Shirley
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