Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman

by Stanley J Weyman

  Of course he came to no decision; though he wandered on Brandon Hill until the Float at his feet ceased to mirror the lights, and Bristol lay dark below him. And Monday found him still hesitating. Thrice he started to take his place on the coach. And thrice he turned back, hating himself for his weakness. If he could not overcome a foolish fancy, how could he hope to scale the heights of the Western Circuit, or hurl Coleridge and Follett from their pride of place? Or, still harder task, how would he dare to confront in the House the cold eye of Croker or of Goulburn? No, he could not hope to do either. He had been wrong in his estimate of himself. He was a poor creature, unable to hold his own amongst his fellows, impotent to guide his own life!

  He was still contesting the matter when, a little before noon, he espied Flixton in the act of threading his way through the busy crowd of Broad Street. The Honourable Bob was wearing hessians, and a high-collared green riding-coat, with an orange vest and a soft many-folded cravat. In fine, he was so smart that suspicion entered Vaughan’s head; and on its heels — jealousy.

  In a twinkling he was on Flixton’s track. Broad Street, the heart of Bristol, was thronged, for Hart Davies’s withdrawal was in the air and an election crowd was abroad. Newsboys with their sheets, tipsy ward-leaders, and gossiping merchants jostled one another. The beau’s green coat, however, shone conspicuous,

  Glorious was his course,

  And long the track of light he left behind him!

  and before Vaughan had asked himself if he were justified in following, pursued and pursuer were over Bristol Bridge, and making, by way of the Welsh Back — a maze of coal-hoys and dangling cranes — for Queen’s Square.

  Vaughan doubted no longer, weighed the propriety of his course no longer. For a cool-headed man of the world, who asked nothing better than to master a silly fancy, he was foolishly perturbed. He made on with a grim face; but a dray loading at a Newport coal-hulk drew across his path, and Flixton was pacing under the pleasant elms and amid the groups that loitered up and down the sunlit Square, before Vaughan came within hail, and called him by name.

  Flixton turned then, saw who it was, and grinned — nothing abashed. “Well,” he said, tipping his hat a little to one side, “well, old chap! Are you let out of school too?”

  Vaughan had already discovered Mary Smith and her little troop under the trees in the farthest corner. But he tried to smile — and did so, a little awry. “This is not fair play, Flixton,” he said.

  “That is just what I think it is,” the Honourable Bob answered cheerfully. “Eh, old chap? Neat trick of yours the other day, but not neat enough! Thought to bamboozle me and win a clear field! Neat! But no go, I found you out and now it is my turn. That’s what I call fair play.”

  “Look here, Flixton,” Vaughan replied — he was fast losing his composure— “I’m not going to have it. That’s plain.”

  The Honourable Bob stared. “Oh!” he answered. “Let’s understand one another. Are you going to marry the girl after all?”

  “I’ve told you — —”

  “Oh, you’ve told me, yes, and you’ve told me, no. The question is, which is it?”

  Vaughan controlled himself. He could see Mary out of the corner of his eye, and knew that she had not yet taken the alarm. But the least violence might attract her attention. “Whichever it be,” he said firmly, “is no business of yours.”

  “If you claim the girl — —”

  “I do not claim her, Flixton. I have told you that. But — —”

  “But you mean to play the dog in the manger?”

  “I mean to see,” Vaughan replied sternly, “that you don’t do her any harm.”

  Flixton hesitated. Secretly he held Vaughan in respect; and he would have postponed his visit to Queen’s Square had he foreseen that that gentleman would detect him. But to retreat now was another matter. The duel was still in vogue; barely two years before the Prime Minister had gone out with a brother peer in Battersea Fields; barely twenty years before one Cabinet Minister had shot another on Wimbledon Common. He could not, therefore, afford to show the white feather, and though he hesitated, it was not for long. “You mean to see to that, do you?” he retorted.

  “I do.”

  “Then come and see,” he returned flippantly. “I’m going to have a chat with the young lady now. That’s not murder, I suppose?” And he turned on his heel and strolled across the turf towards the group of which Mary was the centre.

  Vaughan followed with black looks; and when Mary Smith, informed of their approach by one of the children, turned a startled face towards them, he was at Flixton’s shoulder, and pressing before him.

  But the Honourable Bob had the largest share of presence of mind, and he was the first to speak. “Miss Smith,” he said, raising his hat with aplomb, “I — you remember me, I am sure?”

  Vaughan pushed before him; and before the girl could speak — for jealousy is a fine spoiler of manners, “This gentleman,” he said, “wishes to see — —”

  “To see — —” said Flixton, with a lower bow.

  “Miss Sibson!” Vaughan exclaimed.

  The children stared; gazing up into the men’s faces with the undisguised curiosity of childhood. Fortunately the Mary Smith who had to confront these two was no longer the Mary Smith whom Vaughan’s appearance had stricken with panic three days before. For one thing, she knew Miss Sibson better, and feared her less. For another, her fairy godmother — the gleam of whose gifts never failed to leave a hope of change, a prospect of something other than the plodding, endless round — had shown a fresh sign. And last, not least, a more potent fairy, a fairy whose wand had power to turn Miss Sibson’s house into a Palace Beautiful, and Queen’s Square, with its cawing rooks and ordered elms, into an enchanted forest, had visited her.

  True, Vaughan had left her abruptly — to cool her burning cheeks and still her heart as she best might! But he had said what she would never forget, and though he had left her doubting, he had left her loving. And so the Mary who found herself addressed by two gallants was much less abashed than she who on Friday had had to do with one.

  Still she was astonished by their address; and she showed this, modestly and quietly. “If you wish to see Miss Sibson,” she said — instinctively she looked at Vaughan’s companion— “I will send for her.” And she was in the act of turning, with comparative ease, to despatch one of the children on the errand, when the Honourable Bob interposed.

  “But we don’t want Miss Sibson — now,” he said. “A man may change his mind as well as a woman! Eh, old chap?” turning to his friend with simulated good-humour. “I’m sure you will say so, Miss Smith.”

  She wondered what their odd manner to one another meant. And, to add to her dignity, she laid her hand on the shoulder of one of her charges and drew her closer.

  “Moreover, I’m sure,” Flixton continued — for Vaughan after his first hasty intervention, stood sulkily silent— “I’m sure Mr. Vaughan will agree with me — —”

  “I?”

  “Oh, yes he will, Miss Smith, because he is the most changeable of men himself! A weathercock, upon my honour!” And he pointed to the tower of St. Mary, which from the high ground of Redcliffe Parade on the farther side of the water, looks down on the Square. “Never of the same mind two days together!”

  Vaughan snubbed him savagely. “Be good enough to leave me out!” he said.

  “There!” the Honourable Bob answered, laughing, “he wants to stop my mouth! But I’m not to be stopped. Of all men he’s the least right to say that I mustn’t change my mind. Why, if you’ll believe me, Miss Smith, no farther back than Saturday morning he was all for being married! ‘Pon honour! Went away from here talking of nothing else! In the evening he was just as dead the other way! Nothing was farther from his thoughts. Shuddered at the very idea! Come, old chap, don’t look fierce!” And he grinned at Vaughan. “You can’t deny it!”

  Vaughan could have struck him; the trick was so neat and so malicious. Fortunat
ely a man who had approached the group touched Vaughan’s elbow at this critical moment, and diverted his wrath. “Express for you, sir,” he said. “Brought by chaise, been looking for you everywhere, sir!”

  Vaughan smothered the execration which rose to his lips, snatched the letter from the man, and waved him aside. Then, swelling with rage, he turned upon Flixton. But before he could speak the matter was taken out of his hands.

  “Children,” said Mary Smith in a clear, steady voice, “it is time we went in. The hour is up, collect your hoops. I think,” she continued, looking stiffly at the Honourable Bob, “you have addressed me under a misapprehension, sir, intending to address yourself to Miss Sibson. Good-morning! Good-morning!” with a slight and significant bow which included both gentlemen. And taking a child by either hand, she turned her back on them, and with her little flock clustering about her, and her pretty head held high, she went slowly across the road to the school. Her lips were trembling, but the men could not see that. And her heart was bursting, but only she knew that.

  Without that knowledge Vaughan was furiously angry. It was not only that the other had got the better of him by a sly trick; but he was conscious that he had shown himself at his worst — stupid when tongue-tied, and rude when he spoke. Still, he controlled himself until Mary was out of earshot, and then he turned upon Flixton.

  “What right — what right,” he snarled, “had you to say what I would do! And what I would not do? I consider your conduct — —”

  “Steady, man!” Flixton, who was much the cooler of the two, said. He was a little pale. “Think before you speak. You would interfere. What did you expect? That I was going to play up to you?”

  “I expected at least — —”

  “Ah, well, you can tell me another time what you expected. I have an engagement now and must be going,” the Honourable Bob said. “See you again!” And with a cool nod he turned on his heel, and assured that, whatever came of the affair, he had had the best of that bout, he strode off.

  Vaughan was only too well aware of the same fact; and but that he held himself in habitual control, he would have followed and struck his rival. As it was, he stood a moment looking blackly after him. Then, sobered somewhat, though still bitterly chagrined, he took his way towards his hotel, carrying in his oblivious hand the letter which had been given him. Once he halted, half-minded to return to Miss Sibson’s and to see Mary and explain. He took, indeed, some steps in the backward direction. But he reflected that if he went he must speak, and plainly. And, angry as he was, furiously in love as he was, was he prepared to speak?

  He was not prepared. And while he stood doubting between that eternal would, and would not, his eyes fell on the letter in his hand.

  XII

  A ROTTEN BOROUGH

  Chippinge, Sir Robert Vermuyden’s borough, was in no worse case than two-thirds of the small boroughs of that day. Still, of its great men Cowley might have written:

  Nothing they but dust can show,

  Or bones that hasten to be so.

  And of its greatness he might have said the same. The one and the other belonged to the past.

  The town occupies a low, green hill, dividing two branches of the Avon which join their waters a furlong below. Built on the ridge and clinging to the slopes of this eminence the stone-tiled houses look pleasantly over the gentle undulations of the Wiltshire pastures — no pastures more green; and at a distance are pleasantly seen from them. But viewed more closely — at the date of which we write — the picturesque in the scene became mean or incongruous. Of the Mitred Abbey that crowned the hill and had once owned these fertile slopes there remained but the maimed hulk, patched and botched, and long degraded to the uses of that parish church its neighbour, of which nothing but the steeple survived. The crown-shaped market cross, once a dream of beauty in stone, still stood, but battered and defaced; while the Abbot’s gateway, under which sovereigns had walked, was sunk to a vile lock-up, the due corrective of the tavern which stood cheek by jowl with it.

  Still, to these relics, grouped as they were upon an open triangular green, the hub of the town, there clung in spite of all some shadow of greatness. The stranger whose eye fell on the doorway of the Abbey Church, with its whorls of sculptured images, gazed and gazed again with a sense of wondering awe. But let him turn his back on these buildings, and his eye met, in cramped street and blind alley, a lower depth. Everywhere were things once fine, sunk to base uses; old stone mansions converted into tenements; the solid houses of mediæval burghers into crazy taverns; fretted cloisters into pigsties and hovels; a Gothic arch propped the sagging flank of a lath-and-plaster stable. Or if anything of the beauty of a building survived, it was masked by climbing penthouses; or, like the White Lion, the old inn which had been the Abbot’s guesthouse, it was altered out of all likeness to its former self. For the England of ‘31, gross and matter-of-fact, was not awake to the value of those relics of a noble past which generations of intolerance had hurried to decay.

  Doubtless in this mouldering, dusty shell was snug, warm living. Georgian comfort had outlived the wig and the laced coat, and though the influence of the Church was at its lowest ebb, and morals were not much higher, inns were plenty and flourished, and in the panelled parlours of the White Lion or the Heart and Hand was much good eating, followed by deep drinking. The London road no longer passed through the town; the great fair had fallen into disuse. But the cloth trade, by which Chippinge had once thriven, had been revived, and the town was not quite fallen. Still, of all its former glories, it retained but one intact. It returned two members to Parliament. That which Birmingham and Sheffield had not, this little borough of eighteen hundred souls enjoyed. Fallen in all other points, it retained, or rather its High Steward, Sir Robert Vermuyden, retained the right of returning, by the votes of its Alderman and twelve capital burgesses, two members to the Commons’ House.

  And Sir Robert could not by any stretch of fancy bring himself to believe that the town would willingly part with this privilege. Why should it strip itself? he argued. It enjoyed the honour vicariously, indeed. But did he not year by year pay the Alderman and eight of the capital burgesses thirty pounds apiece for their interest, a sum which quickly filtered through their pockets and enriched the town, besides taking several of the voters off the rates? Did he not also at election times set the taps running and distribute a moderate largesse among the commonalty, and — and in fact do everything which it behoved a liberal and enlightened patron to do? Nay, had he not, since his accession, raised the status of the voters, long and vulgarly known as “The Cripples,” so that they, who in his father’s time had been, almost without exception, drunken illiterates, were now to the extent of at least one half, men of respectable position?

  No, Sir Robert wholly declined to believe that Chippinge had any wish for a change so adverse to its interests. The most he would admit was that there might be some slight disaffection in the place, due to that confounded Bowood, which was for ever sapping and mining and seeking to rob its neighbours.

  But even he was presently to be convinced that there was a very odd spirit abroad in this year ‘31. The new police and the new steam railways and this cholera of which people were beginning to talk, were not the only new things. There were new ideas in the air; and the birds seemed to carry them. They took possession not only of the troublesome and discontented — poachers whom Sir Robert had gaoled, or the sons of men whom his father had pressed — but of the most unlikely people. Backs that had never been aught but pliant grew stiff. Men who had put up with the old system for more years than they could remember grew restive. Others, who had all their lives stood by while their inferiors ruled the roost, discovered that they had rights. Nay — and this was the strangest thing of all — some who had thriven by the old management and could not hope to gain by a change revolted, after the fashion of Dyas the butcher, and proved the mastery of mind over matter. Not many, indeed, these; martyrs for ideas are rare. But their action went for m
uch, and when later the great mass of the voteless began to move, there were rats in plenty of the kind that desert sinking ships. By that time he was a bold man who in tavern or workshop spoke for the rule of the few, to which Sir Robert fondly believed his borough to be loyal.

  His agent had never shared that belief, fortunately for him; or he had had a rude awakening on the first Monday in May. It was customary for the Vermuyden interest to meet the candidates on the Chippenham road, half an hour before the dinner hour, and to attend them in procession through the town to the White Lion. Often this was all that the commonalty saw of an election, and a little horseplay was both expected and allowed. In old days, when the “Cripples” had belonged to the very lowest class, their grotesque appearance in the van of the gentlemanly interest had given rise to many a home-jest. The crowd would follow them, jeering and laughing, and there would be some pushing, and a drunken man or two would fall. But all had passed in good humour; the taps had been running in one interest, the ale was Sir Robert’s, and the crowd envied while they laughed.

  White, as he stood on the bridge reviewing the first comers, wished he might have no worse to expect to-day. But he did not hope as much. The town was crowded, and the streets down to the bridge were so cumbered with moving groups that it was plain the procession would have to push its way. For certain, too, many of the people did not belong to Chippinge. With the townsfolk White knew he could deal. He did not believe that there was a Chippinge man who, eye to eye with him, would cast a stone. But here were yokels from Calne and Bowood, who knew not Sir Robert; with Bristol lambs and men as dangerous, and not a few Radicals from a distance, rabid with zeal and overflowing with promises. Made up of such elements the crowd hooted from time to time, and there was a threat in the sound that filled White with misgivings.