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?”
Flixton looked askance at him. “Ten to one, only what happened last night,” he answered. “You all croaked then; but Brereton was right.”
Vaughan saw that he argued to no purpose. For Flixton, forward and positive in small things and on the surface, was discovered by the emergency; all that now remained of his usual self-assertion was a sense of injury. Vaughan inquired, instead, where he would find Brereton, and as by this time the crowd had clearly outgrown the control of a single man, he contented himself with walking round the Square, and learning, by mingling with the fringe, what manner of spirit moved it.
That spirit, though he heard some ugly threats against Wetherell and the Bishops and the Lords, was rather a reckless and mischievous than a bloodthirsty one. To obtain drink, to destroy this or that gaol, and by and by to destroy all gaols seemed to the crowd the first principles of Reform.
Presently a cry of “To the Bridewell! Come on! To the Bridewell!” was raised, and led by a dozen hobbledehoys, armed with iron bars plucked from the railings, a body of some hundreds trooped off, helter-skelter, in the direction of the prison of that name.
Vaughan saw that someone must be induced to act; and to him the following hours of that wet, dismal Sunday were a waking nightmare. He hurried hither and thither, from Guildhall to Council House, from Brereton’s lodgings to the dragoons’ quarters, striving to effect something and always failing; seeking some cohesion, some decision, some action, and finding none. Always there had just been a meeting, or was going to be a meeting, or would be a meeting by and by. The civil power would not act without the military; and the military did not think itself strong enough to act, but would act if the civil power would do something which the civil power had made up its mind not to do. And meantime the supineness of the mass of the citizens was marvellous. He seemed to be moving endlessly between lines of men who lounged at their doors, and joked, or waited for the crowd to pass that way. Nothing, it seemed to him, would rouse these men to a sense of the position. It would be a lesson to Wetherell, they said. It would be a lesson to the Peers. It would be a lesson to the Tories. The Bridewell was sacked and fired, the great gaol across the New Cut was firing, the Gloucester gaol in the north of the city was threatened. And still it did not occur to these householders, as they looked down the wet, misty streets, that presently it would be a lesson to them.
But at half-past three, with the dusk on that rainy day scarce an hour off, there was a meeting at the Guildhall. Still no cohesion, no action. On the other hand, much recrimination, many opinions. One was for casting all firearms into the float. Another for arming all, fit or unfit. One was for fetching the Fourteenth back, another for sending the Third to join them at Keynsham. One was for appeasing the people by parading a dummy figure of their own Recorder through the city and burning it on College Green. Another for relying on the Political Union. In vain Vaughan warned them that the mob would presently attack private property; in vain he offered, in a few spirited words, to lead the Special Constables to the rescue of the gaol. The meeting, small to begin and always divided, dwindled fast. The handful who were ready to follow him made the support of the military a condition. Everybody said, “To-morrow!” T
o-morrow the posse comitatus might be called out; to-morrow the yeomanry, summoned by the man in the yellow jacket, would be here! To-morrow the soldiers might act. And in fine — To-morrow!
There was over the door of the Council House of those days a statue of Justice, lacking the sword and the bandage. Vaughan, passing out in disgust from the meeting, pointed to it. “There is Bristol, gentlemen,” he said bitterly. “Your authorities have dropped the sword, and until they regain it we are helpless. I have done my best.” And, shrugging his shoulders, he started for Brereton’s lodgings to try a last appeal.
He might well think it necessary. For a night which Bristol was long to remember was closing down upon the city. Though it was Sunday, the churches were empty; in few was a second service held. The streets, on the contrary, were full, in spite of the cold; full of noise and turmoil and disorder; of bands of men hastening up and down with reckless cries and flaring lights, at the bidding of leaders as unwitting. In Queen’s Square the rioters were drinking themselves drunk as at a fair, while amid the falling rain, through which the last stormy gleams of daylight strove to pass, amid the thickening dusk, those who all day long had jested at their doors began to turn doubtful looks on one another. From three points the smoke of fired prisons rose to the clouds and floated in a dense pall over the city; and men whispered that a hundred, two hundred, five hundred criminals had been set free. On Clifton Downs, on Brandon Hill, on College Green, on Redcliffe the thousand gazers of the morning were doubled and redoubled. But they no longer wore the cynical faces of the morning. On the contrary there were some who, following with their eyes the network of waterways laden with inflammable shipping, which pierced the city in every direction — who, tracing these and the cutthroat alleys and lanes about them, predicted that the morning would find Bristol a heap of ruins. And not a few, taking fright at the last moment, precipitately removed their families to Clifton, and locked up their houses.
Vaughan, as he walked through the dusk, had those waterways, those lanes, those alleys, the congested heart of the old city, in his mind. He doubted, even he, if the hour for action was not past. Nor was he surprised when Brereton met his appeal with a flat non possumus. He was more struck with the change which twenty-four hours had wrought in the man. He looked worn and haggard. The shadows under his eyes were deeper, the eyes shone with a more feverish light. His dress, too, was careless and disordered, and while he was not still for a moment, he repeated what he said over and over again as if to persuade himself of its truth.
Naturally Vaughan laid stress on the damage already done. “But, I tell you,” Brereton replied angrily, “we are well clear for that! It’s not a tithe of the harm which would have befallen if I had given way! I tell you, we’re well clear for that. No, I’ve done, thank God, I’ve done the only thing it was possible to do. A little too much, and if I’d succeeded I’d have been hung — for they’re all against me, they’re all against me, above and below! And if I’d failed, a thousand lives would have paid the bill! And do you ever consider, man,” he continued, striking the table, “what a massacre in this crowded place would be! Think of the shipyards, the dockyards, the quays! The water pits and the sunk alleys! How could I clear them with ninety swords? How could I clear them? Eh, with ninety swords? I tell you they never meant me to clear them.”
“But why not clear the wider streets, sir?” Vaughan persisted, “and keep a grip on those?”
“No! I say, no!”
“Yet even now, if you were to move your full force to Queen’s Square, sir, you might clear it. And driven from their headquarters, and taught that they are not going to have it all their own way, the more prudent would fall off and go home.”
“I know,” Brereton answered. “I know the argument. I know it. But who’s to thank for the whole trouble? Your Blues, who went beyond their orders last night. The Fourteenth, sir! The Fourteenth! But I’ll have no more of it. Flixton is of my opinion, too.”
“Flixton is an ass!” Vaughan cried incautiously.
“And you think me one too!” Brereton retorted, with so strange a look that for the first time Vaughan was sure that his mind was tottering. “Well, think what you like! Think what you like! But I’ll trouble you not to take that tone here.”
XXXII
THE AFFRAY AT THE PALACE
A little before the hour at which Vaughan interviewed Brereton, Sir Robert Vermuyden, the arrival of whose travelling carriage at the White Lion about the middle of the afternoon had caused some excitement, walked back to the inn. He was followed by Thomas, the servant who had attended Mary to Bristol, and by another servant. As he passed through the streets the signs of the times were not lost upon him; far from it. But the pride of caste was strong upon him, and he hid his anxiety.
On the threshold of the inn he turned to the servants. “Are you sure,” he asked for the fourth time, “that that was the house at which you left her?”
“Certain sure, Sir Robert,” Thomas answered earnestly.
“And sure — but, ah!” the baronet broke off abruptly, his tone one of relief. “Here’s Mr. Cooke! Go now, but be within call. Mr. Cooke,” — he stepped, as he spoke, in front of that gentleman, who was about to enter the house— “well met!”
Cooke was hot with haste and ire, but at the unexpected sight of Sir Robert he stood still. “God bless my soul!” he cried. “You here, sir?”
“Yes. And you know Bristol well. You can help me.”
“I wish I could help myself!” Cooke cried, forgetting himself in his excitement.
“My daughter is in Bristol.”
“Indeed?” the angry merchant replied. “Then she could not be in a worse place. That is all I can say.”
“I am inclined to agree with you.”
“This is your Reform!”
Sir Robert stared. “Not my Reform, Mr. Cooke,” he said in a tone of displeasure.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Robert,” Cooke rejoined, speaking more coolly. “I beg your pardon. But what I have suffered to-day is beyond telling. By G — d, it’s my opinion that there’s only one man worthy of the name in Bristol! And that’s your cousin, Vaughan!”
Sir Robert struck his stick on the pavement. “Mr. Vaughan?” he exclaimed. “He is here, then? I feared so!”
“Here? You feared? I tell you he’s the only man to be called a man, who is here! If it had not been for him and the way he handled the constables last night we should have been burnt out then instead of to-night! I don’t know that the gain’s much, but for what it’s worth we have him to thank!”
Sir Robert frowned. “I am surprised. He behaved well? Indeed!” he said.
“D —— d well! D —— d well! If there had been half a dozen like him, we’d be out of the wood!”
“Where is he staying?” Sir Robert asked after a moment’s hesitation. “I’ve lost my daughter in the confusion, and I think it possible that he may know where she is.”
“He is staying here at the Lion,” Cooke answered. “But he’s been up and down all day trying to put heart into poltroons.” And he ran over the chief events of the last few hours.
He punctuated the story with oaths and bitter complaints, and perhaps it was for this reason that Sir Robert, after he had heard the main facts, broke away. He went through the hall to the bar where the landlord, who knew him well, came forward and greeted him respectfully. But to Sir Robert’s inquiry as to Mr. Vaughan’s whereabouts he shook his head.
“I wish he was in the house, Sir Robert,” he said in a low voice. “For he’s a marked man in Bristol since last night. I was in the Square myself, and it was wonderful what spirit he put into his men. But the scum and the riffraff who are uppermost to-day say he handled them cruelly, and my daughter tried to persuade him from going out to-day. But he would go, sir.”
Sir Robert reflected with a gloomy face. “Where are Mr. Flixton’s quarters?” he asked at last. He might possibly learn something from him.
The man told him, and Sir Robert summ
oned his servants and went out. It was dark by this time, but a faint glare shone overhead and there was a murmur in the air, as if, in the gloom beneath, the heart of the city was palpitating, in dread of it knew not what. Sir Robert had not far to go. He had barely passed into College Green when he met Flixton under a lamp. And so it happened that two minutes later, Vaughan, on his way from Brereton’s lodgings in Unity Street, came plump upon the two. He might have gone by in ignorance, but as he passed the taller man looked up, and Vaughan with a shock of surprise recognised Sir Robert Vermuyden.
Flixton caught sight of Vaughan at the same moment, and “Here’s your man, Sir Robert,” he cried with a little malice in his tone. “Here, Vaughan,” he continued, “Here’s Sir Robert Vermuyden! He’s looking for you. He wants to know — —”
Sir Robert stopped him. “I will speak for myself, Mr. Flixton, if you please,” he said with the dignity which seldom deserted him. “Mr. Vaughan,” he continued, with a piercing glance, “where is my daughter?”
Vaughan returned his look, frowning. Since the parting in Miss Sibson’s parlour, the remembrance of which still set his blood in a flame, Sir Robert and he had not met. Now, in the wet gloom of College Green, under a rare gaslamp, with turmoil about them, and the murmur of fresh trouble drawing near through the streets, Sir Robert asked him for his daughter! He could have laughed. As it was, “I know nothing, sir, of your daughter,” he replied, in a tone between contempt and anger.
“But,” Sir Robert retorted, “you travelled with her, from London!”
“How do you know that I did?”
“The servants, sir, have told me that you did.”
“Then they must also have told you,” Vaughan rejoined keenly, “that I did not take the liberty of speaking to Miss Vermuyden. And that I left the coach at Chippenham. That being so, I can only refer you,” he continued with a sneer, raising his hat and preparing to move on, “to Mr. Flixton, who went with her the rest of the way to Bristol.”
Complete Works of Stanley J Weyman Page 540