Chippinge Borough

"Oh, that's rubbish!" Vaughan replied. But he owned the flattery, and his heart warmed to the pensioner, whose prediction proved to be correct. The crowd melted slowly but certainly after that. By eleven o'clock there were but a couple of hundred in the Square. By twelve, even these were gone. A half-dozen troopers, and as many tatterdemalions, slinking about the dark corners, were all that remained of the combatants; and the Mayor, with many words, presented Vaughan with the thanks of the city for his services.

"It is gratifying, Mr. Vaughan," he added, "to find that Colonel Brereton was right."

"Yes," Vaughan agreed. And he took his leave, carrying off his staff for a memento.

He was very weary, and it was not the shortest way to the White Lion, yet his feet carried him across the dark Square and past the Immortal Memory to the front of Miss Sibson's house. It showed no lights to the Square, but in a first-floor window of the next house he marked a faint radiance as of a shaded taper, and the outline of a head-doubtless the head of someone looking out to make sure that the disorder was at an end. He saw, but love was at fault. No inner voice told him that the head was Mary's! No thrill revealed to him that at that very moment, with her brow pressed to the cold pane, she was thinking of him! None! With a sigh, and a farther fall from the lightheartedness of an hour before, he went his way.

Broad Street was quiet, but half a dozen persons were gathered outside the White Lion. They were listening: and one of them told him, as he passed in, that the Blues, in beating back a party from the Council House, a short time before, had shot one of the rioters. In the hall he found several groups debating some point with heat, but they fell silent when they saw him, one nudging another; and he fancied that they paid especial attention to him. As he moved towards the office, a man detached himself from them and approached him with a formal air.

"Mr. Vaughan, I think?" he said.

"Yes."

"Mr. Arthur Vaughan?" the man, who was a complete stranger to Vaughan, repeated. "Member of Parliament for Chippinge, I believe?"

"Yes."

"Reform Member?"

Vaughan eyed him narrowly. "If you are one of my constituents," he said drily, "I will answer that question."

"I am not one," the man rejoined, with a little less confidence. "But it's my business, nevertheless, to warn you, Mr. Vaughan, in your own interests, that the part you have been taking here will not commend you to them! You have been handling the people very roughly, I am told. Very roughly! Now, I am Mr. Here-"

"You may be Mr. Here or Mr. There," Vaughan said, cutting him short-but very quietly. "But if you say another word to me, I will throw you through that door for your impudence! That is all. Now-have you any more to say?"

The man tried to carry it off. For there was sniggering behind him. But Vaughan's blood was up, the agitator read it in the young man's eye, and being a man of words, not deeds, he fell back. Vaughan went up to bed.

XXXI

SUNDAY IN BRISTOL

It was far from Vaughan's humour to play the bully, and before he had even reached his bedroom, which looked to the back, he repented of his vehemence. Between that and the natural turmoil of his feelings he lay long waking; and twice, in a stillness which proclaimed that all was well, he heard the Bristol clocks tell the hour. After all, then, Brereton had been right! For himself, had the command been his, he would have adopted more strenuous measures. He would have tried to put fear into the mob before the riot reached its height. And had he done so, how dire might have been the consequences! How many homes might at this moment be mourning his action, how many innocent persons be suffering pain and misery!

Whereas Brereton, the strong, quiet man, resisting importunity, shunning haste, keeping his head where others wavered, had carried the city through its trouble, with scarce the loss of a single life. Truly he was one whom

Non civium ardor prava jubentium,
Non vultus instantis tyranni
Mente quatit solida!

Vaughan thought of him with a new respect, and of himself with a new humility. He was forced to acknowledge that even in that field of action which he had quitted, and to which he was now inclined to return, he was not likely to pick up a marshal's bâton.

He slept at length, and long and heavily, awaking towards ten o'clock with aching limbs and a cheek so sore that it brought all that had passed to instant recollection. He found his hot water at his door, and he dressed slowly and despondently, feeling the reaction and thinking of Mary, and of that sunny morning, six months back, when he had looked into Broad Street from a window of this very house, and dreamed of a modest bonnet and a sweet blushing face. An hour after that, he remembered, he had happened on the Honourable-oh, d- Flixton! All his troubles had started from that unlucky meeting with him.

He found his breakfast laid in the next room, the coffee and bacon in a Japan cat by the fire. He ate and drank in an atmosphere of gloomy retrospect. If he had never met Flixton! If he had not gone to that unlucky dinner at Chippinge! If he had spoken to her in Parliament Street! If-if-if! The bells of half a dozen churches were ringing, drumming his regrets into him; and he stood awhile irresolute, looking through the window. The inn-yard, which was all the prospect the window commanded, was empty; an old liver-and-white pointer, scratching itself in a corner, was the only living thing in it. But while he looked, wondering if the dog had been a good dog in its time, two men came running into the yard with every sign of haste and pressure. One, in a yellow jacket, flung himself against a stable door and vanished within, leaving the door open. The other pounced on a chaise, one of half a dozen ranged under a shed, and by main force dragged it into the open.

The men's actions impressed Vaughan with a vague uneasiness. He listened. Was it fancy, or did he catch the sound of a distant shot? And-there seemed to be an odd murmur in the air. He seized his hat, put on his caped coat-for a cold drizzle was falling-and went downstairs.

The hall was empty, but through the open doorway he could see a knot of people, standing outside, looking up the street. He made for the threshold, and asked the rearmost of the starers what it was.

"Eh, what is it?" the man answered volubly. "Oh, they're gone! It's true enough! And such a crowd as was never seen, I'm told-stoning them, and shouting 'Bloody Blues!' after them. They're gone right away to Keynsham, and glad to be there with whole bones!"

"But what is it?" Vaughan asked impatiently. "What has happened, my man? Who're gone?"

The man turned for the first time, and saw who it was. "You have not heard, sir?" he exclaimed.

"Not a word."

"Not that the people have risen? And most part pulled down the Mansion House? Ay, first thing this morning, sir! They say old Pinney, the Mayor, got out at the back just in time or he'd have been murdered! He's had to send the military away-anyways, the Blues who killed the lad last night on the Pithay."

"Impossible!" Vaughan exclaimed, turning red with anger. "You cannot have heard aright."

"It's as true as true!" the man replied, rubbing his hands in excitement. "As for me," he continued, "I was always for Reform! And this will teach the Lords a lesson! They'll know our mind now, and that Wetherell's a liar, begging your pardon, sir. And the old Corporation's not much better. A set of Tories mostly! If the Welsh Back drinks their cellars dry it won't hurt me, nor Bristol."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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