Kitabı oku: «Chippinge Borough», sayfa 25

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?