But Lady Sybil did not wince. “Then why did you do it?” she retorted, “Why did you do it? Why were you so foolish as to stoop to such things? I’m sure you didn’t get your poor spirit from me! And Vermuyden was as stiff as a poker! But there! I remember the prince saying once that ladies went out of fashion with hoops, and gentlemen with snuffboxes. You make me think he was right. Oh, clumsy!” she continued, raising her voice, “now you are turning the light on my face! Do you wish to see me hideous?”
Mary moved it. “Is that better, mother?” she asked.
Lady Sybil cast a resentful glance at her. “There, there, let it be!” she said. “You can’t help it. You’re like your father. He could never do anything right! I suppose I am doomed to have none but helpless people about me.”
And so on, and so on. Like many invalids, she was most lively at night, and she continued to complain through long restless hours, with the candles burning lower and lower, and the snuffers coming into more frequent request. Until with the chill before the dawn she fell at last into a fitful sleep; and Mary, creeping to the close-curtained windows to cool her weary eyes, peeped out and saw the grey of the morning. Outside, the Square was beginning to discover its half-bare trees and long straight rows of houses. Through openings, here and there, the water glimmered mistily; and on the height facing her, the tall tower of St. Mary Redcliffe rose above the roofs and pointed skywards. Little did Mary think what the day would bring forth in that grey deserted place on which she looked; or in what changed conditions, under what stress of mind and heart, she would, before the sun set twice, view that Square.
XXX
THE MAYOR’S RECEPTION IN QUEEN’S SQUARE
The day, of which Mary watched the cloudy opening from her mother’s window, was drawing to a close; and from a house in the same Square—but on the north side, whereas Miss Sibson’s was on the west—another pair of eyes looked out, while a heart, which a few hours before had been as sore as hers, rose a little at the prospect. Arthur Vaughan, ignorant of her proximity—to love’s shame be it said—sat in a window on the first floor of the Mansion House, and, undismayed by the occasional crash of glass, watched the movements of the swaying, shouting, mocking crowd; a crowd, numbering some thousands, which occupied the middle space of the Square, as well as the roadways, clustered upon the Immortal Memory, overflowed into the side streets, and now joined in one mighty roar of “Reform! Reform!” now groaned thunderously at the name of Wetherell. Behind Vaughan in the same room, the drawing-room of the official residence, some twenty or thirty persons argued and gesticulated; at one time approaching a window to settle a debated point, at another scattering with exclamations of anger as a stone fell or some other missile alighted among them.
“Boo! Boo!” yelled the mob below. “Throw him out! Reform! Reform!”
Vaughan looked down on the welter of moving faces. He saw that the stone-throwers were few, and the daredevils, who at times adventured to pull up the railings which guarded the forecourt, were fewer. But he saw also that the mass sympathised with them, egged them on, and applauded their exploits. And he wondered what would happen when night fell, and wondered again why the peaceable citizens who wrangled behind him made light of the position. The glass was flying, here and there an iron bar had vanished from the railings, night was approaching. For him it was very well. He had accompanied Brereton to Bristol to see what would happen, and for his part, if the adventure proved to be of the first class, so much the better. But the good pursy citizens behind him, who, when they were not deafening the little Mayor with their counsels, were making a jest of the turmoil, had wives and daughters, goods and houses within reach. And in their place he felt that he would have been far from easy.
By and by it appeared that some of them shared his feelings. For presently, in a momentary lull of the babel outside, a voice he knew rose above those in the room.
“Nothing? You call it nothing?” Mr. Cooke—for his was the voice—cried. “Nothing, that his Majesty’s Judge has been hooted and pelted from Totterdown to the Guildhall? Nothing, that the Recorder of Bristol has been hunted like a criminal from the Guildhall to this place! You call it nothing, sir, that his Majesty’s Commission has been flouted for six hours past by all the riffraff of the Docks? And with half of decent Bristol looking on and applauding!”