Mary winced at the word, but if the man feared that she would refuse to go on, he was mistaken. On the contrary, she looked eagerly to the front as the old horse, urged by the whip, took the rise of the bridge at a canter, and, having reached the crown, relapsed into an absent-minded walk.

"Dang me!" cried the driver, greatly excited, "but they do mean business! It's in knee in neck with 'em! Never thought it would come to this. And who is't they've got, Miss?"

Certainly there was something out of the common on foot. Moving to meet the gig, and filling the road from ditch to ditch, appeared a disorderly crowd of two or three hundred persons. Cheering, hooting, and brandishing sticks, they came on at something between a walk and a run, although in the heart of the ma.s.s there was a something that now and again checked the movement, and once brought it to a stand. When this happened the crowd eddied and flowed about the object in its centre and presently swept on again with the same hooting and laughter.

But in the laughter, as in the hooting, there was, after each of these pauses, a more savage note.

"What is it?" Mary cried, as the driver, scared by the sight, pulled up his horse. "What is it?"

"D--n me," the man replied, forgetting his manners, "if I don't think it's Ben Bosham they've got! It is Ben! And they're for ducking him! It's mortal deep by the bridge there, and s'help me, if it's not ten to one they drown him!"

"Ben Bosham?" Mary repeated. Then she recalled the name. She remembered what Mrs. Toft had said of him--that the man had a wife and would bring her to ruin. The crowd was not fifty yards from them now and was still coming on. To the left a track ran down to the towing-path and the ca.n.a.l, and already the leaders of the mob were swerving in that direction. As they did so--and were once more checked for a moment--Mary espied among them a man's bald head twisting this way and that, as he strove to escape. The man was struggling desperately, his clothes almost torn from his back, but he was helpless in the hands of a knot of stout fellows, and after a brief resistance he was hauled forcibly on. A hundred jeering voices rose about him, and a something cruel in the sound chilled Mary's blood. The dreary scene, the sluggish ca.n.a.l, the flat meadows, the rising mist, all pressed on her mind and deepened the note of tragedy.

But on that she broke the spell. The blood in her spoke. She clutched the driver's arm and shook it. "Go on!" she cried. "Go on! Drive into them!"

The man hesitated--he saw that the crowd was in no jesting mood. But the old horse felt the twitch on the reins and started, and having the slope with him, trotted gently forward as if the road were empty before him. The crowd waved and shouted, and cursed the driver. But the horse, thinking perhaps that this was some new form of parade, only c.o.c.ked his ears and ambled on till he reached the foremost. Then a man seized the rein, jerked it, and stopped him.

In a moment Mary sprang down, heedless of the fact that she was one woman among a hundred men. She faced the crowd, her eyes bright with indignation. "Let that man go," she cried. "Do you hear? Do you want to murder him?" And, advancing a step, she laid her hand on Ben Bosham's ragged, filthy sleeve--he had been down more than once and been rolled in the mud. "Let him go!" she continued imperiously. "Do you know who I am, you cowards? Let him go!"

"Yah!" shouted the crowd, and drowned her voice and pressed roughly about her, threatened her. One of the foremost asked her what she would do, another cried that she had best make herself scarce! Furious faces surrounded her, fists were shaken at her. But Mary was not daunted. "If you don't let him go, I shall go to Lord Audley!" she said.

"You're a fool meddling in this!" cried a voice. "We're only going to wash the devil!"

"You will let him go!" she replied, facing them all without fear and, advancing a step, she actually plucked the man from the hands that held him. "I am Miss Audley! If you do not let him go----"

"We're only going to wash him, lady," whined one of the men who held him.

"That's all, lady!" chimed in half-a-dozen. "He wants it!"

But Ben was not of that opinion, or he did not value cleanliness. "They're going to drown me!" he spluttered, his eyes wild. All the fight had been knocked out of him. "They're paid to do it! They'll drown me!"

"And sarve him right!" shouted half-a-dozen at the rear of the crowd. "Sarve him right, the devil!"

"They will not do it!" Mary said firmly. "They'll not lay another hand on you. Get in! Get in here!" And then to the crowd, "For shame!" she cried. "Stand back!"

The man was so shaken that he could not help himself, but she pushed, the driver pulled, and in a trice, before the mob had recovered from its astonishment, Ben was above their heads, on the seat of the gig--a blubbering, ragged, mud-caked figure with a white face and bleeding lips. "Go on!" Mary said in the same tone, and the gig moved forward, the old yeomanry horse tossing its head. She moved on beside it with her hand on the rail.

The mob let them pa.s.s, but closed in behind them, and after a pause began to jeer--a little in amus.e.m.e.nt, a little to cover its defeat. In a moment farce took the place of tragedy; the danger was over. "We'll tell your wife, Ben!" screamed a youth, and the crowd laughed and followed. Other wits took their turn. "You'll want a new coat for the wedding, Ben!" cried one. And now and again amid the laughter a sterner note survived. "We'll ha' you yet, Ben!" a man would cry. "You're not out of the wood yet, Ben!"

Mary's face burned, but she stuck to her post, plodding on beside the gig, and after this fashion the queer procession, heralded by a score of urchins crying the news, entered the streets of the town. On either side women thronged the doorways and steps, and while some cried, "Bravo, Miss!" others laughed and called to their neighbors to come out and see the sight. And still the crowd clung to the rear of the gig, and hooted and laughed and pretended to make forays on it.

Mary had hoped to shake them off, but as they persisted in following and no relief came--for Ba.s.set and his rescue party had gone to the ca.n.a.l by another road--she saw nothing for it but to go on to Lord Audley's. With a curt word she made the man turn that way.

The crowd still attended, curious, amused. It had doubled its numbers, nay, had trebled them. There were friends as well as foes among them now, some of Hatton's men, some of Banfield's, yellow favors as well as blue. If Mary had known it, she might have set Ben down and not a hand would have been laid upon him. Even the leaders of the riot were now thankful that they had not carried the matter farther. Enough had been done.

But Mary did not know this. She thought that the man was still in peril. She did not dream of leaving him. And it was at the head of a crowd of three or four hundred of the riff-raff of Riddsley that she broke in upon the quiet of the suburban road in which The b.u.t.terflies stood. Tumultuously, followed by laughter and hooting and cheers, she swept along it with her train, and came to a halt before the house.

No house was ever more surprised. Mrs. Wilkinson's scared face peered above one blind, her sisters' caps showed above another. Was it an accident? Was it a riot? Was it a Puseyite protest? What was it? Every servant, every neighbor, Lord Audley himself came to the windows.

Mary signed to the driver to help Ben down, and the moment the man's foot touched the ground she grasped his arm. With a burning face, but with her head in the air, she guided his stumbling footsteps through the gate and along the paved walk. They came together to the door. They went in.

The crowd formed up five deep along the railings, and waited in wondering silence to see what would happen. What would his lordship say? What would his lordship do? This was bringing the election to his doors with a vengeance, and there were not a few of the better sort who saw the fun of the situation.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

MY LORD SPEAKS OUT.

Mary had pa.s.sed through twenty minutes of tense excitement. The risk had been slight, after the first moment of intervention, but she had not known this, and she was still trembling with indignation, a creature all fire and pa.s.sion, when the door of The b.u.t.terflies opened to admit her. Leaving Ben Bosham on the threshold she lost not a moment, but with her story on her lips, hurried up the stairs, and on the landing came plump upon Lord Audley.

From the window he had seen something of what was afoot below. He had recognized Mary and the tattered Bosham, and he had read the riddle, grasped the facts, and cursed the busybody, all within thirty seconds. "D--n it! this pa.s.ses everything," he had muttered to himself as he turned from the window in disgust. "This is altogether too much!" And he had opened the door--ready also to open his mind to her!

"What in the world is it?" he asked. He held the door for her to enter. "What has happened? I could not believe my eyes when I saw you in company with that wretched creature!" he continued. "And all the tagrag and bobtail in the place behind you? What is it, Mary?"

She felt the check, and the color, which excitement had brought to her cheeks, faded. But she thought that it was only that he did not understand, and, "That wretched creature, as you call him," she cried, "has just escaped from death. They were going to murder him!"

"Murder him?" Audley repeated. He raised his eyebrows. "Murder him?" coldly. "My dear girl, don't be silly! Don't let yourself be carried away. You've lost your head. And, pardon me for saying it, I am afraid have made a fool of yourself! And of me!"

"But they were going to throw him into the ca.n.a.l!" she protested.

"Going to wash him!" he replied cynically. "And a good thing too! It's a pity they left the job undone. The man is a low, pestilent fellow!" he continued severely, "and obnoxious to me and to all decent people. The idea of bringing him, and that pleasant tail, to my house--my dear girl, it's absurd!"

He made no attempt to soften his tone or suppress his annoyance, and she stared at him in astonishment. Yet she still thought, or she strove to think, that he did not understand, and tried to make the facts clear. "But you don't know what they were like," she protested. "You were not there. They had torn the clothes from his back----"

"I can see that."

"And he was so terrified that it was dreadful to see him! They were handling him brutally, horribly! And then I came up and----"

"And lost your head!" he said. "I dare say you thought all this. But do you know anything about elections?"

"No----"

"Have you ever see an election in progress before?"

"No."

"Just so," he replied dryly. "Well, if you had, you would know that brawls of this kind are common things, the commonest of things at such a time, and that sensible people turn their backs on them. You've chosen to turn the farce into a tragedy, and in doing so you've made yourself ridiculous--and me too!"

"If you had seen them," she said, "I do not think you would speak as you are speaking."

"My dear girl," he replied, and shrugged his shoulders, "I have seen many such things, many. But there is one thing I have never seen, and that is a man killed in an election squabble! The whole thing is childish--silly! The least knowledge of the world--"

"Would have saved me from it?"

"Exactly! Would have saved you from it!" he answered austerely. "And me from a very annoying incident! Peers have nothing to do with elections, as you ought to know; and to bring this mob of all sorts to my door as if the matter touched me, is to compromise me. It is past a joke!"

Mary stared. She was trying to place herself. Certainly this was the room in which she had taken tea, and this was the man who had welcomed her, who had hung over her, whose eyes had paid her homage, who had foreseen her least want, who had lapped her in observance. This was the man and this the room, and there was the chair in which good Mrs. Wilkinson had sat and beamed on her.

But there was a change somewhere; and the change was in the man. Could it mean that he, too, had made a mistake and now recognized it? That he, too, had found that he did not love? But in that case this was not the way to confess an error. His tone, his manner, which held no respect for the woman and no softness for the sweetheart, were far from the tone of one in the wrong. On the contrary, they presented a side of him which had been hitherto hidden from her; a phase of the strength that she had admired, which shocked her even while, as deep calls to deep, it roused her pride. She remembered that she was his betrothed, and that he had wooed her, he had chosen her. And on slight provocation he spoke to her in this strain!

She sought the clue, she fancied that she held it, and from this moment she was on her guard. She was quiet, but there was a smouldering fire in her eyes. "Perhaps I was wrong," she said. "I have had little experience of these things. But are not you, on your side, making too much of this? Too much of a very small, a very natural mistake? Isn't it a trifle after all?"

"Not so much of a trifle as you think!" he retorted. "A man in my position has to follow a certain line of conduct. A girl in yours should be careful to guide herself by my views. Instead, out of a foolish sentimentality, you run directly counter to them! It is too late to consider your relation to me when the harm is done, my dear."

"Perhaps we have neither of us considered the relation quite enough?" she said.

"I am not sure that we have." And again, "I am not sure, Mary, that we have," he repeated more soberly.

She knew what he meant now--knew what was in his mind almost as clearly as if, instead of grasping his conclusion, she had been a party to his reasons. And she closed her lips, a spot of color in each cheek. In other circ.u.mstances she would have taken on herself a full, nay, the main share, of the blame. She would have been quick to admit that she, too, had made a mistake, and that no harm was done.

But his manner opened her eyes to many things that had been a puzzle to her. Thought is swift, and in a flash her mind had travelled over the whole course of their engagement, had recalled his long absence, the chill of his letters, the infrequency of his visits; and she saw by that light that this was no sudden shift, but an occasion sought and seized. Therefore she would not help him. She at least had been honest, she at least had been in earnest. She had tricked, not him only, but herself!

She closed her lips and waited, therefore. And he, knowing that he had now burned his boats, had to go on. "I am not sure that we did think enough about it?" he said doggedly. "I have suspected for some time that I acted hastily in--in asking you to be my wife, Mary."

"Indeed?" she said.

"Yes. And what has happened to-day, proving that we look at things so differently, has confirmed my suspicion. It has convinced me--" he looked down at his table, avoiding her eyes, but continued firmly--"that we are not suited to one another. The wife of a man, placed as I am, should have an idea of values, a certain reserve, that comes of a knowledge of the world; above all, no sentimental notions such as lead to mistakes like this." He indicated the street by a gesture. "If I was mistaken a while ago in listening to my feelings rather than to my prudence, if I gave you credit for knowledge which you had had no means of gaining, I wronged you, Mary, and I am sorry for it. But I should be doing you a far greater wrong if I remained silent now."

"Do you mean," she asked in a low voice, "that you wish it to be at an end between us? That you wish to--to throw me over?"

He smiled awry. "That is an unpleasant way of putting it, isn't it?" he said. "However, I am in the wrong, and I have no right to quarrel with a word. I do think that to break off our engagement at once is the best and wisest thing for both of us."

"How long have you felt this?" she asked.

"For some time," he replied, measuring his words, "I have been coming slowly--to that conclusion."

"That I am not fitted to be your wife?"

"If you like to put it so."

Then her anger, hitherto kept under, flamed up. "Then what right," she cried, "if that was in your mind, had you to treat me as you treated me at Beaudelays--in the garden? What right had you to kiss me? Rather, what right had you to insult me? For it was an insult--it was an insult, if you were not going to marry me! Don't you know, sir, that it was vile? That it was unforgivable?"

She had never looked more handsome, never more attractive than at this moment. The day was failing, but the glow of the fire fell on her face, and on her eyes sparkling with anger. He took in the picture, he owned her charm, he even came near to repenting. But it was too late, and "It may have been vile--and you may not forgive it," he answered hardily, "but I'd do it again, my dear, on the same provocation!"

"You would----"

"I would do it again," he repeated coolly. "Don't you know that you are handsome enough to turn any man's head? And what is a kiss after all? We are cousins. If you were not such a prude, I would kiss you now?"

She was furiously angry--or she fancied that she was. But it may be that, deep down in her woman's mind, she was not truly angry. And, indeed, how could she be angry when in her heart a little bird was beginning to sing--was telling her that she was free, that presently this cloud would be behind her, and that the sky would be blue? Already the message was making itself heard, already she was finding it hard to keep up appearances, to frown upon him and play her part.

Yet she flashed out at him. Was he not going too fast, was he not riding off too lightly? "Oh!" she cried, "You dare to say that! Even while you break off with me!"

But his selfish, masterful nature had now the upper hand. He had eaten his leek and he was anxious to be done with it. "And what then?" he said. "I believe that you know that I am right. I believe that you know that we are not suited to one another."

"And you think I will let you go at a word?"

"I think you will let me go," he said, "because you are not a fool, Mary. You know as well as I do that you might be 'my lady' at too high a price. I'm not the most manageable of men. I'd make a decent husband, all being well. But I'm not meek and I'd make a very unhandy husband malgre moi."

The threat exasperated her. "I know this at least," she retorted, "that I would not marry you now, if you were twenty times my lord! You have behaved meanly, and I believe falsely! Not to-day! You are speaking the truth to-day. But I believe that from the start you had this in your mind, that you foresaw this, and were careful not to commit yourself too publicly! What I don't understand is why you ever asked me to be your wife--at all?"

"Look in the gla.s.s!" he answered impudently.

She put that aside. "But I suppose that you had a reason!" she returned. "That you loved me, that you felt for me anything worthy of the name of love is impossible! For the rest, let me tell you this! If I ever felt thankful for anything I am thankful for the chance that brought me to your house to-day--and brought me to the truth!"

"Anything more to say?" he asked flippantly. The way she was taking it suited him better than if she had wept and appealed. And then she was so confoundedly good-looking in her tantrums!

"Nothing more," she said. "I think that we understand one another now. At any rate, I understand you. Perhaps you will kindly see if I can leave the house without annoyance."

He looked into the street. Dusk had fallen, the lamplighter was going his rounds. Of the crowd that had attended Mary to the house no more than a handful remained; the nipping air, the attractions of free beer, the sound of the m.u.f.fin-bell, had drawn away the rest. The driver of the gig was moving to and fro, now looking disconsolately at the windows, now beating his fingers on his chest.

"I think you can leave with safety," Audley said with irony. "I will see you downstairs."

"I will not trouble you," she answered.

"But, surely, we may still be friends?"

She looked him in the face. "We need not be enemies," she answered. "And, perhaps, some day I may be able to think more kindly of you. If that day comes I will tell you. Good-bye." She went out without touching his hand. She went down the stairs.

She drove through the dusky, dimly-lighted streets in a kind of dream, seeing all things through a pleasant haze. The bank was closed and to deliver up her papers she had to go into the bank-house. The glimpse she had of the cheerful parlor, of the manager's wife, of his two children playing the Royal Game of Goose at a round table, enchanted her. Presently she was driving again through the darkling streets, pa.s.sing the Maypole, pa.s.sing the quaint, low-browed shops, lit only by an oil lamp or a couple of candles. The Audley Arms, the Packhorse, the Portcullis, were all alight and buzzing with the voices of those who fought their battles over again or laid bets on this candidate or that. What the speaker had said to Lawyer Stubbs and what Lawyer Stubbs had said to the speaker, what the "Duke" thought, who would have to pay for the damage, and the odds the stout farmer would give that wheat wouldn't be forty shillings a quarter this day twelvemonth if the Repeal pa.s.sed--sc.r.a.ps of these and the like poured from the doorways as she drove by.

All fell in delightfully with her mood and filled her with a sense of well-being. Even when the streets lay behind her, and the driver hunched his shoulders to meet the damp night-fog and the dreary stretch that lay beyond the ca.n.a.l-bridge, Mary found the darkness pleasant and the chill no more than bracing. For what were that night, that chill beside the numbing grip from which she had just--oh, thing miraculous!--escaped! Beside the fetters that had been lifted from her within the last hour! O foolish girl, O ineffable idiot, to have ever fancied that she loved that man!

No, for her it was a charming night! The owl that, far away towards the Great House, hooted dolefully above the woods--no nightingale had been more tuneful. Ben Bosham--she laughed, thinking of his plight--blessings on his bare, bald head and his ragged shoulders! The old horse plodding on, with the hill that mounts to the Gatehouse sadly on his mind--he should have oats, if oats there were in the Gatehouse stables! He should have oats in plenty, or what he would if oats failed!

"What do you give him when he's tired?" she asked.

"Well," the driver replied with diplomacy, "times a quart of ale, Miss. He'll take it like a Christian."

"Then a quart of ale he shall have to-night!" she said with a happy laugh. "And you shall have one, too, Simonds."

Her mood held to the end, so that before she was out of her wraps, Mrs. Toft was aware of the change in her. "Why, Miss," she said, "you look like another creature! It isn't the bank, I'll be bound, has put that color in your cheeks!"

"No!" Mary answered, "I've had an adventure, Mrs. Toft. And briefly she told the tale of Ben Bosham's plight and of her gallant rescue. She began herself to see the comic side of it.

"He always was a fool, was Ben!" Mrs. Toft commented. "And that," she continued shrewdly, "was how you come to see his lordship was it, Miss?"

"How did you know I saw him?" Mary asked in surprise. "But you're right, I did." Then, as she entered the parlor, "Perhaps I'd better tell you, Mrs. Toft," she said, "that the engagement between my cousin and myself is at an end. You were one of the very few who knew of it, and so I tell you."

Mrs. Toft showed no surprise. "Indeed, Miss," she answered, stooping to the hearth to light the candles with a piece of wood. "Well, one thing's certain, and many a time my mother's drummed it into me, 'Better a plain shoe than one that pinches!' And again, 'Better live at the bottom of the hill than the top,' she'd say. 'You see less but you believe more.'"

Neither she nor Mary saw Toft. But Toft, who had entered the hall a moment before, was within hearing, and Mary's statement, so coolly received by his wife, had an extraordinary effect on the man-servant. He stood an instant, his lank figure motionless. Then he opened the door beside him, slipped out into the chill and the darkness, and silently, but with extravagant gestures, he broke into a dance, now waving his thin arms in the air, now stooping with his hands locked between his knees. Whether he thus found vent for joy or grief was a secret which he kept to himself.