Chapter XV: Part 15

Long before this the women of the house had fled, taking Lady Sybil’s maid with them. And dreadful as was the situation of those who remained, appalling as were the fears of two of them, they were able to control themselves; the better because they knew that they had no aid but their own to look to, and that their companion was helpless. Fortunately Lady Sybil, who had watched the earlier phases of the riot with the detachment which is one of the marks of extreme weakness, had at a certain point turned faint, and demanded to be removed from the window. She was ignorant, therefore, of the approach of the flames and of the imminence of the peril. She had even, in spite of the uproar, dozed off, after a few minutes of trying irritation, into an uneasy sleep.

Mary and Miss Sibson were thus left free. But for what? Compelled to watch in suspense the progress of the flames, driven at times to fancy that they could feel the heat of the fire, assailed more than once by gusts of fear, as one or the other imagined that they were already cut off, they could not have held their ground but for their unselfishness; but for their possession of those qualities of love and heroism which raise women to the height of occasion, and nerve them to a pitch of endurance of which men are rarely capable. In the schoolmistress, with her powdered nose and her portly figure, and her dull past of samplers and backboards and Mrs. Chapone, there dwelt as sturdy a spirit as in any of the rough Bristol shipmasters from whom she sprang. She might be fond of a sweetbread, and a glass of port might not come amiss to her. But the heart in her was stout and large, and she had as soon dreamed of forsaking her forlorn companions as those bluff sailormen would have dreamed of striking their flag to a codfish Don, or to a shipload of mutinous slaves.

And Mary? Perchance the gentlest and the mildest are also the bravest, when the stress is real. Or perhaps those who have never known a mother’s love cling to the veriest shred and tatter of it, if it fall in their way. Or perhaps—but why explain that which all history has proved a hundred times over—-that love casts out fear. Mary quailed, deafened by the thunder of the fire, with the walls of the room turning blood-red round her, and the smoke beginning to drift before the window. But she stood; and only once, assailed by every form of fear, did her courage fail her, or sink below the stronger nerve of the elder woman.

That was when Miss Sibson, after watching that latest and most pregnant sign, the eddying of smoke past the window, spoke out. “I’m going next door,” she cried in Mary’s ear. “There are papers I must save; they are all I have for my old age. The rest may go, but I can’t see them burn when five minutes may save them.”

But Mary clung to her desperately. “Oh!” she cried, “don’t leave me!”

Miss Sibson patted her shoulder. “I shall come back,” she said. “I shall come back, my dear, never fear. And then we must move your mother—into the Square if no better can be. Do you come down and let me in when I knock three times.”

Lady Sybil was still dozing, with a woollen wrap about her head to deaden the noise; and giving way to the cooler brain Mary went down with the schoolmistress. In the hall the roar of the fire was less, for the only window was shuttered. But the raucous voices of the mob, moving to and fro outside, were more clearly heard.

Miss Sibson, however, remained undaunted. “Put up the chain the moment I am outside,” she said.

“But are you not afraid?” Mary cried, holding her back.

“Of those scamps?” Miss Sibson replied truculently. “They had better not touch me!” And she turned the key and slipped out. Nor did she leave the step until Mary had put up the chain and re-locked the door.

Mary waited—oh, many, many minutes it seemed—in the gloom of the hall, pierced here and there by a lurid ray; with half her mind on her mother upstairs, and the other half on the ribald laughter, the drunken oaths and threats and curses which penetrated from the Square. It was plain that Miss Sibson had not gone too soon, for twice or thrice the door was struck with some heavy instrument, and harsh voices called on the inmates to open if they did not wish to be burned. Uncertain how the fire advanced, Mary heard them with a sick heart. But she held her ground, until, oh, joy! she heard voices raised in altercation, and among them the schoolmistress’s. A hand knocked thrice, she turned the key and let down the chain. The door opened upon her, and on the steps, with her hand on a man’s shoulder, appeared Miss Sibson. Behind her and her captive, between them and that background of flame and confusion, stood a group of four or five men—dock labourers, in tarpaulins and frocks, who laughed tipsily.

“This lad will help to carry your mother out,” Miss Sibson said with the utmost coolness. “Come, my lad, and no nonsense! You don’t want to burn a sick lady in her bed!”

“No, I don’t, Missis,” the man grumbled sheepishly. “But I’m none here for that! I’m none here for that, and——”

“You’ll do it, all the same,” the schoolmistress replied. “And I want one more. Here, you,” she continued, addressing a grinning hobbledehoy in a sealskin cap. “I know your face, and you’ll want someone to speak for you at the Assizes. Come in, you two, and the rest must wait until the lady’s carried out!”

And thereon, with that strange mixture of humanity and unreasoning fury of which the night left many examples, the men complied. The two whom she had chosen entered, the others suffered her to shut the door in their faces. Only, “You’ll be quick!” one bawled after her. “She’s afire next door!”

That was the warning that went with them upstairs, and it nerved them for the task before them. Over that task it were well to draw a veil. The poor sick woman, roused anew and abruptly to a sense of her surroundings, to the flickering lights, the smell of smoke, the strange faces, to all the horrors of that scene rarely equalled in our modern England, shrieked aloud. The courage, which had before upheld her, deserted her. She refused to be moved, refused to believe that they were there to save her; she failed even to recognise her daughter, she resisted their efforts, and whatever Mary could say or do, she added to the peril of the moment all the misery which frantic terror and unavailing shrieks could add. They did not know, while they reasoned with her, and tried to lift her, and strove to cloak her against the outer air, the minute at which the house might be entered; nor even that it was not already entered, already in some part on fire. The girl, though her hands were steady, though she never wavered, though she persisted, was white as paper. And even Miss Sibson was almost unnerved, when at last nature came to their aid, and with a frantic protest, a last attempt to thrust them from her, the poor woman swooned; and the men who had looked on, as unhappy as those engaged, lifted the couch and bore her down the stairs. Odd are the windings of chance and fate. These men, in whom every good instinct was awakened by the sight before them, might, had the schoolmistress’s eye alighted on others, have plundered on with their fellows; and with the more luckless of those fellows have stood on the scaffold a month later!

Still, time had been lost. And perforce the men descended slowly, so that as they reached the hall the door gave way, and admitted a dozen rascals, who tumbled over one another in their greed. The moment was critical, the inrush of horrid sounds and sights appalling. But Mary rose to the occasion. With a courage which from this time remained with her to the end, she put herself forward.

“Will you let us pass out?” she said. “My mother is ill. You do not wish to harm her?”

Now Lady Sybil had made Mary put off the Quaker-like costume in which she had wished to nurse her, and she had had no time to cover the light muslin dress she wore. The men saw before them a beautiful creature, white-robed, bareheaded, barenecked—even the schoolmistress had not snatched up so much as a cloak—a Una with sweet shining eyes, before whom they fell aside abashed.

“Lord love you, Miss!” one cried heartily. “Take her out! And God bless you!” while the others grinned fatuously.

So down the steps and into the turmoil of the seething Square, walled on two sides by fire, and full of a drunken, frenzied rabble—for all decent onlookers had fled, awake at last to the result of their quiescence—the strange procession moved, the girl going first. Tipsy groups, singing and dancing delirious jigs to the music of falling walls, pillagers hurrying in ruthless haste from house to house, or quarrelling over their spoils, householders striving to save a remnant of their goods from dwellings past saving—all made way for it. Men who swayed on their feet, brandishing their arms and shouting obscene songs, being touched on the shoulder by others, stared, and gave place with mouths agape. Even boys, whom the madness of that night made worse than men, and unsexed women, shrank at sight of it, and were silent—nay, followed with a strange homage the slender white figure, the shining eyes, the pure sweet face.

In the worst horrors of the French Revolution it is said that the devotion of a daughter stayed the hands which were raised to slay her father. Even so, on this night in Bristol, amid surroundings less bloody, but almost as appalling, the wildest and the most furious made way for the daughter and the mother.

Led by instinct rather than by calculation, Mary did not pause, or look aside, but moved onward, until she reached the middle of the Square; until some sixty or seventy yards divided her charge from the nearest of the burning houses. The heat was less scorching here, the crowd less compact. A fixed seat afforded shelter on one side, and by it she signed to the bearers to set the couch down. The statue stood not far away on the other side, and secured them against the ugly rushes which were caused from time to time by the fall of a roof or a rain of sparks.

Mary gazed round her in stupor. And no wonder. The whole of the north side of the great Square, and a half of the west side—thirty lofty houses in all—were in flames, or were sinking in red-hot ruin. The long wall of fire, the canopy of glowing smoke, the ceaseless roar of the element, the random movements of the forms which, pigmy-like, played between her and the conflagration, the doom which threatened the whole city, held her awestruck, spellbound, fascinated.

But even the feelings which she experienced, confronted by that sight, were exceeded by the emotions of one who had seen her advance, and, at first with horror, then as he recognised her, with incredulity, had watched the white figure which threaded its way through this rout of satyrs, this orgy of recklessness. She had not succeeded in wresting her eyes from the spectacle before a trembling hand fell on her arm, and the last voice she expected to hear called her by name.

“Mary!” Sir Robert cried. “Mary! My God! What are you doing here?” For, taken up with staring at her, he had seen neither who accompanied her nor what they bore.

A sob of relief and joy broke from her, as she recognised him and flung herself into his arms and clung to him.

“Oh!” she cried. “Oh!” She could say no more at that moment. But the joy of it! To have at last a man to turn to, a man to lean upon, a man to look to!

And still he could not grasp the position. “My God!” he repeated in wonder. “What, child, what are you doing here?”

But before she could answer him, his eyes sank to the level of the couch, which the figures about it shaded from the scorching light. And he started—and stepped back. In a lower voice and a quavering tone he called upon his Maker. He was beginning to understand.

“We had to bring her out,” she sobbed. “We had to bring her out. The house is on fire. See!” She pointed to the house beside Miss Sibson’s, from the upper windows of which smoke was beginning to curl and eddy. Men were pouring from the door below, carrying their booty and jostling others who sought to enter.

“You have been here all day?” he asked, passing his hand over his brow.

“Yes.”

“All day? All day?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

He covered his eyes with his hand, while Mary, recalled by a touch from Miss Sibson, knelt beside her mother, to feel her pulse, to rub her hands, to make sure that life still lingered in the inanimate frame. He had not asked, he did not ask who it was over whom his daughter hung with so tender a solicitude. He did not even look at the cloaked figure. But the sidelong glance which at once sought and shunned, the quivering of his mouth, which his shaking fingers did not avail to hide, the agitation which unnerved a frame, erect but feeble, all betrayed his knowledge. And what must have been his thoughts, how poignant his reflections as he considered that there, there, enveloped in those shapeless wraps, there lay the bride whom he had wedded with hopes so high a score of years before! The mother of his child, the wife whom he had last seen in the pride of her beauty, the woman from whom he had been parted for sixteen years, and who through all those sixteen years had never been absent from his thoughts for an hour, nor ever been aught in them but an abiding, clinging, embittering memory—she lay there!

What wonder, if the scene about them rolled away and he saw her again in the stately gardens at Stapylton, walking, smiling, talking, flirting, the gayest of the gay, the lightest of the butterflies, the admired of all? Or if his heart bled at the remembrance—at that remembrance and many another? Or again, what wonder if his mind went back to long hours of brooding in his sombre library, hours given up to the rehearsal of grave remonstrances, vain reproofs, bitter complaints, all destined to meet with defiance? And if his head sank lower, his hands trembled more senilely, his breast heaved at this picture of the irrevocable past?

Of all the strange things wrought in Bristol that night, of all the strangely begotten brood of riot and fire, and Reform, none were stranger than this meeting, if meeting that could be called where one was ignorant of the other’s presence, and he would not look upon her face. For he would not, perhaps he dared not. He stood with bent head, pondering and absorbed, until an uprush of sparks, more fiery than usual, and the movement of the crowd to avoid them, awoke him from his thoughts. Then his eyes fell on Mary’s uncovered head and neck, and he took the cloak from his own shoulders and put it on her, with a touch as if he blessed her. She was kneeling beside the couch at the moment, her head bent to her mother’s, her hair mingling with her mother’s, but he contrived to close his eyes and would not see his wife’s face.

After that he moved to the farther side of the couch, where some sneaking hobbledehoys showed a disposition to break in upon them. And old as he was, and shaken and weary, he stood sentry there, a gaunt stooping figure, for long hours, until the prayed-for day began to break above Redcliffe and to discover the grim relics of the night’s work.

XXXV THE MORNING OF MONDAY

It has been said that midnight of that Sunday saw the alarm speeding along every road by which the forces of order could hope to be recruited; nevertheless in Bristol itself nothing was done to stay the work of havoc. A change had indeed come over the feeling in the city; for to acquiescence had succeeded the most lively alarm, and to approval, rage and boundless indignation. But the handful of officials who all day long had striven, honestly if not very capably, to restore order, were exhausted; and the public without cohesion or leaders were in no state to make head against the rioters. So great, indeed, was the confusion that a troop of Gloucestershire Yeomanry which rode in soon after dark received neither orders nor billets; and being poorly led, withdrew within the hour. This, with the tumult at Bath, where the quarters of the Yeomanry were beset by a mob of Reformers, who would not let them go to the rescue, completed the isolation of the city.

One man only, indeed, in the midst of that welter, had it in his power to intervene with effect. And he could not be found. From Queen’s Square to Leigh’s Bazaar, where the Third Dragoons stood inactive by their horses; from Leigh’s to the Recruiting Office on College Green, where a couple of non-commissioned officers stood inactive; from the Recruiting Office to his lodgings in Unity Street, men, panting and protesting, in terror for their property, hurried in vain nightmare pursuit of that man. For to such men it seemed impossible that in face of the damage already done, of thirty houses in flames, of a mob which had broken all bounds, of a city disturbed to its entrails, he could still refuse to act.

But to go to Unity Street was one thing, and to gain speech with Brereton was another. He had gone to bed. He was asleep. He was not well. He was worn out and was resting. The seekers, with the roar of the fire in their ears and ruin staring them in the face, heard these incredible things, and went away, swearing profanely. Nor did anyone, it would seem, gain speech with him, until the small hours were well advanced. Then Arthur Vaughan, unable to abide by the vow he had taken not to importune him, arrived, he, too, furious, at the door, and found a knot of gentlemen clamouring for admission.

Vaughan had parted from Sir Robert Vermuyden some hours earlier, believing that, bad as things were, he might make head against the rioters, if he could rally his constables. But he had found no one willing to act without the soldiery; and he was here in the last resort, determined to compel Colonel Brereton to move, if it were by main force. For Vaughan had the law-keeping instincts of an Englishman and his blood boiled at the sights he had seen in the streets, at the wanton destruction of property, at the jeopardy of life, at the women made homeless, at the men made paupers. Nor was it quite out of his thoughts that if anything could harm the cause of Reform it was these deeds done in its name, these outrages fulfilling to the letter the worst which its enemies had predicted of it!

He spoke a few words to the persons who, angry and nonplussed, were wrangling at the door, then he pushed his way in, deaf to the remonstrances of the woman of the house. He did not believe, he could not believe the excuse given—that Brereton was in bed. Nero, fiddling while Rome burned, seemed nought beside that! And his surprise was great when, opening the sitting-room door, he saw before him only the Honourable Bob; who, standing on the hearth-rug, met his indignant look with one of forced and sickly amusement.

“Good Heavens!” Vaughan cried, staring at him. “What are you doing here? Where’s the Chief?”

Flixton shrugged his shoulders. “There,” he said irritably, “it’s no use blaming me! Man alive, if he won’t, he won’t! And it’s his business, not mine!”

“Then I’d make it mine!” Vaughan retorted. “Where is he?”

Flixton flicked his thumb in the direction of an inner door. “He’s there,” he said. “He’s there safe enough! For the rest, it is easy to find fault! Very easy for you, my lad! You’re no longer in the service.”

“There are a good many will leave the service for this!” Vaughan replied; and he saw on the instant that the shot told. Flixton’s face fell, he opened his mouth to reply. But disdaining to listen to excuses, of which the speaker’s manner betrayed the shallowness, Vaughan opened the bedroom door and passed in.

To his boundless astonishment Brereton was really in bed, with a light beside him. Asleep he probably was not, for he rose at once to a sitting posture and, with wild and dishevelled hair, confronted the intruder with a mingling of wrath and discomfiture in his looks. His sword and an undress cap, blue with a silver band, lay beside the candle on the table, and Vaughan saw that though in his shirt-sleeves he was not otherwise undressed.

“Mr. Vaughan!” he cried. “What, if you please, does this mean?”

“That is what I am here to ask you!” Vaughan answered, his face flushed with indignation. He was too angry to pick his words. “Are you, can you be aware, sir, what is done while you sleep?”

“Sleep?” Brereton rejoined, with a sombre gleam in his eyes. “Sleep, man? God knows it is the last thing I do!” He clapped his hand to his brow and for a moment remained silent, holding it there. Then, “Sleep has been a stranger to me these three nights!” he said.

“Then what do you do here?” Vaughan answered, in astonishment. And looked round the room as if he might find his answer there.

“Ah!” Brereton rejoined, with a look half suspicious, half cunning. “That is another matter. But never mind! Never mind! I know what I am doing.”

“Know——”

“Yes, well!” the soldier replied, bringing his feet to the floor, but continuing to keep his seat on the bed. “Very well, sir, I assure you.”

Vaughan looked aghast at him. “But, Colonel Brereton,” he rejoined, “do you consider that you are the only person in this city able to act? That without you nothing can be done and nothing can be ventured?”

“That,” Brereton returned, with the same shrewd look, “is just what I do consider! Without me they cannot act! They cannot venture. And I—go to bed!”

He chuckled at it, as at a jest; and Vaughan, checked by the oddity of his manner, and with a growing suspicion in his mind, knew not what to think. For answer, at last, “I fear that you will not be able to go to bed, Colonel Brereton,” he said gravely, “when the moment comes to face the consequences.”

“The consequences?”

“You cannot think that a city such as this can be destroyed, and no one be called to account?”

“But the civil power——”

“Is impotent!” Vaughan answered, with returning indignation, “in the face of the disorder now prevailing! I warn you! A little more delay, a little more license, let the people’s passions be fanned by farther impunity, and nothing, nothing, I warn you, Colonel Brereton,” he continued with emphasis, “can save the major part of the city from destruction!”

Brereton rose to his feet, a certain wildness in his aspect. “Good God!” he exclaimed. “You don’t mean it! Do you really mean it, Vaughan? But—but what can I do?” He sank down on the bed again, and stared at his companion. “Eh? What can I do? Nothing!”

“Everything!”

He sprang to his feet. “Everything! You say everything?” he cried, and his tone rose shrill and excited. “But you don’t know!” he continued, lowering his voice as quickly as he had raised it and laying his hand on Vaughan’s sleeve—“you don’t know! You don’t know! But I know! Man, I was set in command here on purpose. If I acted they counted on putting the blame on me. And if I didn’t act—they would still put the blame on me.”

His cunning look shocked Vaughan.

“But even so, sir,” he answered, “you can do your duty.”

“My duty?” Brereton repeated, raising his voice again. “And do you think it is my duty to precipitate a useless struggle? To begin a civil war? To throw away the lives of my own men and cut down innocent folk? To fill the streets with blood and slaughter? And the end the same?”

“Ay, sir, I do,” Vaughan answered sternly. “If by so doing a worse calamity may be averted! And, for your men’s lives, are they not soldiers? For your own life, are you not a soldier? And will you shun a soldier’s duty?”

Brereton clapped his hand to his brow, and, holding it there, paced the room in his shirt and breeches.

“My God! My God!” he cried, as he went. “I do not know what to do! But if—if it be as bad as you say——”

“It is as bad, and worse!”

“I might try once more,” looking at Vaughan with a troubled, undecided eye, “what showing my men might do? What do you think?”

Vaughan thought that if he were once on the spot, if he saw with his own eyes the lawlessness of the mob, he might act. And he assented. “Shall I pass on the order, sir,” he added, “while you dress?”

“Yes, I think you may. Yes, certainly. Tell the officer commanding to march his men to the Square and I’ll meet him there.”

Vaughan waited for no more. He suspected that the burden of responsibility had proved too heavy for Brereton’s mind. He suspected that the Colonel had brooded upon his position between a Whig Government and a Whig mob until the notion that he was sent there to be a scapegoat had become a fixed idea; and with it the determination that he would not be forced into strong measures, had become also a fixed idea.

Such a man, if he was to be blamed, was to be pitied also. And Vaughan, even in the heat of his indignation, did pity him. But he entertained no such feeling for the Honourable Bob, and in delivering the order to him he wasted no words. After Flixton had left the room, however, he remembered that he had noted a shade of indecision in the aide’s manner. And warned by it, he followed him. “I will come with you to Leigh’s,” he said.

“Better come all the way,” Flixton replied, with covert insolence. “We’ve half a dozen spare horses.”

The next moment he was sorry he had spoken. For, “Done with you!” Vaughan cried. “There’s nothing I’d like better!”

Flixton grunted. He had overreached himself, but he could not withdraw the offer.

Vaughan was by his side, and plainly meant to accompany him.

Let no man think that the past is done with, though he sever it as he will. The life from which he has cut himself off in disgust has none the less cast the tendrils of custom about his heart, which shoot and bud when he least expects it. Vaughan stood in the doorway of the stable while the men bridled. He viewed the long line of tossing heads, and the smoky lanthorns fixed to the stall-posts; he sniffed the old familiar smell of “Stables.” And he felt his heart leap to the past. Ay, even as it leapt a few minutes later, when he rode down College Green, now in darkness, now in glare, and heard beside him the familiar clank of spur and scabbard, the rattle of the bridle-chains, and the tramp of the shod hoofs. On the men’s left, as they descended the slope at a walk, the tall houses stood up in bright light; below them on the right the Float gleamed darkly; above them, the mist glowed red. Wild hurrahing and an indescribable babel of shouts, mingled with the rushing roar of the flames, rose from the Square. When the troop rode into it with the first dawn, they saw that two whole sides—with the exception of a pair of houses—were burnt or burning. In addition a monster warehouse was on fire in the rear, a menace to every building to windward of it.

The Colonel, with Flixton attending him, fell in on the flank, as the troop entered the Square. But apparently—since he gave no orders—he did not share the tingling indignation which Vaughan experienced as he viewed the scene. A few persons were still engaged in removing their goods from houses on the south side; but save for these, the decent and respectable had long since fled the place, and left it a prey to all that was most vile and dangerous in the population of a rough seaport. The rabble, left to themselves, and constantly recruited as the news flew abroad, had cast off the fear of reprisals, and believed that at last the city was their own. Vaughan saw that if the dragoons were to act with effect they must act at once. Nor was he alone in this opinion. The troop had not ridden far into the open before he was shocked, as well as astonished, by the appearance of Sir Robert Vermuyden, who stumbled across the Square towards them. He was bareheaded—for in an encounter with a prowler who had approached too near he had lost his hat; he was without his cloak, though the morning was cold. His face, too, unshorn and haggard, added to the tragedy of his appearance; yet in a sense he was himself, and he tried to steady his voice, as, unaware of Vaughan’s presence, he accosted the nearest trooper.

“Who is in command, my man?” he said.

Flixton, who had also recognised him, thrust his horse forward. “Good Heavens, Sir Robert!” he cried. “What are you doing here? And in this state?”

“Never mind me,” the Baronet replied. “Are you in command?”

Colonel Brereton had halted his men. He came forward. “No, Sir Robert,” he said. “I am. And very sorry to see you in this plight.”

“Take no heed of me, sir,” Sir Robert replied sternly. Through how many hours, hours long as days, had he not watched for the soldiers’ coming! “Take no heed of me, sir,” he repeated. “Unless you have orders to abandon the loyal people of Bristol to their fate—act! Act, sir! If you have eyes, you can see that the mob are beginning to fire the south side on which the shipping abuts. Let that take fire and you cannot save Bristol!”

Brereton looked in the direction indicated, but he did not answer. Flixton did. “We understand all that,” he said, somewhat cavalierly. “We see all that, Sir Robert, believe me. But the Colonel has to think of many things; of more than the immediate moment. We are the only force in Bristol, and——”

“Apparently Bristol is no better for you!” Sir Robert replied with tremulous passion.

So far Vaughan, a horse’s length behind Brereton and his aide, heard what passed; but with half his mind. For his eyes, roving in the direction whence Sir Robert had come, had discerned, amid a medley of goods and persons huddled about the statue, in the middle of the Square, a single figure, slender, erect, in black and white, which appeared to be gazing towards him. At first he resisted as incredible the notion which besieged him—at sight of that figure. But the longer he looked the more sure he became that it was, it was Mary! Mary, gazing towards him out of that welter of miserable and shivering figures, as if she looked to him for help!

Perhaps he should have asked Sir Robert’s leave, to go to her. Perhaps Colonel Brereton’s to quit the troop, which he had volunteered to accompany. But he gave no thought to either. He slipped from his saddle, flung the reins to the nearest man, and, crossing the roadway in three strides, he made towards her through the skulking groups who warily watched the dragoons, or hailed them tipsily, and in the name of Reform invited them to drink.

And Mary, who had risen in alarm to her feet, and was gazing after her father, her only hope, her one protection through the night, saw Vaughan coming, tall and stern, through the prowling night-birds about her, as if she had seen an angel! She said not a word, when he came near and she was sure. Nor did he say more than “Mary!” But he threw into that word so much of love, of joy, of relief, of forgiveness—and of the appeal for forgiveness—that it brought her to his arms, it left her clinging to his breast. All his coldness in Parliament Street, his cruelty on the coach, her father’s opposition, all were forgotten by her, as if they had not been!

And for him, she might have been the weakest of the weak, and fickle and changeable as the weather, she might have been all that she was not—though he had yet to learn that and how she had carried herself that night—but he knew that in spite of all he loved her. She had the old charm for him! She was still the one woman in the world for him! And she was in peril. But for that there is no knowing how long he might have held her. That thought, however, presently overcame all others, made him insensible even to the sweetness of that embrace, ay, even put words in his mouth.

“How come you here?” he cried. “How come you here, Mary?”

She freed herself and pointed to her mother. “I am with her,” she said. “We had to bring her here. It was all we could do.”

He lowered his eyes and saw what she was guarding; and he understood something of the tragedy of that night. From the couch came a low continuous moaning which made the hair rise on his head. He looked at Mary.

“She is insensible,” she said quietly. “She does not know anything.”

“We must remove her!” he said.

She looked at him, and from him to that part of the Square where the rioters wrought still at their fiendish work. And she shuddered. “Where can we take her?” she answered. “They are beginning to burn that side also.”

“Then we must remove them!” he answered sternly.

“That’s sense!” a hearty voice cried at his elbow. “And the first I’ve heard this night!” On which he became aware of Miss Sibson, or rather of a stout body swathed in queer wrappings, who spoke in the schoolmistress’s tones, and though pale with fatigue continued to show a brave face to the mischief about her. “That’s talking!” she continued. “Do that, and you’ll do a man’s work!”

“Will you have courage if I leave you?” he asked. And when Mary, bravely but with inward terror, answered “Yes,” he told her in brief sentences—with his eyes on the movements in the Square—what to do, if the rabble made a rush in that direction, and what to do, if the troops charged too near them, and how, by lying down, to avoid danger if the crowd resorted to firearms, since untrained men fired high. Then he touched Miss Sibson on the arm. “You’ll not leave her?” he said.

“God bless the man, no!” the schoolmistress replied. “Though, for the matter of that, she’s as well able to take care of me as I of her!”

Which was not quite true. Or why in after-days did Miss Sibson, at many a cosy whist-party and over many a glass of hot negus, tell of a particular box on the ear with which she routed a young rascal, more forward than civil? Ay, and dilate with boasting on the way his teeth had rattled, and the gibes with which his fellows had seen him driven from the field?

But, if not quite true, it satisfied Vaughan. He went from them in a cold heat, and finding Sir Robert, still at words and almost at blows with the officers, was going to strike in, when another did so. Daylight was slowly overcoming the glare of the fire and dispelling the shadows which had lain the deeper and more confusing for that glare. It laid the grey of reality upon the scene, showing all things in their true colours, the ruins more ghastly, the pale licking flames more devilish. The fire, which had swept two sides of the Square, leaving only charred skeletons of houses, with vacant sockets gaping to the sky, was now attacking the third side, of which the two most westerly houses were in flames. It was this, and the knowledge of its meaning, that, before Vaughan could interpose, flung at Colonel Brereton a man white with passion, and stuttering under the pressure of feelings too violent for utterance.

“Do you see? Do you see?” he cried brandishing his fist in Brereton’s face—it was Cooke. “You traitor! If the fire catches the fourth house on that side, it’ll get the shipping! The shipping, d’you hear, you Radical? Then the Lord knows what’ll escape? But, thank God, you’ll hang! You’ll—if it gets to the fourth house, I tell you, it’ll catch the rigging by the Great Crane! Are you going to move?”

Vaughan did not wait for Brereton’s answer. “We must charge, Colonel Brereton!” he cried, in a voice which burst the bonds of discipline, and showed that he was determined that others should burst them also. “Colonel Brereton,” he repeated, setting his horse in motion, “we must charge without a moment’s delay!”

“Wait!” Brereton answered hoarsely. “Wait! Let me——”

“We must charge!” Vaughan replied, his face pale, his mind made up. And turning in his saddle he waved his hand to the men. “Forward!” he cried, raising his voice to its utmost. “Trot! Charge, men, and charge home!”

He spurred his horse to the front, and the whole troop, some thirty strong, set in motion by the magic of his voice, followed him. Even Brereton, after a moment’s hesitation, fell in a length behind him. The horses broke into a trot, then into a canter. As they bore down along the south side upon the southwest corner, a roar of rage and alarm rose from the rioters collected there; and scores and hundreds fled, screaming, and sought safety to right and left.

Vaughan had time to turn to Brereton, and cry, “I beg your pardon, sir; I could not help it!” The next moment he and the leading troopers were upon the fleeing, dodging, ducking crowd; were upon them and among them. Half a dozen swords gleamed high and fell, the horses did the rest. The rabble, taken by surprise, made no resistance. In a trice the dragoons were through the mob, and the roadway showed clear behind them. Save where here and there a man rose slowly and limped away, leaving a track of blood at his heels.

“Steady! Steady!” Vaughan cried. “Halt! Halt! Right about!” and then, “Charge!”

He led the men back over the same ground, chasing from it such as had dared to return, or to gather upon the skirts of the troop. Then he led his men along the east side, clearing that also and driving the rioters in a panic into the side streets. Resistance worthy of the name there was none, until, having led the troop back across the open Square and cleared that of the skulkers, he came back again to the southwest corner. There the rabble, rallying from their surprise, had taken up a position in the forecourts of the houses, where they were protected by the railings. They met the soldiers with a volley of stones, and half a dozen pistol-shots. A horse fell, two or three of the men were hit; for an instant there was confusion. Then Vaughan spurred his horse into one of the forecourts, and, followed by half a dozen troopers, cleared it, and the next and the next; on which, volunteers who sprang up, as by magic, at the first act of authority, entered the houses, killed one rioter, flung out the rest, and extinguished the flames. Still the more determined of the rascals, seeing the small number against them, clung to the place and the forecourts; and, driven from one court, retreated to another, and still protected by the railings, kept the troopers at bay with missiles.

Vaughan, panting with his exertions, took in the position, and looked round for Brereton.

“We must send for the Fourteenth, sir!” he said. “We are not enough to do more than hold them in check.”

“There is nothing else for it now,” Brereton replied, with a gloomy face and in such a tone that the very men shrank from looking at him; understanding, the very dullest of them, what his feelings must be, and how great his shame, who, thus superseded, saw another successful in that which it had been his duty to attempt.

And what were Vaughan’s feelings? He dared not allow himself the luxury of a glance towards the middle of the Square. Much less—but for a different reason—had he the heart to meet Brereton’s eyes. “I’m not in uniform, sir,” he said. “I can pass through the crowd. If you think fit, and will give me the order, I’ll fetch them, sir?”

Brereton nodded without a word, and Vaughan wheeled his horse to start. As he pushed it clear of the troop he passed Flixton.

“That was capital!” the Honourable Bob cried heartily. “Capital! We’ll handle ’em easily now, till you come back!”

Vaughan did not answer, nor did he look at Flixton; his look would have conveyed too much. Instead, he put his horse into a trot along the east side of the Square, and, regardless of a dropping fire of stones, made for the opening beside the ruins of the Mansion House. At the last moment, he looked back, to see Mary if it were possible. But he had waited too long, he could distinguish only confused forms about the base of the statue; and he must look to himself. His road to Keynsham lay through the lowest and most dangerous part of the city.

But though the streets were full of rough men, navigators and seamen, whose faces were set towards the Square, and who eyed him suspiciously as he rode by them, none made any attempt to stop him. And when he had crossed Bristol Bridge and had gained the more open outskirts towards Totterdown, where he could urge his horse to a gallop, the pale faces of men and women at door and window announced that it was not only the upper or the middle class which had taken fright, and longed for help and order. Through Brislington and up Durley Hill he pounded; and it must be confessed that his heart was light. Whatever came of it, though they court-martialled him, were that possible, though they tried him, he had done something, he had done right, and he had succeeded. Whatever the consequences, whatever the results to himself, he had dared; and his daring, it might be, had saved a city! Of the charge, indeed, he thought nothing, though she had seen it. It was nothing, for the danger had been of the slightest, the defence contemptible. But in setting discipline at defiance, in superseding the officer commanding the troops, in taking the whole responsibility on his own shoulders—a responsibility which few would have dreamed of taking—there he had dared, there he had played the man, there he had risen to the occasion! If he had been a failure in the House, here, by good fortune, he had not been a failure. And she would know it. Oh, happy thought! And happy man, riding out of Bristol with the murk and smoke and fog at his back, and the sunshine on his face!

For the sun was above the horizon as, with full heart, he rode down the hill into Keynsham, and heard the bugle sound “Boots and saddles!” and poured into sympathetic ears—-and to an accompaniment of strong words—the tale of the night’s doings.

* * * * *

An hour later he rode in with the Fourteenth and heard the Blues welcomed with thanksgiving, in the very streets which had stoned them from the city twenty-four hours before. By that time the officer in command of the main body of the Fourteenth at Gloucester had posted over, followed by another troop, and, seeing the state of things, had taken his own line and assumed, though junior to Colonel Brereton, the command of the forces.

After that the thing became a military evolution. One hour, two hours at most, and twenty charges along the quays and through the streets sufficed—at the cost of a dozen lives—to convince the most obstinate of the rabble of several things. _Imprimis_, that the reign of terror was not come. On the contrary, that law and order, and also Red Judges, survived. That Reform did not spell fire and pillage, and that at these things even a Reforming Government could not wink. In a word, by noon of that day, Monday, and many and many an hour before the ruins had ceased to smoke, the bubble which might have been easily burst before was pricked. Order reigned in Bristol, patrols were everywhere, two thousand zealous constables guarded the streets. And though troops still continued to hasten by every road to the scene, though all England trembled with alarm, and distant Woolwich sent its guns, and Greenwich horsed them, and the Yeomanry of six counties mustered on Clifton Down, or were quartered on the public buildings, the thing was nought by that time. Arthur Vaughan had pricked it in the early morning light when he cried “Charge!” in Queen’s Square.

XXXVI FORGIVENESS

The first wave of thankfulness for crowning blessings or vital escapes has a softening quality against which the hearts of few are wholly proof. Old things, old hopes, old ties, old memories return on that gentle flood tide to eyes and mind. The barriers raised by time, the furrows of ancient wrong are levelled with the plain, and the generous breast cries “_Non nobis!_ Not to us only be the benefit!”

Lady Lansdowne, with something of this kind in her thoughts and pity in her heart, sat eying Miss Sibson in a silence which disclosed nothing, and which the schoolmistress found irksome. Miss Sibson could beard Sir Robert at need; but of the great of her own sex—and she knew Lady Lansdowne for a very great lady, indeed—her sturdy nature went a little in awe. Had her ladyship encroached indeed, Miss Sibson would have known how to put her in her place. But a Lady Lansdowne perfectly polite and wholly silent imposed on her. She rubbed her nose and was glad when the visitor spoke.

“Sir Robert has not seen her, then?”

Miss Sibson smoothed out the lap of her dress. “No, my lady, not since she was brought into the house. Indeed, I can’t say that he saw her before, for he never looked at her.”

“Do you think that I could see her?”

The schoolmistress hesitated. “Well, my lady,” she said, “I am afraid that she will hardly live through the day.”

“Then he must see her,” Lady Lansdowne replied quickly. And Miss Sibson observed with surprise that there were tears in the great lady’s eyes. “He must see her. Is she conscious?”

“She’s so-so,” Miss Sibson answered more at her ease. After all, the great lady was human, it seemed. “She wanders, and thinks that she is in France, my lady; believes there’s a revolution, and that they are come to take her to prison. Her mind harps continually on things of that kind. And not much wonder either! But, then again she’s herself. So that you don’t know from one minute to another whether she’s sensible or not.”

“Poor thing!” Lady Lansdowne murmured. “Poor woman!” Her lips moved without sound. Presently, “Her daughter is with her?” she asked.

“She has scarcely left her for a minute since she was carried in,” Miss Sibson answered warmly. And to her eyes, too, there rose something like a tear. “Only with difficulty have I made her take the most necessary rest. But if your ladyship pleases, I will ask whether she will see you.”

“Do so, if you please.”

Miss Sibson retired for this purpose, and Lady Lansdowne, left to herself, rose and looked from the window. As soon as it had been possible to move her, the dying woman had been carried into the nearest house which had escaped the flames, and Lady Lansdowne, gazing out, looked on the scene of conflict, saw lines of ruins, still asmoke in parts, and discerned between the scorched limbs of trees, from which the last foliage had fallen, the blackened skeletons of houses. A gaping crowd was moving round the Square, under the eyes of special constables, who, distinguished by white bands on their arms, guarded the various entrances. Hundreds, doubtless, who would fain have robbed were there to stare; but for the most part the guilty shunned the scene, and the gazers consisted mainly of sightseers from the country, or from Bath, or of knots of merchants and traders and the like who argued, some that this was what came of Reform, others that not Reform but the refusal of Reform was to blame for it.

Presently she saw Sir Robert’s stately figure threading its way through the crowd. He walked erect, but with effort; yet though her heart swelled with pity, it was not with pity for him. He would have his daughter and in a few days, in a few weeks, in a few months at most, the clouds would pass and leave him to enjoy the clear evening of his days.

But for her whom he had taken to his house twenty years before in the bloom of her beauty, the envied, petted, spoiled child of fortune, who had sinned so lightly and paid so dearly, and who now lay distraught at the close of all, what evening remained? What gleam of light? What comfort at the last?

In her behalf, the heart which Whig pride, and family prejudice, and the cares of riches had failed to harden, swelled to bursting. “He must forgive her!” she ejaculated. “He shall forgive her!” And gliding to the door she stayed Mary, who was in the act of entering.

“I must see your father,” she said. “He is mounting the stairs now. Go to your mother, my dear, and when I ring, do you come!”

What Mary read in her face, of feminine pity and generous purpose, need not be told. Whatever it was, the girl seized the woman’s hand, kissed it with wet eyes, and fled. And when Sir Robert, ushered upstairs by Miss Sibson, entered the room and looked round for his daughter, he found in her stead the wife of his enemy.

On the instant he remembered the errand on which she had sought him six months before, and he was quick to construe her presence by its light, and to feel resentment. The wrong of years, the daily, hourly wrong, committed not against him only but against the innocent and the helpless, this woman would have him forgive at a word; merely because the doer, who had had no ruth, no pity, no scruples, hung on the verge of that step which all, just and unjust, must take! And some, he knew, standing where he stood, would forgive; would forgive with their lips, using words which meant nought to the sayer, though they soothed the hearers. But he was no hypocrite; he would not forgive. Forgive? Great Heaven, that any should think that the wrongs of a lifetime could be forgiven in an hour! At a word! Beside a bed! As soon might the grinding wear of years be erased from the heart, the wrinkles of care from the brow, the snows of age from the head! As easily might a word give back to the old the spring and flame and vigour of their youth!

Something of what he thought impressed itself on his face. Lady Lansdowne marked the sullen drop of his eyebrows, and the firm set of the lower face; but she did not flinch. “I came upon your name,” she said, “in the report of the dreadful doings here—in the ‘Mercury,’ this morning. I hope, Sir Robert, I shall be pardoned for intruding.”

He murmured something, as much no as yes, and with a manner as frigid as his breeding permitted. And standing—she had reseated herself—he continued to look at her, his lips drawn down.

“I grieve,” she continued, “to find the truth more sad than the report.”

“I do not know that you can help us,” he said.

“No?”

“No.”

“Because,” she rejoined, looking at him softly, “you will not let me help you. Sir Robert——”