Chippinge Borough

He could say no more; not another word. It was the stupidest thing in the world, but he was tongue-tied. Seeing, however, that she had turned from him and was absorbed in the view of Windsor rising stately amid its trees, he had the cleverness to steal a glance at the neat little basket which nestled at her feet. Surreptitiously he read the name on the label.

    Mary Smith
    Miss Sibson's
    Queen's Square, Bristol.

Mary Smith! Just Mary Smith! For the moment-it is not to be denied-he was sobered by the name. It was not a romantic name. It was anything but high-sounding. The author of "Tremayne" or "De Vere," nay, the author of "Vivian Grey" – to complete the trio of novels which were in fashion at the time-would have turned up his nose at it. But what did it matter? He desired no more than to make himself agreeable for the few hours which he and this beautiful creature must pass together-in sunshine and with the fair English landscape gliding by them. And that being so, what need he reck what she called herself or whence she came. It was enough that under her modest bonnet her ears were shells and her eyes pure cornflowers, and that a few pleasant words, a little April dalliance-if only that Frenchman would cease to peep behind him and grin-would harm neither the one nor the other.

But opportunities let slip do not always recur. As he turned to address her they rose the ascent of Maidenhead Bridge, had on either hand a glimpse of the river framed in pale green willows, and halted with sweating horses before the King's Arms. The boots advanced, amid a group of gazers, and reared a ladder against the coach. "Half an hour for breakfast, gentlemen!" he cried briskly. And through the windows of the inn the travellers had a view of a long table whereat the passengers on the up night-coach were already feasting.

Our friends hastened to descend, but not so fast that Vaughan failed to note the girl's look of uncertainty, almost of distress. He guessed that she was not at ease in a scene so bustling and so new to her. And the thought gave him the courage that he needed.

"Will you allow me to find you a place at the table?" he said. "I know this inn and they know me. Guard, the ladder here!" And he took her hand-oh, such a little, little hand! – and aided her in her descent.

"Will you follow me?" he said. And he made way for her through the knot of starers who cumbered the doorway. But once in the coffee-room he had, cunning fellow, an inspiration. "Find this lady a seat!" he commanded one of the attendant damsels. And when he had seen her seated and the coffee set before her, he took himself deliberately to the other end of the room. But whether he did so out of pure respect for her feelings, or because he thought-and hugged himself on the thought-that he would be missed, he did not himself know. Nor was he so much a captive, though he counted how many rolls she ate, and looked a dozen times to see if she looked at him, as to be unable to make an excellent breakfast.

The cheery, noisy throng at the tables, the brisk coming and going of the servants, the smell of hot coffee, the open windows, and the sunshine outside-where the fresh team of the up night-coach were already tossing their heads impatiently-he wondered how it all struck her, new to such scenes and to this side of life. And then while he wondered he saw that she had risen from the table and was going out with one of the waiting-maids. To reach the door she had to pass near him; and, oh bliss, her eyes found him-and she blushed. She blushed, ye heavens! He saw it clearly, and he sat thinking about it until, though the coach was not due to start for another five minutes and he might count on the guard summoning him, he was taken with fear lest some one should steal his seat. And he hurried out.

She was alone on the top of the coach, and a youthful waterman, one of the crowd of loiterers below, was making eyes at her to the delight of his companions. When Vaughan came forth, "I'd like to be him," the wag said, winking with vulgar gusto. And the bystanders grinned at the good-looking young man who stood in the doorway buttoning up his box-coat. The position might soon have become embarrassing to her if not to him; but in the nick of time the eye of an inside passenger, who had followed him through the doorway, alighted on a huge placard which hung behind the coach.

"Take that down!" the stranger cried loudly and pompously. And in a moment all eyes were upon him. He prodded with his umbrella at the offending bill. "Do you hear me? Take it down, sir," he repeated, turning to the guard. He was a portly man, reddish about the gills. "Take it down, sir, or I will! It is disgraceful! I shall report this conduct to your employers."

The guard hesitated. "It don't harm you, sir," he pleaded, anxious, it was clear, to propitiate a man who would presently be good for half a crown.

"Don't harm me?" the choleric gentleman retorted. "Don't harm me? What's that to do with it? What right-what right have you, man, to put party filth like that on a public vehicle in which I pay to ride? 'The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill!' D-n the Bill, sir!" with violence. "Take it down! Take it down at once!" he repeated, as if his order closed the matter.

The guard frowned at the placard, which bore, largely printed, the legend which the gentleman found so little to his taste. He rubbed his head. "Well, I don't know, sir," he said. And then-the crowd about the coach was growing-he looked at the driver. "What do you say, Sammy?" he asked.

"Don't touch it," growled the driver, without deigning to turn his head.

"You see, sir, it is this way," the guard ventured civilly. "Mr. Palmer has a Whig meeting at Reading to-day and the town will be full. And if we don't want rotten eggs and broken windows-we'll carry that!"

"I'll not travel with it!" the stout gentleman answered positively. "Do you hear me, man? If you don't take it down I will!"

"Best not!" cried a voice from the little crowd about the coach. And when the angry gentleman turned to see who spoke, "Best not!" cried another behind him. And he wheeled about again, so quickly that the crowd laughed. This raised his wrath to a white heat.

He grew purple. "I shall have it taken down!" he said. "Guard, remove it!"

"Don't touch it," growled the driver-one of a class noted in that day for independence and surly manners. "If the gent don't choose to travel with it, let him stop here and be d-d!"

"Do you know," the insulted passenger cried, "that I am a Member of Parliament?"

"I'm hanged if you are!" coachee retorted. "Nor won't be again!"

The crowd roared at this repartee. The guard was in despair. "Anyway, we must go on, sir," he said. And he seized his horn. "Take your seats, gents! Take your seats!" he cried. "All for Reading! I'm sorry, sir, but I've to think of the coach."

"And the horses!" grumbled the driver. "Where's the gent's sense?"

They all scrambled to their seats except the ex-member. He stood, bursting with rage and chagrin. But at the last moment, when he saw that the coach would really go without him, he swallowed his pride, plucked open the coach-door, and amid the loud jeers of the crowd, climbed in. The driver, with a chuckle, bade the helpers let go, and the coach swung cheerily away through the streets of Maidenhead, the merry notes of the horn and the rattle of the pole-chains drowning the cries of the gutter-boys.

The little Frenchman turned round. "You vill have a refolution," he said solemnly. "And the gentleman inside he vill lose his head."

The coachman, who had hitherto looked askance at Froggy, as if he disdained his neighbourhood, now squinted at him as if he could not quite make him out. "Think so?" he said gruffly. "Why, Mounseer?"

"I have no doubt," the Frenchman answered glibly. "The people vill have, and the nobles vill not give! Or they vill give a leetle-a leetle! And that is the worst of all. I have seen two refolutions!" he continued with energy. "The first when I was a child-it is forty years! My bonne held me up and I saw heads fall into the basket-heads as young and as lofly as the young Mees there! And why? Because the people would have, and the King, he give that which is the worst of all-a leetle! And the trouble began. And then the refolution of last year-it was worth to me all that I had! The people would have, and the Polignac, our Minister-who is the friend of your Vellington-he would not give at all! And the trouble began."

The driver squinted at him anew. "D'you mean to say," he asked, "that you've seen heads cut off?"

"I have seen the white necks, as white and as small as the Mees there; I have seen the blood spout from them; bah! like what you call pump! Ah, it was ogly, it was very ogly!"

The coachman turned his head slowly and with difficulty, until he commanded a full view of Vaughan's pretty neighbour; at whom he gazed for some seconds as if fascinated. Then he turned to his horses and relieved his feelings by hitting one of the wheelers below the trace; while Vaughan, willing to hear what the Frenchman had to say, took up the talk.

"Perhaps here," he said, "those who have will give, and give enough, and all will go well."

"Nefer! Nefer!" the Frenchman answered positively. "By example, the Duke whose château we pass-what you call it-Jerusalem House?"

"Sion House," Vaughan answered, smiling. "The Duke of Northumberland."

"By example he return four members to your Commons House. Is it not so? And they do what he tell them. He have this for his nefew, and that for his niece, and the other thing for his maître d'hôtel! And it is he and the others like him who rule the country! Gives he up all that? To the bourgeoisie? Nefer! Nefer!" he continued with emphasis. "He will be the Polignac! They will all be the Polignacs! And you will have a refolution. And by-and-by, when the bourgeoisie is frightened of the canaille and tired of the blood-letting, your Vellington he will be the Emperor. It is as plain as the two eyes in the face! So plain for me, I shall not take off my clothes the nights!"

"Well, King Billy for me!" said the driver. "But if he's willing, Mounseer, why shouldn't the people manage their own affairs?"

"The people! The people! They cannot! Your horses, will they govern themselves? Will you throw down the reins and leave it to them, up hill, down hill? The people govern themselves Bah!" And to express his extreme disgust at the proposition, the Frenchman, who had lost his all with Polignac, bent over the side and spat into the road. "It is no government at all!"

The driver looked darkly at his horses as if he would like to see them try it on. "I am afraid," said Vaughan, "that you think we are in trouble either way then, whether the Tories give or withhold?"

"Eizer way! Eizer way!" the Frenchman answered con amore. "It is fate! You are on the edge of the what you call it-chute! And you must go over! We have gone over. We have bumped once, twice! We shall bump once, twice more, et voilà-Anarchy! Now it is your turn, sir. The government has to be-shifted-from the one class to the other!"

"But it may be peacefully shifted?"

The little Frenchman shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "I have nefer seen the government shifted without all that that I have told you. There will be the guillotine, or the barricades. For me, I shall not take off my clothes the nights!"

He spoke with a sincerity so real and a persuasion so clear that even Vaughan was a little shaken, and wondered if those who watched the game from the outside saw more than the players. As for the coachman:

"Dang me," he said that evening to his cronies in the tap of the White Lion at Bristol, "if I feel so sure about this here Reform! We want none of that nasty neck-cutting here! And if I thought Froggy was right I'm blest if I wouldn't turn Tory!"

And for certain the Frenchman voiced what a large section of the timid and the well-to-do were thinking. For something like a hundred and fifty years a small class, the nobility and the greater gentry, turning to advantage the growing defects in the representation-the rotten boroughs and the close corporations-had ruled the country through the House of Commons. Was it to be expected that the basis of power could be shifted in a moment? Or that all these boroughs and corporations, in which the governing class were so deeply interested, could be swept away without a convulsion; without opening the floodgates of change, and admitting forces which no man could measure? Or, on the other side, was it likely that, these defects once seen and the appetite of the middle class for power once whetted, their claims could be refused without a struggle from which the boldest must flinch? No man could say for certain, and hence these fears in the air. The very winds carried them. They were being discussed in that month of April not only on the White Lion coach, not on the Bath road only, but on a hundred coaches, and a hundred roads over the length and breadth of England. Wherever the sway of Macadam and Telford extended, wherever the gigs of "riders" met, or farmers' carts stayed to parley, at fair and market, sessions and church, men shook their heads or raised their voices in high debate; and the word Reform rolled down the wind!

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.