Shirley
"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 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