Chippinge Borough Page 4

  IV

  TANTIVY! TANTIVY! TANTIVY!

  The White Lion coach was a light coach carrying only five passengersoutside, and merrily it swept by Kensington Church, whence thetravellers had a peep of Holland House--home of the Whigs--on theirright. And then in a twinkling they were swinging throughHammersmith, where the ale-houses were opening and lusty girls werebeginning to deliver the milk. They passed through Turnham, throughBrentford, awakening everywhere the lazy with the music of their horn.They saw Sion House on their left, and on their right had a glimpse ofthe distant lawns of Osterley--the seat of Lady Jersey, queen ofAlmack's, and the Holland's rival. Thence they travelled over HounslowHeath, and by an endless succession of mansions and lawns and orchardsrich at this season with apple blossom, and framing here and there aview of the sparkling Thames.

  Vaughan breathed the air of spring and let his eyes dwell on sceneafter scene; and he felt that it was good to be young and to sitbehind fast horses. He stole a glance at his neighbour and judged bythe brightness of her eyes, her parted lips and rapt expression, thatshe felt with him. And he would have said something to her, but hecould think of nothing worthy of her. At last:

  "It's a beautiful morning," he ventured, and cursed his vapidity.

  But she did not seem to find bathos in the words. "It is, indeed!" sheanswered with an enthusiasm which showed that she had forgotten herdoubts of him. "And," she added simply, "I have not been on a coachsince I was a child!"

  "Not on a coach?" he cried in astonishment.

  "No. Except on the Clapham Stage. And that is not a coach like this!"

  "No, perhaps it is not," he said. And he thought of her, and--oh,Lord!--of Clapham! And yet after all there was something about her,about her grey, dove-like dress and her gentleness, which smacked ofClapham. He wondered who she was and what she was; and he was stillwondering when she turned her eyes on him, and, herself serenelyunconscious, sent a tiny shock through him.

  "I enjoy it the more," she said, "because I--I am not usually free inthe morning."

  "Oh, yes!"

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

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

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

  But opportunities let slip do not always recur. As he turned toaddress her they rose the ascent of Maidenhead Bridge, had on eitherhand a glimpse of the river framed in pale green willows, and haltedwith sweating horses before the King's Arms. The boots advanced, amida group of gazers, and reared a ladder against the coach. "Half anhour for breakfast, gentlemen!" he cried briskly. And through thewindows of the inn the travellers had a view of a long table whereatthe passengers on the up night-coach were already feasting.

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

  "Will you allow me to find you a place at the table?" he said. "I knowthis inn and they know me. Guard, the ladder here!" And he took herhand--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 theknot of starers who cumbered the doorway. But once in the coffee-roomhe had, cunning fellow, an inspiration. "Find this lady a seat!" hecommanded one of the attendant damsels. And when he had seen herseated and the coffee set before her, he took himself deliberately tothe other end of the room. But whether he did so out of pure respectfor her feelings, or because he thought--and hugged himself on thethought--that he would be missed, he did not himself know. Nor was heso much a captive, though he counted how many rolls she ate, andlooked a dozen times to see if she looked at him, as to be unable tomake an excellent breakfast.

  The cheery, noisy throng at the tables, the brisk coming and going ofthe servants, the smell of hot coffee, the open windows, and thesunshine outside--where the fresh team of the up night-coach werealready tossing their heads impatiently--he wondered how it all struckher, new to such scenes and to this side of life. And then while hewondered he saw that she had risen from the table and was going outwith one of the waiting-maids. To reach the door she had to pass nearhim; 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 hemight count on the guard summoning him, he was taken with fear lestsome one should steal his seat. And he hurried out.

  She was alone on the top of the coach, and a youthful waterman, one ofthe crowd of loiterers below, was making eyes at her to the delight ofhis companions. When Vaughan came forth, "I'd like to be him," the wagsaid, winking with vulgar gusto. And the bystanders grinned at thegood-looking young man who stood in the doorway buttoning up hisbox-coat. The position might soon have become embarrassing to her ifnot 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 placardwhich hung behind the coach.

  "Take that down!" the stranger cried loudly and pompously. And in amoment all eyes were upon him. He prodded with his umbrella at theoffending 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 thisconduct to your employers."

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

  "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, toput 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!" herepeated, as if his order closed the matter.

  The guard frowned at the placard, which bore, largely printed, thelegend which the gentleman found so little to his taste. He rubbed hishead. "Well, I don't know, sir," he said. And then--the crowd aboutthe 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 hishead.

  "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 carrythat!"

  "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. Andwhen the angry gentleman turned to see who spoke, "Best not!" criedanother behind him. And he wheeled about again, so quickly that thecrowd laughed. This raised his wrath to a white heat.

  He grew purple. "I shall have it taken dow
n!" he said. "Guard, removeit!"

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

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

  "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 yourseats, 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 sawthat 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, andthe coach swung cheerily away through the streets of Maidenhead, themerry notes of the horn and the rattle of the pole-chains drowning thecries of the gutter-boys.

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

  The coachman, who had hitherto looked askance at Froggy, as if hedisdained his neighbourhood, now squinted at him as if he could notquite make him out. "Think so?" he said gruffly. "Why, Mounseer?"

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

  The driver squinted at him anew. "D'you mean to say," he asked, "thatyou'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 hecommanded a full view of Vaughan's pretty neighbour; at whom he gazedfor some seconds as if fascinated. Then he turned to his horses andrelieved his feelings by hitting one of the wheelers below the trace;while Vaughan, willing to hear what the Frenchman had to say, took upthe 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, theDuke whose chateau 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 notso? And they do what he tell them. He have this for his nefew, andthat for his niece, and the other thing for his _maitre d'hotel!_ Andit is he and the others like him who rule the country! Gives he up allthat? To the _bourgeoisie?_ Nefer! Nefer!" he continued with emphasis."He will be the Polignac! They will all be the Polignacs! And you willhave a refolution. And by-and-by, when the _bourgeoisie_ is frightenedof the _canaille_ and tired of the blood-letting, your Vellington hewill be the Emperor. It is as plain as the two eyes in the face! Soplain 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 governthemselves? Will you throw down the reins and leave it to them, uphill, down hill? The people govern themselves Bah!" And to express hisextreme disgust at the proposition, the Frenchman, who had lost hisall with Polignac, bent over the side and spat into the road. "It isno government at all!"

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

  "Eizer way! Eizer way!" the Frenchman answered _con amore_. "It isfate! You are on the edge of the what you call it--_chute!_ And youmust go over! We have gone over. We have bumped once, twice! We shallbump once, twice more, _et voila_--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 neferseen the government shifted without all that that I have told you.There will be the guillotine, or the barricades. For me, I shall nottake off my clothes the nights!"

  He spoke with a sincerity so real and a persuasion so clear that evenVaughan was a little shaken, and wondered if those who watched thegame 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 WhiteLion at Bristol, "if I feel so sure about this here Reform! We wantnone of that nasty neck-cutting here! And if I thought Froggy wasright I'm blest if I wouldn't turn Tory!"

  And for certain the Frenchman voiced what a large section of the timidand the well-to-do were thinking. For something like a hundred andfifty years a small class, the nobility and the greater gentry,turning to advantage the growing defects in the representation--therotten boroughs and the close corporations--had ruled the countrythrough the House of Commons. Was it to be expected that the basis ofpower could be shifted in a moment? Or that all these boroughs andcorporations, in which the governing class were so deeply interested,could be swept away without a convulsion; without opening thefloodgates of change, and admitting forces which no man could measure?Or, on the other side, was it likely that, these defects once seen andthe appetite of the middle class for power once whetted, their claimscould be refused without a struggle from which the boldest mustflinch? No man could say for certain, and hence these fears in theair. The very winds carried them. They were being discussed in thatmonth of April not only on the White Lion coach, not on the Bath roadonly, but on a hundred coaches, and a hundred roads over the lengthand breadth of England. Wherever the sway of Macadam and Telfordextended, wherever the gigs of "riders" met, or farmers' carts stayedto parley, at fair and market, sessions and church, men shook theirheads 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 hethought that the subject might serve him with his neighbour, and headdressed 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 shrubsfeel 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 ajourney 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 isit! 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 theemployment which filled her mornings and fitted her to enjoy with sokeen a zest this early ride. The Gloucester up-coach was coming tomeet them, the guard tootling merrily on his horn, and a blue andyellow flag--the Whig colours--flying on the roof of the coach, whichwas crowded with smiling passengers. Vaughan saw the girl's eyessparkle as the two coaches passed one another amid a
volley ofbadinage; and demure as she was, he was sure that she had a store offun within. He wished that she would remove her cheap thread glovesthat he might see if her hands were as white as they were small. Shewas no common person, he was sure of that; her speech was correct,though formal, and her manner was quiet and refined. And her eyes--hemust 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 toneof 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 apossible libertine, who aimed at putting himself on a footing ofintimacy with her. And that was the last thing--confound it, he meantthat 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 hecudgelled his brain for a subject at once safe and sympathetic,without finding one. But either she was not so deeply offended as hefancied, or she thought him sufficiently punished. For presently sheaddressed 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 Iought to give the coachman?"

  Oh. bless her! She did not think him a horrid libertine. "You?" hesaid audaciously. "Why nothing, of course."

  "But--but I thought it was usual?"

  "Not on this road," he answered, lying resolutely. "Gentlemen areexpected to give half a crown, others a shilling. Ladies nothing atall. Sam," he continued, rising to giddy heights of invention, "wouldgive it back to you, if you offered it."

  "Indeed!" He fancied a note of relief in her tone, and judged thatshillings were not very plentiful. Then, "Thank you," she added. "Youmust 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 themost delicious feeling--a sort of lightness within, half exhilaration,half excitement. And of a sudden, emboldened by it, he was grown sofoolhardy that there is no knowing what he would not have said, if thestreets of Reading had not begun to open before them and display aroadway abnormally thronged.

  For Mr. Palmer's procession, with its carriages, riders, and flags,was entering ahead of them; and the train of tipsy rabble whichaccompanied it blocked King Street, and presently brought the coach toa stand. The candidate, lifting his cocked hat from time to time, wasa hundred paces before them and barely visible through a forest offlags and banners. But a troop of mounted gentry in dusty black, andsmiling dames in carriages--who hardly masked the disgust with whichthey viewed the forest of grimy hands extended to them to shake--wereunder the travellers' eyes, and showed in the sunlight both tawdry andfalse. Our party, however, were not long at ease to enjoy thespectacle. The crowd surrounded the coach, leapt on the steps, andhung on to the boot. And presently the noise scared the horses, whichat the entrance to the marketplace began to plunge.

  "The Bill! The Bill!" cried the rabble. And with truculence called onthe passengers to assent. "You lubbers," they bawled, "shout for theBill! Or we'll have you over!"

  "All right! All right!" replied Sammy, controlling his horses as wellas 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 forever! But let us pass, lads! Let us pass! We're for the Bear, andwe've no votes."

  "Britons never will be slaves!" shrieked a drunken butcher as themarketplace opened before them. The space was alive with flags and gaywith cockades, and thronged by a multitude, through which thecandidate'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 highfalsetto.

  The roar of laughter which greeted the sally startled the horsesafresh. But the guard had dropped down by this time and fought his wayto the head of one of the leaders; and two or three good-humouredfellows seconded his efforts. Between them the coach was pilotedslowly but safely through the press; which, to do it justice, meantonly to exercise the privileges which the Election season brought withit.