Shirley
machinery, and he expects two wagon-loads of frames and shears from
Stilbro' this evening. Scott, the overlooker, and a few picked men are
gone to fetch them."
"They will bring them in safely and quietly enough, sir."
"Moore says so, and affirms he wants nobody. Some one, however, he must
have, if it were only to bear evidence in case anything should happen. I
call him very careless. He sits in the counting-house with the shutters
unclosed; he goes out here and there after dark, wanders right up the
hollow, down Fieldhead Lane, among the plantations, just as if he were
the darling of the neighbourhood, or--being, as he is, its
detestation--bore a 'charmed life,' as they say in tale-books. He takes
no warning from the fate of Pearson, nor from that of Armitage--shot,
one in his own house and the other on the moor."
"But he should take warning, sir, and use precautions too," interposed
Mr. Sweeting; "and I think he would if he heard what I heard the other
day."
"What did you hear, Davy?"
"You know Mike Hartley, sir?"
"The Antinomian weaver? Yes."
"When Mike has been drinking for a few weeks together, he generally
winds up by a visit to Nunnely vicarage, to tell Mr. Hall a piece of his
mind about his sermons, to denounce the horrible tendency of his
doctrine of works, and warn him that he and all his hearers are sitting
in outer darkness."
"Well, that has nothing to do with Moore."
"Besides being an Antinomian, he is a violent Jacobin and leveller,
sir."
"I know. When he is very drunk, his mind is always running on regicide.
Mike is not unacquainted with history, and it is rich to hear him going
over the list of tyrants of whom, as he says, 'the revenger of blood has
obtained satisfaction.' The fellow exults strangely in murder done on
crowned heads or on any head for political reasons. I have already
heard it hinted that he seems to have a queer hankering after Moore. Is
that what you allude to, Sweeting?"
"You use the proper term, sir. Mr. Hall thinks Mike has no personal
hatred of Moore. Mike says he even likes to talk to him and run after
him, but he has a _hankering_ that Moore should be made an example of.
He was extolling him to Mr. Hall the other day as the mill-owner with
the most brains in Yorkshire, and for that reason he affirms Moore
should be chosen as a sacrifice, an oblation of a sweet savour. Is Mike
Hartley in his right mind, do you think, sir?" inquired Sweeting simply.
"Can't tell, Davy. He may be crazed, or he may be only crafty, or
perhaps a little of both."
"He talks of seeing visions, sir."
"Ay! He is a very Ezekiel or Daniel for visions. He came just when I was
going to bed last Friday night to describe one that had been revealed to
him in Nunnely Park that very afternoon."
"Tell it, sir. What was it?" urged Sweeting.
"Davy, thou hast an enormous organ of wonder in thy cranium. Malone, you
see, has none. Neither murders nor visions interest him. See what a big
vacant Saph he looks at this moment."
"Saph! Who was Saph, sir?"
"I thought you would not know. You may find it out. It is biblical. I
know nothing more of him than his name and race; but from a boy upwards
I have always attached a personality to Saph. Depend on it he was
honest, heavy, and luckless. He met his end at Gob by the hand of
Sibbechai."
"But the vision, sir?"
"Davy, thou shalt hear. Donne is biting his nails, and Malone yawning,
so I will tell it but to thee. Mike is out of work, like many others,
unfortunately. Mr. Grame, Sir Philip Nunnely's steward, gave him a job
about the priory. According to his account, Mike was busy hedging rather
late in the afternoon, but before dark, when he heard what he thought
was a band at a distance--bugles, fifes, and the sound of a trumpet; it
came from the forest, and he wondered that there should be music there.
He looked up. All amongst the trees he saw moving objects, red, like
poppies, or white, like may-blossom. The wood was full of them; they
poured out and filled the park. He then perceived they were
soldiers--thousands and tens of thousands; but they made no more noise
than a swarm of midges on a summer evening. They formed in order, he
affirmed, and marched, regiment after regiment, across the park. He
followed them to Nunnely Common; the music still played soft and
distant. On the common he watched them go through a number of
evolutions. A man clothed in scarlet stood in the centre and directed
them. They extended, he declared, over fifty acres. They were in sight
half an hour; then they marched away quite silently. The whole time he
heard neither voice nor tread--nothing but the faint music playing a
solemn march."
"Where did they go, sir?"
"Towards Briarfield. Mike followed them. They seemed passing Fieldhead,
when a column of smoke, such as might be vomited by a park of artillery,
spread noiseless over the fields, the road, the common, and rolled, he
said, blue and dim, to his very feet. As it cleared away he looked again
for the soldiers, but they were vanished; he saw them no more. Mike,
like a wise Daniel as he is, not only rehearsed the vision but gave the
interpretation thereof. It signifies, he intimated, bloodshed and civil
conflict."
"Do you credit it, sir?" asked Sweeting.
"Do you, Davy?--But come, Malone; why are you not off?"
"I am rather surprised, sir, you did not stay with Moore yourself. You
like this kind of thing."
"So I should have done, had I not unfortunately happened to engage
Boultby to sup with me on his way home from the Bible Society meeting at
Nunnely. I promised to send you as my substitute; for which, by-the-bye,
he did not thank me. He would much rather have had me than you, Peter.
Should there be any real need of help I shall join you. The mill-bell
will give warning. Meantime, go--unless (turning suddenly to Messrs.
Sweeting and Donne)--unless Davy Sweeting or Joseph Donne prefers
going.--What do you say, gentlemen? The commission is an honourable one,
not without the seasoning of a little real peril; for the country is in
a queer state, as you all know, and Moore and his mill and his machinery
are held in sufficient odium. There are chivalric sentiments, there is
high-beating courage, under those waistcoats of yours, I doubt not.
Perhaps I am too partial to my favourite Peter. Little David shall be
the champion, or spotless Joseph.--Malone, you are but a great
floundering Saul after all, good only to lend your armour. Out with your
firearms; fetch your shillelah. It is there--in the corner."
With a significant grin Malone produced his pistols, offering one to
each of his brethren. They were not readily seized on. With graceful
modesty each gentleman retired a step from the presented weapon.
"I never touch them. I never did touch anything of the kind," said Mr.
Donne.
"I am almost a stranger to Mr. Moore," murmured Sweeting.
"If you never touched a pistol, try the feel of it now, great satrap of
Egypt. As to the little minstrel, he probably prefers encountering the
Philistines with no other weapon than his flute.--Get their hats, Peter.
They'll both of 'em go."
"No, sir; no, Mr. Helstone. My mother wouldn't like it," pleaded
Sweeting.
"And I make it a rule never to get mixed up in affairs of the kind,"
observed Donne.
Helstone smiled sardonically; Malone laughed a horse-laugh. He then
replaced his arms, took his hat and cudgel, and saying that "he never
felt more in tune for a shindy in his life, and that he wished a score
of greasy cloth-dressers might beat up Moore's quarters that night," he
made his exit, clearing the stairs at a stride or two, and making the
house shake with the bang of the front-door behind him.
CHAPTER II.
THE WAGONS.
The evening was pitch dark: star and moon were quenched in gray
rain-clouds--gray they would have been by day; by night they looked
sable. Malone was not a man given to close observation of nature; her
changes passed, for the most part, unnoticed by him. He could walk miles
on the most varying April day and never see the beautiful dallying of
earth and heaven--never mark when a sunbeam kissed the hill-tops, making
them smile clear in green light, or when a shower wept over them, hiding
their crests with the low-hanging, dishevelled tresses of a cloud. He
did not, therefore, care to contrast the sky as it now appeared--a
muffled, streaming vault, all black, save where, towards the east, the
furnaces of Stilbro' ironworks threw a tremulous lurid shimmer on the
horizon--with the same sky on an unclouded frosty night. He did not
trouble himself to ask where the constellations and the planets were
gone, or to regret the "black-blue" serenity of the air-ocean which
those white islets stud, and which another ocean, of heavier and denser
element, now rolled below and concealed. He just doggedly pursued his
way, leaning a little forward as he walked, and wearing his hat on the
back of his head, as his Irish manner was. "Tramp, tramp," he went along
the causeway, where the road boasted the privilege of such an
accommodation; "splash, splash," through the mire-filled cart ruts,
where the flags were exchanged for soft mud. He looked but for certain
landmarks--the spire of Briarfield Church; farther on, the lights of
Redhouse. This was an inn; and when he reached it, the glow of a fire
through a half-curtained window, a vision of glasses on a round table,
and of revellers on an oaken settle, had nearly drawn aside the curate
from his course. He thought longingly of a tumbler of whisky-and-water.
In a strange place he would instantly have realized the dream; but the
company assembled in that kitchen were Mr. Helstone's own parishioners;
they all knew him. He sighed, and passed on.
The highroad was now to be quitted, as the remaining distance to
Hollow's Mill might be considerably reduced by a short cut across
fields. These fields were level and monotonous. Malone took a direct
course through them, jumping hedge and wall. He passed but one building
here, and that seemed large and hall-like, though irregular. You could
see a high gable, then a long front, then a low gable, then a thick,
lofty stack of chimneys. There were some trees behind it. It was dark;
not a candle shone from any window. It was absolutely still; the rain
running from the eaves, and the rather wild but very low whistle of the
wind round the chimneys and through the boughs were the sole sounds in
its neighbourhood.
This building passed, the fields, hitherto flat, declined in a rapid
descent. Evidently a vale lay below, through which you could hear the
water run. One light glimmered in the depth. For that beacon Malone
steered.
He came to a little white house--you could see it was white even through
this dense darkness--and knocked at the door. A fresh-faced servant
opened it. By the candle she held was revealed a narrow passage,
terminating in a narrow stair. Two doors covered with crimson baize, a
strip of crimson carpet down the steps, contrasted with light-coloured
walls and white floor, made the little interior look clean and fresh.
"Mr. Moore is at home, I suppose?"
"Yes, sir, but he is not in."
"Not in! Where is he then?"
"At the mill--in the counting-house."
Here one of the crimson doors opened.
"Are the wagons come, Sarah?" asked a female voice, and a female head at
the same time was apparent. It might not be the head of a
goddess--indeed a screw of curl-paper on each side the temples quite
forbade that supposition--but neither was it the head of a Gorgon; yet
Malone seemed to take it in the latter light. Big as he was, he shrank
bashfully back into the rain at the view thereof, and saying, "I'll go
to him," hurried in seeming trepidation down a short lane, across an
obscure yard, towards a huge black mill.