But apparently she did not know. For by and by she spoke again. “No,” she said. “I suppose not. Yet have you thought”—and now there was a more decided tremor in her voice—“that that which you surrender is not all there is at stake? Your independence is precious to you, and you have a right, Mr. Vaughan, to purchase it even at the cost of your happiness. But have you a right to purchase it at the cost of another’s? At the cost of mine? Have you thought of my happiness?” she continued, “or only of yours—and of yourself? To save your independence—shall I say, to save your pride?—you are willing to set your love aside. But have you asked me whether I am willing to pay my half of the price? My heavier half? Whether I am willing to set my happiness aside? Have you thought of—me at all?”
If he had not, then, when he saw how she looked at him, with what eyes, with what love, as she laid her hand on his arm, he had been more than man if he had resisted her long! But he still fought with himself, and with her; staring with hard, flushed face straight before him, telling himself that by all that was left to him he must hold.
“I think, I think,” she said gently, yet with dignity, “you have not thought of me.”
“But your father—Sir Robert——”
“He is an ogre, of course,” she cried in a tone suddenly changed. “But you should have thought of that before, sir,” she continued, tears and laughter in her voice. “Before you travelled with me on the coach! Before you saved my life! Before you—looked at me! For you can never take it back. You can never give me myself again. I think that you must take me!”
And then he did not resist her any longer. And the carriage was stayed; and orders were given. And, empty and hugely overpaid, the yellow post-chaise ambled on to Chippenham; and bearing two inside, and a valise on the roof, the mourning coach drove slowly and solemnly back to Stapylton. As it wound its way over the green undulations of the park, the rabbits that ran, and then stopped, cocking their scuts, to look at it, saw nothing strange in it. Nor the fallow-deer of the true Savernake breed, who, before they fled through the dying bracken, eyed it with poised heads. Nay, the heron which watched its approach from the edge of the Garden Pool, and did not even deign to drop a second leg, saw nothing strange in it. Yet it bore for all that the strangest of all earthly passengers, and the strongest, and the bravest, and the fairest—and withal, thank God, the most familiar. For it carried Love. And love the same yet different, love gaunt and grey-haired, yet kind and warm of heart, met it at the door and gave it welcome.
XXXVIII
THREADS AND PATCHES
Though England had not known for fifty years an outbreak so formidable or so destructive as that of which the news was laid on men’s breakfast-tables on the Tuesday morning, it had less effect on the political situation than might have been expected. It sent, indeed, a thrill of horror through the nation. And had it occurred at an earlier stage of the Reform struggle, before the middle class had fully committed itself to a trial of strength with the aristocracy, it must have detached many more of the timid and conservative of the Reformers. But it came too late. The die was cast; men’s minds were made up on the one side and the other. Each saw events coloured to his wish. And though Wetherell and Croker, and the devoted band who still fought manfully round those chieftains, called heaven and earth to witness the first-fruits of the tree of Reform, the majority of the nation preferred to see in these troubles the alternative to the Bill—the abyss into which the whole country would be hurled if that heaven-sent measure were not passed.
On one thing, however, all were agreed. The outrage was too great to be overlooked. The law must be vindicated, the lawbreakers must be punished. To this end the Government, anxious to clear themselves of the suspicion of collusion, appointed a special Commission, and sent it to Bristol to try the rioters; and four poor wretches were hanged, a dozen were transported, and many received minor sentences. Having thus, a little late in the day, taught the ignorant that Reform did not spell Revolution after the French pattern, the Cabinet turned their minds to the measure again. And in December they brought in the Third Reform Bill, with the fortunes and passage of which this story is not at pains to deal.
But of necessity the misguided creatures who kindled the fires in Queen’s Square on that fatal Sunday, and swore that they would not leave a gaol standing in England, were not the only men who suffered. Sad as their plight was, there was one whose plight—if pain be measured by the capacity to feel—was sadder. While they were being tried in one part of Bristol, there was proceeding in another part an inquiry charged with deeper tragedy. Not those only who had done the deed, but those who had suffered them to do it, must answer for it. And the fingers of all pointed to one man. The magistrates might escape—the Mayor indeed had done his duty creditably, if to little purpose; for war was not their trade, and the thing at its crisis had become an affair of war. But Colonel Brereton could not shield himself behind that plea: so many had behaved poorly that the need to bring one to book was the greater.