Chippinge Borough

It was with a set face, therefore, that he watched the carriage draw near. Apparently it was a carriage which had conveyed guests to the funeral, for the blinds were drawn.

"It will save time, if it takes you a mile on your way," White said, with some nervousness. "I will tell your chaise to follow." And he opened the door.

Vaughan raised his hat, and stepped in. It was only when the door was closing behind him and the carriage starting anew at a word from White, that he saw that it contained, not Sir Robert Vermuyden, but a lady.

"Mary!" he cried. The name broke from him in his astonishment.

She looked at him with self-possession, and a gentle, unsmiling gravity. She indicated the front seat, and "Will you sit there?" she said. "I can talk to you better, Mr. Vaughan, if you sit there."

He obeyed her, marvelling. The blind on the side on which she sat was raised a few inches, and in the subdued light her graceful head showed like some fair flower rising from the depth of her mourning. For she wore no covering on her head, and he might have guessed, had he had any command of his thoughts, that she had sprung as she was into the nearest carriage. Amazement, however, put him beyond thinking.

Her eyes met his seriously. "Mr. Vaughan," she said, "my presence must seem extraordinary to you. But I am come to ask you a question. Why did you tell me six months ago that you loved me if you did not?"

He was as deeply agitated as she was quiet on the surface. "I told you nothing but the truth," he said.

"No," she said.

"But yes! A hundred times, yes!" he cried.

"Then you are altered? That is it?"

"Never!" he cried. "Never!"

"And yet-things are changed? My father wrote to you, did he not, three days ago? And said as much as you could look to him to say?"

"He said-"

"He withdrew what he had uttered in an unfortunate moment. He withdrew that which, I think, he had never believed in his heart. He said as much as you could expect him to say?" she repeated, her colour mounting a little, her eyes challenging him with courageous firmness.

"He said," Vaughan answered in a low voice, "what I think it became him to say."

"You understood that his feelings were changed towards you?"

"To some extent."

She drew a deep breath and sat back. "Then it is for you to speak," she said.

But before, agitated as he was, he could speak, she leant forward again. "No," she said, "I had forgotten. I had forgotten." And the slight quivering of her lips, a something piteous in her eyes, reminded him once more, once again-and the likeness tugged at his heart-of the Mary Smith who had paused on the threshold of the inn at Maidenhead, alarmed and abashed by the bustle of the coffee-room. "I had forgotten! It is not my father you cannot forgive-it is I, who am unworthy of your forgiveness? You cannot make allowance," she continued, stopping him by a gesture, as he opened his mouth to speak, "for the weakness of one who had always been dependent, who had lived all her life under the dominion of others, who had been taught by experience that, if she would eat, she must first obey. You can make no allowance, Mr. Vaughan, for such an one placed between a father, whom it was her duty to honour, and a lover to whom she had indeed given her heart, she knew not why-but whom she barely knew, with whose life she had no real acquaintance, whose honesty she must take on trust, because she loved him? You cannot forgive her because, taught all her life to bend, she could not, she did not stand upright under the first trial of her faith?"

"No!" he cried violently. "No! No! It is not that!"

"No?" she said. "You do forgive her then? You have forgiven her? The more as to-day she is not weak. The earth is not level over my mother's grave, some may say hard things of me-but I have come to you to-day."

"God bless you!" he cried.

She drew a deep breath and sat back. "Then," she said, with a sigh as of relief, "it is for you to speak."

There was a gravity in her tone, and so complete an absence of all self-consciousness, all littleness, that he owned that he had never known her as she was, had never measured her true worth, had never loved her as she deserved to be loved. Yet-perhaps because it was all that was left to him-he clung desperately to the resolution he had formed, to the position which pride and prudence alike had bidden him to take up.

"What am I to say?" he asked hoarsely.

"Why, if you love me, if you forgive me," she answered softly, "do you leave me?"

"Can you not understand?"

"In part, I can. But not altogether. Will you explain? I-I think," she continued with a movement of her flower-like head, that for gentle dignity he had never seen excelled, "I have a right to an explanation."

"You know of what Sir Robert accused me?"

"Yes."

"Am I to justify him? You know what was the difference which came between us, which first divided us? And what I thought right then, I still think right. Am I to abandon it? You know what I bore. Am I to live on the bounty of one who once thought so ill of me, and may think as ill again? Of one who, differing from me, punished me so cruelly? Am I to sink into dependence, to sacrifice my judgment, to surrender my political liberty into the hands of one who-"

"Of my father!" she said gravely.

He could not, so reminded, say what he had been going to say, but he assented by a movement of the head. And after an interval of silence, "I cannot," he cried passionately, "I cannot, even to secure my happiness, run that risk!"

She looked from the window of the carriage, and in a voice which shook a little, "No," she said, "I suppose not."

He was silent and he suffered. He dared not meet her eyes. Why had she sought this interview? Why had she chosen to torment him? Ah, if she knew, if she only knew what pain she was inflicting upon him!

But apparently she did not know. For by and by she spoke again. "No," she said. "I suppose not. Yet have you thought" – and now there was a more decided tremor in her voice-"that that which you surrender is not all there is at stake? Your independence is precious to you, and you have a right, Mr. Vaughan, to purchase it even at the cost of your happiness. But have you a right to purchase it at the cost of another's? At the cost of mine? Have you thought of my happiness?" she continued, "or only of yours-and of yourself? To save your independence-shall I say, to save your pride? – you are willing to set your love aside. But have you asked me whether I am willing to pay my half of the price? My heavier half? Whether I am willing to set my happiness aside? Have you thought of-me at all?"

If he had not, then, when he saw how she looked at him, with what eyes, with what love, as she laid her hand on his arm, he had been more than man if he had resisted her long! But he still fought with himself, and with her; staring with hard, flushed face straight before him, telling himself that by all that was left to him he must hold.

"I think, I think," she said gently, yet with dignity, "you have not thought of me."

"But your father-Sir Robert-"

"He is an ogre, of course," she cried in a tone suddenly changed. "But you should have thought of that before, sir," she continued, tears and laughter in her voice. "Before you travelled with me on the coach! Before you saved my life! Before you-looked at me! For you can never take it back. You can never give me myself again. I think that you must take me!"

And then he did not resist her any longer. And the carriage was stayed; and orders were given. And, empty and hugely overpaid, the yellow post-chaise ambled on to Chippenham; and bearing two inside, and a valise on the roof, the mourning coach drove slowly and solemnly back to Stapylton. As it wound its way over the green undulations of the park, the rabbits that ran, and then stopped, cocking their scuts, to look at it, saw nothing strange in it. Nor the fallow-deer of the true Savernake breed, who, before they fled through the dying bracken, eyed it with poised heads. Nay, the heron which watched its approach from the edge of the Garden Pool, and did not even deign to drop a second leg, saw nothing strange in it. Yet it bore for all that the strangest of all earthly passengers, and the strongest, and the bravest, and the fairest-and withal, thank God, the most familiar. For it carried Love. And love the same yet different, love gaunt and grey-haired, yet kind and warm of heart, met it at the door and gave it welcome.

XXXVIII

THREADS AND PATCHES

Though England had not known for fifty years an outbreak so formidable or so destructive as that of which the news was laid on men's breakfast-tables on the Tuesday morning, it had less effect on the political situation than might have been expected. It sent, indeed, a thrill of horror through the nation. And had it occurred at an earlier stage of the Reform struggle, before the middle class had fully committed itself to a trial of strength with the aristocracy, it must have detached many more of the timid and conservative of the Reformers. But it came too late. The die was cast; men's minds were made up on the one side and the other. Each saw events coloured to his wish. And though Wetherell and Croker, and the devoted band who still fought manfully round those chieftains, called heaven and earth to witness the first-fruits of the tree of Reform, the majority of the nation preferred to see in these troubles the alternative to the Bill-the abyss into which the whole country would be hurled if that heaven-sent measure were not passed.

On one thing, however, all were agreed. The outrage was too great to be overlooked. The law must be vindicated, the lawbreakers must be punished. To this end the Government, anxious to clear themselves of the suspicion of collusion, appointed a special Commission, and sent it to Bristol to try the rioters; and four poor wretches were hanged, a dozen were transported, and many received minor sentences. Having thus, a little late in the day, taught the ignorant that Reform did not spell Revolution after the French pattern, the Cabinet turned their minds to the measure again. And in December they brought in the Third Reform Bill, with the fortunes and passage of which this story is not at pains to deal.

But of necessity the misguided creatures who kindled the fires in Queen's Square on that fatal Sunday, and swore that they would not leave a gaol standing in England, were not the only men who suffered. Sad as their plight was, there was one whose plight-if pain be measured by the capacity to feel-was sadder. While they were being tried in one part of Bristol, there was proceeding in another part an inquiry charged with deeper tragedy. Not those only who had done the deed, but those who had suffered them to do it, must answer for it. And the fingers of all pointed to one man. The magistrates might escape-the Mayor indeed had done his duty creditably, if to little purpose; for war was not their trade, and the thing at its crisis had become an affair of war. But Colonel Brereton could not shield himself behind that plea: so many had behaved poorly that the need to bring one to book was the greater.

He was tried by court-martial, and among the witnesses was Arthur Vaughan. By reason of his position, as well as of the creditable part he had played, the Member for Chippinge was heard by the Court with more than common attention; and he moved all who listened to him by his painful anxiety to set the accused's conduct in the best light; to show that what was possible by daylight on the Monday morning might not have been possible on the Sunday night, and that the choice from first to last was between two risks. No question of Colonel Brereton's courage-for he had served abroad with credit, nay, with honour-entered into the inquiry; and it was proved that a soldier's duty in such a case was not well defined. But afterwards Vaughan much regretted that he had not laid before the Court the opinion he had formed at the time-that during the crisis of the riots Brereton, obsessed by one idea, was not responsible for his actions. For, sad to say, on the fifth day of the inquiry, sinking under a weight of mental agony which a man of his reserved and melancholy temper was unable to support, the unfortunate officer put an end to his life. Few have paid so dearly for an error of judgment and the lack of that coarser fibre which has enabled many an inferior man to do his duty. The page darkens with his fate, too tragical for such a theme as this. And if by chance these words reach the eye of any of his descendants, theirs be the homage due to the memory of a signal misfortune and an honourable but hapless man.

Of another and greater personage whose life touched Arthur Vaughan's once and twice, and of whom, with all his faults, it was never said by his worst enemy that he feared responsibility or shunned the post of danger, a brief word must suffice. If Lord Brougham did not live to see that complete downfall of the great Whig houses which he had predicted, he lived to see their power ruinously curtailed. He lived to see their influence totter under the blow which the Repeal of the Corn Laws dealt the landed interest, he lived to see the Reform Bill of 1867, he lived almost to see the coup de grâce given to their leadership by the Ballot Act. And in another point his prophecy came true. As it had been with Burke and Sheridan and Tierney, it was with him. His faults were great, as his merits were transcendent; and presently in the time of his need his highborn associates remembered only the former. They took advantage of them to push him from power; and he spent nearly forty years, the remnant of his long life, in the cold shade of Opposition. The most brilliant, the most versatile, and the most remarkable figure of the early days of the century, whose trumpet voice once roused England as it has never been roused from that day to this, and whose services to education and progress are acknowledged but slightly even now, paid for the phenomenal splendour of his youth by long years spent in a changed and changing world, jostled by a generation forgetful or heedless of his fame. To us he is but the name of a carriage; remembered otherwise, if at all, for his part in Queen Caroline's trial. While Wetherell, that stout fighter, Tory of the Tories, witty, slovenly, honest man, whose fame was once in all mouths, whose caricature was once in all portfolios, and whose breeches made the fortune of many a charade, is but the shadow of a name.

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