Chippinge Borough

"It was against my will I said what I have said," he resumed. "I did not wish to speak. I do not wish you to listen. I rose only because I was forced to rise. But being up, I owed it to myself to say enough to clear myself of-of the appearance of duplicity. That is all."

The Sergeant did not speak, but gazed darkly at him, his mind busy with the effect which this would have on the election. White, too, did not speak-he sat stricken dumb. The Squire swore, and five or six of the more intelligent hissed. But again it was Cooke who found words.

"That all? But that is not all!" he shouted. "That is not all! What are you, sir?" For still, in common with most of those at the table, he could not believe that he heard aright. He fancied that this was some trope, some nice distinction, which he had not followed. "You may be Sir Robert Vermuyden's cousin ten times over," he continued, vehemently, "but we'll have it clear what we have to expect. Speak like a man, sir! Say what you mean!"

Vaughan had taken his seat, but he rose again, a gleam of anger in his eyes. "Have I not spoken plainly?" he said. "I thought I had. If you have still any doubt, sir, I am for the Constitution, but I think that it has suffered by the wear and tear of time and needs repair. I think that the shifting of population during the last two centuries, the decay of one place and the rise of another, call for some change in the representation! I hold that the spread of education and the creation of a large and wealthy class unconnected with the land, render that change more urgent if we would avoid a revolution! I believe that the more we enlarge the base upon which our institutions rest, the more safely, the more steadily, and the longer will they last!"

They knew now, they understood, and the storm broke. The smaller men, or such of them as were sober, stared. But the greater number burst into a roar of dissent, of reprobation, of anger, led by the Squire.

"A Whig, by Heaven!" he cried violently. And he thrust his chair as far as possible from his neighbour. "A Whig, by Heaven! And here!" While others cried, "Renegade!" "Radical!" and "What are you doing here?" and hissed him. But above all, in some degree stilling all, rose Cooke's crucial question, "Are you for the Bill? Answer me that!" And he extended his hand for silence. "Are you for the Bill?"

"I am," Vaughan answered. The storm steadied him.

"You are?"

"Yes."

"Fool or rogue, then! which are you?" shrieked a voice from the lower end of the table. "Fool or rogue? Which are you?"

Vaughan turned sharply in the direction of the voice. "That reminds me," he said with a vigour which seemed after a few seconds to gain him a hearing-for the noise died down-"that reminds me, Sergeant Wathen is against the Bill. But he has addressed himself solely and only to your prejudices, gentlemen! I am for the Bill-I am for the Bill," he repeated, seeing that their attention was wandering, "I-"

He stopped, silenced and taken aback. For some were on their feet, others were rising; the faces of nine out of ten were turned from him. What was it? He turned to see; and he saw.

A few paces within the door stood Sir Robert himself; his fur collared travelling cloak hanging loose about him and showing his tall spare figure at its best. He stooped, but his high-bred face, cynically smiling, was turned full on the speaker; it was certain that he had heard much, if not all. And Vaughan had been brave indeed, he had been a hero, if taken by surprise and at this disadvantage he had not shown some discomfiture.

It is easy to smile now! Easy to say that this was but an English gentleman, bound like others by the law! And Vaughan's own kinsman! But few would have smiled then. He, through whose hands passed a quarter of the patronage of a county, who dammed or turned the stream of promotion, who had made many there and could unmake them, whose mere hint could have consigned, a few years back, the troublesome to the press-gang, who belonged almost as definitely, almost as exclusively, to a caste, as do white men in the India of to-day; who seldom showed himself to the vulgar save in his coach and four, or riding with belted grooms behind him-about such an one in '81 there was, if no divinity, at least the ægis of real power, that habit which unquestioned authority confers, that port of Jove to which men bow! Scan the pictured faces of the men who steered this country through the long war-the faces of Liverpool and Castlereagh-

Daring pilots in extremity,
Scorning the danger when the waves ran high;

or of those men, heirs to their traditions, who, for nearly twenty years, confronted the no less formidable forces of discontent and disaffection-of Peel and Wellington, Croker and Canning, and he is blind who does not find there the reflection of that firm rule, the shadow of that power which still survived, though maimed and weakened in the early thirties.

Certainly it was not easy to smile at such men then; at their pride or their prejudices, their selfishness or their eccentricity. For behind lay solid power. Small blame to Vaughan therefore, if in the face of the servile attitude, the obsequious rising of the company about him, he felt his countenance change, if he could not quite hide his dismay. And though he told himself that his feelings were out of place, that the man did but stand in the shoes which would one day be his, and was but now what he would be, vox faucibus hæsit-he was dumb. It was Sir Robert who broke the silence.

"I fear, Mr. Vaughan," he said, the gleam in his eyes alone betraying his passion-for he would as soon have walked the country lanes in his dressing robe as given way to rage in that company-"I fear you are saying in haste words which you will repent at leisure! Did I hear aright that-that you are in favour of the Bill?"

"I am," Vaughan replied a little huskily. "I-"

"Just so, just so!" Sir Robert replied with a certain lightness. And raising his walking cane he pointed gravely and courteously to the door a pace or two from him. "That is the door, Mr. Vaughan," he said. "You must be here, I am sure, under an error."

Vaughan coloured painfully. "Sir Robert," he said, "I owe you, I know-"

"You will owe me very little by to-morrow evening," Sir Robert rejoined, interrupting him suavely. "Much less than you now think! But that is not to the point. Will you-kindly withdraw?"

"I would like at least to say this! That I came here-"

"Will you kindly withdraw?" Sir Robert persisted. "That is all." And he pointed again, and still more blandly, to the door. "Any explanation you may please to offer-and I do not deny that one may be in place-you can give to my agent to-morrow. He, on his part, will have something to say. For the present-Annibal," turning with kindly condescension, "be good enough to open the door for this gentleman. Good-evening, Mr. Vaughan. You will not, I am sure, compel me to remove with my friends to another room?"

And as he continued to point to the door, and would listen to nothing-and the room was certainly his-Vaughan walked out. And Annibal closed the door behind him.

XIV

MISS SIBSON'S MISTAKE

It was perhaps fortunate for Miss Hilhouse that she did not hazard any remarks on that second escapade in the Square. Whether this amendment in her manners was due to Miss Sibson's apothegms, or to the general desire of the school to see the new teacher's new pelisse-which could only be gratified by favour-or to a threatening rigidity in Mary Smith's bearing must remain a question. But children are keen observers. Their senses are as sharp as their tongues are cruel. And it is certain that Miss Smith had not read four lines of the fifth chapter of The Fairchild Family before a certain sternness in her tone was noted by those who had not already marked the danger signal in her eyes. For the gentlest eyes can dart lightnings on occasion. The sheep will turn in defence of its lamb. Nor ever walked woman who could not fight for her secret and her pride.

So Miss Hilhouse bit her tongue and kept silence, the girls behaved beautifully, and Mary read The Fairchild Family to them in a tone of monotony that perfectly reflected the future as she saw it. She had been very foolish, and very weak, but she was not without excuse. He had saved her life, she could plead that. True, brought up as she had been at Clapham, shielded from all dealings with the other sex, taught to regard them as wolves, or at best as a race with which she could have no safe parley, she should have known better. She should have known that handsome, courteous, masterful-eyed, as they were-and with a way with them that made poor girls' hearts throb at one moment and stand still at another-she should have known that they meant nothing. That they were still men, and that she must not trust them, must not think of them, must not expect to find them more steadfast to a point than the weather-cock on St. Mary's at Redcliffe.

The weather-cock? Ah!

She had no sooner framed the thought in the middle of the reading than she was aware of a sensation; and a child, one of the youngest, raised her hand. "Please-"

Mary paused.

"Yes?" she asked. "What is it?"

"Please, Miss Smith, did the weather-cock speak?"

Mary reddened violently.

"Speak? The weather-cock? What do you mean, child?"

"Please, Miss Smith, you said that the weather-cock told Lucy the truth, the truth, and all the truth."

"Impossible!" Mary stammered. "I-I should have said, the coachman." And Mary resumed the story, but with a hot face; a face that blushed more painfully and more intolerably because she was conscious that every eye was upon it, and that a score of small minds were groping for the cause of her confusion.

She remembered, oh, how well she remembered, that the schoolmistress at Clapham had told her that she had every good quality except strength of will. And how thoroughly, how rapidly had she proved the truth of the exception! Freed from control for only twenty-four hours, left for that time to her own devices, she had listened to the first voice that addressed her, believed the first flattering look that fell on her, taken the most ordinary attentions-attentions at which any girl with knowledge of the world or strength of will would have smiled-for gold, real red gold! So that a light look without a spoken word had drawn her heart from her. How it behoved her to despise herself, loathe herself, discipline herself! How she ought to guard herself in the future! Above all, how thankful should she be for the dull but safe routine that fenced, and henceforth would fence, her life from such dangers!

True. Yet how dreary to her young eyes seemed that routine stretched before her! How her courage fainted at the prospect of morning added to morning, formal walk to formal walk, lesson to lesson, one generation of pupils to another! For generation would follow generation, one chubby face would give place to another, and still she would be there, plodding through the stale task, listening with an aching head to the strumming on the harpsichord, saying the same things, finding the same faults, growing slowly into a correcting, scolding, punishing machine. By and by she would know The Fairchild Family by heart, and she would sicken at the "Letters on the Improvement of the Mind." The children would still be young, but grey hairs would come to her, she would grow stout and dull; and those slender hands, those dainty fingers still white and fine, still meet for love, would be seared by a million needle-pricks and roughened by the wear and tear of ten thousand hours of plain sewing.

She was ungrateful, oh, she was ungrateful to think such thoughts! For in what was her lot worse than the lot of others? Or worse than it had been a week before when, who more humble-minded or contented, more cheerful or helpful than Mary Smith? When her only fault had been a weakness of character which her old schoolmistress hoped would be cured by time? When, though the shadow of an unknown Miss Sibson loomed formidable before her, she had faced her fate bravely and hopefully, supported not a little by the love and good wishes-won by a thousand kind offices-which went with her into the unknown world.

What had happened in the meantime? A little thing, oh, a very little thing. But to think of it under the childrens' eyes made her face burn again. She had lost her heart-to a man. To a man! The very word seemed improper in that company. How much more improper when the man cared nothing for her, but tossing her a smile for guerdon, had taken her peace of mind and gone his way, with a laugh. At the best, if he had ever dreamt seriously of her, ever done more than deem her an innocent, easily flattered and as lightly to be won, he had changed his mind as quickly as a weather-cock shifts in April. And he had talked-that hurt her, that hurt her most! He had talked of her freely, boasted of her silliness, told his companions what he would do, or what he would not do; made her common to them!

She got away for a few minutes at tea-time. But twenty pairs of eyes followed her from the room and seized on her as she returned. And "Miss Smith, ain't you well?" piped a tiny treble.

She was controlling her voice to answer-that she was quite well, when Miss Sibson intervened. "Miss Fripp," she said sombrely, "write 'Are you not,' twenty times on your slate after tea! Miss Hilhouse, if you stare in that fashion you will be goggle-eyed. Young ladies, elbows, elbows! Have I not told you a score of times that the art of deportment consists in the right use of the elbow? Now, Miss Claxton, in what does the art of deportment consist?"

"In the right use of the elbow, Ma'am."

"And what is the right use of the elbow?"

"To efface it, Ma'am."

"That is better," Miss Sibson replied, somewhat mollified. "Understood is half done. Miss Smith," looking about her with benevolence, "had you occasion to commend any young lady's needle this afternoon?"

Miss Smith looked unhappy: conscious that she had not been as attentive to her duties as became her. "I had no occasion to find fault, Ma'am," she said timidly.

"Very good. Then every fourth young lady beginning at my right hand may take a piece of currant cake. I see that Miss Burges is wearing the silver medal for good conduct. She may take a piece, and give a piece to a friend. When you have eaten your cake you may go to the schoolroom and play for half an hour at Blind Man's Buff. But-elbows! Elbows, young ladies," gazing austerely at them over her glasses. "In all your frolics let deportment be your first consideration."