The Complete Novels of Charlotte Brontë

by Charlotte Bronte

  But there was a mistake. Miss Helstone paused, hesitated, gazed. The figure had suddenly retreated from the gate, and was running back hastily to the mill.

  “Make haste, Lina!” cried Shirley; “meet him before he enters.”

  Caroline slowly returned. “It is not Robert,” she said. “It has neither his height, form, nor bearing.”

  “I saw it was not Robert when I let you go. How could you imagine it? It is a shabby little figure of a private soldier; they had posted him as sentinel. He is safe in the mill now. I saw the door open and admit him. My mind grows easier. Robert is prepared. Our warning would have been superfluous; and now I am thankful we came too late to give it. It has saved us the trouble of a scene. How fine to have entered the counting-house toute éperdue, and to have found oneself in presence of Messrs. Armitage and Ramsden smoking, Malone swaggering, your uncle sneering, Mr. Sykes sipping a cordial, and Moore himself in his cold man-of-business vein! I am glad we missed it all.”

  “I wonder if there are many in the mill, Shirley!”

  “Plenty to defend it. The soldiers we have twice seen to-day were going there, no doubt, and the group we noticed surrounding your cousin in the fields will be with him.”

  “What are they doing now, Shirley? What is that noise?”

  “Hatchets and crowbars against the yard gates. They are forcing them. Are you afraid?”

  “No; but my heart throbs fast. I have a difficulty in standing. I will sit down. Do you feel unmoved?”

  “Hardly that; but I am glad I came. We shall see what transpires with our own eyes. We are here on the spot, and none know it. Instead of amazing the curate, the clothier, and the corn-dealer with a romantic rush on the stage, we stand alone with the friendly night, its mute stars, and these whispering trees, whose report our friends will not come to gather.”

  “Shirley, Shirley, the gates are down! That crash was like the felling of great trees. Now they are pouring through. They will break down the mill doors as they have broken the gate. What can Robert do against so many? Would to God I were a little nearer him — could hear him speak — could speak to him! With my will — my longing to serve him — I could not be a useless burden in his way; I could be turned to some account.”

  “They come on!” cried Shirley. “How steadily they march in! There is discipline in their ranks. I will not say there is courage — hundreds against tens are no proof of that quality — but” (she dropped her voice) “there is suffering and desperation enough amongst them. These goads will urge them forwards.”

  “Forwards against Robert; and they hate him. Shirley, is there much danger they will win the day?”

  “We shall see. Moore and Helstone are of ‘earth’s first blood’ — no bunglers — no cravens — — “

  A crash — smash — shiver — stopped their whispers. A simultaneously hurled volley of stones had saluted the broad front of the mill, with all its windows; and now every pane of every lattice lay in shattered and pounded fragments. A yell followed this demonstration — a rioters’ yell — a north-of-England, a Yorkshire, a West-Riding, a West-Riding-clothing-district-of-Yorkshire rioters’ yell.

  You never heard that sound, perhaps, reader? So much the better for your ears — perhaps for your heart, since, if it rends the air in hate to yourself, or to the men or principles you approve, the interests to which you wish well, wrath wakens to the cry of hate; the lion shakes his mane, and rises to the howl of the hyena; caste stands up, ireful against caste; and the indignant, wronged spirit of the middle rank bears down in zeal and scorn on the famished and furious mass of the operative class. It is difficult to be tolerant, difficult to be just, in such moments.

  Caroline rose; Shirley put her arm round her: they stood together as still as the straight stems of two trees. That yell was a long one, and when it ceased the night was yet full of the swaying and murmuring of a crowd.

  “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 goodnight, 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 tonight; neither taunt nor misconstruction can consequently molest us. Tomorrow 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.

  TOMORROW.

  Table of Contents

  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 lon
g 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.