“There is nothing else for it now,” Brereton replied, with a gloomy face and in such a tone that the very men shrank from looking at him; understanding, the very dullest of them, what his feelings must be, and how great his shame, who, thus superseded, saw another successful in that which it had been his duty to attempt.
And what were Vaughan’s feelings? He dared not allow himself the luxury of a glance towards the middle of the Square. Much less—but for a different reason—had he the heart to meet Brereton’s eyes. “I’m not in uniform, sir,” he said. “I can pass through the crowd. If you think fit, and will give me the order, I’ll fetch them, sir?”
Brereton nodded without a word, and Vaughan wheeled his horse to start. As he pushed it clear of the troop he passed Flixton.
“That was capital!” the Honourable Bob cried heartily. “Capital! We’ll handle ’em easily now, till you come back!”
Vaughan did not answer, nor did he look at Flixton; his look would have conveyed too much. Instead, he put his horse into a trot along the east side of the Square, and, regardless of a dropping fire of stones, made for the opening beside the ruins of the Mansion House. At the last moment, he looked back, to see Mary if it were possible. But he had waited too long, he could distinguish only confused forms about the base of the statue; and he must look to himself. His road to Keynsham lay through the lowest and most dangerous part of the city.
But though the streets were full of rough men, navigators and seamen, whose faces were set towards the Square, and who eyed him suspiciously as he rode by them, none made any attempt to stop him. And when he had crossed Bristol Bridge and had gained the more open outskirts towards Totterdown, where he could urge his horse to a gallop, the pale faces of men and women at door and window announced that it was not only the upper or the middle class which had taken fright, and longed for help and order. Through Brislington and up Durley Hill he pounded; and it must be confessed that his heart was light. Whatever came of it, though they court-martialled him, were that possible, though they tried him, he had done something, he had done right, and he had succeeded. Whatever the consequences, whatever the results to himself, he had dared; and his daring, it might be, had saved a city! Of the charge, indeed, he thought nothing, though she had seen it. It was nothing, for the danger had been of the slightest, the defence contemptible. But in setting discipline at defiance, in superseding the officer commanding the troops, in taking the whole responsibility on his own shoulders—a responsibility which few would have dreamed of taking—there he had dared, there he had played the man, there he had risen to the occasion! If he had been a failure in the House, here, by good fortune, he had not been a failure. And she would know it. Oh, happy thought! And happy man, riding out of Bristol with the murk and smoke and fog at his back, and the sunshine on his face!
For the sun was above the horizon as, with full heart, he rode down the hill into Keynsham, and heard the bugle sound “Boots and saddles!” and poured into sympathetic ears—-and to an accompaniment of strong words—the tale of the night’s doings.
* * * * *
An hour later he rode in with the Fourteenth and heard the Blues welcomed with thanksgiving, in the very streets which had stoned them from the city twenty-four hours before. By that time the officer in command of the main body of the Fourteenth at Gloucester had posted over, followed by another troop, and, seeing the state of things, had taken his own line and assumed, though junior to Colonel Brereton, the command of the forces.
After that the thing became a military evolution. One hour, two hours at most, and twenty charges along the quays and through the streets sufficed—at the cost of a dozen lives—to convince the most obstinate of the rabble of several things. Imprimis, that the reign of terror was not come. On the contrary, that law and order, and also Red Judges, survived. That Reform did not spell fire and pillage, and that at these things even a Reforming Government could not wink. In a word, by noon of that day, Monday, and many and many an hour before the ruins had ceased to smoke, the bubble which might have been easily burst before was pricked. Order reigned in Bristol, patrols were everywhere, two thousand zealous constables guarded the streets. And though troops still continued to hasten by every road to the scene, though all England trembled with alarm, and distant Woolwich sent its guns, and Greenwich horsed them, and the Yeomanry of six counties mustered on Clifton Down, or were quartered on the public buildings, the thing was nought by that time. Arthur Vaughan had pricked it in the early morning light when he cried “Charge!” in Queen’s Square.