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

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——”

“Lady Lansdowne!” He broke in abruptly, using her name with emphasis,

using it with intention. “Once before you came to me. Doubtless you

remember. Now, let me say at once, that if your errand to-day be the

same, and I think it likely that it is the same——”

“It is not the same,” she replied with emotion which she did not try to

hide. “It is not the same! For then there was time. And now there is no

time. Let a day, it may be an hour, pass, and at the cost of all you

possess you will not be able to buy that which you can still have for

nothing!”

“And what is that?” he asked, frowning.

“An easy heart.” He had not looked for that answer, and he started.

“Sir Robert,” she continued, rising from her seat, and speaking with

even deeper feeling, “forgive her! Forgive her, I implore you. The

wrong is past, is done, is over! Your daughter is restored——”

“But not by her!” he cried, taking her up quickly. “Not by her act!” he

repeated sternly, “or with her will! And what has she done that I

should forgive? I, whose life she blighted, whose pride she stabbed,

whose hopes she crushed? Whom she left solitary, wifeless, childless

through the years of my strength, the years that she cannot, that no

one can give back to me? Through the long summer days that were a

weariness, and the dark winter days that were a torpor? Yet—yet I could

forgive her, Lady Lansdowne, I could forgive her, I do forgive her

that!”

“Sir Robert!”

“That, all that!” he continued, with a gesture and in a tone of

bitterness which harmonised but ill with the words he uttered. “All

that she ever did amiss to me I forgive her. But—but the child’s wrong,

never! Had she relented indeed, at the last, had she of her own motion,

of her own free will given me back my daughter, had she repented and

undone the wrong, then—but no matter! she did not! She did not one,” he

repeated with agitation, “she did not any of these things. And I ask,

what has she done that I should forgive her?”

She did not answer him at once, and when she did it was in a tone so

low as to be barely audible.

“I cannot answer that,” she said. “But is it the only question? Is

there not another question, Sir Robert—not what she has done, or left

undone, but what you—forgive me and bear with me—have left undone, or

done amiss? Are you—you clear of all spot or trespass, innocent of all

blame or erring? When she came to you a young girl, a young bride—and,

oh, I remember her, the sunshine was not brighter, she was a child of

air rather than of earth, so fair and heedless, so capricious, and yet

so innocent!—did you in the first days never lose patience? Never fail

to make allowance? Never preach when wisdom would have smiled, never

look grave when she longed for lightness, never scold when it had been

better to laugh? Did you never forget that she was a score of years

younger than you, and a hundred years more frivolous? Or”—Lady

Lansdowne’s tone was a mere whisper now—“if you are clear of all

offence against her, are you clear of all offence against any, of all

trespass? Have you no need to be forgiven, no need, no——”

Her voice died away into silence. She left the appeal unfinished.

Sir Robert paced the room. And other scenes than those on which he had

taught himself to brood, other days than those later days of wasted

summers and solitary winters, of dulness and decay, rose to his memory.

Sombre moods by which it had pleased him—at what a cost!—to make his

displeasure known. Sarcastic words, warrant for the facile retort that

followed, curt judgments and ill-timed reproofs; and always the sense

of outraged dignity to freeze the manner and embitter the tone.

So much, so much which he had forgotten came back to him as he walked

the room with averted face! While Lady Lansdowne waited with her hand

on the bell. Minutes were passing, minutes; who knew how precious they

might be? And with them was passing his opportunity.

He spoke at last. “I will see her,” he said huskily.

And on that Lady Lansdowne performed a last act of kindness. She said

nothing, bestowed no thanks. But when Mary entered—pale, yet with that

composure which love teaches the least experienced—she was gone. Nor as

she drove in all the pomp of her liveries and outriders through Bath,

through Corsham, through Chippenham, did those who ran out to watch my

lady’s four greys go by, see her face as the face of an angel. But Lady

Louisa, flying down the steps to meet her—four at a time and

hoidenishly—was taken to her arms, unscolded; and knew by instinct that

this was the time to pet and be petted, to confess and be forgiven, and

to learn in the stillness of her mother’s room those thrilling lessons

of life, which her governess had not imparted, nor Mrs. Fairchild

approved.

_But more than wisdom sees, love knows.

What eye has scanned the perfume of the rose?

Has any grasped the low grey mist which stands

Ghost-like at eve above the sheeted lands?_

Meanwhile Sir Robert paused on the threshold of the room—_her_ room,

which he had first entered two-and-twenty years before. And as the then

and the now, the contrast between the past and the present, forced

themselves upon him, what could he do but pause and bow his head? In

the room a voice, her voice, yet unlike her voice, high, weak, never

ceasing, was talking as from a great distance, from another world;

talking, talking, never ceasing. It filled the room. Yet it did not

come from a world so distant as he at first fancied, hearing it; a

world that was quite aloof. For when, after he had listened for a time

in the shadow by the door, his daughter led him forward, Lady Sybil’s

eyes took note of their approach, though she recognised neither of

them. Her mind was still busy amid the scenes of the riot; twisting and

weaving them, it seemed, into a piece with old impressions of the

French Terror, made on her mind in childhood by talk heard at her

nurse’s knee.

“They are coming! They are coming now,” she muttered, her bright eyes

fixed on his. “But they shall not take her. They shall not take her,”

she repeated. “Hide behind me, Mary. Hide, child! Don’t tremble! They

shan’t take you. One neck’s enough and mine is growing thin. It used

not to be thin. But that’s right. Hide, and they’ll not see you, and

when I am gone you’ll escape. Hush! Here they are!” And then in a

louder tone, “I am ready,” she said, “I am quite ready.”

Mary leant over her.

“Mother!” she cried, unable to bear the scene in silence. “Mother!

Don’t you know me?”

“Hush!” the dying woman answered, a look of terror crossing her face.

“Hush, child! Don’t speak! I’m ready, gentlemen; I will go with you. I

am not afraid. My neck is small, and it will be but a squeeze.” And she

tried to raise herself in the bed.

Mary laid gentle hands on her, and restrained her. “Mother,” she said.

“Mother! Don’t you know me? I am Mary.”

But Lady Sybil, heedless of her, looked beyond her, with fear and

suspicion in her eyes. “Yes,” she said. “I know you. I know you. I know

you. But who is—that? Who is that?”

“My father. It is my father. Don’t you know him?”

But still, “Who is it? Who is it?” Lady Sybil continued to ask. “Who is

it?”

Mary burst into tears.

“What does he want? What does he want? What does he want?” the dying

woman asked in endless, unreasoning repetition.

Sir Robert had entered the room in the full belief that with the best

of wills it would be hard, it would be well-nigh impossible to forgive;

to forgive his wife with more than the lips. But when he heard her,

weak and helpless as she was, thinking of another; when he understood

that she who had done so great a wrong to the child was willing to give

up her own life for the child; when he felt the sudden drag at his

heart-strings of many an old and sacred recollection, shared only by

her, and which that voice, that face, that form brought back, he fell

on his knees by the bed.

She shrank from him, terrified. “What does he want?” she repeated.

“Sybil,” he said, in a husky voice, “I want your forgiveness, Sybil,

wife! Do you hear me? Will you forgive me? Can you forgive me, late as

it is?”

Strange to say, his voice pierced the confusion which filled the sick

brain. She looked at him steadily and long; and she sighed, but she did

not answer.

“Sybil,” he repeated in a quavering voice. “Do you not know me? Don’t

you remember me? I am your husband.”

“Yes, I know,” she muttered.

“This is your daughter.”

She smiled.

“Our daughter,” he repeated. “Our daughter!”

“Mary?” she murmured. “Mary?”

“Yes, Mary.”

She smiled faintly on him. Mary’s head was touching his, but she did

not answer. She remained looking at them. They could not tell whether

she understood, or was slipping away again. He took her hand and

pressed it gently. “Do you hear me?” he said. “If I was harsh to you in

the old days, if I made mistakes, if I wronged you, I want you—wife,

say that you forgive me.”

“I—forgive you,” she murmured. A faint gleam of mischief, of laughter,

of the old Lady Sybil, shone for an instant in her eyes, as if she knew

that she had the upper hand. “I forgive you—everything,” she murmured.

Yes, for certain now, she was slipping away.

Mary took her other hand. But she did not speak again. And before the

watch on the table beside her had ticked many times she had slipped

away for good, with that gleam of triumph in her eyes—forgiving.

XXXVII

IN THE MOURNING COACH

It is a platitude that the flood is followed by the ebb. In the heat of

action, and while its warmth cheered his spirits, Arthur Vaughan felt

that he had done something. True, what he had done brought him no

nearer to making his political dream a reality. Not for him the

promise,

_It shall be thine in danger’s hour

To guide the helm of Britain’s power

And midst thy country’s laurelled crown

To twine a garland all thy own_.

Yet he had done something. He had played the man when some others had

not played the man.

But now that the crisis was over, and he had made his last round, now

that he had inspected for the last time the patrols over whom he was

set, seen order restored on the Welsh Back, and panic driven from

Queen’s Square, he owned the reaction. There is a fatigue which one

night’s rest fails to banish; and low in mind and tired in body, he

felt, when he rose late on Tuesday afternoon, that he had done nothing

worth doing; nothing that altered his position in essentials.

For a time, indeed, he had fancied that things were changed. Sir Robert

had requested his assistance, and allowed him to share his search; and

though it was possible that the merest stranger, cast by fortune into

the same adventure, had been as welcome, it was also possible that the

Baronet viewed him with a more benevolent eye. And Mary—Mary, too, had

flown to his arms as to a haven; but in such a position, amid

surroundings so hideous, was that wonderful? Was it not certain that

she would have behaved in the same way to the merest acquaintance if he

brought her aid and protection?

The answer might be yes or no! What was certain was that it could not

avail him. For between him and her there stood more than her father’s

aversion, more than the doubt of her affection, more than the unlucky

borough, of which he had despoiled Sir Robert. There were her

possessions, there was the suspicion which Sir Robert had founded on

them—on Mary’s gain and his loss—there was the independence, which he

must surrender, and which pride and principle alike forbade him to

relinquish.

In the confusion of the night Vaughan had almost forgotten and quite

forgiven. Now he saw that the thing, though forgotten, though forgiven,

was there. He could not owe all to a man who had so misconstrued him,

and who might misconstrue him again. He could not be dependent on one

whose views, thoughts, prejudices, were opposed to his own. No, the

night and its doing must stand apart. He and she had met, they had

parted. He had one memory more, and nothing was changed.

In this mood the fact that the White Lion regarded him as a hero

brought him no comfort. Neither the worshipping eyes of the young lady

who had tried to dissuade him from going forth on the Sunday, nor the

respectful homage which dogged his movements, uplifted him. He had

small appetite for his solitary dinner, and was languidly reading the

“Bristol Mercury,” when a name was brought up to him, and a letter.

“Gentleman will wait your pleasure, sir,” the man said.

He broke open the letter, and felt the blood rise to his face as his

eyes fell on the signature. The few lines were from his cousin, and ran

as follows:

“Dear Sir,—I feel it my duty to inform you, as a connection of the

family, that Lady Sybil Vermuyden died at five minutes past three

o’clock this afternoon. Her death, which I am led to believe could in

no event have been long delayed, was doubtless hastened by the

miserable occurrences of the last few days.

“I have directed Isaac White to convey this intimation to your hands,

and to inform you from time to time of the arrangements made for her

ladyship’s funeral, which will take place at Stapylton. I have the

honour to be, sir,

“Your obedient servant,

“Robert Vermuyden.”

Vaughan laid the letter down with a groan. As he did so he became aware

that Isaac White was in the room. “Halloa, White,” he said. “Is that

you?”

White looked at him with unconcealed respect. “Yes, sir,” he said. “Sir

Robert bade me wait on you in person without delay. If I may venture,”

he continued, “to compliment you on my own account, sir—a very great

honour to the family, Mr. Vaughan—in all the west country, I may say——”

Vaughan stopped him, and said something of Lady Sybil’s death; adding

that he had never seen her but once.

“Twice, begging your pardon,” White answered, smiling. “Do you remember

I met you at Chippenham before the election, Mr. Vaughan? Well, sir,

she came up to the coach, and as good as touched your sleeve, poor

lady, while I was talking to you. Of course, she knew that her daughter

was on the coach.”

“I learned afterwards that Lady Sybil travelled by it that day,”

Vaughan replied. Then with a frown he took up the letter. “Of course,”

he continued, “I have no intention of attending the funeral.”

“But I think his honour wishes much——”

“There is no possible reason,” Vaughan said doggedly.

“Pardon me, sir,” White answered anxiously. “You are not aware, I am

sure, how highly Sir Robert appreciates your gallant conduct yesterday.

No one in Bristol can view it in a stronger light. It is a happy thing

he witnessed it. He thinks, indeed, that but for you her ladyship would

have died in the crowd. Moreover——”

“That’s enough, White,” Vaughan said coldly. “It is not so much what

Sir Robert thinks now, too, as what he thought formerly.”

“But indeed, sir, his honour’s opinion of that matter, too——”

“That’s enough, White,” the young gentleman repeated, rising from his

seat. He was telling himself that he was not a dog to be kicked away

and called to heel again. He would forgive, but he would not return. “I

don’t wish to discuss the matter,” he added with an air of finality.

And White did not venture to say more.

He did wisely. For Vaughan, left to himself, had not reflected two

minutes before he felt that he had played the churl. To make amends, he

called at the house to inquire after the ladies at an hour next morning

when they could not be stirring. Having performed that duty, and having

learned that no inquiry into the riots would be opened for some

days—and also that a proposal to give him a piece of gold plate was

under debate at the Commercial Rooms, he fled, pride and love at odds

in his breast.

It is possible that in Sir Robert’s heart, also, there was a battle

going on. On the eve of the funeral he sat alone in the library at

Stapylton, that room in which he had passed so many unhappy hours, and

with which the later part of his life seemed bound up. Doubtless, as he

sat, he gave solemn thought to the past and the future. The room was no

longer dusty, the furniture was no longer shabby; there were fresh

flowers on his table; and by his great leather chair, a smaller chair,

filled within the last few minutes, had its place. Yet he could not

forget what he had suffered there; how he had brooded there. And

perhaps he thanked God, amid his more solemn thoughts, that he was not

glad that she who had plagued him would plague him no more. All that

her friend had urged in her behalf, all that was brightest and best in

his memories of her, this generous whim, that quixotic act rose, it may

be supposed, before him. And the picture of her fair young beauty, of

her laughing face in the bridal veil or under the Leghorn, of her first

words to him, of her first acts in her new home! And but that the tears

of age flow hardly, it is possible that he would have wept.

Presently—perhaps he was not sorry for it—a knock came at the door and

Isaac White entered. He came to take the last instructions for the

morrow. A few words settled what remained to be settled, and then,

after a little hesitation, “I promised to name it to you, sir,” White

said. “I don’t know what you’ll say to it. Dyas wishes to walk with the

others.”

Sir Robert winced. “Dyas?” he muttered.

“He says he’s anxious to show his respect for the family, in every way

consistent with his opinions.”

“Opinions?” Sir Robert echoed. “Opinions? Good Lord! A butcher’s

opinions! Who knows but some day he’ll have a butcher to represent him?

Or a baker or a candlestick-maker! If ever they have the ballot,

that’ll come with it, White.”

White waited, but as the other said no more, “You won’t forbid him,

sir?” he said, a note of appeal in his voice.

“Oh, let him come,” Sir Robert answered wearily. “I suppose,” he

continued, striving to speak in the same tone, “you’ve heard nothing

from his—Member?”

“From—oh, from Mr. Vaughan, sir? No, sir. But Mr. Flixton is coming.”

Sir Robert muttered something under his breath, and it was not

flattering to the Honourable Bob. Then he turned his chair and held his

hands over the blaze. “That will do, White,” he said. “That will do.”

And he did not look round until the agent had left the room.

But White was certain that even on this day of sad memories, with the

ordeal of the morrow before him, Arthur Vaughan’s attitude troubled his

patron. And when, twenty-four hours later, the agent’s eyes travelling

round the vast assemblage which regard for the family had gathered

about the grave, fell upon Arthur Vaughan, and he knew that he had

repented and come, he was glad.

The young Member held himself a little apart from the small group of

family mourners; a little apart also from the larger company whom

respect or social ties had brought thither. Among these last, who were

mostly Tories, many were surprised to see Lord Lansdowne and his son.

But more, aware of the breach between Mr. Vaughan and his cousin, and

of the former’s peculiar position in the borough, were surprised to see

him. And these, while their thoughts should have been elsewhere, stole

furtive glances at the sombre figure; and when Vaughan left, still

alone and without speaking to any, followed his departure with

interest. In those days of mutes and crape-coloured staves, mourning

cloaks and trailing palls, it was not the custom for women to bury

their dead. And Vaughan, when he had made up his mind to come, knew

that he ran no risk of seeing Mary.

That he might escape with greater case, he had left his post-chaise at

a side-gate of the park. The moment the ceremony was over, he made his

way to it, now traversing beds of fallen chestnut and sycamore leaves,

now striding across the sodden turf. The solemn words which he had

heard, emphasised as they were by the scene, the grey autumn day, the

lonely park, and the dark groups threading their way across it, could

not hold his thoughts from Mary. She would be glad that he had come.

Perhaps it was for that reason that he had come.

He had passed through the gate of the park and his foot was on the step

of the chaise, when he heard White’s voice, calling after him. He

turned and saw the agent hurrying desperately after him. White’s

mourning suit was tight and new and ill made for haste; and he was hot

and breathless. For a moment, “Mr. Vaughan! Mr. Vaughan!” was all he

could say.

Vaughan turned a reluctant, almost a stern face to him. Not that he

disliked the agent, but he thought that he had got clear.

“What is it?” he asked, without removing his foot from the step.

White looked behind him. “Sir Robert, sir,” he said, “has something to

say to you. The carriage is following. If you’ll be good enough,” he

continued, mopping his face, “to wait a moment!”

“Sir Robert cannot wish to see me at such a time,” Vaughan answered,

between wonder and impatience. “He will write, doubtless.”

“The carriage should be in sight,” was White’s answer. As he spoke it

came into view; rounding the curve of a small coppice of beech trees,

it rolled rapidly down a declivity, and ascended towards them as

rapidly.

A moment and it would be here. Vaughan looked uncertainly at his

post-boy. He wished to catch the York House coach at Chippenham, and he

had little time to spare.

It was not the loss of time, however, that he really had in his mind.

But he could guess, he fancied, what Sir Robert wished to say; and he

did not deny that the old man was generous in saying it at such a

moment, if that were his intention. But his own mind was made up; he

could only repeat what he had said to White. It was not a question of

what Sir Robert had thought, or now thought, but of what _he_ thought.

And the upshot of all his thoughts was that he would not be dependent

upon any man. He had differed from Sir Robert once, and the elder had

treated the younger man with injustice, and contumely; that might occur

again. Indeed, taking into account the difference in their political

views in an age when politics counted for much, it was sure to occur

again. But his mind was made up that it should not occur to him.

Unhappy as the resolution made him, he would be free. He would be his

own man. He would remember nothing except that that night had changed

nothing.

It was with a set face, therefore, that he watched the carriage draw

near. Apparently it was a carriage which had conveyed guests to the

funeral, for the blinds were drawn.

“It will save time, if it takes you a mile on your way,” White said,

with some nervousness. “I will tell your chaise to follow.” And he

opened the door.

Vaughan raised his hat, and stepped in. It was only when the door was

closing behind him and the carriage starting anew at a word from White,

that he saw that it contained, not Sir Robert Vermuyden, but a lady.

“Mary!” he cried. The name broke from him in his astonishment.

She looked at him with self-possession, and a gentle, unsmiling

gravity. She indicated the front seat, and “Will you sit there?” she

said. “I can talk to you better, Mr. Vaughan, if you sit there.”

He obeyed her, marvelling. The blind on the side on which she sat was

raised a few inches, and in the subdued light her graceful head showed

like some fair flower rising from the depth of her mourning. For she

wore no covering on her head, and he might have guessed, had he had any

command of his thoughts, that she had sprung as she was into the

nearest carriage. Amazement, however, put him beyond thinking.

Her eyes met his seriously. “Mr. Vaughan,” she said, “my presence must

seem extraordinary to you. But I am come to ask you a question. Why did

you tell me six months ago that you loved me if you did not?”

He was as deeply agitated as she was quiet on the surface. “I told you

nothing but the truth,” he said.

“No,” she said.

“But yes! A hundred times, yes!” he cried.

“Then you are altered? That is it?”

“Never!” he cried. “Never!”

“And yet—things are changed? My father wrote to you, did he not, three

days ago? And said as much as you could look to him to say?”

“He said——”

“He withdrew what he had uttered in an unfortunate moment. He withdrew

that which, I think, he had never believed in his heart. He said as

much as you could expect him to say?” she repeated, her colour mounting

a little, her eyes challenging him with courageous firmness.

“He said,” Vaughan answered in a low voice, “what I think it became him

to say.”

“You understood that his feelings were changed towards you?”

“To some extent.”

She drew a deep breath and sat back. “Then it is for you to speak,” she

said.

But before, agitated as he was, he could speak, she leant forward

again. “No,” she said, “I had forgotten. I had forgotten.” And the

slight quivering of her lips, a something piteous in her eyes, reminded

him once more, once again—and the likeness tugged at his heart—of the

Mary Smith who had paused on the threshold of the inn at Maidenhead,

alarmed and abashed by the bustle of the coffee-room. “I had forgotten!

It is not my father you cannot forgive—it is I, who am unworthy of your

forgiveness? You cannot make allowance,” she continued, stopping him by

a gesture, as he opened his mouth to speak, “for the weakness of one

who had always been dependent, who had lived all her life under the

dominion of others, who had been taught by experience that, if she

would eat, she must first obey. You can make no allowance, Mr. Vaughan,

for such an one placed between a father, whom it was her duty to

honour, and a lover to whom she had indeed given her heart, she knew

not why—but whom she barely knew, with whose life she had no real

acquaintance, whose honesty she must take on trust, because she loved

him? You cannot forgive her because, taught all her life to bend, she

could not, she did not stand upright under the first trial of her

faith?”

“No!” he cried violently. “No! No! It is not that!”

“No?” she said. “You do forgive her then? You have forgiven her? The

more as to-day she is not weak. The earth is not level over my mother’s

grave, some may say hard things of me—but I have come to you to-day.”

“God bless you!” he cried.

She drew a deep breath and sat back. “Then,” she said, with a sigh as

of relief, “it is for you to speak.”

There was a gravity in her tone, and so complete an absence of all

self-consciousness, all littleness, that he owned that he had never

known her as she was, had never measured her true worth, had never

loved her as she deserved to be loved. Yet—perhaps because it was all

that was left to him—he clung desperately to the resolution he had

formed, to the position which pride and prudence alike had bidden him

to take up.

“What am I to say?” he asked hoarsely.

“Why, if you love me, if you forgive me,” she answered softly, “do you

leave me?”

“Can you not understand?”

“In part, I can. But not altogether. Will you explain? I—I think,” she

continued with a movement of her flower-like head, that for gentle

dignity he had never seen excelled, “I have a right to an explanation.”

“You know of what Sir Robert accused me?”

“Yes.”

“Am I to justify him? You know what was the difference which came

between us, which first divided us? And what I thought right then, I

still think right. Am I to abandon it? You know what I bore. Am I to

live on the bounty of one who once thought so ill of me, and may think

as ill again? Of one who, differing from me, punished me so cruelly? Am

I to sink into dependence, to sacrifice my judgment, to surrender my

political liberty into the hands of one who——”

“Of my father!” she said gravely.

He could not, so reminded, say what he had been going to say, but he

assented by a movement of the head. And after an interval of silence,

“I cannot,” he cried passionately, “I cannot, even to secure my

happiness, run that risk!”

She looked from the window of the carriage, and in a voice which shook

a little, “No,” she said, “I suppose not.”

He was silent and he suffered. He dared not meet her eyes. Why had she

sought this interview? Why had she chosen to torment him? Ah, if she

knew, if she only knew what pain she was inflicting upon him!

But apparently she did not know. For by and by she spoke again. “No,”

she said. “I suppose not. Yet have you thought”—and now there was a

more decided tremor in her voice—“that that which you surrender is not

all there is at stake? Your independence is precious to you, and you

have a right, Mr. Vaughan, to purchase it even at the cost of your

happiness. But have you a right to purchase it at the cost of

another’s? At the cost of mine? Have you thought of my happiness?” she

continued, “or only of yours—and of yourself? To save your

independence—shall I say, to save your pride?—you are willing to set

your love aside. But have you asked me whether I am willing to pay my

half of the price? My heavier half? Whether I am willing to set my

happiness aside? Have you thought of—me at all?”

If he had not, then, when he saw how she looked at him, with what eyes,

with what love, as she laid her hand on his arm, he had been more than

man if he had resisted her long! But he still fought with himself, and

with her; staring with hard, flushed face straight before him, telling

himself that by all that was left to him he must hold.

“I think, I think,” she said gently, yet with dignity, “you have not

thought of me.”

“But your father—Sir Robert——”

“He is an ogre, of course,” she cried in a tone suddenly changed. “But

you should have thought of that before, sir,” she continued, tears and

laughter in her voice. “Before you travelled with me on the coach!

Before you saved my life! Before you—looked at me! For you can never

take it back. You can never give me myself again. I think that you must

take me!”

And then he did not resist her any longer. And the carriage was stayed;

and orders were given. And, empty and hugely overpaid, the yellow

post-chaise ambled on to Chippenham; and bearing two inside, and a

valise on the roof, the mourning coach drove slowly and solemnly back

to Stapylton. As it wound its way over the green undulations of the

park, the rabbits that ran, and then stopped, cocking their scuts, to

look at it, saw nothing strange in it. Nor the fallow-deer of the true

Savernake breed, who, before they fled through the dying bracken, eyed

it with poised heads. Nay, the heron which watched its approach from

the edge of the Garden Pool, and did not even deign to drop a second

leg, saw nothing strange in it. Yet it bore for all that the strangest

of all earthly passengers, and the strongest, and the bravest, and the

fairest—and withal, thank God, the most familiar. For it carried Love.

And love the same yet different, love gaunt and grey-haired, yet kind

and warm of heart, met it at the door and gave it welcome.

XXXVIII

THREADS AND PATCHES

Though England had not known for fifty years an outbreak so formidable

or so destructive as that of which the news was laid on men’s

breakfast-tables on the Tuesday morning, it had less effect on the

political situation than might have been expected. It sent, indeed, a

thrill of horror through the nation. And had it occurred at an earlier

stage of the Reform struggle, before the middle class had fully

committed itself to a trial of strength with the aristocracy, it must

have detached many more of the timid and conservative of the Reformers.

But it came too late. The die was cast; men’s minds were made up on the

one side and the other. Each saw events coloured to his wish. And

though Wetherell and Croker, and the devoted band who still fought

manfully round those chieftains, called heaven and earth to witness the

first-fruits of the tree of Reform, the majority of the nation

preferred to see in these troubles the alternative to the Bill—the

abyss into which the whole country would be hurled if that heaven-sent

measure were not passed.

On one thing, however, all were agreed. The outrage was too great to be

overlooked. The law must be vindicated, the lawbreakers must be

punished. To this end the Government, anxious to clear themselves of

the suspicion of collusion, appointed a special Commission, and sent it

to Bristol to try the rioters; and four poor wretches were hanged, a

dozen were transported, and many received minor sentences. Having thus,

a little late in the day, taught the ignorant that Reform did not spell

Revolution after the French pattern, the Cabinet turned their minds to

the measure again. And in December they brought in the Third Reform

Bill, with the fortunes and passage of which this story is not at pains

to deal.

But of necessity the misguided creatures who kindled the fires in

Queen’s Square on that fatal Sunday, and swore that they would not

leave a gaol standing in England, were not the only men who suffered.

Sad as their plight was, there was one whose plight—if pain be measured

by the capacity to feel—was sadder. While they were being tried in one

part of Bristol, there was proceeding in another part an inquiry

charged with deeper tragedy. Not those only who had done the deed, but

those who had suffered them to do it, must answer for it. And the

fingers of all pointed to one man. The magistrates might escape—the

Mayor indeed had done his duty creditably, if to little purpose; for

war was not their trade, and the thing at its crisis had become an

affair of war. But Colonel Brereton could not shield himself behind

that plea: so many had behaved poorly that the need to bring one to

book was the greater.

He was tried by court-martial, and among the witnesses was Arthur

Vaughan. By reason of his position, as well as of the creditable part

he had played, the Member for Chippinge was heard by the Court with

more than common attention; and he moved all who listened to him by his

painful anxiety to set the accused’s conduct in the best light; to show

that what was possible by daylight on the Monday morning might not have

been possible on the Sunday night, and that the choice from first to

last was between two risks. No question of Colonel Brereton’s

courage—for he had served abroad with credit, nay, with honour—entered

into the inquiry; and it was proved that a soldier’s duty in such a

case was not well defined. But afterwards Vaughan much regretted that

he had not laid before the Court the opinion he had formed at the

time—that during the crisis of the riots Brereton, obsessed by one

idea, was not responsible for his actions. For, sad to say, on the

fifth day of the inquiry, sinking under a weight of mental agony which

a man of his reserved and melancholy temper was unable to support, the

unfortunate officer put an end to his life. Few have paid so dearly for

an error of judgment and the lack of that coarser fibre which has

enabled many an inferior man to do his duty. The page darkens with his

fate, too tragical for such a theme as this. And if by chance these

words reach the eye of any of his descendants, theirs be the homage due

to the memory of a signal misfortune and an honourable but hapless man.

Of another and greater personage whose life touched Arthur Vaughan’s

once and twice, and of whom, with all his faults, it was never said by

his worst enemy that he feared responsibility or shunned the post of

danger, a brief word must suffice. If Lord Brougham did not live to see

that complete downfall of the great Whig houses which he had predicted,

he lived to see their power ruinously curtailed. He lived to see their

influence totter under the blow which the Repeal of the Corn Laws dealt

the landed interest, he lived to see the Reform Bill of 1867, he lived

almost to see the _coup de grâce_ given to their leadership by the

Ballot Act. And in another point his prophecy came true. As it had been

with Burke and Sheridan and Tierney, it was with him. His faults were

great, as his merits were transcendent; and presently in the time of

his need his highborn associates remembered only the former. They took

advantage of them to push him from power; and he spent nearly forty

years, the remnant of his long life, in the cold shade of Opposition.

The most brilliant, the most versatile, and the most remarkable figure

of the early days of the century, whose trumpet voice once roused

England as it has never been roused from that day to this, and whose

services to education and progress are acknowledged but slightly even

now, paid for the phenomenal splendour of his youth by long years spent

in a changed and changing world, jostled by a generation forgetful or

heedless of his fame. To us he is but the name of a carriage;

remembered otherwise, if at all, for his part in Queen Caroline’s

trial. While Wetherell, that stout fighter, Tory of the Tories, witty,

slovenly, honest man, whose fame was once in all mouths, whose

caricature was once in all portfolios, and whose breeches made the

fortune of many a charade, is but the shadow of a name.

* * * * *

The year had waned and waxed, and it was June again. At Stapylton the

oaks were coming to their full green; the bracken was lifting its

million heads above the sod, and by the edge of the Garden Pool the

water voles sat on the leaves of the lilies and clean their fur. Arthur

Vaughan—strolling up and down with his father-in-law, not without an

occasional glance at Mary, recumbent on a seat on the lawn—looked

grave.

“I fancy,” he said presently, “that we shall learn the fate of the Bill

to-day.”

“Very like, very like,” Sir Robert answered, in an offhand fashion, as

if the subject were not to his taste. And he turned about and by the

aid of his stick expounded his plan for enlarging the flower garden.

But Vaughan returned to the subject. “If not to-day, to-morrow,” he

said. “And that being so, I’ve wanted for some time, sir, to ask you

what you wish me to do.”

“To do?”

“As to the seat at Chippinge.”

Sir Robert’s face expressed his annoyance. “I told you—I told you long

ago,” he replied, “that I should never interfere with your political

movements.”

“And you have kept your word, sir. But as Lord Lansdowne cedes the seat

to you for this time, I assume——”

“I don’t know why you assume anything!” Sir Robert retorted irritably.

“I assume only that you will wish me to seek another seat.”

“I certainly don’t wish you to lead an idle life,” Sir Robert answered.

“When the younger men of our class do that, when they cease to take an

interest in political life, on the one side or the other, our power

will, indeed, be ended. Nothing is more certain than that. But for

Chippinge, I don’t choose that a stranger should hold a seat close to

my own door. You might have known that! For the party, I have taken

steps to furnish Mr. Cooke, a man whose opinions I thoroughly approve,

with a seat elsewhere; and I have therefore done my duty in that

direction. For the rest, the mischief is done. I suppose,” he continued

in his driest tones, “you won’t want to bring in another Reform Bill

immediately?”

“No, sir,” Vaughan answered gratefully. “Nor do I think that we are so

far apart as you assume. The truth is, Sir Robert, that we all fear one

of two things, and according as we fear the one or the other we are

dubbed Whigs or Tories.”

“What are your two things?”

“Despotism, or anarchy,” Vaughan replied modestly.

Sir Robert sniffed. “You don’t refine enough,” he said, pleased with

his triumph. “We all fear despotism; you, the despotism of the one: I,

a worse, a more cruel, a more hopeless despotism, the despotism of the

many! That’s the real difference between us.”

Vaughan looked thoughtful. “Perhaps you are right,” he said. “But—what

is that, sir?” He raised his hand. The deep note of a distant gun

rolled up the valley from the town.

“The Lords have passed the Bill,” Sir Robert replied. “They are

celebrating the news in Chippinge. Well, I am not sorry that my day is

done. I give you the command. See only, my boy,” he continued, with a

loving glance at Mary, who had risen, and, joined by Miss Sibson, was

coming to the end of the bridge to meet them, “see only that you hand

it on to others—I do not say as I give it to you, but as little

impaired as may be.”

And again, as Mary called to them to know what it was, the sound of the

gun rolled up the valley—the knell of the system, good or bad, under

which England had been ruled so long. The battle of which Brougham had

fired the first shot in the Castle Yard at York was past and won.

_Boom!_

THE END.