Chapter XIV: Part 14

Vaughan was too sharply surprised to rebuke the man. Could the story be true! And if it were, what was Brereton doing? He could not have been so foolish as to halve his force in obedience to the people he was sent to check! But the murmur in the air was a fact, and past the end of the street men were running in anything but a Sunday fashion.

He went back to his room and pocketed his staff. Then he descended again and was on his way out, when a person belonging to the house stopped him.

“Mr. Vaughan,” she said earnestly, “don’t go, sir. You are known after last night and will come to harm. You will indeed, sir. And you can do no good. My father says that nothing can be done until to-morrow.”

“I will take care of myself,” he replied, lightly. But his eyes thanked her. He pushed his way through the gazers at the door, and set off towards Queen’s Square.

At every door men and women were standing looking out. In the distance he could hear cheering, which waxed louder and more insistent as, prudently avoiding the narrower lanes, he passed down Clare Street to Broad Quay, from which there was an entrance to the northwest corner of the Square. Alongside the quay, which was fringed with warehouses and sheds, and from which the huge city crane towered up, lay a line of brigs and schooners; the masts of the more distant of these tapering to vanishing points in the mist which lay upon the water. At the moment, however, Vaughan had no eye for them. He saw them, but his thoughts were with the rioters, and in a twinkling he was within the Square, and seeing what was to be seen.

He judged that there were not more than fifteen hundred persons present. Of the whole about one-half belonged to the lowest class. These were gathered about the Mansion House, some drinking before it, others bearing up liquor from the cellars, while others again were tearing out the woodwork of the casements, or wantonly flinging the last remnants of furniture from the windows. The second moiety of the crowd, less reckless or of higher position, looked on as at a show; or now and again, at the bidding of some active rioter, raised a cheer for Reform, “The King and Reform! Reform!”

There was nothing dreadful, nothing awe-inspiring in the sight. Yet it was such a sight, for an English city on a Sunday morning, that Vaughan’s gorge rose at it. A hundred resolute men might have put the mob to flight. And meantime, on every point of vantage, on Redcliffe Parade, eastward of the Square, on College Green, and Brandon Hill, to the westward of it, thousands stood looking in silence on the scene, and by their supineness encouraging the work of destruction.

He thought for a moment of pushing to the front and trying what a few reasonable words would effect. But as he advanced, his eye caught a gleam of colour, and in the corner of the Square, most remote from the disorder, he discovered a handful of dragoons, seated motionless in their saddles, watching the proceedings.

The folly of this struck him dumb. And he hurried, at a white heat, across the Square to remonstrate. He was about to speak to the sergeant in charge, when Flixton, with a civilian cloak masking his uniform, rode up to the men at a foot-pace. Vaughan turned to him instead.

“Good Heavens, man!” he cried, too hot to mince his words or remember at the moment what there was between him and Flixton, “What’s Brereton doing? What has happened! It is not true that he has sent the Fourteenth away?”

Flixton looked down at him sulkily. “He’s sent ’em to Keynsham,” he said, shortly. “If he hadn’t, the crowd would have been out of hand!”

“But what do you call them now?” Vaughan retorted, with angry sarcasm. “They are destroying a public building in broad daylight! Aren’t they sufficiently out of hand?”

Flixton shrugged his shoulders, but did not answer. He was flushed and has manner was surly.

“And your squad here, looking on and doing nothing? They’re worse than useless!” Vaughan continued. “They encourage the beggars! They’d be better in their quarters than here! Better at Keynsham,” he added bitterly.

“So I’ve told him,” Flixton answered, taking the last words literally. “He sent me to see how things are looking. And a d——d pleasant way this is of spending a wet Sunday!” On which, without more, having seen, apparently, what he came to see, he turned his horse to go out of the Square by the Broad Quay.

Vaughan walked a few paces beside the horse. “But, Flixton, press him,” he said urgently; “press him, man, to act! To do something!”

“That’s all very fine,” the Honourable Bob answered churlishly, “but Brereton’s in command. And you don’t catch me interfering. I am not going to take the responsibility off his shoulders.”

“But think what may happen to-night!” Vaughan urged. Already he saw that the throng was growing denser and its movements less random. Somewhere in the heart of it a man was speaking. “Think what may happen after dark, if they are as bad as this in daylight?”

Flixton looked askance at him. “Ten to one, only what happened last night,” he answered. “You all croaked then; but Brereton was right.”

Vaughan saw that he argued to no purpose. For Flixton, forward and positive in small things and on the surface, was discovered by the emergency; all that now remained of his usual self-assertion was a sense of injury. Vaughan inquired, instead, where he would find Brereton, and as by this time the crowd had clearly outgrown the control of a single man, he contented himself with walking round the Square, and learning, by mingling with the fringe, what manner of spirit moved it.

That spirit, though he heard some ugly threats against Wetherell and the Bishops and the Lords, was rather a reckless and mischievous than a bloodthirsty one. To obtain drink, to destroy this or that gaol, and by and by to destroy all gaols seemed to the crowd the first principles of Reform.

Presently a cry of “To the Bridewell! Come on! To the Bridewell!” was raised, and led by a dozen hobbledehoys, armed with iron bars plucked from the railings, a body of some hundreds trooped off, helter-skelter, in the direction of the prison of that name.

Vaughan saw that someone must be induced to act; and to him the following hours of that wet, dismal Sunday were a waking nightmare. He hurried hither and thither, from Guildhall to Council House, from Brereton’s lodgings to the dragoons’ quarters, striving to effect something and always failing; seeking some cohesion, some decision, some action, and finding none. Always there had just been a meeting, or was going to be a meeting, or would be a meeting by and by. The civil power would not act without the military; and the military did not think itself strong enough to act, but would act if the civil power would do something which the civil power had made up its mind not to do. And meantime the supineness of the mass of the citizens was marvellous. He seemed to be moving endlessly between lines of men who lounged at their doors, and joked, or waited for the crowd to pass that way. Nothing, it seemed to him, would rouse these men to a sense of the position. It would be a lesson to Wetherell, they said. It would be a lesson to the Peers. It would be a lesson to the Tories. The Bridewell was sacked and fired, the great gaol across the New Cut was firing, the Gloucester gaol in the north of the city was threatened. And still it did not occur to these householders, as they looked down the wet, misty streets, that presently it would be a lesson to them.

But at half-past three, with the dusk on that rainy day scarce an hour off, there was a meeting at the Guildhall. Still no cohesion, no action. On the other hand, much recrimination, many opinions. One was for casting all firearms into the float. Another for arming all, fit or unfit. One was for fetching the Fourteenth back, another for sending the Third to join them at Keynsham. One was for appeasing the people by parading a dummy figure of their own Recorder through the city and burning it on College Green. Another for relying on the Political Union. In vain Vaughan warned them that the mob would presently attack private property; in vain he offered, in a few spirited words, to lead the Special Constables to the rescue of the gaol. The meeting, small to begin and always divided, dwindled fast. The handful who were ready to follow him made the support of the military a condition. Everybody said, “To-morrow!” To-morrow the _posse comitatus_ might be called out; to-morrow the yeomanry, summoned by the man in the yellow jacket, would be here! To-morrow the soldiers might act. And in fine—To-morrow!

There was over the door of the Council House of those days a statue of Justice, lacking the sword and the bandage. Vaughan, passing out in disgust from the meeting, pointed to it. “There is Bristol, gentlemen,” he said bitterly. “Your authorities have dropped the sword, and until they regain it we are helpless. I have done my best.” And, shrugging his shoulders, he started for Brereton’s lodgings to try a last appeal.

He might well think it necessary. For a night which Bristol was long to remember was closing down upon the city. Though it was Sunday, the churches were empty; in few was a second service held. The streets, on the contrary, were full, in spite of the cold; full of noise and turmoil and disorder; of bands of men hastening up and down with reckless cries and flaring lights, at the bidding of leaders as unwitting. In Queen’s Square the rioters were drinking themselves drunk as at a fair, while amid the falling rain, through which the last stormy gleams of daylight strove to pass, amid the thickening dusk, those who all day long had jested at their doors began to turn doubtful looks on one another. From three points the smoke of fired prisons rose to the clouds and floated in a dense pall over the city; and men whispered that a hundred, two hundred, five hundred criminals had been set free. On Clifton Downs, on Brandon Hill, on College Green, on Redcliffe the thousand gazers of the morning were doubled and redoubled. But they no longer wore the cynical faces of the morning. On the contrary there were some who, following with their eyes the network of waterways laden with inflammable shipping, which pierced the city in every direction—who, tracing these and the cutthroat alleys and lanes about them, predicted that the morning would find Bristol a heap of ruins. And not a few, taking fright at the last moment, precipitately removed their families to Clifton, and locked up their houses.

Vaughan, as he walked through the dusk, had those waterways, those lanes, those alleys, the congested heart of the old city, in his mind. He doubted, even he, if the hour for action was not past. Nor was he surprised when Brereton met his appeal with a flat _non possumus_. He was more struck with the change which twenty-four hours had wrought in the man. He looked worn and haggard. The shadows under his eyes were deeper, the eyes shone with a more feverish light. His dress, too, was careless and disordered, and while he was not still for a moment, he repeated what he said over and over again as if to persuade himself of its truth.

Naturally Vaughan laid stress on the damage already done. “But, I tell you,” Brereton replied angrily, “we are well clear for that! It’s not a tithe of the harm which would have befallen if I had given way! I tell you, we’re well clear for that. No, I’ve done, thank God, I’ve done the only thing it was possible to do. A little too much, and if I’d succeeded I’d have been hung—for they’re all against me, they’re all against me, above and below! And if I’d failed, a thousand lives would have paid the bill! And do you ever consider, man,” he continued, striking the table, “what a massacre in this crowded place would be! Think of the shipyards, the dockyards, the quays! The water pits and the sunk alleys! How could I clear them with ninety swords? How could I clear them? Eh, with ninety swords? I tell you they never meant me to clear them.”

“But why not clear the wider streets, sir?” Vaughan persisted, “and keep a grip on those?”

“No! I say, no!”

“Yet even now, if you were to move your full force to Queen’s Square, sir, you might clear it. And driven from their headquarters, and taught that they are not going to have it all their own way, the more prudent would fall off and go home.”

“I know,” Brereton answered. “I know the argument. I know it. But who’s to thank for the whole trouble? Your Blues, who went beyond their orders last night. The Fourteenth, sir! The Fourteenth! But I’ll have no more of it. Flixton is of my opinion, too.”

“Flixton is an ass!” Vaughan cried incautiously.

“And you think me one too!” Brereton retorted, with so strange a look that for the first time Vaughan was sure that his mind was tottering. “Well, think what you like! Think what you like! But I’ll trouble you not to take that tone here.”

XXXII THE AFFRAY AT THE PALACE

A little before the hour at which Vaughan interviewed Brereton, Sir Robert Vermuyden, the arrival of whose travelling carriage at the White Lion about the middle of the afternoon had caused some excitement, walked back to the inn. He was followed by Thomas, the servant who had attended Mary to Bristol, and by another servant. As he passed through the streets the signs of the times were not lost upon him; far from it. But the pride of caste was strong upon him, and he hid his anxiety.

On the threshold of the inn he turned to the servants. “Are you sure,” he asked for the fourth time, “that that was the house at which you left her?”

“Certain sure, Sir Robert,” Thomas answered earnestly.

“And sure—but, ah!” the baronet broke off abruptly, his tone one of relief. “Here’s Mr. Cooke! Go now, but be within call. Mr. Cooke,”—he stepped, as he spoke, in front of that gentleman, who was about to enter the house—“well met!”

Cooke was hot with haste and ire, but at the unexpected sight of Sir Robert he stood still. “God bless my soul!” he cried. “You here, sir?”

“Yes. And you know Bristol well. You can help me.”

“I wish I could help myself!” Cooke cried, forgetting himself in his excitement.

“My daughter is in Bristol.”

“Indeed?” the angry merchant replied. “Then she could not be in a worse place. That is all I can say.”

“I am inclined to agree with you.”

“This is your Reform!”

Sir Robert stared. “Not my Reform, Mr. Cooke,” he said in a tone of displeasure.

“I beg your pardon, Sir Robert,” Cooke rejoined, speaking more coolly. “I beg your pardon. But what I have suffered to-day is beyond telling. By G—d, it’s my opinion that there’s only one man worthy of the name in Bristol! And that’s your cousin, Vaughan!”

Sir Robert struck his stick on the pavement. “Mr. Vaughan?” he exclaimed. “He is here, then? I feared so!”

“Here? You feared? I tell you he’s the only man to be called a man, who is here! If it had not been for him and the way he handled the constables last night we should have been burnt out then instead of to-night! I don’t know that the gain’s much, but for what it’s worth we have him to thank!”

Sir Robert frowned. “I am surprised. He behaved well? Indeed!” he said.

“D——d well! D——d well! If there had been half a dozen like him, we’d be out of the wood!”

“Where is he staying?” Sir Robert asked after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ve lost my daughter in the confusion, and I think it possible that he may know where she is.”

“He is staying here at the Lion,” Cooke answered. “But he’s been up and down all day trying to put heart into poltroons.” And he ran over the chief events of the last few hours.

He punctuated the story with oaths and bitter complaints, and perhaps it was for this reason that Sir Robert, after he had heard the main facts, broke away. He went through the hall to the bar where the landlord, who knew him well, came forward and greeted him respectfully. But to Sir Robert’s inquiry as to Mr. Vaughan’s whereabouts he shook his head.

“I wish he was in the house, Sir Robert,” he said in a low voice. “For he’s a marked man in Bristol since last night. I was in the Square myself, and it was wonderful what spirit he put into his men. But the scum and the riffraff who are uppermost to-day say he handled them cruelly, and my daughter tried to persuade him from going out to-day. But he would go, sir.”

Sir Robert reflected with a gloomy face. “Where are Mr. Flixton’s quarters?” he asked at last. He might possibly learn something from him.

The man told him, and Sir Robert summoned his servants and went out. It was dark by this time, but a faint glare shone overhead and there was a murmur in the air, as if, in the gloom beneath, the heart of the city was palpitating, in dread of it knew not what. Sir Robert had not far to go. He had barely passed into College Green when he met Flixton under a lamp. And so it happened that two minutes later, Vaughan, on his way from Brereton’s lodgings in Unity Street, came plump upon the two. He might have gone by in ignorance, but as he passed the taller man looked up, and Vaughan with a shock of surprise recognised Sir Robert Vermuyden.

Flixton caught sight of Vaughan at the same moment, and “Here’s your man, Sir Robert,” he cried with a little malice in his tone. “Here, Vaughan,” he continued, “Here’s Sir Robert Vermuyden! He’s looking for you. He wants to know——”

Sir Robert stopped him. “I will speak for myself, Mr. Flixton, if you please,” he said with the dignity which seldom deserted him. “Mr. Vaughan,” he continued, with a piercing glance, “where is my daughter?”

Vaughan returned his look, frowning. Since the parting in Miss Sibson’s parlour, the remembrance of which still set his blood in a flame, Sir Robert and he had not met. Now, in the wet gloom of College Green, under a rare gaslamp, with turmoil about them, and the murmur of fresh trouble drawing near through the streets, Sir Robert asked him for his daughter! He could have laughed. As it was, “I know nothing, sir, of your daughter,” he replied, in a tone between contempt and anger.

“But,” Sir Robert retorted, “you travelled with her, from London!”

“How do you know that I did?”

“The servants, sir, have told me that you did.”

“Then they must also have told you,” Vaughan rejoined keenly, “that I did not take the liberty of speaking to Miss Vermuyden. And that I left the coach at Chippenham. That being so, I can only refer you,” he continued with a sneer, raising his hat and preparing to move on, “to Mr. Flixton, who went with her the rest of the way to Bristol.”

He turned away. But he had not taken two paces before Sir Robert touched his shoulder, and with that habit of command which few questioned. “Wait, sir,” he said, “Wait, if you please. You do not escape me so easily. You will attend to me one moment, if you please. Mr. Flixton accompanied Miss Vermuyden, as did her man and maid, to Miss Sibson’s house. She gave that address to Lady Worcester, in whose care she was; and I sought her there this afternoon. But she is not there.” Sir Robert continued, striving to read Vaughan’s face. “The house is empty. So is the house on either side. I can make no one hear.”

“And you come to me for news of her?” Vaughan asked in the tone he had used throughout. He was very sore.

“I do.”

“You do not think that I am the last person of whom you should ask tidings of your daughter?”

“She came here,” Sir Robert answered sternly, “to see Lady Sybil.”

Vaughan stared. The answer seemed to be irrelevant. Then he understood. “Oh,” he said, “I see. You are still under the impression that your wife and I are in a conspiracy to delude you? Your daughter also? You think that she is in the plot? And that she gave the schoolmistress’s address to deceive you?”

“No!” Sir Robert cried. But, after all, that was what he did think. Had he not told himself, more than once, that she was her mother’s daughter? Had he not told himself that it could not have been by chance that Vaughan and she met a second time on the coach? He knew that she had left London and gone to her mother in defiance of him. He knew that. And though she had entwined herself about his heart, though she had seemed to him all gentleness, goodness, truth—she was still her mother’s daughter! Nevertheless, he said “No!”—and said it angrily.

“Then I do not know what you mean!” Vaughan retorted.

“I believe that you can tell me something, if you will.”

Vaughan looked at him. “I have nothing to tell you,” he said.

“You mean, sir, that you will tell me nothing!”

“That, if you like.”

For nearly half a century the old man had found few to oppose him; and now by good luck he had not time to reply. A man running out of the darkness in the direction of Unity Street—the open space was full of moving groups, of alarms and confusion—caught sight of Vaughan’s face, checked himself and addressed him.

“Mr. Vaughan!” he said. “They are coming! They are making for the Palace! The Bishop must be got away, if he’s not gone! I am fetching the Colonel! The Mayor is following with all he can get together. If you will give warning at the Palace, there will be time for his lordship to escape.”

“Right!” Vaughan cried, glad to leave his company. And he started without the loss of a moment. Even so, he had not gone twenty paces down the Green before the head of the mob entered it from St. Augustine’s, and passed, with hoarse shouts, along the south side, towards the ancient Archway which led to the Lower Green. It was a question whether he or they reached the Archway first; but he won the race by a score of yards.

The view from the Lower Green, which embraced the burning gaol, as well as all Queen’s Square and the Floating Basin that islanded it, had drawn together a number of gazers. These impeded Vaughan’s progress, but he got through them at last, and as the mob burst into the Lower Green he entered the paved passage leading to the Precincts, hurried along it, turned the dark elbow near the inner end, and halted before the high gates which shut off the Cloisters. The Palace door was in the innermost or southeast corner of the Cloisters.

It was very dark at the end of the passage; and fortunately! For the gates were fast closed, and before he could, groping, find the knocker, the rabble had entered the passage behind him and cut off his retreat. The high wall which rose on either side made escape impossible. Nor was this all. As he awoke to the trap in which he had placed himself, a voice at his elbow muttered, “My God, we shall be murdered!” And he learned that Sir Robert had followed him.

He had no time to remonstrate, nor thought of remonstrance. “Stand flat against the wall!” he muttered, his fingers closing upon the staff in his pocket. “It is our only chance!”

He had basely spoken before the leaders of the mob swept round the elbow. They had one light, a flare borne above them, which shone on their tarpaulins and white smocks, and on the huge ship-hammers they carried. There was a single moment of great peril, and instinctively Vaughan stepped before the older man. He could not have made a happier movement, for it seemed—to the crowd who caught a glimpse of the two and took them for some of their own party—as if he advanced against the gates along with their leaders.

The peril indeed, or the worst of it, was over the moment they fell into the ranks. “Hammers to the front!” was the cry. And Sir Robert and Vaughan were thrust back into the second line, that those who wielded the hammers might have room. Vaughan tipped his hat over his face, and the villains who pressed upon the two and jostled them, and whose cries of “Burn him out! Burn the old devil out!” were dictated by greed rather than by hate, were too full of the work in hand to regard their neighbours closely. In three or four minutes—long minutes they seemed to the two inclosed in that unsavoury company—the bars gave way, the gates were thrown open, and Vaughan and Sir Robert, hardly keeping their feet in the rush, were borne into the Cloisters.

The rabble, with cries of triumph, raced across the dark court to the Palace door and began to use their hammers on that. Vaughan hoped that the Bishop had had warning—as a fact he had escaped some hours earlier. At any rate he and his companion could do no more, and under cover of the darkness they retreated to the porch of a smaller house which opened on the Cloisters. Here they were safe for the time; and, his heart opened and his tongue loosed by the danger through which they had passed, he turned to his companion and remonstrated with him.

“Sir Robert,” he said, “this is no place for a man of your years.”

“England will soon be no place for any man of my years,” the Baronet answered bitterly. “I would your leaders, sir, were here to see their work! I would Lord Grey were here to see how well his friends carry out his hints!”

“I doubt if he would be more pleased than you or I!” Vaughan answered. “In the meantime——”

“The soldiers! Have a care!” The alarm came from the gate by which they had entered, and Vaughan broke off, with an exclamation of joy. “We have them now!” he said. “And red-handed! Brereton has only to close the passage, and he must take them all!”

But the rioters took that view also, and the alarm. And they streamed out panic-stricken. When the soldiers rode in, Brereton at their head, not more than twenty or thirty remained in the Precincts. And on that followed the most remarkable of all the scenes that disgraced Bristol that night; the scene which beyond others convinced many of the complicity of the troops, if not of the Government, in the outrage.

Not a man could leave the Palace except with the troops’ good-will. Yet they let the rascals pass. In vain a handful of constables—who had arrived on the heels of the military—exerted themselves to seize the worst offenders, and such as passed with plunder in their hands. The soldiers discouraged the attempt, and even beat back the constables. “Let them go! Let them go!” was the cry. And the nimbleness of the scamps in effecting their escape was greeted with laughter and applause.

Vaughan and the companion whom fate had so strangely joined saw it with indignation. But Vaughan had made up his mind that he would not approach Brereton again; and he controlled himself, until a blackguard bolting from the Palace with his arms full of spoil was seized, close to him, by an elderly man, who seemed to be one of the Bishop’s servants. The two wrestled fiercely, the servant calling for help, the soldiers looking on and laughing. A moment and the two fell to the ground, the servant undermost. He uttered a cry of pain.

That was too much for Vaughan. He sprang forward, dragged the ruffian from his prey, and with his other hand he drew his staff. He was about to strike his prisoner—for the man continued to struggle desperately—when a voice above them shouted “Put that up! Put that up!” And a trooper urged his horse almost on the top of them, at the same time threatening him with his naked sword.

Vaughan lost his temper at that. “You blackguard!” he cried. “Stand back. The man is my prisoner!”

For answer the soldier struck at him. Fortunately the blade was turned by his hat and only the flat alighted on his head. But the man, drunk or reckless, repeated the blow, and this time would certainly have cut him down if Sir Robert, with a quickness beyond his years, had not turned aside the stroke with his walking-cane. At the same time “Are you mad?” he shouted peremptorily. “Where is your Colonel?”

The tone, rather than the words, sobered the trooper. He swore sulkily, reined in his horse, and moved back to his fellows. Sir Robert turned to Vaughan, who, dazed by the blow, was leaning against the porch of the house. “I hope you are not wounded?” he said.

“It’s thanks to you, sir, he’s not killed!” the man whom Vaughan had rescued, replied; and he hung about him solicitously. “He’d have cut him to the chin! Ay, to the chin he would!” with quavering gusto.

Vaughan was regaining his coolness. He tried to smile. “I hardly saw—what happened,” he said. “I am only sure I am not hurt. Just—a rap on the head!”

“I am glad that it is no worse,” Sir Robert said gravely. “Very glad!” Now it was over he had to bite his lower lip to repress its trembling.

“You feel better, sir, now?” the servant asked, addressing Vaughan.

“Yes, yes,” Vaughan said. But after that he was silent, thinking. And Sir Robert was silent, too. The soldiers were withdrawing; the constables, outraged and indignant, were following them, declaring aloud that they were betrayed. And for certain the walls of the Cathedral had looked down on few stranger scenes, even in those troubled days when the crosslets of the Berkeleys first shone from their casements.

Vaughan thought of the thing which had happened; and what was he to say? The position was turned upside down. The obligation was on the wrong person; the boot was on the wrong foot. If he, the young, the strong, and the injured, had saved Sir Robert, that had been well enough. But this? It required some magnanimity to take it gracefully, to bear it with dignity.

“I owe you sincere thanks,” he said at last, but awkwardly and with constraint.

“The blackguard!” Sir Robert cried.

“You saved me, sir, from a very serious injury.”

“It was as much threat as blow!” Sir Robert rejoined.

“I don’t think so,” Vaughan answered. And then he was silent, finding it hard to say more. But after a pause, “I can only make you one return,” he said with an effort. “Perhaps you will believe me when I say, that upon my honour I do not know where your daughter is. I have neither spoken to her nor communicated with her since I saw her in Queen’s Square in May. And I know nothing of Lady Sybil.”

“I am obliged to you,” Sir Robert said.

“If you believe me,” Vaughan said. “Not otherwise!”

“I do believe you, Mr. Vaughan.” And Sir Robert said it as if he meant it.

“Then that is something gained,” Vaughan answered, “besides the soundness of my head.” Try as he might he felt the position irksome, and was glad to seek refuge in flippancy.

Sir Robert removed his hat, and stood in perplexity. “But where can she be then?” he asked. “If you know nothing of her.”

Vaughan paused before he answered. Then “I think I should look for her in Queen’s Square,” he suggested. “In that neighbourhood neither life nor property will be safe until Bristol comes to its senses. She should be removed, therefore, if she be there.”

“I will take your advice and try the house again,” Sir Robert answered. “I think you are right, and I am much obliged to you.”

He put his hat on his head, but removed it to salute his cousin. “Thank you,” he repeated, “I am much obliged to you.” And he departed slowly across the court.

Halfway to the entrance, he paused, and fingered his chin. He went on again—again he paused. He took a step or two, turned, hesitated. At last he came slowly back.

“Perhaps you will go with me?” he asked.

“You are very good,” Vaughan answered, his voice shaking a little. Was it possible that Sir Robert meant more than he said? It did seem possible.

But after all they did not go out that way. For, as they approached the broken gates, shouts of “Reform!” and “Down with the Lords!” warned them that the rioters were returning. And the Bishop’s servant, approaching them anew, insisted on taking them through the Palace, and by way of the garden and a low wall conducted them into Trinity Street. Here they were close to the Drawbridge which crossed the water to the foot of Clare Street; and they passed over it, one of them walking with a lighter heart, notwithstanding Mary’s possible danger, than he had borne for weeks. Soon they were in Queen’s Square, and, avoiding as far as possible the notice of the mob, were knocking doggedly at Miss Sibson’s door. But by that time the Palace, high above them on College Green, had burst into flames, and, a mark for all the countryside, had flung the red banner of Reform to the night.

XXXIII FIRE

Sir Robert and his companion might have knocked longer and more loudly, and still to no purpose. For the schoolmistress, prepared to witness a certain amount of disorder on the Saturday, had been taken aback by the sight which met her eyes when she rose on Sunday morning. And long before noon she had sent her servants to their friends, locked up her house, and gone next door, to dispel by her cheerful face and her comfortable common sense the fears which she knew would prevail there. The sick lady was not in a state to withstand alarm; Mary was a young girl and timid; and neither the landlady nor Lady Sybil’s maid were persons of strong mind. Miss Sibson felt that here was an excellent occasion for the display of that sturdy indifference with which firm nerves and a long experience of Bristol elections had endowed her.

“La, my dear,” was her first remark, “it’s all noise and nonsense! They look fierce, but there’s not a man of them all, that if I took him soundly by the ear and said, ‘John Thomas Gaisford, I know you well and your wife! You live in the Pithay, and if you don’t go straight home this minute I’ll tell her of your goings on!’—there’s not one of them, my dear,” with a jolly laugh, “wouldn’t sneak off with his tail between his legs! Hurt us, my lady? I’d like to see them doing it. Still, it will be no harm if we lock the door downstairs, and answer no knocks. We shall be cosy upstairs, and see all that’s to be seen besides!”

These were Miss Sibson’s opinions, a little after noon on the Sunday. Nor, when the day began to draw in, without abating the turmoil, did she recant them aloud. But when the servant of the house, who found amusement in listening at the locked door to the talk of those who passed, came open-eyed to announce that the people had fired the Bridewell, and were attacking the gaol, Miss Sibson did rub her nose reflectively. And privately she began to wonder whether the prophecies of evil, which both parties had sown broadcast, were to be fulfilled.

“It’s that nasty Brougham!” she said. “Alderman Daniel told me that he was stirring up the devil; and we’re going to get the dust. But la, bless your ladyship,” she continued comfortably, “I know the Bristol lads, and they’ll not hurt us. Just a gaol or two, for the sake of the frolic. My dear, your mother’ll have her tea, and will feel the better for it. And we’ll draw the curtains and light the lamps and take no heed. Maybe there’ll be bones broken, but they’ll not be ours!”

Lady Sybil, with her face turned away, muttered something about Paris.

“Well, your ladyship knows Paris and I don’t,” the schoolmistress replied respectfully. “I can fancy anything there. But you may depend upon it, my lady, England is different. I know old Alderman Daniel calls Lord John Russell ‘Lord John Robespierre,’ and says he’s worse than a Jacobin. But I’ll never believe he’d cut the King’s head off! Never! And don’t you believe it, either, my lady. No, English are English! There’s none like them, and never will be. All the same,” she concluded, “I shall set ‘Honour the King!’ for a copy when the young ladies come back.”

Her views might not have convinced by themselves. But taken with tea and buttered toast, a good fire and a singing kettle, they availed. Lady Sybil was a shade easier that afternoon; and, naturally of a high courage, found a certain alleviation in the exciting doings under her windows. She was gracious to Miss Sibson, whose outpourings she received with languid amusement; and when Mary was not looking, she followed her daughter’s movements with mournful eyes. Uncertain as the wind, she was this evening in her best mood; as patient as she could be fractious, and as gentle as she was sometimes violent. She scouted the notion of danger with all Miss Sibson’s decision; and after tea she insisted that the lights should be shaded, and her couch be wheeled to the window, in order that, propped high with pillows, she might amuse herself with the hurly-burly in the Square below.

“To be sure,” Miss Sibson commented, “it will do no good to anyone, this; and many a poor chap will suffer for it by and by. That’s the worst of these Broughams and Besoms, my lady. It’s the low down that swallow the dust. It’s very fine to cry ‘King and Reform!’ and drink the Corporation wine! But it will be ‘Between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar!’ one of these days! And their throats will be dry enough then!”

“Poor misguided people!” Mary murmured.

“They’ve all learned the Church Catechism,” the schoolmistress replied shrewdly. “Or they should have; it’s lucky for them—ay, you may shout, my lads—that there’s many a slip between the neck and the rope—Lord ha’ mercy!”

The last words fitted the context well enough; but they fell so abruptly from her lips that Mary, who was bending over her mother, looked up in alarm. “What is it?” she asked.

“Only,” Miss Sibson answered with composure, “what I ought to have said long ago—that nothing can be worse for her ladyship than the cold air that comes in at the cracks of this window!”

“It’s not that,” Lady Sybil replied, smiling. “They have set fire to the Mansion House, Mary. You can see the flames in the room on the farther side of the door.”

Mary uttered an exclamation of horror, and they all looked out. The Mansion House was the most distant house on the north, or left-hand, side of the Square, viewed from the window at which they stood; the house next Miss Sibson’s being about the middle of the west side. Nearer them, on the same side as the Mansion House, stood another public building—the Custom House. And nearer again, being the most northerly house on their own side of the Square, stood a third—the Excise Office.

They had thus a fair, though a side view, of the front of the Mansion House, and were able to watch, with what calmness they might, the flames shoot from one window after another; until, presently, meeting in a waving veil of fire, they hid—save when the wind blew them aside—all the upper part of the house from their eyes.

A great fire in the night, the savage, uncontrollable revolt of man’s tamed servant—is at all times a terrible sight. Nor on this occasion was it only the horror of the flames, roaring and crackling and pouring forth a million of sparks, which chained their eyes. For as these rose, they shed an intense light, not only on the heights of Redcliffe, visible above the east side of the Square, and on the stately tower which rose from them, but on the multitude below; on the hurrying forms that, monkey-like, played before the flames and seemed to feed them, and on a still stranger sight, the expanse of up-turned faces that, in the rear of the active rioters, extended to the farthest limit of the Square.

For it was the quiescence, it was the inertness of the gazing crowd which most appalled the spectators at the window. To see that great house burn and to see no man stretch forth a hand to quench it, this terrified. “Oh, but it is frightful! It is horrible!” Mary exclaimed.

“I should like to knock their heads together!” Miss Sibson cried sternly. “What are the soldiers doing? What is anyone doing?”

“They have hounded on the dogs,” Lady Sybil said slowly—she alone seemed to view the sight with a dispassionate eye, “and they are biting instead of barking! That is all.”

“Dogs?” Miss Sibson echoed.

“Ay, the dogs of Reform!” Lady Sybil replied cynically. “Brougham’s dogs! Grey’s dogs! Russell’s dogs! I could wish Sir Robert were here, it would so please him to see his words fulfilled!” And then, as in surprise at the thing she had uttered, “I wonder when I wished to please him before?” she muttered.

“Oh, but it is frightful!” Mary repeated, unable to remove her eyes from the flames.

It was frightful; even while they were all sane people in the room, and, whatever their fears, restrained them. What then was it a moment later, when the woman of the house burst in upon them, with a maid in wild hysterics clinging to her, and another on the threshold screaming “Fire! Fire!”

“It’s all on fire at the back!” the woman panted. “It’s on fire, it’s all on fire, my lady, at the back!”

“It’s all—what?” Miss Sibson rejoined, in a tone which had been known to quell the pertest of seventeen-year-old rebels. “It is what, woman? On fire at the back? And if it is, is that a ground for forgetting your manners? Where is your deportment? Fire, indeed! Are you aware whose room this is? For shame! And you, silly,” she continued, addressing herself to the maid, “be silent, and go outside, as becomes you.”

But the maid, though she retreated to the door, continued to scream, and the woman of the house to wring her hands. “You had better go and see what it is,” Lady Sybil said, turning to the schoolmistress. For, strange to say, she who a few hours before had groaned if a coal fell on the hearth, and complained if her book slid from the couch, was now quite calm.

“They are afraid of their own shadows,” Miss Sibson cried contemptuously. “It is the reflection they have seen.”

But she went. And as it was but a step to a window overlooking the rear, Mary went with her.

They looked. And for a moment something like panic seized them. The back of the house was not immediately upon the quay, but through an opening in the warehouses which fringed the latter it commanded a view of the water and the masts, and of the sloping ground which rose to College Green. And high above, dyeing the Floating Basin crimson, the Palace showed in a glow of fire; fire which seemed to be on the point of attacking the Cathedral, of which every pinnacle and buttress, with every chimney of the old houses clustered about it, stood out in the hot glare. It was clear that the building had been burning some time, for the roar of the flames could be heard, and almost the hiss of the water as innumerable sparks floated down to it.

Horror-struck, Mary grasped her companion’s arm. And “Good Heavens!” Miss Sibson muttered. “The whole city will be burned!”

“And we are between the two fires,” Mary faltered. An involuntary shudder might be pardoned her.

“Ay, but far enough from them,” the schoolmistress answered, recovering herself. “On this side, the water makes us safe.”

“And on the other?”

“La, my dear,” Miss Sibson replied confidently. “The folks are not going to burn their own houses. They are angry with the Corporation. They hold them all one with Wetherell. And for the Bishop, they’ve so abused him the last six months that he’s hardly dared to show his wig on the streets, and it’s no wonder the poor ignorants think him fair game. But we’re just ordinary folk, and they’ll no more harm us than fly. But we must go back to your mother.”

They went back, and wisely Miss Sibson made no mystery of the truth; repeating, however, those arguments against giving way to alarm which she had used to Mary.

“The poor dear gentleman has lost his house,” she concluded piously. “But we should be thankful he has another.”

Lady Sybil took the news with calmness; her eyes indeed seemed brighter, as if she enjoyed the excitement. But the frightened woman at the door refused to be comforted, and underlying the courage of the two who stood by Lady Sybil’s couch was a secret uneasiness, which every cheer of the crowd below the windows, every “huzza” which rose from the revellers, every wild rush from one part of the Square to another tended to strengthen. In her heart Miss Sibson owned that in all her experience she had known nothing like this; no disorder so flagrant, so unbridled, so daring. She could carry her mind back to the days when the cheek of England had paled at the Massacres of September in Paris. The deeds of ’98 in Ireland, she had read morning by morning in the journals. The Three Days of July, with their street fighting, were fresh in all men’s minds—it was impossible to ignore their bearing on the present conflagration. And if here was not the dawn of Revolution, if here were not signs of the crash of things, appearances deceived her. But even so, she was not to be dismayed. She believed that even in revolutions a comfortable courage, sound sense, and a good appetite went far. And “I’d like to hear John Thomas Gaisford talk to me of guillotines!” she thought. “I’d make his ears burn!”

Meanwhile, Mary was thinking that, whatever the emergency, her mother was too ill to be moved. Miss Sibson might be right, the danger might be remote. But it was barely midnight; and long hours of suspense must be lived through before morning came. Meanwhile there were only women in the house, and, bravely as the girl controlled herself, a cry more reckless than usual, an outburst of cheering more savage, a rush below the windows, drove the blood to her heart. And presently, while she gazed with shrinking eyes on the crowd, now blood-red in the glow of the burning timbers, now lost for a moment in darkness, a groan broke from it, and she saw pale flames appear at the windows of the house next the Mansion House. They shot up rapidly, licking the front of the buildings.

Miss Sibson saw them at the same moment, and “The villains!” she exclaimed. “God grant it be an accident!”

Mary’s lips moved, but no sound came from them.

Lady Sybil laughed her shrill laugh. “The curs are biting bravely!” she said. “What will Bristol say to this?”

“Show them that they have gone too far!” Miss Sibson answered stoutly. “The soldiers will act now, and put them in their places, as they did in Wiltshire in the winter! And high time too!”

But though they watched in tense anxiety for the first sign of action on the part of the troops, for the first movement of the authorities, they gazed in vain. The miscreants, who fed the flames and spread them, were few; and in the Square were thousands who had property to lose, and friends and interests in jeopardy. If a tithe only of those who looked on, quiescent and despairing, had raised their hands, they could have beaten the rabble from the place. But no man moved. The fear of coming trouble, which had been long in the air, paralysed even the courageous, while the ignorant and the timid believed that they saw a revolution in progress, and that henceforth the mob would rule—and woe betide the man who set himself against it! As it had been in Paris, so it would be here. And so the flames spread, before the eyes of the terrified women at the window, before the eyes of the inert multitude, from the house first attacked to its neighbour, and from that to the next and the next. Until the noise of the conflagration, the crash of sinking walls, the crackling of beams were as the roar of falling waters, and the Square in that hideous red light, which every moment deepened, resembled an inferno, in which the devils of hell played awful pranks, and wherein, most terrible sight of all, thousands who in ordinary times held the salvation of property to be the first of duties, stood with scared eyes, passive and cowed.

It was such a scene—and they were only women, and alone in the house—as the mind cannot imagine and the eye views but once in a generation, nor ever forgets. In quiet Clifton, and on St. Michael’s Hill, children were snatched from their midnight slumbers and borne into the open, that they might see the city stretched below them in a pit of flame, with the overarching fog at once confining and reflecting the glare. Dundry Tower, five miles from the scene, shone a red portent visible for leagues; and in Chepstow and South Monmouth, beyond the wide estuary of the Severn, the light was such that men could see to read. From all the distant Mendips, and from the Forest of Dean, miners and charcoal-burners gazed southward with scared faces, and told one another that the revolution was begun; while Lansdowne Chase sent riders galloping up the London Road with the news that all the West was up. Long before dawn on the Monday horsemen and yellow chaises were carrying the news through the night to Gloucester, to Southampton, to Salisbury, to Exeter, to every place where scanty companies of foot lay, or yeomanry had their headquarters. And where these passed, alarming the sleeping inns and posthouses, panic sprang up upon their heels, and the travellers on the down nightcoaches marvelled at the tales which met them with the daylight.

If the sight viewed from a distance was so terrible as to appal a whole countryside, if, on those who gazed at it from vantage spots of safety, and did not guess at the dreadful details, it left an impression of terror never to be effaced, what was it to the three women who, in the Square itself, watched the onward march of the flames towards them, were blinded by the glare, choked by the smoke, deafened by the roar? Whom distance saved from no feature of the scene played under their windows: who could shun neither the savage cries of the drunken rabble, dancing before the doomed houses, nor the sight, scarce less amazing, of the insensibility which watched the march of the flames and stretched forth not a finger to stay them! Who, chained by Lady Sybil’s weakness to the place where they stood, saw house after house go up in flames, until all the side of the Square adjoining their own was a wall of fire; and who then were left to guess the progress, swift or slow, which the element was making towards them! For whom the copper-hued fog above them must have seemed, indeed, the roof of a furnace, from which escape grew moment by moment less likely?

XXXIV HOURS OF DARKNESS