“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, n
ot 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.
“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 a journey 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 is it! 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 the employment which filled her mornings and fitted her to enjoy with so keen a zest this early ride. The Gloucester up-coach was coming to meet them, the guard tootling merrily on his horn, and a blue and yellow flag — the Whig colours — flying on the roof of the coach, which was crowded with smiling passengers. Vaughan saw the girl’s eyes sparkle as the two coaches passed one another amid a volley of badinage; and demure as she was, he was sure that she had a store of fun within. He wished that she would remove her cheap thread gloves that he might see if her hands were as white as they were small. She was no common person, he was sure of that; her speech was correct, though formal, and her manner was quiet and refined. And her eyes — he must 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 tone of 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 a possible libertine, who aimed at putting himself on a footing of intimacy with her. And that was the last thing — confound it, he meant that 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 he cudgelled his brain for a subject at once safe and sympathetic, without finding one. But either she was not so deeply offended as he fancied, or she thought him sufficiently punished. For presently she addressed 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 I ought to give the coachman?”
Oh. bless her! She did not think him a horrid libertine. “You?” he said audaciously. “Why nothing, of course.”
“But — but I thought it was usual?”
“Not on this road,” he answered, lying resolutely. “Gentlemen are expected to give half a crown, others a shilling. Ladies nothing at all. Sam,” he continued, rising to giddy heights of invention, “would give it back to you, if you offered it.”
“Indeed!” He fancied a note of relief in her tone, and judged that shillings were not very plentiful. Then, “Thank you,” she added. “You must 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 the most delicious feeling — a sort of lightness within, half exhilaration, half excitement. And of a sudden, emboldened by it, he was grown so foolhardy that there is no knowing what he would not have said, if the streets of Reading had not begun to open before them and display a roadway abnormally thronged.
For Mr. Palmer’s procession, with its carriages, riders, and flags, was entering ahead of them; and the train of tipsy rabble which accompanied it blocked King Street, and presently brought the coach to a stand. The candidate, lifting his cocked hat from time to time, was a hundred paces before them and barely visible through a forest of flags and banners. But a troop of mounted gentry in dusty black, and smiling dames in carriages — who hardly masked the disgust with which they viewed the forest of grimy hands extended to them to shake — were under the travellers’ eyes, and showed in the sunlight both tawdry and false. Our party, however, were not long at ease to enjoy the spectacle. The crowd surrounded the coach, leapt on the steps, and hung on to the boot. And presently the noise scared the horses, which at the entrance to the marketplace began to plunge.
“The Bill! The Bill!” cried the rabble. And with truculence called on the passengers to assent. “You lubbers,” they bawled, “shout for the Bill! Or we’ll have you over!”
“All right! All right!” replied Sammy, controlling his horses as well as 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 for ever! But let us pass, lads! Let us pass! We’re for the Bear, and we’ve no votes.”
“Britons never will be slaves!” shrieked a drunken butcher as the marketplace opened before them. The space was alive with flags and gay with cockades, and thronged by a multitude, through which the candidate’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 high falsetto.
The roar of laughter which greeted the sally startled the horses afresh. But the guard had dropped down by this time and fought his way to the head of one of the leaders; and two or three good-humoured fellows seconded his efforts. Between them the coach was piloted slowly but safely through the press; which, to do it justice, meant only to exercise the privileges which the Election season brought with it.
V
ROSY-FINGERED DAWN
“Beaucoup de bruit, pas de mal!” Vaughan muttered in his neighbour’s ear; and saw with as much surprise as pleasure that she understood.
And all would have gone well but for the imprudence of the inside passenger who had distinguished himself by his protest against the placard. The coach was within a dozen paces of the Bear, the crowd was falling back from it, the peril, if it had been real, seemed past, the most timid was breathing again, when he thrust out his foolish head, and flung a taunt — which those on the roof could not hear — at the rabble.
Whatever the words, their effect was disastrous. A bystander caught them up and repeated them, and in a trice half-a-dozen louts flung themselves on the door and strove to drag it open, and get at the man; while others, leaning over their shoulders, aimed missiles at the inside passengers.
The guard saw that more than the glass of his windows was at stake; but he could do nothing. He was at the leaders’ heads. And the passengers on the roof, who had risen to their feet to see the fray, were as helpless. Luckily the coachman kept his head and his reins. “Turn ‘em into the yard!” he yelled. “Turn ‘em in!”
The guard did so, almost too quickly. The frightened horses wheeled round, and, faster than was prudent, dashed under the low arch, dragging the swaying coach after them.
There was a cry of “Heads! Heads!” and then, more imperatively, “Heads! Stoop! Stoop!”
The warning was needed. The outsides were on their feet engrossed in the struggle at the coach door. And so quickly did the coach turn that — though a score of spectators in the street and on the balcony of the inn saw the per
il — it was only at the last moment that Vaughan and the two passengers at the back, men well used to the road, caught the warning, and dropped down. And it was only at the very last moment that Vaughan felt rather than saw that the girl was still standing. He had just time, by a desperate effort, and amid a cry of horror — for to the spectators she seemed to be already jammed between the arch and the seat — to drag her down. Instinctively, as he did so, he shielded her face with his arm; but the horror was so near that, as they swept under the low brow, he was not sure that she was safe.
He was as white as she was, when they emerged into the light again. But he saw that she was safe, though her bonnet was dragged from her head; and he cried unconsciously, “Thank God! Thank God!” Then, with that hatred of a scene which is part of the English character, he put her quickly back into her seat again, and rose to his feet, as if he wished to separate himself from her.
But a score of eyes had seen the act; and however much he might wish to spare her feelings, concealment was impossible.
“Christ!” cried the coachman, whose copper cheeks were perceptibly paler. “If your head’s on your shoulders, Miss, it is to that young gentleman you owe it. Don’t you ever go to sleep on the roof of a coach again! Never! Never!”
“Here, get a drop of brandy!” cried the landlady, who, from one of the doors flanking the archway, had seen all. “Do you stay where you are, Miss,” she continued, “and I’ll send it up to you.”
Then amid a babel of exclamations and a chorus of blame and praise, the ladder was brought, and Vaughan made haste to descend. A waiter tripped out with the brown brandy and water on a tray; and the young lady, who had not spoken, but had remained, sitting white and still, where Vaughan had placed her, sipped it obediently. Unfortunately the landlady’s eyes were sharp; and as Vaughan passed her to go into the house — for the coach must be driven up the yard and turned before they could set off again — she let fall a cry.
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 509