Chippinge Borough

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!"