Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  “Ay, just so! Very unlucky, ain’t it?” grinning. “Fear I’ll cut you out, eh? You’re a neat artist, I must say.”

  “I don’t know the good lady from Eve!”

  “Tell that to —— But here, let me make you known to Brereton,” hauling him towards a gentleman who was seated in one of the window recesses. “Old West Indian man, in charge of the recruiting district, and a good fellow, but a bit of a saint! Colonel,” he rattled on, as they joined the gentleman, “here’s Vaughan, once of ours, become a counsellor, and going to be Lord Chancellor. As to the veiled lady, mum, sir, mum!” with an exaggerated wink.

  Vaughan laughed. It was impossible to resist Bob’s impudent good-humour. He was a fair young man, short, stout, and inclining to baldness, with a loud, hearty voice, and a manner which made those who did not know him for a peer’s son, think of a domestic fowl with a high opinion of itself. He was for ever damning this and praising that with unflagging decision; a man with whom it was impossible to be displeased, and in whom it was next to impossible not to believe. Yet at the mess-table it was whispered that he did not play his best when the pool was large; nor had he ever seen service, save in the lists of love, where his reputation stood high.

  His companion, Vaughan saw, was of a different stamp. He was tall and lean, with the air and carriage of a soldier, but with features of a refined and melancholy cast, and with a brooding sadness in his eyes which could not escape the most casual observer. He was somewhat sallow, the result of the West Indian climate, and counted twenty years more than Flixton, for whom his gentle and quiet manner formed an admirable foil. He greeted Vaughan courteously, and the Honourable Bob forced our hero into a seat beside them.

  “That’s snug!” he said. “And now mum’s the word, Vaughan. We’ll not ask you what you’re doing here among the nigger-nabobs. It’s clear enough.”

  Vaughan explained that the veiled lady was a stranger who had come down in the coach with him, and that, for himself, it was election business which had brought him.

  “Old Vermuyden?” returned the Honourable Bob. “To be sure! Man you’ve expectations from! Good old fellow, too. I know him. Go and see him one of these days. Gad, Colonel, if old Sir Robert heard your views he’d die on the spot! D —— n the Bill, he’d say! And I say it too!”

  “But afterwards?” Brereton returned, drawing Vaughan into the argument by a courteous gesture. “Consider the consequences, my dear fellow, if the Bill does not pass.”

  “Oh, hang the consequences!”

  “You can’t,” drily. “You can hang men — we’ve been too fond of hanging them — but not consequences! Look at the state of the country; everywhere you will find excitement, and dangerous excitement. Cobbett’s writings have roused the South; the papers are full of rioters and special commission to try them! Not a farmer can sleep for thinking of his stacks, nor a farmer’s wife for thinking of her husband. Then for the North; look at Birmingham and Manchester and Glasgow, with their Political Unions preaching no taxation without representation. Or, nearer home, look at Bristol here, ready to drown the Corporation, and Wetherell in particular, in the Float! Then, if that is the state of things while they still expect the Bill to pass, what will be the position if they learn it is not to pass? No, no! You may shrug your shoulders, but the three days in Paris will be nothing to it.”

  “What I say is, shoot!” Flixton answered hotly. “Shoot! Shoot! Put ‘em down! Put an end to it! Show ‘em their places! What do a lot of d —— d shopkeepers and peasants know about the Bill? Ride ‘em down! Give ‘em a taste of the Float themselves! I’ll answer for it a troop of the 14th would soon bring the Bristol rabble to their senses!”

  “I should be sorry to see it tried,” Brereton answered, shaking his head. “They took that line in France last July, and you know the result. You’ll agree with me, Mr. Vaughan, that where Marmont failed we are not likely to succeed. The more as his failure is known. The three days of July are known.”

  “Ay, by the Lord,” the Honourable Bob cried. “The revolution in France bred the whole of this trouble!”

  “The mob there won, and the mob here know it. In my opinion,” Brereton continued, “conciliation is our only card, if we do not want to see a revolution.”

  “Hang your conciliation! Shoot, I say!”

  “What do you think, Mr. Vaughan?”

  “I think with you, Colonel Brereton,” Vaughan answered, “that the only way to avoid such a crisis as has befallen France is to pass the Bill, and to set the Constitution on a wider basis by enlisting as large a number as possible in its defence.”

  “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” from Flixton.

  “On the other hand,” Vaughan continued, “I would put down the beginnings of disorder with a strong hand. I would allow no intimidation, no violence. The Bill should be passed by argument.”

  “Argument? Why, d —— n me, intimidation is your argument!” the Honourable Bob struck in, with more acuteness than he commonly evinced. “Pass the Bill or we’ll loose the dog! At ‘em, Mob, good dog! At ‘em! That’s your argument!” triumphantly. “But I’ll be back in a minute.” And he left them.

  Vaughan laughed. Brereton, however, seemed to be unable to take the matter lightly. “Do you really mean, Mr. Vaughan,” he said, “that if there were trouble, here, for instance, you would not hesitate to give the order to fire?”

  “Certainly, sir, if it could not be put down with the cold steel.”

  The Colonel shook his head despondently. “I don’t think I could,” he said. “I don’t think I could. You have not seen war, and I have. And it is a fearful thing. Bad enough abroad, infinitely worse here. The first shot — think, Mr. Vaughan, of what it might be the beginning! What hundreds and thousands of lives might hang upon it! How many scores of innocent men shot down, of daughters made fatherless!” He shuddered. “And to give such an order on your own responsibility, when the first volley might be the signal for a civil war, and twenty-four hours might see a dozen counties in a blaze! It is horrible to think of! Too horrible! It’s too much for one man’s shoulders! Flixton would do it — he sees no farther than his nose! But you and I, Mr. Vaughan — and on one’s own judgment, which might be utterly, fatally wrong! My God, no!”

  “Yet there must be a point,” Vaughan replied, “at which such an order becomes necessary; becomes mercy!”

  “Ay,” Brereton answered eagerly; “but who is to say when that point is reached; and that peaceful methods can do no more? Or, granted that they can do no more, that provocation once given, your force is sufficient to prevent a massacre! A massacre in such a place as this!”

  Vaughan saw that the idea had taken possession of the other’s mind, and, aware that he had distinguished himself more than once on foreign service, he wondered. It was not his affair, however; and “Let us hope that the occasion may not arise,” he said politely.

  “God grant it!” Brereton replied. And then again, to himself and more fervently, “God grant it!” he muttered. The shadow lay darker on his face.

  Vaughan might have wondered more, if Flixton had not returned at that moment and overwhelmed him with importunities to dine with him the next evening. “Gage and Congreve of the 14th are coming from Gloucester,” he said, “and Codrington and two or three yeomanry chaps. You must come. If you don’t, I’ll quarrel with you and call you out! It’ll do you good after the musty, fusty, goody-goody life you’ve been leading. Brereton’s coming, and we’ll drink King Billy till we’re blind!”

  Vaughan hesitated. He had taken his place on the coach, but — but after all there was that parcel. He must do something about it. It seemed to be his fate to be tempted, yet — what nonsense that was! Why should he not stay in Bristol if he pleased?

  “You’re very good,” he said at last. “I’ll stay.”

  Yet on his way to his room he paused, half-minded to go. But he was ashamed to change his mind again, and he strode on, opened his door, and saw the parcel, a neat little affair, laid on th
e table.

  It bore in a clear handwriting the address which he had seen on the basket at Mary Smith’s feet. But, possibly because an hour of the Honourable Bob’s company had brushed the bloom from his fancy, it moved him little. He looked at it with something like indifference, felt no inclination to kiss it, and smiled at his past folly as he took it up and set off to return it to its owner. He had exaggerated the affair and his feelings; he had made much out of little, and a romance out of a chance encounter. He could smile now at that which had moved him yesterday. Certainly:

  Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,

  ’Tis woman’s whole existence; man may range

  The Court, camp, Church, the vessel and the mart,

  Sword, gown, gain, glory, offer in exchange

  Pride, fame, ambition to fill up his heart.

  And the Honourable Bob, with his breezy self-assertion, had brought this home to him and, with a puff of everyday life, had blown the fantasy away.

  He was still under this impression when he reached Queen’s Square, once the pride of Bristol, and still, in 1831, a place handsome and well inhabited. Uniformly and substantially built, on a site surrounded on three sides by deep water, it lay, indeed, rather over-near the quays, of which, and of the basins, it enjoyed a view through several openings. But in the reign of William IV. merchants were less averse from living beside their work than they are now. The master’s eye was still in repute, and though many of the richest citizens had migrated to Clifton, and the neighbouring Assembly Rooms in Prince’s Street had been turned into a theatre, the spacious square, with its wide lawn, its lofty and umbrageous elms, its colony of rooks, and, last of all, its fine statue of the Glorious and Immortal Memory, was still the abode of many respectable people. In one corner stood the Mansion House; a little further along the same side the Custom House; and a third public department, the Excise, also had offices here.

  The Cathedral and the Bishop’s Palace, on College Green, stood, as the crow flies, scarce a bow-shot from the Square; on which they looked down from the westward, as the heights of Redcliffe looked down on it from the east. But marsh as well as water divided the Square from these respectable neighbours; nor, it must be owned, was this the only drawback. The centre of the city’s life, but isolated on three sides by water, the Square was as easily reached from the worse as from the better quarters, and owing to the proximity of the Welsh Back, a coasting quay frequented by the roughest class, it was liable in times of excitement to abrupt and boisterous inroads.

  Vaughan entered the Square by Queen Charlotte Street, and had traversed one half of its width when his nonchalance failed him. Under the elms, in the corner which he was approaching, were a dozen children. They were at play, and overlooking them from a bench, with their backs to him, sat two young persons, the one in that mid-stage between childhood and womanhood when the eyes are at their sharpest and the waist at its thickest, the other, Mary Smith.

  The colour rose to his brow, and to his surprise he found that he was not indifferent. Nor was the discovery that the back of her head and an inch of the nape of her neck had this effect upon him the worst. He had to ask himself what, if he was not indifferent, he was doing there, sneaking on the skirts of a ladies’ school. What were his intentions, and what his aim? For to healthy minds there is something distasteful in the notion of an intrigue connected, ever so remotely, with a girls’ school. Nor are conquests gained on that scene laurels of which even a Lothario is over-proud. If Flixton saw him, or some others of the gallant Fourteenth!

  And yet, in the teeth of all this, and under the eyes of all Queen’s Square, he must do his errand. And sheepish within, brazen without, he advanced and stood beside her. She heard his step, and, unsuspicious as the youngest of her flock, looked up to see who came — looked, and saw him standing within a yard of her, with the sunshine falling through the leaves on his wavy, fair hair. For the twentieth part of a second he fancied a glint of glad surprise in her eyes. Then, if anything could have punished him, it was the sight of her confusion; it was the blush of distress which covered her face as she rose to her feet.

  Oh, cruel! He had pursued her, when to pursue was an insult! He had followed her when he should have known that in her position a breath of scandal was ruin! And oh, the round eyes of the round-faced child beside her!

  “I must apologise,” he murmured humbly, “but I am not trespassing upon you without a cause. I — I think that this is yours.” And rather lamely, for the distress in her face troubled him, he held out the parcel.

  She put her hand behind her, and as stiffly as Miss Sibson — of the Queen’s Square Academy for Young Ladies of the Genteel and Professional Classes — could have desired. “I do not understand, sir,” she said. She was pale and red by turns, as the round eyes saw.

  “You left this in the coach.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You left this in the coach,” he repeated, turning very red himself. Was it possible that she meant to repudiate her own property because he brought it? “It is yours, is it not?”

  “No.”

  “It is not!” in incredulous astonishment.

  “No.”

  “But I am sure it is,” he persisted. Confound it, this was a little overdoing modesty! He had no desire to eat the girl! “You left it inside the coach, and it has your address upon it. See!” And he tried to place it in her hands.

  But she drew back with a look of reprobation of which he would not have believed her eyes capable. “It is not mine, sir,” she said. “Be good enough to leave us!” And then, drawing herself up, mild creature as she was, “You are intruding, sir,” she said.

  Now, if Vaughan had really been guilty of approaching her upon a feigned pretext, he had certainly retired on that with his tail between his legs. But being innocent, and both incredulous and angry, he stood his ground, and his eyes gave back some of the reproach which hers darted.

  “I am either mad or it is yours,” he said stubbornly, heedless of the ring of staring children who, ceasing to play, had gathered round them. “It bears your name and address, and it was left in the coach by which you travelled yesterday. I think, Miss Smith, you will be sorry afterwards if you do not take it.”

  She fancied that his words imported a bribe; and in despair of ridding herself of him, or in terror of the tale which the children would tell, she took her courage in both hands. “You say that it is mine?” she said, trembling visibly.

  “Certainly I do,” he answered. And again he held it out to her.

  But she did not take it. Instead, “Then be good enough to follow me,” she replied, with something of the prim dignity of the school-mistress. “Miss Cooke, will you collect the children and bring them into the house?”

  And, avoiding his eyes, she led the way across the road to the door of one of the houses. He followed, but reluctantly, and after a moment of hesitation. He detested the scene which he now foresaw, and bitterly regretted that he had ever set foot inside Queen’s Square. To be suspected of thrusting an intrigue upon a little schoolmistress, to be dragged, with a pack of staring, chattering children in his train, before some grim-faced duenna — he, a man of years and affairs, with whom the Chancellor of England did not scorn to speak on equal terms! It was hateful; it was an intolerable position. Yet to turn back, to say that he would not go, was to acknowledge himself guilty. He wished — he wished to heaven that he had never seen the girl. Or at least that he had had the courage, when she first denied the thing, to throw the parcel on the seat and go.

  It was not an heroic frame of mind; but neither was the position heroic. And something may be forgiven him in the circumstances.

  Fortunately the trial was short. She opened the door of the house, and on the threshold he found himself face to face with a tall, bulky woman, with a double chin, and an absurdly powdered nose, who wore a cameo of the late Queen Charlotte on her ample bosom. Miss Sibson had viewed the encounter from an upper window, and her face was a p
icture of displeasure, slightly tempered by powder.

  “What is this?” she asked, in an intimidating voice. “Miss Smith, what is this, if you please?”

  Perhaps Mary, aware that her place was at stake, was desperate. At any rate she behaved with a dignity which astonished Vaughan. “This gentleman, Madam,” she explained, speaking with firmness though her face was on fire, “travelled with me on the coach yesterday. A few minutes ago he appeared and addressed me, and insisted that the — the parcel he carries is mine, and that I left it in the coach. It is not mine, and I have not seen it before.”

  Miss Sibson folded her arms upon her ample person. The position was not altogether new to her.

  “Sir,” she said, eying the offender majestically, “have you any explanation to offer — of this extraordinary conduct?”

  He had, indeed. As clearly as his temper permitted he told his tale, his tone half ironical, half furious.

  When he paused, “Who do you say gave it to you?” Miss Sibson asked in a deep voice.

  “I do not know her name. A lady who travelled in the coach.”

  Miss Sibson’s frown grew even deeper. “Thank you,” she replied, “that will do. I have heard enough, and I understand. I understand, sir. Be good enough to leave the house.”

  “But, Madam — —”

  “Be good enough to leave the house,” she repeated. “That is the door,” pointing to it. “That is the door, sir! Any apology you may wish to make, you can make by letter to me. To me, you understand! I think one were not ill-fitting!”

  He lost his temper altogether at that, and he flung the parcel with violence, and with a violent word, on a chair. “Then at any rate I shall not take that, for it’s not mine!” he cried. “You may keep it, Madam!”

  And he flung out, his retreat hampered and made humiliating by the entrance of the pupils, who, marshalled by the round-eyed one, and all round-eyed themselves, blocked the doorway at that unlucky moment. He broke through them without ceremony, though they represented the most respectable families in Bristol, and with his head bent he strode wrathfully across the Square.