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.
"Lord, sir!" she said, "your hand is torn dreadful! You've grazed every bit of skin off it!"
He tried to silence her; and failing, hurried into the house. She fussed after him to attend to him; and Sammy, who was not a man of the most delicate perceptions, seized the opportunity to drive home his former lesson. "There, Miss," he said solemnly, "I hope that'll teach you to look out another time! But better his hand than your head. You'd ha' been surely scalped!"
The girl, a shade whiter than before, did not answer. And he thought her, for so pretty a wench, "a right unfeelin' un!"
Not so the Frenchman. "I count him a very locky man!" he said obscurely. "A very locky man."
"Well," the coachman answered with a grunt, "if you call that lucky-"
"Vraiment! Vraiment! But I-alas!" the Frenchman answered with an eloquent gesture, "I have lost my all, and the good fortunes are no longer for me!"
"Fortunes!" the coachman muttered, looking askance at him. "A fine fortune, to have your hand flayed! But where's" – recollecting himself-"where's that there fool that caused the trouble! D-n me, if he shall go any further on my coach. I'd like to double-thong him, and it'd serve him right!"
So when the ex-M.P. presently appeared, Sammy let go his tongue to such purpose that the political gentleman; finding himself in a minority of one, retired into the house and, with many threats of what he would do when he saw the management, declined to go on.
"And a good riddance of a d-d Tory!" the coachman muttered. "Think all the world's made for them! Fifteen minutes he's cost us already! Take your seats, gents, take your seats! I'm off!"
Vaughan, with his hand hastily bandaged, was the last to come out. He climbed as quickly as he could to his place, and, without looking at his neighbour, he said some common-place word. She did not reply, and they swept under the arch. For a moment the sight of the thronged marketplace diverted him. Then he looked at her, and he saw that she was trembling.
If he was not quite so wise as the Frenchman, having had no bonnes fortunes to speak of, he had, nevertheless, keen perceptions. And he guessed that the girl, between her maiden shyness and her womanly gratitude, was painfully placed. It could not be otherwise. A girl who had spent her years, since childhood, within the walls of a school at Clapham, first as genteel apprentice, and then as assistant; who had been taught to consider young men as roaring lions with whom her own life could have nothing in common, and from whom it was her duty to guard the more giddy of her flock; who had to struggle at once with the shyness of youth, the modesty of her sex, and her inexperience-above all, perhaps with that dread of insult which becomes the instinct of lowly beauty-how was she to carry herself in circumstances so different from any which she had ever imagined? How was she to express a tithe of the feelings with which her heart was bursting, and which overwhelmed her as often as she thought of the hideous death from which he had snatched her?
She could not; and with inborn good taste she refrained from the commonplace word, the bald acknowledgment, in which a shallow nature might have taken refuge. On his side, he guessed some part of this, and discerned that if he would relieve her he must himself speak. Accordingly, when they had left the streets behind them and were swinging merrily along the Newbury Road, he leant towards her.
"May I beg," he said in a low voice, "that you won't think of what has happened? The coachman would have done as much, and scolded you! I happened to be next you. That was all."
In a strangled voice, "But your hand," she faltered. "I fear-I-" She shuddered, unable to go on.
"It is nothing!" he protested. "Nothing! In three days it will be well!"
She turned her eves on him, eyes which possessed an eloquence of which their owner was unconscious. "I will pray for you," she murmured. "I can do no more."
The pathos of her simple gratitude was such that Vaughan could not laugh it off. "Thank you," he said quietly. "We shall then be more than quits." And having given her a few moments in which to recover herself, "We are nearly at Speenhamland," he resumed cheerfully. "There is the George and Pelican! It's a great baiting-house for coaches. I am afraid to say how much corn and hay they give out in a day. They have a man who does nothing else but weigh it out." And so he chattered on, doing his utmost to talk of indifferent matters in an indifferent tone.
She could not repulse him after what had passed. And now and then, by a timid word, she gave him leave to talk. Presently he began to speak of things other than those under their eyes, and when he thought that he had put her at her ease, "You understand French?" he said looking at her suddenly.
"I spoke it as a child," she answered. "I was born abroad. I did not come to England until I was nine."
"To Clapham?"
"Yes. I have been employed in a school there."
Prudently he hastened to bring the talk back to the road again. And she took courage to steal a look at him when his eyes were elsewhere. He seemed so strong and gentle and courteous; this unknown creature which she had been taught to fear. And he was so thoughtful of her! He could throw so tender a note into his voice. Beside d'Orsay or Alvanley-but she had never heard of them-he might have passed muster but tolerably; but to her he seemed a very fine gentleman. She had a woman's eye for the fineness of his linen, and the smartness of his waistcoat-had not Sir James Graham, with his chest of Palermo stuffs, set the seal of Cabinet approval on fancy waistcoats? Nor was she blind to the easy carriage of his head, and his air of command.
And there she caught herself up: reflecting with a blush that it was by the easy path of thoughts such as these that the precipice was approached; that so it was the poor and pretty let themselves be led from the right road. Whither was she travelling? In what was this to end? She trembled. And if they had not at that moment swung out of Savernake Forest and sighted the red roofs of Marlborough, lying warm and sung at the foot of the steep London Hill, she did not know what she should have done, since she could not repulse him.
They rattled in merry style through the town, the leaders cantering, the bars swinging, the guard tootling, the sun shining; past a score of inn signs before which the heavy stages were baiting; past the two churches, while all the brisk pleasantness of this new, this living world, appealed to her to go its way. Ta-ra-ra!
