"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.
"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