Now, upon this coach were six people; and as they bowled along in the crisp November morning they were thinking of many things. Let us fancy, if we can, what some of these gay thoughts were. On the inside seat was Mr. Sydney, the hired wit, the broken-down man-about-town; his health gone, his future gone, with no family, no friends, no faith in a hereafter and no joy in the present; and the day preceding, at dinner, he had eaten a vol-au-vent which had disagreed with him. Next Mr. Sydney came the Duchess, the gaunt and dignified lady who awed even Jawkins to repose. There was not a night of her life that she did not cry like any schoolgirl whose lover has forgotten her, at the shame of her life, and the bitterness and humiliation of her daily bread. She would rail at the old Duke, who had come to it so easily, and was willing to prostitute the honors of his race for gross creature comforts, his claret, his cigar; and every morning, when her old eyes opened, she hated the daylight that told her she was not yet dead.
Next the Duchess came Maggie Windsor. Come now (you might say), she, at least, is in her place upon a four-in-hand, with her young life, her happy lot, her pretty, pouting lips and laughing eyes? I do not know; I marked the quiver of those pretty lips, and the flush of her fresh face, as her eyes, no longer laughing, looked at Mrs. Carey, just in front. Beside her sits Sir John Dacre. His lips are closed firmly above the square blue chin, and his eyes, beneath a prematurely wrinkled brow, look straight before him out upon the road. Perhaps you would not call Sir John's face attractive; his expression does not change enough for charm, and there is not light enough in those still gray eyes. As you see it now, so his expression has been these twenty years, from his studious youth at Oxford on. The four horses break into a furious canter down the hill; the coach sways from side to side; and Dacre still looks far ahead and down the road. If there is no light in the eyes, there is no tremor of the lips; just so he looked when at the doorway, all unconscious that Mary Lincoln was looking at his eyes and finding them attractive. Dacre has never thought of women; his life has had but a single thought, a single hope, and that, perhaps, a forlorn one.
In front, on the box-seat, is Geoffrey Ripon, driving, and Ripon is miserable that Maggie Windsor is there, miserable that Eleanor Carey is there, so miserable about either that he half forgets he has promised his life to Dacre, and with him, so close that her full arm touches his, and troubles him as if it had some magnetic influence, sits the beautiful woman whose girlhood he had loved; she, now knowing this, now conscious of the might of love, and of the power that it gave her womanhood upon this man; and in her heart the madness of her misery, the scorning of her world, the courage and the passion of despair.
It is a gay coaching party, and many such another rattles through this world with the footmen and the shining trappings and the pomp of paint and varnish. Oddly enough, no one speaks for moments, while they whirl down the avenue beneath the stately trees. "Where shall I drive you to?" finally says Ripon to the company.
"Where you like," says Miss Windsor, after a pause. "You must know the prettiest place—you have known this country from your childhood."
Ripon drove them up to the highest crest of the down, where the long main wave of the green hills stretches eastward along the coast, and the faint blue sea sleeps glimmering in the south. Still no one spoke; Dacre's eyes were lost over the ocean; even Miss Windsor was grave and silent. Mrs. Carey tried to point out a sail to Geoffrey; he could not see it, and she leaned over close to him that he might follow the direction of her eye. Her breath seemed warm upon his face after the sea breeze.
"Your eyes are not so good as they used to be," said she. Geoffrey looked at her, and thought to himself that hers were deeper. He said so; but she only laughed the more and looked at him again. "Do you remember our rides in the pony-carriage?" she went on. "Poor Neddy!"
He did remember the rides in the pony-carriage only too well; when he sat beside the laughing girl, and she looked up at him as they drove through the leafy lanes when the shadows lengthened till the sunbeams crept under the old trees and touched her hair with gold. It was in one of these drives that he had vowed that he would always love her. He had broken a sixpence with her in earnest of their betrothal contract. But he did not like to have those drives recalled with Maggie Windsor sitting just behind them. The horses were conveniently restive just then, and perhaps Geoffrey did not put on quite so much brake going down the hill as was necessary. The heavy vehicle went down with a rush; Geoffrey and Mrs. Carey were not looking at the horses, the Duchess was indifferent, Sydney looked on dyspeptically, and Dacre was looking far ahead, as was his wont. Only Maggie Windsor gave a little scream and grasped the rail.
"It was not so hard to drive Neddy as that four," Mrs. Carey went on. "If I remember aright, the reins were often on the dash-board, and we were not always absorbed in the scenery, I fear." Mrs. Carey sighed, and looked away over the green hills and valleys.
"Poor old Neddy!" said Geoffrey, lightly. "I suppose he carries no such happy burdens now."