made no reply to that, and he wondered in silence what was the employment which filled her mornings and fitted her to enjoy with so keen a zest this early ride. The Gloucester up-coach was coming to meet them, the guard tootling merrily on his horn, and a blue and yellow flag-the Whig colours-flying on the roof of the coach, which was crowded with smiling passengers. Vaughan saw the girl's eyes sparkle as the two coaches passed one another amid a volley of badinage; and demure as she was, he was sure that she had a store of fun within. He wished that she would remove her cheap thread gloves that he might see if her hands were as white as they were small. She was no common person, he was sure of that; her speech was correct, though formal, and her manner was quiet and refined. And her eyes-he must make her look at him again!
"You are going to Bristol?" he said. "To stay there?"
Perhaps he threw too much feeling into his voice. At any rate the tone of her answer was colder. "Yes," she said, "I am."
"I am going as far as Chippenham," he volunteered.
"Indeed!"
There! He had lost all the ground he had gained. She thought him a possible libertine, who aimed at putting himself on a footing of intimacy with her. And that was the last thing-confound it, he meant that to do her harm was the last thing he had in his mind.
It annoyed him that she should think anything of that kind. And he cudgelled his brain for a subject at once safe and sympathetic, without finding one. But either she was not so deeply offended as he fancied, or she thought him sufficiently punished. For presently she addressed him; and he saw that she was ever so little embarrassed.
"Would you please to tell me," she said, in a low voice, "how much I ought to give the coachman?"
Oh. bless her! She did not think him a horrid libertine. "You?" he said audaciously. "Why nothing, of course."
"But-but I thought it was usual?"
"Not on this road," he answered, lying resolutely. "Gentlemen are expected to give half a crown, others a shilling. Ladies nothing at all. Sam," he continued, rising to giddy heights of invention, "would give it back to you, if you offered it."
"Indeed!" He fancied a note of relief in her tone, and judged that shillings were not very plentiful. Then, "Thank you," she added. "You must think me very ignorant. But I have never travelled."
"You must not say that," he returned. "Remember the Clapham Stage!"
She laughed at the jest, small as it was; and her laugh gave him the most delicious feeling-a sort of lightness within, half exhilaration, half excitement. And of a sudden, emboldened by it, he was grown so foolhardy that there is no knowing what he would not have said, if the streets of Reading had not begun to open before them and display a roadway abnormally thronged.
For Mr. Palmer's procession, with its carriages, riders, and flags, was entering ahead of them; and the train of tipsy rabble which accompanied it blocked King Street, and presently brought the coach to a stand. The candidate, lifting his cocked hat from time to time, was a hundred paces before them and barely visible through a forest of flags and banners. But a troop of mounted gentry in dusty black, and smiling dames in carriages-who hardly masked the disgust with which they viewed the forest of grimy hands extended to them to shake-were under the travellers' eyes, and showed in the sunlight both tawdry and false. Our party, however, were not long at ease to enjoy the spectacle. The crowd surrounded the coach, leapt on the steps, and hung on to the boot. And presently the noise scared the horses, which at the entrance to the marketplace began to plunge.
"The Bill! The Bill!" cried the rabble. And with truculence called on the passengers to assent. "You lubbers," they bawled, "shout for the Bill! Or we'll have you over!"
"All right! All right!" replied Sammy, controlling his horses as well as he could. "We're all for the Bill here! Hurrah!"
"Hurrah! Palmer for ever, Tories in the river!" cried the mob. "Hurrah!"
"Hurrah!" echoed the guard, willing to echo anything. "The Bill for ever! But let us pass, lads! Let us pass! We're for the Bear, and we've no votes."
"Britons never will be slaves!" shrieked a drunken butcher as the marketplace opened before them. The space was alive with flags and gay with cockades, and thronged by a multitude, through which the candidate's procession clove its way slowly. "We'll have votes now! Three cheers for Lord John!"
"Hurrah! Hurrah!"
"And down with Orange Peel!" squeaked a small tailor in a high falsetto.
The roar of laughter which greeted the sally startled the horses afresh. But the guard had dropped down by this time and fought his way to the head of one of the leaders; and two or three good-humoured fellows seconded his efforts. Between them the coach was piloted slowly but safely through the press; which, to do it justice, meant only to exercise the privileges which the Election season brought with it.
V
ROSY-FINGERED DAWN
"Beaucoup de bruit, pas de mal!" Vaughan muttered in his neighbour's ear; and saw with as much surprise as pleasure that she understood.
And all would have gone well but for the imprudence of the inside passenger who had distinguished himself by his protest against the placard. The coach was within a dozen paces of the Bear, the crowd was falling back from it, the peril, if it had been real, seemed past, the most timid was breathing again, when he thrust out his foolish head, and flung a taunt-which those on the roof could not hear-at the rabble.
Whatever the words, their effect was disastrous. A bystander caught them up and repeated them, and in a trice half-a-dozen louts flung themselves on the door and strove to drag it open, and get at the man; while others, leaning over their shoulders, aimed missiles at the inside passengers.
The guard saw that more than the glass of his windows was at stake; but he could do nothing. He was at the leaders' heads. And the passengers on the roof, who had risen to their feet to see the fray, were as helpless. Luckily the coachman kept his head and his reins. "Turn 'em into the yard!" he yelled. "Turn 'em in!"
The guard did so, almost too quickly. The frightened horses wheeled round, and, faster than was prudent, dashed under the low arch, dragging the swaying coach after them.
There was a cry of "Heads! Heads!" and then, more imperatively, "Heads! Stoop! Stoop!"
The warning was needed. The outsides were on their feet engrossed in the struggle at the coach door. And so quickly did the coach turn that-though a score of spectators in the street and on the balcony of the inn saw the peril-it was only at the last moment that Vaughan and the two passengers at the back, men well used to the road, caught the warning, and dropped down. And it was only at the very last moment that Vaughan felt rather than saw that the girl was still standing. He had just time, by a desperate effort, and amid a cry of horror-for to the spectators she seemed to be already jammed between the arch and the seat-to drag her down. Instinctively, as he did so, he shielded her face with his arm; but the horror was so near that, as they swept under the low brow, he was not sure that she was safe.
He was as white as she was, when they emerged into the light again. But he saw that she was safe, though her bonnet was dragged from her head; and he cried unconsciously, "Thank God! Thank God!" Then, with that hatred of a scene which is part of the English character, he put her quickly back into her seat again, and rose to his feet, as if he wished to separate himself from her.
But a score of eyes had seen the act; and however much he might wish to spare her feelings, concealment was impossible.
"Christ!" cried the coachman, whose copper cheeks were perceptibly paler. "If your head's on your shoulders, Miss, it is to that young gentleman you owe it. Don't you ever go to sleep on the roof of a coach again! Never! Never!"
"Here, get a drop of brandy!" cried the landlady, who, from one of the doors flanking the archway, had seen all. "Do you stay where you are, Miss," she continued, "and I'll send it up to you."
Then amid a babel of exclamations and a chorus of blame and praise, the ladder was brought, and Vaughan made haste to descend. A waiter tripped out with the brown brandy and water on a tray; and the young lady, who had not spoken, but had remained, sitting white and still, where Vaughan had placed her, sipped it obediently. Unfortunately the landlady's eyes were sharp; and as Vaughan passed her to go into the house-for the coach must be driven up the yard and turned before they could set off again-she let fall a cry.
"Lord, sir!" she said, "your hand is torn dreadful! You've grazed every bit of skin off it!"
He tried to silence her; and failing, hurried into the house. She fussed after him to attend to him; and Sammy, who was not a man of the most delicate perceptions, seized the opportunity to drive home his former lesson. "There, Miss," he said solemnly, "I hope that'll teach you to look out another time! But better his hand than your head. You'd ha' been surely scalped!"
The girl, a shade whiter than before, did not answer. And he thought her, for so pretty a wench, "a right unfeelin' un!"
Not so the Frenchman. "I count him a very locky man!" he said obscurely. "A very locky man."
"Well," the coachman answered with a grunt, "if you call that lucky-"
"Vraiment! Vraiment! But I-alas!" the Frenchman answered with an eloquent gesture, "I have lost my all, and the good fortunes are no longer for me!"
"Fortunes!" the coachman muttered, looking askance at him. "A fine fortune, to have your hand flayed! But where's" – recollecting himself-"where's that there fool that caused the trouble! D-n me, if he shall go any further on my coach. I'd like to double-thong him, and it'd serve him right!"
So when the ex-M.P. presently appeared, Sammy let go his tongue to such purpose that the political gentleman; finding himself in a minority of one, retired into the house and, with many threats of what he would do when he saw the management, declined to go on.
"And a good riddance of a d-d Tory!" the coachman muttered. "Think all the world's made for them! Fifteen minutes he's cost us already! Take your seats, gents, take your seats! I'm off!"
Vaughan, with his hand hastily bandaged, was the last to come out. He climbed as quickly as he could to his place, and, without looking at his neighbour, he said some common-place word. She did not reply, and they swept under the arch. For a moment the sight of the thronged marketplace diverted him. Then he looked at her, and he saw that she was trembling.
If he was not quite so wise as the Frenchman, having had no bonnes fortunes to speak of, he had, nevertheless, keen perceptions. And he guessed that the girl, between her maiden shyness and her womanly gratitude, was painfully placed. It could not be otherwise. A girl who had spent her years, since childhood, within the walls of a school at Clapham, first as genteel apprentice, and then as assistant; who had been taught to consider young men as roaring lions with whom her own life could have nothing in common, and from whom it was her duty to guard the more giddy of her flock; who had to struggle at once with the shyness of youth, the modesty of her sex, and her inexperience-above all, perhaps with that dread of insult which becomes the instinct of lowly beauty-how was she to carry herself in circumstances so different from any which she had ever imagined? How was she to express a tithe of the feelings with which her heart was bursting, and which overwhelmed her as often as she thought of the hideous death from which he had snatched her?
She could not; and with inborn good taste she refrained from the commonplace word, the bald acknowledgment, in which a shallow nature might have taken refuge. On his side, he guessed some part of this, and discerned that if he would relieve her he must himself speak. Accordingly, when they had left the streets behind them and were swinging merrily along the Newbury Road, he leant towards her.
"May I beg," he said in a low voice, "that you won't think of what has happened? The coachman would have done as much, and scolded you! I happened to be next you. That was all."
In a strangled voice, "But your hand," she faltered. "I fear-I-" She shuddered, unable to go on.
"It is nothing!" he protested. "Nothing! In three days it will be well!"
She turned her eves on him, eyes which possessed an eloquence of which their owner was unconscious. "I will pray for you," she murmured. "I can do no more."
The pathos of her simple gratitude was such that Vaughan could not laugh it off. "Thank you," he said quietly. "We shall then be more than quits." And having given her a few moments in which to recover herself, "We are nearly at Speenhamland," he resumed cheerfully. "There is the George and Pelican! It's a great baiting-house for coaches. I am afraid to say how much corn and hay they give out in a day. They have a man who does nothing else but weigh it out." And so he chattered on, doing his utmost to talk of indifferent matters in an indifferent tone.
She could not repulse him after what had passed. And now and then, by a timid word, she gave him leave to talk. Presently he began to speak of things other than those under their eyes, and when he thought that he had put her at her ease, "You understand French?" he said looking at her suddenly.
"I spoke it as a child," she answered. "I was born abroad. I did not come to England until I was nine."
"To Clapham?"
"Yes. I have been employed in a school there."
Prudently he hastened to bring the talk back to the road again. And she took courage to steal a look at him when his eyes were elsewhere. He seemed so strong and gentle and courteous; this unknown creature which she had been taught to fear. And he was so thoughtful of her! He could throw so tender a note into his voice. Beside d'Orsay or Alvanley-but she had never heard of them-he might have passed muster but tolerably; but to her he seemed a very fine gentleman. She had a woman's eye for the fineness of his linen, and the smartness of his waistcoat-had not Sir James Graham, with his chest of Palermo stuffs, set the seal of Cabinet approval on fancy waistcoats? Nor was she blind to the easy carriage of his head, and his air of command.
And there she caught herself up: reflecting with a blush that it was by the easy path of thoughts such as these that the precipice was approached; that so it was the poor and pretty let themselves be led from the right road. Whither was she travelling? In what was this to end? She trembled. And if they had not at that moment swung out of Savernake Forest and sighted the red roofs of Marlborough, lying warm and sung at the foot of the steep London Hill, she did not know what she should have done, since she could not repulse him.
They rattled in merry style through the town, the leaders cantering, the bars swinging, the guard tootling, the sun shining; past a score of inn signs before which the heavy stages were baiting; past the two churches, while all the brisk pleasantness of this new, this living world, appealed to her to go its way. Ta-ra-ra! Ta-ra-ra! Swerving to the right they pulled up bravely, with steaming horses, before the door of the far-famed Castle Inn. Ta-ra-ra! Ta-ra-ra! "Half an hour for dinner, gentlemen!"
"Now," said Vaughan, thinking that all was well, or rather declining to think of anything but her shy glances and the delightful present. "You must cut my meat for me!"
She did not reply, and he saw that her eyes went to the basket at her feet. He guessed that she wished to avoid the expense of dining. "Or, perhaps, you are not coming in?" he said.
"I did not intend to do so," she replied. "I suppose," she continued timidly, "that I may stay here?"
"Certainly. You have something with you?"
"Yes."
He nodded pleasantly and left her; and she remained in her seat. As she ate, the target for many a sly glance of admiration, she was divided between gratitude and self-reproach; now thinking of him with a quickened heart, now taking herself to task for her weakness. The result was that when he strode out, confident and at ease, and looked up at her with laughing eyes, she blushed furiously-to her own unspeakable mortification.
Vaughan was no Lothario, and for a moment the telltale colour took him aback. Then he told himself that at Chippenham, less than twenty miles down the road, he was leaving her. It was absurd to suppose that, in the short space which remained, either could be harmed. And he mounted gaily, and masking his knowledge of her emotion with a skill which surprised himself, he chatted pleasantly, unaware that with every word he was stamping the impression of her face, her long eyelashes, her graceful head, her trick of this and that, more deeply upon his memory. While she, reassured by the same thought that they would part in an hour-and in an hour what harm could happen? – closed her eyes and drank the sweet draught-the sweeter for its novelty, and for the bitter which lurked at the bottom of the cup. Meantime Sammy winked sagely at his horses, and the Frenchman cast envious glances over his shoulders, and Silbury Hill, Fyfield, and the soft folds of the downs swept by, and on warm commons and southern slopes the early bees hummed above the gorse.
Here was Chippenham at last; and the end was come. He must descend. A hasty touch, a murmured word, a pang half-felt; she veiled her eyes. If her colour fluttered and she trembled, why not? She had cause to be grateful to him. And if he felt as his foot touched the ground that the world was cold, and the prospect cheerless, why not, when he had to face Sir Robert, and when his political embarrassments, forgotten for a time, rose nearer and larger?
It had often fallen to him to alight before the Angel at Chippenhan. From boyhood he had known the wide street, in which the fairs were held, the red Georgian houses, and the stone bridge of many arches over the Avon. But he had never seen these things, he had never alighted there, with less satisfaction than on this day.
Still this was the end. He raised his hat, saluted silently, and turned to speak to the guard. In the act he jostled a person who was approaching to accost him. Vaughan stared. "Hallo, White!" he said. "I was coming to see you."
White's hat was in his hand. "Your servant, sir," he said. "Your servant, sir. I am glad to be here to meet you, Mr. Vaughan."
"But you didn't expect me?"
"No, sir, no; I came to meet Mr. Cooke, who was to arrive by this coach. But I do not see him."
A light broke in upon Vaughan. "Gad! he must be the man we left behind at Reading," he said. "Is he a peppery chap?"
"He might be so called, sir," the agent answered with a smile. "I fancied that you knew him."
"No. Sergeant Wathen I know; not Mr. Cooke. Any way, he's not come, White."
"All the better, sir, if I can get a message to him by the up-coach. For he's not needed. I am glad to say that the trouble is at an end. My Lord Lansdowne has given up the idea of contesting the borough, and I came over to tell Mr. Cooke, thinking that he might prefer to go on to Bristol. He has a house at Bristol."
"Do you mean," Vaughan said, "that there will be no contest?"
"No, sir, no. Not now. And a good thing, too. Upset the town for nothing! My lord has no chance, and Pybus, who is his lordship's man here, he told me himself-"
He paused with his mouth open, and his eyes on a tall lady wearing a veil, who, after standing a couple of minutes on the further side of the street, was approaching the coach. To enter it she had to pass by him, and he stared, as if he saw a ghost. "By Gosh!" he muttered under his breath. And when, with the aid of the guard, she had taken her seat inside, "By Gosh!" he muttered again, "if that's not my lady-though I've not seen her for ten years-I've the horrors!"
He turned to Vaughan to see if he had noticed anything. But Vaughan, without waiting for the end of his sentence, had stepped aside to tell a helper to replace his valise on the coach. In the bustle he had noted neither White's emotion nor the lady.
At this moment he returned. "I shall go on to Bristol for the night, White," he said. "Sir Robert is quite well?"
"Quite well, sir, and I shall be happy to tell him of your promptness in coming."
"Don't tell him anything," the young man said, with a flash of peremptoriness. "I don't want to be kept here. Do you understand, White? I shall probably return to town to-morrow. Anyway, say nothing."
"Very good, sir," White answered. "But I am sure Sir Robert would be pleased to know that you had come down so promptly."
"Ah, well, you can let him know later. Good-bye, White."
The agent, with one eye on the young squire and one on the lady, whose figure was visible through the small coach-window, seemed to be about to refer to her. But he checked himself. "Good-bye, sir," he said. "And a pleasant journey! I'm glad to have been of service, Mr. Vaughan."
"Thank you, White, thank you," the young man answered. And he swung himself up, as the coach moved. A good-natured nod, and-Tantivy! Tantivy! Tantivy! The helpers sprang aside, and away they went down the hill, and over the long stone bridge, and so along the Bristol road; but now with the shades of evening beginning to spread on the pastures about them, and the cawing rooks, that had been abroad all day on the uplands, streaming across the pale sky to the elms beside the river.
But varium et mutabile femina. When he turned, eager to take up the fallen thread, Clotho could not have been more cold than his neighbour, nor Atropos with her shears more decisive. "I've had good news," he said, as he settled his coat about him. "I came down with a very unpleasant task before me. And it is lifted from me."
"Indeed!"
"So I am going on to Bristol instead of staying at Chippenham."
No answer.
"It is a great relief to me," he continued cheerfully.
"Indeed!" She spoke in the most distant of voices.
He raised his brows in perplexity. What had happened to her? She had been so grateful, so much moved, a few minutes before. The colour had fluttered in her cheek, the tear had been visible in her eye, she had left her hand the fifth of a second in his. And now!
Now she was determined that she would blush and smile and be kind no more. She was grateful-God knew she was grateful, let him think what he would. But there were limits. Her weakness, as long as she believed that Chippenham must part them, had been pardonable. But if he had it in his mind to attend her to Bristol, to follow her or haunt her-as she had known foolish young cits at Clapham to haunt the more giddy of her flock-then her mistake was clear; and his conduct, now merely suspicious, would appear in its black reality. She hoped that he was innocent. She hoped that his change of plan at Chippenham had been no subterfuge; that he was not a roaring lion. But appearances were deceitful and her own course was plain.
It was the plainer, as she had not been blind to the respect with which all at the Angel had greeted her companion; even White, a man of substance, with a gold chain and seals hanging from his fob, had stood bareheaded while he talked to him. It was plain that he was a fine gentleman; one of those whom young persons in her rank of life must shun.
So he drew scarcely five words out of her in as many miles. At last, thrice rebuffed, "I am afraid you are tired," he said. Was it for this that he had chosen to go on to Bristol?
"Yes," she answered. "I am rather tired. If you please I would prefer not to talk."
He was a little huffed then, and let her be; nor did he guess, though he was full of conjectures about her, how she hated her seeming ingratitude. But there was nought else for it; better seem thankless now than be worse hereafter. For she was growing frightened. She was beginning to have more than an inkling of the road by which young things were led to be foolish. Her ear retained the sound of his voice though he was silent. The fashion in which he had stooped to her-though he was looking another way now-clung to her memory. His laugh, though he was grave now, rang for her, full of glee and good-fellowship. She could have burst into tears.
They stayed at Marshfield to take on the last team. And she tried to divert her mind by watching a woman in a veil who walked up and down beside the coach, and seemed to return her curiosity. But she tried to little purpose, for she felt strained and weary, and more than ever inclined to cry. Doubtless the peril through which she had passed had shaken her.
So that she was thankful when, after descending perilous Tog Hill, they saw from Kingswood heights the lights of Bristol shining through the dusk; and she knew that she was at her journey's end. To arrive in a strange place on the edge of night is trying to anyone. But to alight friendless and alone, amid the bustle of a city, and to know that new relations must be created and a new life built up-this may well raise in the most humble and contented bosom a feeling of loneliness and depression. And doubtless that was why Mary Smith, after evading Vaughan with a success beyond her hopes, felt as she followed her modest trunk through the streets that-but she bent her head to hide the unaccustomed tears.