Kitabı oku: «Chippinge Borough», sayfa 27
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.
