XXXIITHE AFFRAY AT THE PALACEA 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 summoned 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.”He turned away. But he had not taken two paces before Sir Robert touched his shoulder, and with that habit of command which few questioned. “Wait, sir,” he said, “Wait, if you please. You do not escape me so easily. You will attend to me one moment, if you please. Mr. Flixton accompanied Miss Vermuyden, as did her man and maid, to Miss Sibson’s house. She gave that address to Lady Worcester, in whose care she was; and I sought her there this afternoon. But she is not there.” Sir Robert continued, striving to read Vaughan’s face. “The house is empty. So is the house on either side. I can make no one hear.”“And you come to me for news of her?” Vaughan asked in the tone he had used throughout. He was very sore.“I do.”“You do not think that I am the last person of whom you should ask tidings of your daughter?”“She came here,” Sir Robert answered sternly, “to see Lady Sybil.”Vaughan stared. The answer seemed to be irrelevant. Then he understood. “Oh,” he said, “I see. You are still under the impression that your wife and I are in a conspiracy to delude you? Your daughter also? You think that she is in the plot? And that she gave the schoolmistress’s address to deceive you?”“No!” Sir Robert cried. But, after all, that was what he did think. Had he not told himself, more than once, that she was her mother’s daughter? Had he not told himself that it could not have been by chance that Vaughan and she met a second time on the coach? He knew that she had left London and gone to her mother in defiance of him. He knew that. And though she had entwined herself about his heart, though she had seemed to him all gentleness, goodness, truth—she was still her mother’s daughter! Nevertheless, he said “No!”—and said it angrily.“Then I do not know what you mean!” Vaughan retorted.“I believe that you can tell me something, if you will.”Vaughan looked at him. “I have nothing to tell you,” he said.“You mean, sir, that you will tell me nothing!”“That, if you like.”For nearly half a century the old man had found few to oppose him; and now by good luck he had not time to reply. A man running out of the darkness in the direction of Unity Street—the open space was full of moving groups, of alarms and confusion—caught sight of Vaughan’s face, checked himself and addressed him.“Mr. Vaughan!” he said. “They are coming! They are making for the Palace! The Bishop must be got away, if he’s not gone! I am fetching the Colonel! The Mayor is following with all he can get together. If you will give warning at the Palace, there will be time for his lordship to escape.”“Right!” Vaughan cried, glad to leave his company. And he started without the loss of a moment. Even so, he had not gone twenty paces down the Green before the head of the mob entered it from St. Augustine’s, and passed, with hoarse shouts, along the south side, towards the ancient Archway which led to the Lower Green. It was a question whether he or they reached the Archway first; but he won the race by a score of yards.The view from the Lower Green, which embraced the burning gaol, as well as all Queen’s Square and the Floating Basin that islanded it, had drawn together a number of gazers. These impeded Vaughan’s progress, but he got through them at last, and as the mob burst into the Lower Green he entered the paved passage leading to the Precincts, hurried along it, turned the dark elbow near the inner end, and halted before the high gates which shut off the Cloisters. The Palace door was in the innermost or southeast corner of the Cloisters.It was very dark at the end of the passage; and fortunately! For the gates were fast closed, and before he could, groping, find the knocker, the rabble had entered the passage behind him and cut off his retreat. The high wall which rose on either side made escape impossible. Nor was this all. As he awoke to the trap in which he had placed himself, a voice at his elbow muttered, “My God, we shall be murdered!” And he learned that Sir Robert had followed him.He had no time to remonstrate, nor thought of remonstrance. “Stand flat against the wall!” he muttered, his fingers closing upon the staff in his pocket. “It is our only chance!”He had basely spoken before the leaders of the mob swept round the elbow. They had one light, a flare borne above them, which shone on their tarpaulins and white smocks, and on the huge ship-hammers they carried. There was a single moment of great peril, and instinctively Vaughan stepped before the older man. He could not have made a happier movement, for it seemed—to the crowd who caught a glimpse of the two and took them for some of their own party—as if he advanced against the gates along with their leaders.The peril indeed, or the worst of it, was over the moment they fell into the ranks. “Hammers to the front!” was the cry. And Sir Robert and Vaughan were thrust back into the second line, that those who wielded the hammers might have room. Vaughan tipped his hat over his face, and the villains who pressed upon the two and jostled them, and whose cries of “Burn him out! Burn the old devil out!” were dictated by greed rather than by hate, were too full of the work in hand to regard their neighbours closely. In three or four minutes—long minutes they seemed to the two inclosed in that unsavoury company—the bars gave way, the gates were thrown open, and Vaughan and Sir Robert, hardly keeping their feet in the rush, were borne into the Cloisters.The rabble, with cries of triumph, raced across the dark court to the Palace door and began to use their hammers on that. Vaughan hoped that the Bishop had had warning—as a fact he had escaped some hours earlier. At any rate he and his companion could do no more, and under cover of the darkness they retreated to the porch of a smaller house which opened on the Cloisters. Here they were safe for the time; and, his heart opened and his tongue loosed by the danger through which they had passed, he turned to his companion and remonstrated with him.“Sir Robert,” he said, “this is no place for a man of your years.”“England will soon be no place for any man of my years,” the Baronet answered bitterly. “I would your leaders, sir, were here to see their work! I would Lord Grey were here to see how well his friends carry out his hints!”“I doubt if he would be more pleased than you or I!” Vaughan answered. “In the meantime——”“The soldiers! Have a care!” The alarm came from the gate by which they had entered, and Vaughan broke off, with an exclamation of joy. “We have them now!” he said. “And red-handed! Brereton has only to close the passage, and he must take them all!”But the rioters took that view also, and the alarm. And they streamed out panic-stricken. When the soldiers rode in, Brereton at their head, not more than twenty or thirty remained in the Precincts. And on that followed the most remarkable of all the scenes that disgraced Bristol that night; the scene which beyond others convinced many of the complicity of the troops, if not of the Government, in the outrage.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.
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 summoned 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.”
He turned away. But he had not taken two paces before Sir Robert touched his shoulder, and with that habit of command which few questioned. “Wait, sir,” he said, “Wait, if you please. You do not escape me so easily. You will attend to me one moment, if you please. Mr. Flixton accompanied Miss Vermuyden, as did her man and maid, to Miss Sibson’s house. She gave that address to Lady Worcester, in whose care she was; and I sought her there this afternoon. But she is not there.” Sir Robert continued, striving to read Vaughan’s face. “The house is empty. So is the house on either side. I can make no one hear.”
“And you come to me for news of her?” Vaughan asked in the tone he had used throughout. He was very sore.
“I do.”
“You do not think that I am the last person of whom you should ask tidings of your daughter?”
“She came here,” Sir Robert answered sternly, “to see Lady Sybil.”
Vaughan stared. The answer seemed to be irrelevant. Then he understood. “Oh,” he said, “I see. You are still under the impression that your wife and I are in a conspiracy to delude you? Your daughter also? You think that she is in the plot? And that she gave the schoolmistress’s address to deceive you?”
“No!” Sir Robert cried. But, after all, that was what he did think. Had he not told himself, more than once, that she was her mother’s daughter? Had he not told himself that it could not have been by chance that Vaughan and she met a second time on the coach? He knew that she had left London and gone to her mother in defiance of him. He knew that. And though she had entwined herself about his heart, though she had seemed to him all gentleness, goodness, truth—she was still her mother’s daughter! Nevertheless, he said “No!”—and said it angrily.
“Then I do not know what you mean!” Vaughan retorted.
“I believe that you can tell me something, if you will.”
Vaughan looked at him. “I have nothing to tell you,” he said.
“You mean, sir, that you will tell me nothing!”
“That, if you like.”
For nearly half a century the old man had found few to oppose him; and now by good luck he had not time to reply. A man running out of the darkness in the direction of Unity Street—the open space was full of moving groups, of alarms and confusion—caught sight of Vaughan’s face, checked himself and addressed him.
“Mr. Vaughan!” he said. “They are coming! They are making for the Palace! The Bishop must be got away, if he’s not gone! I am fetching the Colonel! The Mayor is following with all he can get together. If you will give warning at the Palace, there will be time for his lordship to escape.”
“Right!” Vaughan cried, glad to leave his company. And he started without the loss of a moment. Even so, he had not gone twenty paces down the Green before the head of the mob entered it from St. Augustine’s, and passed, with hoarse shouts, along the south side, towards the ancient Archway which led to the Lower Green. It was a question whether he or they reached the Archway first; but he won the race by a score of yards.
The view from the Lower Green, which embraced the burning gaol, as well as all Queen’s Square and the Floating Basin that islanded it, had drawn together a number of gazers. These impeded Vaughan’s progress, but he got through them at last, and as the mob burst into the Lower Green he entered the paved passage leading to the Precincts, hurried along it, turned the dark elbow near the inner end, and halted before the high gates which shut off the Cloisters. The Palace door was in the innermost or southeast corner of the Cloisters.
It was very dark at the end of the passage; and fortunately! For the gates were fast closed, and before he could, groping, find the knocker, the rabble had entered the passage behind him and cut off his retreat. The high wall which rose on either side made escape impossible. Nor was this all. As he awoke to the trap in which he had placed himself, a voice at his elbow muttered, “My God, we shall be murdered!” And he learned that Sir Robert had followed him.
He had no time to remonstrate, nor thought of remonstrance. “Stand flat against the wall!” he muttered, his fingers closing upon the staff in his pocket. “It is our only chance!”
He had basely spoken before the leaders of the mob swept round the elbow. They had one light, a flare borne above them, which shone on their tarpaulins and white smocks, and on the huge ship-hammers they carried. There was a single moment of great peril, and instinctively Vaughan stepped before the older man. He could not have made a happier movement, for it seemed—to the crowd who caught a glimpse of the two and took them for some of their own party—as if he advanced against the gates along with their leaders.
The peril indeed, or the worst of it, was over the moment they fell into the ranks. “Hammers to the front!” was the cry. And Sir Robert and Vaughan were thrust back into the second line, that those who wielded the hammers might have room. Vaughan tipped his hat over his face, and the villains who pressed upon the two and jostled them, and whose cries of “Burn him out! Burn the old devil out!” were dictated by greed rather than by hate, were too full of the work in hand to regard their neighbours closely. In three or four minutes—long minutes they seemed to the two inclosed in that unsavoury company—the bars gave way, the gates were thrown open, and Vaughan and Sir Robert, hardly keeping their feet in the rush, were borne into the Cloisters.
The rabble, with cries of triumph, raced across the dark court to the Palace door and began to use their hammers on that. Vaughan hoped that the Bishop had had warning—as a fact he had escaped some hours earlier. At any rate he and his companion could do no more, and under cover of the darkness they retreated to the porch of a smaller house which opened on the Cloisters. Here they were safe for the time; and, his heart opened and his tongue loosed by the danger through which they had passed, he turned to his companion and remonstrated with him.
“Sir Robert,” he said, “this is no place for a man of your years.”
“England will soon be no place for any man of my years,” the Baronet answered bitterly. “I would your leaders, sir, were here to see their work! I would Lord Grey were here to see how well his friends carry out his hints!”
“I doubt if he would be more pleased than you or I!” Vaughan answered. “In the meantime——”
“The soldiers! Have a care!” The alarm came from the gate by which they had entered, and Vaughan broke off, with an exclamation of joy. “We have them now!” he said. “And red-handed! Brereton has only to close the passage, and he must take them all!”
But the rioters took that view also, and the alarm. And they streamed out panic-stricken. When the soldiers rode in, Brereton at their head, not more than twenty or thirty remained in the Precincts. And on that followed the most remarkable of all the scenes that disgraced Bristol that night; the scene which beyond others convinced many of the complicity of the troops, if not of the Government, in the outrage.
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.