Again he soothed her and comforted her, and then he raised his voice, the manly tones touched with pathos, and thanked God for His mercy, committing his wife and her little children to His care.
All that week passed in dread and apprehension. The popular feeling grew stronger and stronger against the Recorder, as the head and chief, as far as Bristol was concerned, of the anti-reformers.
Efforts were made to postpone the assizes, or, in the phrase of the day, "Deliver the gaol"; but all their efforts were vain, and the authorities actually despatched a deputation to Lord Melbourne at the Home Office, to beg he would send down a body of soldiers to keep the peace during the Recorder's visit. Lord Melbourne, doubting the expediency of such a movement, tried to get at the opinions of the two members for Bristol. Mr. Baillie was from home, but Mr. Protheroe said he would be answerable for order, and himself accompany Sir Charles Wetherall, if the military were dispensed with.
The idea of an armed force to protect a judge he considered preposterous, and more likely to inflame the people than anything else.
It was a memorable week to all those who lived in Bristol. And when the morning of Saturday, October the twenty-ninth dawned, and the tramp of the civic force was heard on their way to Totterdown to meet the Recorder, many hearts sank within them.
Lord Maythorne had found his way to Great George Street much oftener than his sister, Mrs. Arundel, wished, or Gilbert expected. He took a very lofty standpoint, and vowed that the Recorder was a fine fellow and did what was right, and that he should like to see sacks full of the malcontents thrown into the Float as an easy way of getting rid of them.
Gilbert found silence his safest course with his uncle, and tried to put a restraint on himself when in his presence. He came up from Bristol about four o'clock in the afternoon of this memorable Saturday, weary and dispirited, and found, to his dismay, that his uncle was in the drawing-room.
He was lounging on a sofa, holding a skein of silk for Charlotte Benson's embroidery, affecting, at forty, the airs and manners of a young beau, and talking an immense deal of nonsense to poor Charlotte, which she was only too ready to drink in.