Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (109 page)

“What next?” was the question of the listeners. Nothing came yet. The mill remained mute as a mausoleum.

“He
cannot
be alone!” whispered Caroline.

“I would stake all I have that he is as little alone as he is alarmed,” responded Shirley.

Shots were discharged by the rioters. Had the defenders waited for this signal? It seemed so. The hitherto inert and passive mill woke; fire flashed from its empty window-frames; a volley of musketry pealed sharp through the Hollow.

“Moore speaks at last!” said Shirley, “and he seems to have the gift of tongues. That was not a single voice.”

“He has been forbearing. No one can accuse him of rashness,” alleged Caroline. “Their discharge preceded his. They broke his gates and his windows. They fired at his garrison before he repelled them.”

What was going on now? It seemed difficult, in the darkness, to distinguish; but something terrible, a still-renewing tumult, was obvious — fierce attacks, desperate repulses. The mill-yard, the mill itself, was full of battle movement. There was scarcely any cessation now of the discharge of firearms; and there was struggling, rushing, trampling, and shouting between. The aim of the assailants seemed to be to enter the mill, that of the defenders to beat them off. They heard the rebel leader cry, “To the back, lads!” They heard a voice retort, “Come round; we will meet you.”

“To the counting-house!” was the order again.

“Welcome! we shall have you there!” was the response. And accordingly the fiercest blaze that had yet glowed, the loudest rattle that had yet been heard, burst from the counting-house front when the mass of rioters rushed up to it.

The voice that had spoken was Moore’s own voice. They could tell by its tones that his soul was now warm with the conflict; they could guess that the fighting animal was roused in every one of those men there struggling together, and was for the time quite paramount above the rational human being.

Both the girls felt their faces glow and their pulses throb; both knew they would do no good by rushing down into the
mêlée
. They desired neither to deal nor to receive blows; but they could not have run away — Caroline no more than Shirley; they could not have fainted; they could not have taken their eyes from the dim, terrible scene — from the mass of cloud, of smoke, the musket-lightning — for the world.

“How and when would it end?” was the demand throbbing in their throbbing pulses. “Would a juncture arise in which they could be useful?” was what they waited to see; for though Shirley put off their too-late arrival with a jest, and was ever ready to satirize her own or any other person’s enthusiasm, she would have given a farm of her best land for a chance of rendering good service.

The chance was not vouchsafed her; the looked-for juncture never came. It was not likely. Moore had expected this attack for days, perhaps weeks; he was prepared for it at every point. He had fortified and garrisoned his mill, which in itself was a strong building. He was a cool, brave man; he stood to the defence with unflinching firmness. Those who were with him caught his spirit, and copied his demeanour. The rioters had never been so met before. At other mills they had attacked they had found no resistance; an organized, resolute defence was what they never dreamed of encountering. When their leaders saw the steady fire kept up from the mill, witnessed the composure and determination of its owner, heard themselves coolly defied and invited on to death, and beheld their men falling wounded round them, they felt that nothing was to be done here. In haste they mustered their forces, drew them away from the building. A roll was called over, in which the men answered to figures instead of names. They dispersed wide over the fields, leaving silence and ruin behind them. The attack, from its commencement to its termination, had not occupied an hour.

Day was by this time approaching; the west was dim, the east beginning to gleam. It would have seemed that the girls who had watched this conflict would now wish to hasten to the victors, on whose side all their interest had been enlisted; but they only very cautiously approached the now battered mill, and when suddenly a number of soldiers and gentlemen appeared at the great door opening into the yard, they quickly stepped aside into a shed, the deposit of old iron and timber, whence they could see without being seen.

It was no cheering spectacle. These premises were now a mere blot of desolation on the fresh front of the summer dawn. All the copse up the Hollow was shady and dewy, the hill at its head was green; but just here, in the centre of the sweet glen, Discord, broken loose in the night from control, had beaten the ground with his stamping hoofs, and left it waste and pulverized. The mill yawned all ruinous with unglazed frames; the yard was thickly bestrewn with stones and brickbats; and close under the mill, with the glittering fragments of the shattered windows, muskets and other weapons lay here and there. More than one deep crimson stain was visible on the gravel, a human body lay quiet on its face near the gates, and five or six wounded men writhed and moaned in the bloody dust.

Miss Keeldar’s countenance changed at this view. It was the after-taste of the battle, death and pain replacing excitement and exertion. It was the blackness the bright fire leaves when its blaze is sunk, its warmth failed, and its glow faded.

“This is what I wished to prevent,” she said, in a voice whose cadence betrayed the altered impulse of her heart.

“But you could not prevent it; you did your best — it was in vain,” said Caroline comfortingly. “Don’t grieve, Shirley.”

“I am sorry for those poor fellows,” was the answer, while the spark in her glance dissolved to dew. “Are any within the mill hurt, I wonder? Is that your uncle?”

“It is, and there is Mr. Malone; and, O Shirley, there is Robert!”

“Well” (resuming her former tone), “don’t squeeze your fingers quite into my hand. I see. There is nothing wonderful in that. We knew he, at least, was here, whoever might be absent.”

“He is coming here towards us, Shirley!”

“Towards the pump, that is to say, for the purpose of washing his hands and his forehead, which has got a scratch, I perceive.”

“He bleeds, Shirley. Don’t hold me. I must go.”

“Not a step.”

“He is hurt, Shirley!”

“Fiddlestick!”

“But I
must
go to him. I wish to go so much. I cannot bear to be restrained.”

“What for?”

“To speak to him, to ask how he is, and what I can do for him.”

“To tease and annoy him; to make a spectacle of yourself and him before those soldiers, Mr. Malone, your uncle, et cetera. Would he like it, think you? Would you like to remember it a week hence?”

“Am I always to be curbed and kept down?” demanded Caroline, a little passionately.

“For his sake, yes; and still more for your own. I tell you, if you showed yourself now you would repent it an hour hence, and so would Robert.”

“You think he would not like it, Shirley?”

“Far less than he would like our stopping him to say good-night, which you were so sore about.”

“But that was all play; there was no danger.”

“And this is serious work; he must be unmolested.”

“I only wish to go to him because he is my cousin — you understand?”

“I quite understand. But now, watch him. He has bathed his forehead, and the blood has ceased trickling. His hurt is really a mere graze; I can see it from hence. He is going to look after the wounded men.”

Accordingly Mr. Moore and Mr. Helstone went round the yard, examining each prostrate form. They then gave directions to have the wounded taken up and carried into the mill. This duty being performed, Joe Scott was ordered to saddle his master’s horse and Mr. Helstone’s pony, and the two gentlemen rode away full gallop, to seek surgical aid in different directions.

Caroline was not yet pacified.

“Shirley, Shirley, I should have liked to speak one word to him before he went,” she murmured, while the tears gathered glittering in her eyes.

“Why do you cry, Lina?” asked Miss Keeldar a little sternly. “You ought to be glad instead of sorry. Robert has escaped any serious harm; he is victorious; he has been cool and brave in combat; he is now considerate in triumph. Is this a time — are these causes for weeping?”

“You do not know what I have in my heart,” pleaded the other — “what pain, what distraction — nor whence it arises. I can understand that you should exult in Robert’s greatness and goodness; so do I, in one sense, but in another I feel
so
miserable. I am too far removed from him. I used to be nearer. Let me alone, Shirley. Do let me cry a few minutes; it relieves me.”

Miss Keeldar, feeling her tremble in every limb, ceased to expostulate with her. She went out of the shed, and left her to weep in peace. It was the best plan. In a few minutes Caroline rejoined her, much calmer. She said, with her natural, docile, gentle manner, “Come, Shirley, we will go home now. I promise not to try to see Robert again till he asks for me. I never will try to push myself on him. I thank you for restraining me just now.”

“I did it with a good intention,” returned Miss Keeldar.

“Now, dear Lina,” she continued, “let us turn our faces to the cool morning breeze, and walk very quietly back to the rectory. We will steal in as we stole out. None shall know where we have been or what we have seen to-night; neither taunt nor misconstruction can consequently molest us. To-morrow we will see Robert, and be of good cheer; but I will say no more, lest I should begin to cry too. I seem hard towards you, but I am not so.”

CHAPTER XX.

TO-MORROW.

The two girls met no living soul on their way back to the rectory. They let themselves in noiselessly; they stole upstairs unheard — the breaking morning gave them what light they needed. Shirley sought her couch immediately; and though the room was strange — for she had never slept at the rectory before — and though the recent scene was one unparalleled for excitement and terror by any it had hitherto been her lot to witness, yet scarce was her head laid on the pillow ere a deep, refreshing sleep closed her eyes and calmed her senses.

Perfect health was Shirley’s enviable portion. Though warm-hearted and sympathetic, she was not nervous; powerful emotions could rouse and sway without exhausting her spirit. The tempest troubled and shook her while it lasted, but it left her elasticity unbent, and her freshness quite unblighted. As every day brought her stimulating emotion, so every night yielded her recreating rest. Caroline now watched her sleeping, and read the serenity of her mind in the beauty of her happy countenance.

For herself, being of a different temperament, she could not sleep. The commonplace excitement of the tea-drinking and school-gathering would alone have sufficed to make her restless all night; the effect of the terrible drama which had just been enacted before her eyes was not likely to quit her for days. It was vain even to try to retain a recumbent posture; she sat up by Shirley’s side, counting the slow minutes, and watching the June sun mount the heavens.

Life wastes fast in such vigils as Caroline had of late but too often kept — vigils during which the mind, having no pleasant food to nourish it, no manna of hope, no hived-honey of joyous memories, tries to live on the meagre diet of wishes, and failing to derive thence either delight or support, and feeling itself ready to perish with craving want, turns to philosophy, to resolution, to resignation; calls on all these gods for aid, calls vainly — is unheard, unhelped, and languishes.

Caroline was a Christian; therefore in trouble she framed many a prayer after the Christian creed, preferred it with deep earnestness, begged for patience, strength, relief. This world, however, we all know, is the scene of trial and probation; and, for any favourable result her petitions had yet wrought, it seemed to her that they were unheard and unaccepted. She believed, sometimes, that God had turned His face from her. At moments she was a Calvinist, and, sinking into the gulf of religious despair, she saw darkening over her the doom of reprobation.

Most people have had a period or periods in their lives when they have felt thus forsaken — when, having long hoped against hope, and still seen the day of fruition deferred, their hearts have truly sickened within them. This is a terrible hour, but it is often that darkest point which precedes the rise of day — that turn of the year when the icy January wind carries over the waste at once the dirge of departing winter and the prophecy of coming spring. The perishing birds, however, cannot thus understand the blast before which they shiver; and as little can the suffering soul recognize, in the climax of its affliction, the dawn of its deliverance. Yet, let whoever grieves still cling fast to love and faith in God. God will never deceive, never finally desert him. “Whom He loveth, He chasteneth.” These words are true, and should not be forgotten.

The household was astir at last; the servants were up; the shutters were opened below. Caroline, as she quitted the couch, which had been but a thorny one to her, felt that revival of spirits which the return of day, of action, gives to all but the wholly despairing or actually dying. She dressed herself, as usual, carefully, trying so to arrange her hair and attire that nothing of the forlornness she felt at heart should be visible externally. She looked as fresh as Shirley when both were dressed, only that Miss Keeldar’s eyes were lively, and Miss Helstone’s languid.

“To-day I shall have much to say to Moore,” were Shirley’s first words; and you could see in her face that life was full of interest, expectation, and occupation for her. “He will have to undergo cross-examination,” she added. “I dare say he thinks he has outwitted me cleverly. And this is the way men deal with women — still concealing danger from them — thinking, I suppose, to spare them pain. They imagined we little knew where they were to-night. We
know
they little conjectured where we were. Men, I believe, fancy women’s minds something like those of children. Now, that is a mistake.”

This was said as she stood at the glass, training her naturally waved hair into curls, by twining it round her fingers. She took up the theme again five minutes after, as Caroline fastened her dress and clasped her girdle.

“If men could see us as we really are, they would be a little amazed; but the cleverest, the acutest men are often under an illusion about women. They do not read them in a true light; they misapprehend them, both for good and evil. Their good woman is a queer thing, half doll, half angel; their bad woman almost always a fiend. Then to hear them fall into ecstasies with each other’s creations — worshipping the heroine of such a poem, novel, drama — thinking it fine, divine! Fine and divine it may be, but often quite artificial — false as the rose in my best bonnet there. If I spoke all I think on this point, if I gave my real opinion of some first-rate female characters in first-rate works, where should I be? Dead under a cairn of avenging stones in half an hour.”

“Shirley, you chatter so, I can’t fasten you. Be still. And, after all, authors’ heroines are almost as good as authoresses’ heroes.”

“Not at all. Women read men more truly than men read women. I’ll prove that in a magazine paper some day when I’ve time; only it will never be inserted. It will be ‘declined with thanks,’ and left for me at the publisher’s.”

“To be sure. You could not write cleverly enough. You don’t know enough. You are not learned, Shirley.”

“God knows I can’t contradict you, Cary; I’m as ignorant as a stone. There’s one comfort, however: you are not much better.”

They descended to breakfast.

“I wonder how Mrs. Pryor and Hortense Moore have passed the night,” said Caroline, as she made the coffee. “Selfish being that I am, I never thought of either of them till just now. They will have heard all the tumult, Fieldhead and the cottage are so near; and Hortense is timid in such matters — so, no doubt, is Mrs. Pryor.”

“Take my word for it, Lina, Moore will have contrived to get his sister out of the way. She went home with Miss Mann. He will have quartered her there for the night. As to Mrs. Pryor, I own I am uneasy about her; but in another half-hour we will be with her.”

By this time the news of what had happened at the Hollow was spread all over the neighbourhood. Fanny, who had been to Fieldhead to fetch the milk, returned in panting haste with tidings that there had been a battle in the night at Mr. Moore’s mill, and that some said twenty men were killed. Eliza, during Fanny’s absence, had been apprised by the butcher’s boy that the mill was burnt to the ground. Both women rushed into the parlour to announce these terrible facts to the ladies, terminating their clear and accurate narrative by the assertion that they were sure master must have been in it all. He and Thomas, the clerk, they were confident, must have gone last night to join Mr. Moore and the soldiers. Mr. Malone, too, had not been heard of at his lodgings since yesterday afternoon; and Joe Scott’s wife and family were in the greatest distress, wondering what had become of their head.

Scarcely was this information imparted when a knock at the kitchen door announced the Fieldhead errand-boy, arrived in hot haste, bearing a billet from Mrs. Pryor. It was hurriedly written, and urged Miss Keeldar to return directly, as the neighbourhood and the house seemed likely to be all in confusion, and orders would have to be given which the mistress of the hall alone could regulate. In a postscript it was entreated that Miss Helstone might not be left alone at the rectory. She had better, it was suggested, accompany Miss Keeldar.

“There are not two opinions on that head,” said Shirley, as she tied on her own bonnet, and then ran to fetch Caroline’s.

“But what will Fanny and Eliza do? And if my uncle returns?”

“Your uncle will not return yet; he has other fish to fry. He will be galloping backwards and forwards from Briarfield to Stilbro’ all day, rousing the magistrates in the court-house and the officers at the barracks; and Fanny and Eliza can have in Joe Scott’s and the clerk’s wives to bear them company. Besides, of course, there is no real danger to be apprehended now. Weeks will elapse before the rioters can again rally, or plan any other attempt; and I am much mistaken if Moore and Mr. Helstone will not take advantage of last night’s outbreak to quell them altogether. They will frighten the authorities of Stilbro’ into energetic measures. I only hope they will not be too severe — not pursue the discomfited too relentlessly.”

“Robert will not be cruel. We saw that last night,” said Caroline.

“But he will be hard,” retorted Shirley; “and so will your uncle.”

As they hurried along the meadow and plantation path to Fieldhead, they saw the distant highway already alive with an unwonted flow of equestrians and pedestrians, tending in the direction of the usually solitary Hollow. On reaching the hall, they found the backyard gates open, and the court and kitchen seemed crowded with excited milk-fetchers — men, women, and children — whom Mrs. Gill, the housekeeper, appeared vainly persuading to take their milk-cans and depart. (It
is
, or
was
, by-the-bye, the custom in the north of England for the cottagers on a country squire’s estate to receive their supplies of milk and butter from the dairy of the manor house, on whose pastures a herd of milch kine was usually fed for the convenience of the neighbourhood. Miss Keeldar owned such a herd — all deep-dewlapped, Craven cows, reared on the sweet herbage and clear waters of bonny Airedale; and very proud she was of their sleek aspect and high condition.) Seeing now the state of matters, and that it was desirable to effect a clearance of the premises, Shirley stepped in amongst the gossiping groups. She bade them good-morning with a certain frank, tranquil ease — the natural characteristic of her manner when she addressed numbers, especially if those numbers belonged to the working-class; she was cooler amongst her equals, and rather proud to those above her. She then asked them if they had all got their milk measured out; and understanding that they had, she further observed that she “wondered what they were waiting for, then.”

“We’re just talking a bit over this battle there has been at your mill, mistress,” replied a man.

“Talking a bit! Just like you!” said Shirley. “It is a queer thing all the world is so fond of
talking
over events. You
talk
if anybody dies suddenly; you
talk
if a fire breaks out; you
talk
if a mill-owner fails; you
talk
if he’s murdered. What good does your talking do?”

There is nothing the lower orders like better than a little downright good-humoured rating. Flattery they scorn very much; honest abuse they enjoy. They call it speaking plainly, and take a sincere delight in being the objects thereof. The homely harshness of Miss Keeldar’s salutation won her the ear of the whole throng in a second.

“We’re no war nor some ‘at is aboon us, are we?” asked a man, smiling.

“Nor a whit better. You that should be models of industry are just as gossip-loving as the idle. Fine, rich people that have nothing to do may be partly excused for trifling their time away; you who have to earn your bread with the sweat of your brow are quite inexcusable.”

“That’s queer, mistress. Suld we never have a holiday because we work hard?”

“
Never
,” was the prompt answer; “unless,” added the “mistress,” with a smile that half belied the severity of her speech — “unless you knew how to make a better use of it than to get together over rum and tea if you are women, or over beer and pipes if you are men, and
talk
scandal at your neighbours’ expense. Come, friends,” she added, changing at once from bluntness to courtesy, “oblige me by taking your cans and going home. I expect several persons to call to-day, and it will be inconvenient to have the avenues to the house crowded.”

Yorkshire people are as yielding to persuasion as they are stubborn against compulsion. The yard was clear in five minutes.

“Thank you, and good-bye to you, friends,” said Shirley, as she closed the gates on a quiet court.

Now, let me hear the most refined of cockneys presume to find fault with Yorkshire manners. Taken as they ought to be, the majority of the lads and lasses of the West Riding are gentlemen and ladies, every inch of them. It is only against the weak affectation and futile pomposity of a would-be aristocrat they turn mutinous.