XXXIII
FIRE
Sir Robert and his companion might have knocked longer and moreloudly, and still to no purpose. For the schoolmistress, prepared towitness a certain amount of disorder on the Saturday, had been takenaback by the sight which met her eyes when she rose on Sunday morning.And long before noon she had sent her servants to their friends,locked up her house, and gone next door, to dispel by her cheerfulface and her comfortable common sense the fears which she knew wouldprevail there. The sick lady was not in a state to withstand alarm;Mary was a young girl and timid; and neither the landlady nor LadySybil's maid were persons of strong mind. Miss Sibson felt that herewas an excellent occasion for the display of that sturdy indifferencewith which firm nerves and a long experience of Bristol elections hadendowed her.
"La, my dear," was her first remark, "it's all noise and nonsense!They look fierce, but there's not a man of them all, that if I tookhim soundly by the ear and said, 'John Thomas Gaisford, I know youwell and your wife! You live in the Pithay, and if you don't gostraight home this minute I'll tell her of your goings on!'--there'snot one of them, my dear," with a jolly laugh, "wouldn't sneak offwith his tail between his legs! Hurt us, my lady? I'd like to see themdoing it. Still, it will be no harm if we lock the door downstairs,and answer no knocks. We shall be cosy upstairs, and see all that's tobe seen besides!"
These were Miss Sibson's opinions, a little after noon on the Sunday.Nor, when the day began to draw in, without abating the turmoil, didshe recant them aloud. But when the servant of the house, who foundamusement in listening at the locked door to the talk of those whopassed, came open-eyed to announce that the people had fired theBridewell, and were attacking the gaol, Miss Sibson did rub her nosereflectively. And privately she began to wonder whether the propheciesof evil, which both parties had sown broadcast, were to be fulfilled.
"It's that nasty Brougham!" she said. "Alderman Daniel told me that hewas stirring up the devil; and we're going to get the dust. But la,bless your ladyship," she continued comfortably, "I know the Bristollads, and they'll not hurt us. Just a gaol or two, for the sake of thefrolic. My dear, your mother'll have her tea, and will feel the betterfor it. And we'll draw the curtains and light the lamps and take noheed. Maybe there'll be bones broken, but they'll not be ours!"
Lady Sybil, with her face turned away, muttered something about Paris.
"Well, your ladyship knows Paris and I don't," the schoolmistressreplied respectfully. "I can fancy anything there. But you may dependupon it, my lady, England is different. I know old Alderman Danielcalls Lord John Russell 'Lord John Robespierre,' and says he's worsethan a Jacobin. But I'll never believe he'd cut the King's head off!Never! And don't you believe it, either, my lady. No, English areEnglish! There's none like them, and never will be. All the same," sheconcluded, "I shall set 'Honour the King!' for a copy when the youngladies come back."
Her views might not have convinced by themselves. But taken with teaand buttered toast, a good fire and a singing kettle, they availed.Lady Sybil was a shade easier that afternoon; and, naturally of a highcourage, found a certain alleviation in the exciting doings under herwindows. She was gracious to Miss Sibson, whose outpourings shereceived with languid amusement; and when Mary was not looking, shefollowed her daughter's movements with mournful eyes. Uncertain as thewind, she was this evening in her best mood; as patient as she couldbe fractious, and as gentle as she was sometimes violent. She scoutedthe notion of danger with all Miss Sibson's decision; and after teashe insisted that the lights should be shaded, and her couch bewheeled to the window, in order that, propped high with pillows, shemight amuse herself with the hurly-burly in the Square below.
"To be sure," Miss Sibson commented, "it will do no good to anyone,this; and many a poor chap will suffer for it by and by. That's theworst of these Broughams and Besoms, my lady. It's the low down thatswallow the dust. It's very fine to cry 'King and Reform!' and drinkthe Corporation wine! But it will be 'Between our sovereign lord theKing and the prisoner at the bar!' one of these days! And theirthroats will be dry enough then!"
"Poor misguided people!" Mary murmured.
"They've all learned the Church Catechism," the schoolmistress repliedshrewdly. "Or they should have; it's lucky for them--ay, you mayshout, my lads--that there's many a slip between the neck and therope--Lord ha' mercy!"
The last words fitted the context well enough; but they fell soabruptly from her lips that Mary, who was bending over her mother,looked up in alarm. "What is it?" she asked.
"Only," Miss Sibson answered with composure, "what I ought to havesaid long ago--that nothing can be worse for her ladyship than thecold air that comes in at the cracks of this window!"
"It's not that," Lady Sybil replied, smiling. "They have set fire tothe Mansion House, Mary. You can see the flames in the room on thefarther side of the door."
Mary uttered an exclamation of horror, and they all looked out. TheMansion House was the most distant house on the north, or left-hand,side of the Square, viewed from the window at which they stood; thehouse next Miss Sibson's being about the middle of the west side.Nearer them, on the same side as the Mansion House, stood anotherpublic building--the Custom House. And nearer again, being the mostnortherly house on their own side of the Square, stood a third--theExcise Office.
They had thus a fair, though a side view, of the front of the MansionHouse, and were able to watch, with what calmness they might, theflames shoot from one window after another; until, presently, meetingin a waving veil of fire, they hid--save when the wind blew themaside--all the upper part of the house from their eyes.
A great fire in the night, the savage, uncontrollable revolt of man'stamed servant--is at all times a terrible sight. Nor on this occasionwas it only the horror of the flames, roaring and crackling andpouring forth a million of sparks, which chained their eyes. For asthese rose, they shed an intense light, not only on the heights ofRedcliffe, visible above the east side of the Square, and on thestately tower which rose from them, but on the multitude below; on thehurrying forms that, monkey-like, played before the flames and seemedto feed them, and on a still stranger sight, the expanse of up-turnedfaces that, in the rear of the active rioters, extended to thefarthest limit of the Square.
For it was the quiescence, it was the inertness of the gazing crowdwhich most appalled the spectators at the window. To see that greathouse burn and to see no man stretch forth a hand to quench it, thisterrified. "Oh, but it is frightful! It is horrible!" Mary exclaimed.
"I should like to knock their heads together!" Miss Sibson criedsternly. "What are the soldiers doing? What is anyone doing?"
"They have hounded on the dogs," Lady Sybil said slowly--she aloneseemed to view the sight with a dispassionate eye, "and they arebiting instead of barking! That is all."
"Dogs?" Miss Sibson echoed.
"Ay, the dogs of Reform!" Lady Sybil replied cynically. "Brougham'sdogs! Grey's dogs! Russell's dogs! I could wish Sir Robert were here,it would so please him to see his words fulfilled!" And then, as insurprise at the thing she had uttered, "I wonder when I wished toplease him before?" she muttered.
"Oh, but it is frightful!" Mary repeated, unable to remove her eyesfrom the flames.
It was frightful; even while they were all sane people in the room,and, whatever their fears, restrained them. What then was it a momentlater, when the woman of the house burst in upon them, with a maid inwild hysterics clinging to her, and another on the threshold screaming"Fire! Fire!"
"It's all on fire at the back!" the woman panted. "It's on fire, it'sall on fire, my lady, at the back!"
"It's all--what?" Miss Sibson rejoined, in a tone which had been knownto quell the pertest of seventeen-year-old rebels. "It is what, woman?On fire at the back? And if it is, is that a ground for forgettingyour manners? Where is your deportment? Fire, indeed! Are you awarewhose room this is? For shame! And you, silly," she continued,addressing herself
to the maid, "be silent, and go outside, as becomesyou."
But the maid, though she retreated to the door, continued to scream,and the woman of the house to wring her hands. "You had better go andsee what it is," Lady Sybil said, turning to the schoolmistress. For,strange to say, she who a few hours before had groaned if a coal fellon the hearth, and complained if her book slid from the couch, was nowquite calm.
"They are afraid of their own shadows," Miss Sibson criedcontemptuously. "It is the reflection they have seen."
But she went. And as it was but a step to a window overlooking therear, Mary went with her.
They looked. And for a moment something like panic seized them. Theback of the house was not immediately upon the quay, but through anopening in the warehouses which fringed the latter it commanded a viewof the water and the masts, and of the sloping ground which rose toCollege Green. And high above, dyeing the Floating Basin crimson, thePalace showed in a glow of fire; fire which seemed to be on the pointof attacking the Cathedral, of which every pinnacle and buttress, withevery chimney of the old houses clustered about it, stood out in thehot glare. It was clear that the building had been burning some time,for the roar of the flames could be heard, and almost the hiss of thewater as innumerable sparks floated down to it.
Horror-struck, Mary grasped her companion's arm. And "Good Heavens!"Miss Sibson muttered. "The whole city will be burned!"
"And we are between the two fires," Mary faltered. An involuntaryshudder might be pardoned her.
"Ay, but far enough from them," the schoolmistress answered,recovering herself. "On this side, the water makes us safe."
"And on the other?"
"La, my dear," Miss Sibson replied confidently. "The folks are notgoing to burn their own houses. They are angry with the Corporation.They hold them all one with Wetherell. And for the Bishop, they've soabused him the last six months that he's hardly dared to show his wigon the streets, and it's no wonder the poor ignorants think him fairgame. But we're just ordinary folk, and they'll no more harm us thanfly. But we must go back to your mother."
They went back, and wisely Miss Sibson made no mystery of the truth;repeating, however, those arguments against giving way to alarm whichshe had used to Mary.
"The poor dear gentleman has lost his house," she concluded piously."But we should be thankful he has another."
Lady Sybil took the news with calmness; her eyes indeed seemedbrighter, as if she enjoyed the excitement. But the frightened womanat the door refused to be comforted, and underlying the courage of thetwo who stood by Lady Sybil's couch was a secret uneasiness, whichevery cheer of the crowd below the windows, every "huzza" which rosefrom the revellers, every wild rush from one part of the Square toanother tended to strengthen. In her heart Miss Sibson owned that inall her experience she had known nothing like this; no disorder soflagrant, so unbridled, so daring. She could carry her mind back tothe days when the cheek of England had paled at the Massacres ofSeptember in Paris. The deeds of '98 in Ireland, she had read morningby morning in the journals. The Three Days of July, with their streetfighting, were fresh in all men's minds--it was impossible to ignoretheir bearing on the present conflagration. And if here was not thedawn of Revolution, if here were not signs of the crash of things,appearances deceived her. But even so, she was not to be dismayed. Shebelieved that even in revolutions a comfortable courage, sound sense,and a good appetite went far. And "I'd like to hear John ThomasGaisford talk to me of guillotines!" she thought. "I'd make his earsburn!"
Meanwhile, Mary was thinking that, whatever the emergency, her motherwas too ill to be moved. Miss Sibson might be right, the danger mightbe remote. But it was barely midnight; and long hours of suspense mustbe lived through before morning came. Meanwhile there were only womenin the house, and, bravely as the girl controlled herself, a cry morereckless than usual, an outburst of cheering more savage, a rush belowthe windows, drove the blood to her heart. And presently, while shegazed with shrinking eyes on the crowd, now blood-red in the glow ofthe burning timbers, now lost for a moment in darkness, a groan brokefrom it, and she saw pale flames appear at the windows of the housenext the Mansion House. They shot up rapidly, licking the front of thebuildings.
Miss Sibson saw them at the same moment, and "The villains!" sheexclaimed. "God grant it be an accident!"
Mary's lips moved, but no sound came from them.
Lady Sybil laughed her shrill laugh. "The curs are biting bravely!"she said. "What will Bristol say to this?"
"Show them that they have gone too far!" Miss Sibson answered stoutly."The soldiers will act now, and put them in their places, as they didin Wiltshire in the winter! And high time too!"
But though they watched in tense anxiety for the first sign of actionon the part of the troops, for the first movement of the authorities,they gazed in vain. The miscreants, who fed the flames and spreadthem, were few; and in the Square were thousands who had property tolose, and friends and interests in jeopardy. If a tithe only of thosewho looked on, quiescent and despairing, had raised their hands, theycould have beaten the rabble from the place. But no man moved. Thefear of coming trouble, which had been long in the air, paralysed eventhe courageous, while the ignorant and the timid believed that theysaw a revolution in progress, and that henceforth the mob wouldrule--and woe betide the man who set himself against it! As it hadbeen in Paris, so it would be here. And so the flames spread, beforethe eyes of the terrified women at the window, before the eyes of theinert multitude, from the house first attacked to its neighbour, andfrom that to the next and the next. Until the noise of theconflagration, the crash of sinking walls, the crackling of beams wereas the roar of falling waters, and the Square in that hideous redlight, which every moment deepened, resembled an inferno, in which thedevils of hell played awful pranks, and wherein, most terrible sightof all, thousands who in ordinary times held the salvation of propertyto be the first of duties, stood with scared eyes, passive and cowed.
It was such a scene--and they were only women, and alone in thehouse--as the mind cannot imagine and the eye views but once in ageneration, nor ever forgets. In quiet Clifton, and on St. Michael'sHill, children were snatched from their midnight slumbers and borneinto the open, that they might see the city stretched below them in apit of flame, with the overarching fog at once confining andreflecting the glare. Dundry Tower, five miles from the scene, shone ared portent visible for leagues; and in Chepstow and South Monmouth,beyond the wide estuary of the Severn, the light was such that mencould see to read. From all the distant Mendips, and from the Forestof Dean, miners and charcoal-burners gazed southward with scaredfaces, and told one another that the revolution was begun; whileLansdowne Chase sent riders galloping up the London Road with the newsthat all the West was up. Long before dawn on the Monday horsemen andyellow chaises were carrying the news through the night to Gloucester,to Southampton, to Salisbury, to Exeter, to every place where scantycompanies of foot lay, or yeomanry had their headquarters. And wherethese passed, alarming the sleeping inns and posthouses, panic sprangup upon their heels, and the travellers on the down nightcoachesmarvelled at the tales which met them with the daylight.
If the sight viewed from a distance was so terrible as to appal awhole countryside, if, on those who gazed at it from vantage spots ofsafety, and did not guess at the dreadful details, it left animpression of terror never to be effaced, what was it to the threewomen who, in the Square itself, watched the onward march of theflames towards them, were blinded by the glare, choked by the smoke,deafened by the roar? Whom distance saved from no feature of the sceneplayed under their windows: who could shun neither the savage cries ofthe drunken rabble, dancing before the doomed houses, nor the sight,scarce less amazing, of the insensibility which watched the march ofthe flames and stretched forth not a finger to stay them! Who, chainedby Lady Sybil's weakness to the place where they stood, saw houseafter house go up in flames, until all the side of the Squareadjoining their own was a wall of fire; and who then were left toguess the prog
ress, swift or slow, which the element was makingtowards them! For whom the copper-hued fog above them must haveseemed, indeed, the roof of a furnace, from which escape grew momentby moment less likely?