'But then you must remember how differently those sort of people are brought up.'
'I do remember it.'
'They don't have the same needs as we do.'
'Don't they?'
'No. What do they care about music or art or poetry or travelling? Fortunately for them they haven't the tastes that run away with money.'
'They have a taste for food and for warmth, I suppose,' the Count was beginning, when Roland interrupted him.
'There, Litvinoff, it's no good; you'll never convert me. I'm a Radical, not a Socialist. Let's talk about something else.'
'By all means. To return to John Hatfield. I noticed in the mill to-day that he did not participate in the general scowl.'
'No. I don't think he bears me any ill-will. Our relations with the Hatfields are peculiar. When my mother died—it was before my aunt came to live with us—Mrs Hatfield took charge of my brother and me, and was a sort of foster-mother to us. Her daughter Alice was our playfellow, and a dear little girl she was.'
'Was that the girl you said had—well, not acted very wisely?' asked the Count, feeling an insensate longing to talk about Alice, or to hear some one else do so.
'Yes; that was the girl,' said Roland. 'She was as sweet a little girl as you would wish to see.'
Litvinoff mentally endorsed this statement to the full. Aloud he said,—
'What was it—the old story?'
'Yes. She met some fellow at Liverpool; I suppose lost her heart to him, and gave the world for love, and considered it well lost, as they say. Damn the brute! I wish I had the handling of him. I should like to have half an hour with him without the gloves.'
Litvinoff was conscious of an insane desire to give Roland his wish, and try which was the better man, but he said quietly,—
'You don't know him, then? I suppose nothing has been heard or seen of her?'
'No, only—it's rather funny—when I went to the Agora that night I fancied I saw her face, but it must have been fancy.'
'Of course; unless,' added the other, goaded by the Imp of the Perverse—'unless her lover was a gentleman interested in social reform.'
'Not he,' said Roland contemptuously; 'more likely some fool of a counter-jumper or clerk. You know I looked upon her quite as my sister, and I was very fond of her, and all that.'
'Yes?' interrogatively.
Roland had not meant to say anything more; but after that 'yes' he found himself going on,—
'And that's why it's so deuced hard that my brother should blame me for it. Upon my soul, I seem fated to be blamed by everybody I know for everything any one else has done!'
'That, then, was your brother's accusation?'
'Yes. At least if it wasn't I can make neither head nor tail of anything he said. But I didn't mean to have said anything about it—it's too preposterous! I don't know how it is, but I'm always finding myself telling you things that I didn't mean to tell any one. I wonder how it is? Natural affinity, I suppose.'
'I suppose it's because you know I am interested in you,' said Litvinoff cordially, as they turned in at the gate of Thornsett Edge.
'It will be very dull for you here,' said Roland, beating the shrubs lightly with his ash stick as they walked up the path; 'and, I am sorry to say I shall have to be out this evening. Imustgo down to our solicitor to arrange about several things. You won't think me an awful bear?'
'Don't mention it; I shall be very well amused, I doubt not. I can take a walk if I find I miss you very much, and then I shall be sure to lose myself, and there is some excitement to be got out of that.'
That evening John Hatfield was sitting on the oak settle by his hearth, his wife with her knitting in the substantial rocking-chair opposite. The interior was cosy and bright enough. A high wooden screen protected the inmates from any cold air that might else have come through the door, which opened straight from the house-place into the street. A short red curtain hung in front of the long low window, that was nearlyas wide as the room itself. There was a chintz flounce to the chimney-piece, and a bright round table, on three legs, in the middle of the room. There was a good deal of shining brass about, and a few pieces of old china. Mrs Hatfield, a small fair woman, with grey, short-sighted eyes, had more lines in her face than her years should have traced there. But the poor age much more rapidly than the rich. Significant reflection. And every trouble leaves its signet on our faces, and Mrs Hatfield's trouble had been a heavy one, and its traces were easily discernible. So thought Count Litvinoff, as he tapped at the door and entered John Hatfield's house, and the thought was not a pleasant one. Derbyshire was certainly not the place to come to for pleasant thoughts, or pleasant incidents either.
'Is't thee, man?' said Hatfield, leaning forward to discern the features of his visitor in the comparative gloom by the door where he stood. 'Come in—come to the fire. Here, lass, this is the chap I telled ye on.'
As Litvinoff held out his hand to Mrs Hatfield her husband went on,—
'Ay, shake his hand, lass; you don't so often get to shake hands wi' an honest man, and a brave man—'
Alice's father speaking of him to Alice's mother! Another pleasant incident for Count Litvinoff!
CHAPTER XX.
IMPROVING PROSPECTS.
CLARE STANLEY was the mistress of Aspinshaw, and of a good deal of bricks and mortar, stocks and shares, and Three per Cent. Consols besides. Mrs Stanley was comfortably provided for, but it was Clare who was to profit by the hard work, the self-denial and forethought of some three generations of Stanleys, or, as some might think, of their greed, their grasping, and their over-reaching of their less crafty fellow-men.
The will that had laid the burden of wealth upon her, at an age when most young women of her class are engaged in constant differences with their parents and guardians on the subject of pin-money, had been the one act of eccentricity of Mr Stanley's whole life.
For some days her grief for her father's loss had been too absorbing to permit of her thinking of much else besides, but on this first day of the new year she felt more able to think, and as she sat alone by the drawing-room fire she began for the first time to realise her position. About one thing she had made up her mind; she must leave this horrible house, where the shadow had fallen on her which she felt just then could never be lifted again.
Between Clare and her father's second wife there had always been perfectly cordial relations, but they were not bound together by any ties of love.
Mrs Stanley had always done her duty to her husband and his child, but hers was a cold nature, and not one which haddrawn out Clare's heart towards itself. She was now going to stay with her own relatives, and was perfectly willing to take her step-daughter with her; but the girl decided, without much need for reflection, that there would be many things better than to be buried alive in a Yorkshire village, with no one more congenial to talk to than Mrs Stanley or Mrs Stanley's relations, whom Clare had been wont to term 'the fossils.'
An unposted letter lay on the little table at her elbow, in which she had accepted an invitation to spend an indefinite time with the Quaids. She thought that in London, away from the associations of the recent past, she would be better able to plan out the course of her future life. She knew that that course would now be a very different one from what it would have been had she had the planning of it three months ago, before she met Count Litvinoff or spent that evening at the Cleon. She was sorrowfully glad that her father's will was what it was, for she was conscious in a vague sort of way that wealth meant power, and she was determined that in her hands it should mean power to do good and to make others happy. Her plans went no further than this at present, and she knew that even to carry this out she would need teaching and help and counsel from those who had more experience of the world and its needs than she had. It was, perhaps, this thought that had mainly influenced her in her acceptance of Mrs Quaid's very kind and cordial invitation, for Marlborough Villa was not the most unlikely place in the world at which to meet some one who had just that which she lacked. There she had first been forced to think; perhaps there she would first be taught how to act.
Why does one never learn at school the things one needs when one leaves it? 'How much there is to know—how much there is for me to learn,' she said to herself, with a little sigh, leaning forward and gazing into the glowing fire, resting her elbow on her knee and her cheek on her clasped hands.
She started and rose at a loud, clanging ring of the door-bell.As she had expected, the servant announced 'Count Litvinoff.' He came forward with a low and deferential bow.
'You must forgive me,' he said, 'for calling on you on Sunday afternoon, which, I believe, is not the rule in England; but I heard that you were leaving Aspinshaw to-morrow, and I could not run the risk of not seeing you again.'
'We are always pleased to see you,' said Clare; 'but I am not going to London for some time yet. There will be a good deal of law business, I suppose, and it is not fair to carry the trouble of that to my friend's house. Is Mr Roland well?'
'He is on duty,' said Litvinoff; 'he has gone to a chapel with his aunt, which is good of him, as his views are not that way.'
Clare drew a breath of relief. She had not felt comfortable in Roland's presence since that interview with Litvinoff in the National Gallery.
'I myself shall be returning to London in a few weeks,' the young man went on. 'I have already stayed as long as I at first intended to do, but now Ferrier is good enough to wish me to stay until the household at Thornsett Edge is broken up.'
'Ah, yes, I had forgotten that. What a horrible thing! What are they going to do?'
'I believe Mr Roland will live with his aunt at Chelsea.'
'We seem to be all going to London,' said Clare, with an effort to be as cheerful as possible.
'True; but London is so vast, and in it I know so few people whom you are likely to know, that I feel I might as well be going back to Siberia for any chance I shall have of seeing you.' This with the air of one who would as soon go to Siberia as not while he was about it.
'Oh, I daresay we shall see each other,' she answered, leaning back in her chair and trifling with a big screen of peacock's feathers, which she had idly taken up. 'I'm going to stay with a lady who is madly anxious to know you.'
Count Litvinoff looked intensely surprised, as though that had been almost impossible.
'I think I told you about her,' she continued; 'Mrs Quaid, who belongs to the Cleon, you know, where I heard all about Socialism, you remember?'
'Oh, yes, I remember,' said Litvinoff, which was true. He did.
'I do hope I shall see you again, because you and Mr Petrovitch are the only two people I know who can help me.'
'It is a great privilege my fellow-countryman shares with me, Miss Stanley. May I be the first to hear of what help you stand in need?'
'I daresay you have heard,' she answered, 'that my father'—here her voice trembled a little—'has left me nearly all his money, and it is mine now, though I am not of age.'
Ah, no, Count Litvinoff had certainly not heard that.
'And then, you see,' she went on, knitting her brows under the stress of the difficulty she found in putting her thoughts into words, 'the question is, what am I to do with it? A little time ago I should have found it easy enough to do with it what every one else does; but I have been thinking a great deal—a very great deal lately—ever since I heard Mr Petrovitch; and now I feel the responsibility of it so much more than I should have done before.'
Count Litvinoff thought to himself that that was the sort of responsibility he was admirably adapted to share. He merely looked sympathetic, and Miss Stanley went on.
'And then I feel sure money may be a fearful curse if one doesn't use it properly. Of course, I can't disguise from myself that this money was made in the usual way, and that others have lost all that my father and his father have gained, and I wish I could think of some way in which it might give as much happiness as it would have done had it been left inthe hands of the workers who toiled to produce it. You are one who should be able to advise me. What shall I do?'
Litvinoff's hair almost stood on end. This was getting his own coin back with a vengeance.
'My dear Miss Stanley,' he said gravely, 'if I were to advise you in the only way which seems possible to me now, your friends would all look upon me as your worst enemy—as an adventurer, as a rogue. Whereas I desire to be looked on as your faithful friend and servant—as the man who, more than all others, would go through fire and water to do you the slightest service.'
'I should hardly have thought you would have cared what my friends or anybody else thought of you,' was Miss Stanley's only reply to this fervid declaration.
'Under most circumstances,' said the Count, with a little wave of his hand, 'I do care for nothing and for nobody; but'—he went on, with a slight tremor in his voice—'rather than incur the dislike of any one whom you respect and love, I would abjure every principle, and sacrifice every cause.'
'I asked for advice,' said Clare, not seeing her way to a more direct answer.
'I know you did,' he spoke rapidly, dropping into a foreign accent; 'and I—I cannot give it you, Miss Stanley. Let me tell you one thing. You know—you have heard, you have read—how in Russia, when money is wanted for our cause, it is the duty of some of us to get it—to persuade it out of those who have. That has often been my duty, and I have never failed. I have taken, over and over again, all, all from those as young as you, and have left them with nothing. I have had to raise enthusiasm by every means, to urge to self-sacrifice, and then to take unsparingly. There are men now, myfriends, who, if they knew that you—rich, young, enthusiastic—had asked me foradvice, and that I had refused to give it, would say, "Michael Litvinoff has becometraitor," and would kill me like a rat. But,' he went on, rising and stretching out his clenched fist, 'did I know that a legion of such men were outside that door, armed and waiting for me, and hearing every word I speak, I would still say that for no cause in the world must you make sacrifices or must you suffer; and I would still say that I would serve you before all causes.'
'Count Litvinoff, I can hear no more of this. Please talk of something else.'
'Ah! now yet once more I have offended you. It is part of my unhappy lot that whenever I speak in earnest I offend you. But I can't talk of something else to-day. I must say adieu, Miss Stanley. If I stayed I should disobey you, and I cannot disobey you.'
'Good-bye, then,' said Clare, extending her hand.
He caught her hand, held it tightly an instant, bent over it as though he were about to raise it to his lips, then dropped it as if it had burned him. 'Adieu,' he said, 'I know that in England the hand-shake means forgivenness, and that once more I am forgiven—for speaking the truth—and that I may see you again.'
Clare did not gainsay it, and he left the room.
Count Litvinoff was marching back to Thornsett with a very elate step, and a good deal of military swagger, and Clare had resumed her thinking—she was thinking of him, and he was thinking of her. He thought aloud, as usual.
'H'm,' he said to the grey stone walls on each side of him, and to the plovers who were wheeling and screaming overhead, 'la bellewas offended, but not so much. When she thinks over it she will say,—"He is not a good patriot and friend of liberty, this Litvinoff, for he forgets his mistress,La Révolution; therefore he is unfaithful." Ay, but she will add, "He only forgets her when I am near, and he is only unfaithful for me,"C'est bien—c'est bien—c'est très bien!' he added, vaulting a gate and making a short cut home.
CHAPTER XXI.
FRIENDS IN COUNCIL.
GOING out again, John?' spoke Mrs Hatfield, a little plaintively, as her husband rose and took down his hat from its peg, ten days after Thornsett Mill had been closed. Not closed for a day on account of a wedding, as had once been suggested, but closed, it might be for ten years, or practically for ever.
'Ay, lass,' said her husband shortly, but not unkindly; 'Ah should go clean daft if Ah stayed i' the house. Lazying about don't suit me—it's only my betters as takes their pleasure i' that way.'
'Tha'lt do no good down at t' Spotted Cow,' returned Mrs Hatfield, compressing her lips; 'tha might as well be idle i' tha own house as wi' all they gomerils—spending tha money too, as if tha was i' full work.'
'Well,' he said, pausing with his hand on the back of the settle where she sat, 'we'll all have to be shifting out o' this soon, and tha knows, lass, as Ah were never one to drink nor to talk out o' season. Ah mun hear where the lads is going for work. It won't ne'er do for us a' to be going the same way.'
'It seems hard tha should have to go after work at tha time o' life, John. But likely it's as hard for Rowley and Dick as for thee and me. Poor lads, poor lads! Ah, Heaven help us a' in this hard world.'
'They're fur enow fro' want, tha may be sure, or they wouldn'tha' sacrificed the mill to their mucky pride. It's little they care who starves, so long as they have enow. Tha must remember as what they'd call being poor we'd call being rich. "Hard up" for a gentleman ud be enow and to spare for a working man.'
And he went out, slamming the door behind him, and his wife took up her knitting with a sigh. She could rarely follow her husband in his reasonings, but troubles are not the less hard to bear because we don't clearly see their causes. They had saved a little money, but that would soon be gone, and then there would be nothing before them but 'the house.' Both their sons were away—one a sailor, and the other in a warehouse in Liverpool—but neither was earning enough to be able to help their parents. Vaguely she hoped that her husband might take it into his head to go to London for work. An idea is prevalent in the provinces that in London there is work for every one, and besides, Alice had written from London, and there would be a chance of finding her poor lost child and bringing her back.
The sudden closing of the mill made affairs indeed terribly serious for most of the men in Thornsett. It was in the middle of winter, when journeying was not pleasant, nor work easy to get; and though the 'hands' employed in the mill had been told that it would close, very, very few among them had made any effort to secure other work before the time for closing came. Perhaps it had seemed to them that the closing of the mill was one of those calamities too terrible to happen. But it had happened, and after ten days of idleness the men were beginning to see clearly what it would mean to them. For there was no other work to be got within anything like easy reach of the village; and even if work could be obtained somewhere else, the little community must be broken up, and each family must separate itself from friends and neighbours and relatives in order to journey thither. This alone is thought a terrible calamity for middle-class men and women, but it is the least of thetroubles which are always hanging over the heads of the workers. The exodus that must shortly take place had not yet begun, but every one knew that it could not now be long delayed; and Potters and the few other tradespeople being, of course, involved in the general distress, could no longer give credit. This had never been withheld in slack times, when the shopkeepers knew that good ones were certain to come in which the scores would be wiped off or reduced very considerably; but now there was no chance of things growing brighter again, and even the small accounts then owing were not very likely ever to be paid.
During the past ten days, as the men's money was being spent, and as the want of work gave them more time to reason on the causes of their trouble, a strong feeling of resentment had been growing up among them against the two young masters, who had held, as it were, the happiness, the comfort, perhaps the lives, of all these men in their hands, and had thrown all to the dogs rather than humble their own insensate pride and abate their own insensate obstinacy. This feeling had found vent, not only in the scowls and black looks on which Litvinoff had commented, but in certain faint groans and hisses with which Roland had been greeted on more than one occasion when he passed down the village street.
What right had these two, on whose forbearance and good fellowship hung the fate of all these families, to go quarrelling with each other?
'It's a' their darn'd selfishness,' Murdoch was saying, just as Hatfield kicked open the door of the tap-room at the Spotted Cow, and passed in. 'What's the odds to them if we clem or if we dunna't?'
'It's my belief,' said Potters bitterly, 'as they done it to show their independence.'
'They might have hit on a cheaper way,' growled Hatfield, as Murdoch and Sigley made room for him to sit between them.
'Cheaper! why, what's cheaper nor our flesh and blood?' asked Murdoch, with a snarl. 'They can afford to chuck a little o' that away. They can get more of it when they want it easy enow.'
'Ay, that's it, lad,' said Hatfield. 'It's the flesh and blood o' some o' us that's here still, and more o' us that's dead and gone, that's made the bit o' money they'll live on for the rest o' their days.'
'Well, I don't quite see that,' muttered Sigley, with his usual meekness. 'They've always paid fair wages.'
'Yes,' answered Hatfield. 'Ah never said they took it for nothing. They paid for it right enow, but they bought it cheap, lad—they bought it cheap, and they sold it at a good profit. We've nowt but our flesh and blood to sell, and now we mun carry it to another market.'
'If you mean your work,' put in the landlord, 'I don't see as you ought to talk i' that way. They paid you your own price for your work, anyhow.'
'No,' said Hatfield. 'They paid us what we was forced to take.'
'Thou'dst always some sense i' tha head, John,' broke in old Murdoch approvingly. 'Tha was na here when.... D'ye mind, Bolt, the night after t'owd master's burying, tha made the lads drink t' young masters' health? Ask them to drink it now!'
The murmur of ironical assent which went round the room showed that Murdoch had expressed the sense of the meeting. He had been rising in importance daily, ever since the announcement of the mill's closing. He had always been the prophet of calamity, and now that his worst prophecies had been more than fulfilled he was looked upon as little less than inspired.
'Well,' said Bolt deprecatingly, 'who could ha' foreseen things turning out i' this way? And as for asking them to drink their healths, why they ain't their masters now. So where's the use?'
'It do seem hard, it do,' murmured Sigley, who went to chapel regularly, 'when a man have saved up a bit to have itall swept away in a rushing, mighty wind, and us left, like Pharaoh's lean kine, to make bricks without straw. The whole creation groaneth!...'
'Well, don't groan here,' interrupted Murdoch grimly; 'tha'd best do tha groanin' wi' the rest o' creation at t' chapel; and well mayst tha groan there if tha hears tell o' cows makin' bricks.'
'Them as don't believe in the Bible,' said Sigley impressively, giving voice to a very popular belief, 'can't look for a blessing.'
'Nor yet them as does, it seems.'
'What ah was going to say was this—as we should take comfort, thinking as we ain't the only ones.'
'Comfort, tha loon!—that's the hell of it! Damn the man, says I, as can find comfort i' t' thought o' other men's misery!'
It was Hatfield who spoke, and as he spoke he brought his fist down on the table with a bang that made the glasses ring.
'How tha does take on, John,' said Bolt. 'What Sigley meant was only as it shows you ain't to blame, seeing as so many others is in the same fix.'
Sigley did not confirm this interpretation. He only shook his head, with the air of one who had meant something much more pious and profound.
'You're wrongagain,' said Hatfield loudly. He had risen and faced the room, which was now pretty full. While this talk had been going on, men had dropped in by twos and threes, and all that had been said had been listened to with profound attention. 'You're wrong again! Itisour faults, and the faults of all like us. Our fathers might have altered it. We might alter it now if we had but the spunk to take it in hand; and, if we don't, them as comes after us will, and'll curse us for leaving them the work to do. Didn't none o' ye ever hear tell o' the elephant that lets himself be led and mastered by one he could smash with a shake o' his poll? And why? Because, the books tell us,he doesna know his own strength. But he doesna fare so bad as we. Hegets well fed and well looked after because it costs summat to replace him, and we lets oursels be led and drove and starved, when it suits 'em, by a set as we could chase out o' the world to-morrow if we but stood together and acted like men.'
A thrill of excited sympathy ran through the room as old Murdoch shouted,—
'Right again! That's it, John; tha's got it! A score thousand o' your pattern and there'd be an end to men being turned out o' their homes to clem i' midwinter because two young devils both wants the same lass!'
'It's all very well, Hatfield,' said Potters sourly; 'but tha's one face for us and another face for t' gentlefolk. That warn't no working man as I've see comin' out o' your house time and again this last three week.'
'No, he ain't. He's more o' the right stuff in his little finger nor you and all like you put together has got in your whole bodies. There, take that, Potters!'
'Whatever he's got in him, he seems pretty thick with young Roland Ferrier,' said a man who had not spoken before.
'He did his best to stop their quarrelling,' Hatfield answered hotly; 'because he knew what it would be for all o' us; and he's been chased out o' his own country and lost nearly all his brass for standing up for the likes o' we.'
'Yes, I've had a bit o' talk with him, too; that's true enough.'
'Ay! he's no fool, nor no coward neither.'
'He's a true friend o' working men, he is, if he is a Count.'
Litvinoff, it will be seen, had not lost his opportunities while he had been at Thornsett, for nearly every man present had something to say in his favour.
'But seeing as he's such a friend o' Mr Roland's, why don't he do something to stop this set-out?'
'What can he do?'
'He might speak to him about it.'
'Look'ee here, lads,' said Clayton, an old man who had not spoken before, 'ah've been a-turnin' o' this thing over i' my head, and this is what ah come to. If so be as young Ferrier's like to listen to any one, would he listen first to a new-fangled furrin' chap, or to all o' us honest lads as has known him since he was so high? Has any of you spoke to him? Has any one of you put it straight to him—this is the way of it, and this and this? M'appen this fooling o' theirs was just through ignorance. They might ha' thought it didna matter to any but them, and if once they knowed a' as it means, m'appen they'd think better owt, and let things go the old way.'
'Old heads is worth most, arter all,' said John Bolt, who was of a hopeful nature and turned to the new idea as a relief from his former visions of empty benches and deserted bar,—of a time when there would be nothing to chalk up but his own losses, and when adulterated beer would seem what it was, a drug in the market. 'Why shouldn't some of you do as he says, and go and see him and speak him reasonable?'
A great difference of opinion arose at once on the new idea, but nearly all were in their hearts glad to try a new chance, and at last old Clayton, from whom the suggestion had come, said,—
'Well, sithee, if any of you lads'll come wi' me, dang me if I'll not go this very night—this very minute.'
'You'd better all go,' advised Potters; 'it would be more telling like.'
'All o' us isn't here,' murmured Sigley.
'Get 'em here,' said Clayton shortly. 'If two or three o' ye was to go round and tell the other lads what's towards, they'd come too, and we'd have one more try at getting things righted here, afore we all turns different ways and never sees each other's faces again.'
No sooner said than done. Men are ready at all times to follow any one who will act, or even to act themselves ifprompted with sufficient energy. In less than half an hour over a hundred men were assembled outside the Spotted Cow, and were prepared to go up to Thornsett Edge to try to open again the doors of the workshop which a dead hand had closed against them. But their faith was strong in the power of a young and living hand, and they went with a new hope in their hearts.
'We'll all go up,' said old Clayton, who had assumed the position of leader, 'but only a few of us had best go in. Let's see—you, and you, and you. You'll be one, Hatfield, and Murdoch makes five.'
'Not me,' snarled Murdoch sourly; 'no eatin' dirt for me. I ain't never humbled myself to no man, and I ain't a-goin' to begin now, to a young chap as ah worked along o' his father manys a long day.'
'Not me, neither,' said Hatfield, 'for ah know aforehand as it's too late. But don't you mind us. Go your own way, and here's luck to you.'
He and Murdoch stood at the door with Bolt and Potters, and a few more who, not having been employed in the mill, were considered not to have any place in the deputation. They watched the crowd out of sight up the steep street, and the women turned out to watch their men go by. It was a clear, frosty night, and bitterly cold, but most of the women rolled their bare arms in their aprons and stood talking in little knots after the procession had passed out of sight. They were more hopeful than their husbands, for women are naturally more trusting than men and believe more in the possibility of altering facts by emotional influences.
To Murdoch and Hatfield, in spite of their assumption of indifference, the time seemed very long as it went by and brought them no news of their comrades. After half an hour Bill suggested that they should stroll up the hill to meet the others and learn how it fared with them.
CHAPTER XXII.
A FORLORN HOPE.
IF the frequenters of the Spotted Cow had only known, this was about the most unpropitious moment for obtaining a hearing for their petition. A hearing was all they could possibly obtain for it, but that they did not know either.
Litvinoff's host had not found him as great a comfort as he had expected. For one thing, the Count's almost universal sympathy seemed unaccountably to stop short at Roland Ferrier. The young man felt that he had been terribly ill-used and naturally expected every one else to see things in the same light, and it was 'riling' to find all the sympathy of his guest turned, not towards him, but towards his workmen, which did not seem reasonable; for, as Roland said, they could get other work, but where was he to get another mill? Then he did not like a certain change which he noticed in the other's tone when he spoke of Miss Stanley. He had sympathy enough for her, goodness knows—a trifle too much Roland sometimes thought.
For Litvinoff to be a bore was impossible; but still it did happen rather often that he would bring forward political economy of the most startling pattern when the other wanted to talk literature, or art, or personal grievances.
On this particular night Roland had been led, much againsthis will, into a discussion of the nature which Litvinoff so much affected, and he had to admit to himself that, as usual, he had much the worst of it.
'It's all very well,' he said (people always say, 'It's all very well,' when they can find no other answer to an argument); 'it's all very well, and that sort of thing may do for Russia, but you will never get an economic or any other revolution here— Why what the deuce is all that row?'
'That row' was a tramping of many feet on the gravel, and a hum of voices just outside the window.
Litvinoff, who was sitting nearer the window, rose and looked through the laths of the venetian blinds.
'Well, my dear Ferrier,' he said, turning round with a smile, 'it strikes me that thereisa revolution in England, and that it has begun at Thornsett. The whole population of Derbyshire appears to have assembled in your front garden—yes, that's it, evidently,' he went on, as a ring was given to the door bell, 'and they are going to try gentle measures to begin with, just as I have always advised,' he concluded, for the ring was not a loud one.
Roland had risen from his easy-chair and had made towards the window, when the door opened and the maid announced that Clayton and one or two of the hands wanted to speak to Mr Ferrier.
'Show them in,' said Roland curtly; and, as she withdrew, 'One or two,' echoed Litvinoff; 'that young woman's ideas on the subject of numbers are limited and primitive. Now, Ferrier, just repeat those arguments you have been using against me, and I doubt not, so lucid and convincing are they, that they will reconcile Clayton and the "hands" here to the starvation that awaits them.'
Only three men followed old Clayton as he entered the room.
'Well, my men,' said Roland Ferrier, turning to them, andwith a faint irritation in his tone, as Litvinoff, leaning one elbow on the mantelpiece, waved a recognition to the deputation, 'What can I do for you at this time of night?'
'Well, sir,' began Clayton, 'me and my mates here has come to speak to you for ourselves and them as is outside.'
'Who are numerous and noisy,' murmured the Count softly to himself.
'Well, go on,' said Roland, chafing.
'We knows well enow,' continued the old man, 'as it ain't all your doing as t' mill's to stop, but we thowt as you might work things so as to make it easier for us. It's on'y nat'ral as you shouldn't know till it's put to you what stoppin' work 'ill mean to most of us. What 'ill it mean? Why, hard want is what it 'ill mean, and clemming to more nor one. So wot we've come to ask is, won't you keep the works on till summer comes, and let the stoppin' be a bit less sudden like, and give us time to get other work? This is bitter weather, and it's bitter hard as we must all leave our homes just because—' He paused in some confusion.
'Because what?' asked Roland sharply.
'Because our masters has fell out,' struck in No. 2 of the deputation.
'Look here, my men,' Roland stamped his foot impatiently, 'I thought I made it perfectly clear to you a month ago that the closing of this mill was no fault of mine. Do you take me for a born fool? Do you suppose I should throw away this money if I could help it? Don't you know I lose as much as any of you? As much? I lose more than all of you put together.'
'Oh, just division of profits!' murmured Litvinoff confidentially to the clock on the mantelpiece.
'You've had long enough notice of this,' Roland went on, casting a goaded glance at Litvinoff; 'why didn't you get work elsewhere?'
'We hoped it 'ud blow over. We thought perhaps you'd make it up with Mr Richard; and we thought to-night as perhaps, if we told you straight out, you'd go to him.'
'Damn!' hissed Roland, between his teeth. 'I wish,' he went on, raising his voice, 'you wouldn't talk about things you don't understand. What's the use of coming up like this in the middle of the night, interfering in my private affairs; for I'd have you know my brother and I have a perfect right to close the mill or keep it open as we choose. As for you, Clayton, you're old enough to know better than to come up here at midnight with all the riff-raff of the village at your heels.'
'No more riff-raff than yourself!' this from the youngest deputy.
'Hold tha noise, Jim!' said old Clayton. 'The other lads has come up, sir, because they thought there mout be some good news, and they'd like to hear 'em as soon as mout be.'
'Well, they've had their tramp for nothing. That's all the news I've got for them, and much good may it do them.'
'Well, well, sir,' said Clayton, 'we didn't mean no harm. I'll tell 'em what you say. Good-night, sir!'
'Good-night, Clayton!' Roland spoke a little more gently. 'I'm sorry I can do nothing for you.'
The deputation turned to go. Litvinoff walked across the room and shook hands with each man as he passed out of the door.
'Good-night, my friends!' he said. 'Keep your tempers. This unfortunate business is no one's fault. It's the fault of the system we all live under.'
The door closed upon the last man. Roland turned angrily on his guest.
'I can't imagine,' he said, with asperity, 'how a man who is so sensible about most things can take the part of these unreasonable idiots!'
'My dear Ferrier,' relighting the cigar which had gone outin the excitement of the moment, 'of course I've the very greatest sympathy with you in this painful business, and I know how little it is your fault, but now, as always, I'm on the side of the workers, and you know I never disguise my views.'
'So it appears,' Roland was beginning, when the murmur of voices outside gave place to a single voice—that of one of the deputies, who seemed to be speaking to the men. Ferrier and his guest could hear the shuffling of many feet on the gravel as the men crowded round the speaker. When he stopped there was a tumult of hissing and yelling and groaning—a noise as of a very Pandemonium let loose.
Roland turned to Litvinoff.
'I hope you're proud of your preciousprotégés?' he said, and at the same moment a voice outside cried,—
'Let's smash the cursed walls in!'
Old Clayton's voice sounded thin and shrill above the uproar.
'Don't be fools, lads! Come away! Let un alone! Come home! We'll do no good here.'
The men seemed to hesitate a minute, and then to obey, reluctantly moving towards the gate.
'They have gone without doing anything very serious, you see,' said the Count; but even as he spoke a big stone, thrown by some strong hand, came crashing through the window, and rolled, muddy and grey, on to the edge of the soft fur hearthrug.
'Damn!' cried Roland furiously, 'I'll have the fellow who did that, anyway.'
He made a dash for the door, but Litvinoff caught him by the shoulders, and there was a struggle, silent and brief, which ended in Roland's standing still, and looking at the other savagely.
'Stay where you are, for God's sake!' shouted the Count; 'they've only done you five shillings' worth of damage now, but they'll perhaps add murder to it if you go outside. Dobe reasonable, Ferrier. There, they've gone now; and if you went out you couldn't identify the man who did it.'
Roland turned away, and flung himself sulkily into a chair by the fire.
'I suppose you're right,' he said; 'but I shall be deuced glad to be out of the whole thing.'
It was perhaps as well for Roland's self-esteem and peace of mind that he did not hear the strictures that were passed upon him by the men as they returned towards the village. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when a new-born hope is killed, and killed cruelly and suddenly, there comes sometimes something more terrible than heart-sickness and more dangerous.
The moon had flung aside the slight mist which had covered her face earlier in the evening, and now shone full on the valley, towards which the crowd were making their way. As they turned the corner which brought them in sight of the mill whose doors none of them were to pass again, a burst of curses and oaths broke from the men and fell on the still air, violating and outraging the peace and beauty of the night.
At this moment Hatfield and Murdoch, walking together from the village to meet them, came up and were promptly informed of the result of the interview.
'Ay, ay, lads!' said old Murdoch. 'What did Ah tell ye? as Ah thowt.' Then looking down at the mill he pointed towards it, and went on in a loud voice, 'Ye shall best have another try now. Go down and beg o' t' door-posts o' t' owd mill to take ye on again. Ye'll be as likely to get a good hearing fro' them as ye were fro' t' young puppy up yonder; and they'll not be laughing at ye as soon as yer turned, anyway.'
This last suggestion had the effect that Murdoch probably wished it to have. At once a dozen voices were raised for going back to Thornsett Edge, and not leaving a pane of glassin the window-sashes. The man who had thrown the stone before at once became a small hero, and met with numerous offers of assistance in going back and completing the work he had begun. Not a few of the men were excited by drink as well as by rage, having taken considerably more than was good for them before they started on the forlorn hope, and the excitement of these men communicated itself by those mysterious means which only manifest themselves on these occasions to the men who were sober. Roland Ferrier's words, passing from mouth to mouth, had been added to and altered so much that in the prevailing state of mind each man felt that he personally had been insulted and outraged by the man of whom he had asked the small favour of being allowed to continue to work until the winter-tide had passed. The idea of returning and wrecking the Ferriers' house became every moment more and more popular, and the crowd had actually faced round and begun that swaying movement which in an undisciplined body always, for a moment or two, precedes a start, when Hatfield spoke out at the top of his voice,—
'See here,' he said. 'In a few weeks now we shall all be gone to different parts, some on us to "the house." Most like, when that's done, when we're tramping the country far an' wide, and seeking the work we're turned out of here, they two'—pointing towards Thornsett Edge—''ll get tired o' goin' without their brass so long, maybe, an' 'ill make up the quarrel, and come back and start the mill again, with a new lot o' hands, to live i' our homes and eat the bread we're done out off.'
This new view of the case was received with a moment's silence by the hands; then a voice from the rear spoke out,—'Na, na, they 'ont, not if I can stop it; let's break t' ow'd mill to bits, and give the new hands the job to build it up again afore they work it.'
This suggestion, probably because its adoption was a trifleless dangerous than wrecking a house, some of whose inmates were young men—possibly young men with firearms—was received with almost unanimous applause. In less time than it takes to tell, a hundred pieces of the rock of which the Derbyshire walls are built had begun to rattle on the roof and smash the windows of the mill below, and two or three pairs of strong arms had torn away a huge boulder of grey stone which, held in its place by creepers and earth, overhung the descent, and had set it rolling down the steep decline. It bounded on to the slated roof of the mill, and with a great crash went right through it, leaving a large black gap. Then the men set up a yell that made the country round ring again. When it had died away old Murdoch, who was beside himself with excitement, shouted out, 'Why waste yer time i' chuckin' stones at the danged place, lads? Get down t' hill and burn it to the ground.' Another yell of approval greeted the proposition, and in a few seconds the hill-top was deserted, and the crowd, swayed by an irresistible impulse, was scrambling down the rocky decline and making for the mill.
The shout that had been sent up when the hole had been knocked in the roof had reached the quick ears of Count Litvinoff sitting smoking in silence opposite his host. He got out of his chair. 'I have a bit of a headache to-night,' he said, 'I don't think arguing agrees with me. I'll just go and take a turn across the moor.'
'All right,' said Roland. 'I won't turn in till you come back.'
Litvinoff sauntered out of the room and across the hall, took a stout oak stick from the hall-stand, and, opening the front-door, strolled leisurely down the carriage drive. But directly he was out in the road he pulled his hat down tightly upon his ears, vaulted a low stone wall and set off running in the direction of the mill as though a thousand devils were following at his heels.
CHAPTER XXIII.
FIRE!
TO run at full speed across a Derbyshire moor by the uncertain light of a wintry moon is a feat not unattended with difficulty and danger, especially when the runner is not quite accustomed to the course; but it would have taken greater pitfalls than even those moors present to have made Count Litvinoff choose a longer and easier way. For when that shout had been borne to him on the wind he scented excitement and danger, and excitement and danger were to him as the breath of life. He was almost certain that the men meant mischief, and he intended to do his best to prevent it. His sympathies really were, as he had told Roland, entirely with them, and he was genuinely anxious that they should not add a criminal prosecution for riot to their other troubles. At the same time he looked forward with some pleasure to the scene in which he was now hastening to take a part.
He had been in a fretful and irritable state of mind ever since he had left London, and he cordially welcomed a row, and did not care much if in that row he got a knock on the head that would put an end to his visit and his life at the same time. At any rate, the situation offered a chance of action, and it was action more than anything that he had been longing for lately.
As he got nearer the valley in which the mill lay he was able to form a better idea of what was toward, for the shouts seemed to get louder and louder. He quickened his pace atthe moment when he reached the brow of the hill, from the foot of which all the noise and clamour arose, and paused, looking down; a lurid flash of flame lighted up for an instant the semi-darkness before him, and as suddenly died out again.
'Diable!' he said. 'I shall be too late for anything. I have some power over men, but I am not a fire-engine—'
He made the descent rather more cautiously, though not much less rapidly, than he had done the rest of the journey, and pushed his way through the little wood to within a hundred yards or so of the mill. Then he stopped, peering forward to ascertain the exact state of things before he went on.
The mill was not one of those square, many-windowed blocks which remind one of children's toy-houses, but a group of irregular buildings of all sorts and sizes, built of grey stone and roofed with slate. There was a paved yard surrounded by outhouses, some mere sheds of wood and thatch, and it was round the outhouse nearest to the mill itself that the men were crowding. There was plenty of light now for Litvinoff to discern every detail of the scene before him, for two sheds were on fire and burning merrily in the frosty air. The door of a certain room where he remembered to have seen quantities of cotton waste and inflammable rubbish, and which opened directly on to the yard, had been battered in by the men, and, the hinges having given way, hung crookedly by its strained, bent, but still strong, lock. Some of the men were hurrying to and fro between this room and the outbuilding, carrying armfuls of wood and straw, and these men were for the most part silent. The shouting, of which there was a good deal, was done by those who were doing nothing else.
Count Litvinoff had not been the only one to hear that first yell, and to interpret it as the note of something unusual, for dark heads were moving along the brow of the hill on the other side, and dark figures were hurrying down the stone steps.
The situation was obvious, and it was obvious too that no time was to be lost, for the crowd was becoming wilder and wilder, drunk with the strong wine of excitement as well as with the more habitual beer. Rioting, like everything else, grows by what it feeds on, and the higher the flames went the higher rose the cries that accompanied them. There is always something exciting about a fire—in the breaking loose of the tremendous force which we keep mostly as our servant. The fire was still small enough to be quenched if its originators so chose, but they saw well enough that soon it would be beyond their control, and would be their master in the place where it had been their slave. And they, too, had broken from their old place to-night. They were no longer the humble dependants of a rich man. Their hand was against him, and against all his class, and the new sense of independent, self-chosen action was intoxicating them all, and had driven far from them all thought of forbearance or of fear. For there was danger to the men themselves in this hell they were making. The out-buildings and the mill formed a square, and, once kindled, all would burn rapidly; and, from the slight eminence where he stood, the onlooker, cool and free from the madness that surged in the brain of the actors, could see plainly that the incendiaries ran a very fair chance of being caught in their own trap, and of perishing like rats in a barn. The big iron gates were closed immovably, and the only exit was by a narrow door. If once a panic began, and the men lost their heads in trying to pass this door, there might be a tragedy more terrible than Litvinoff cared to contemplate. He knew that if once the fire began in the mill itself there would be no chance of saving it, or anything else, and he could see that the men were beginning to drag burning fragments from the out-buildings, and he knew that they would be dragged to that room with the broken-in door. He paused no longer. That door was thepoint d'appuiof the defence, and for that door he made.
He came rapidly down the hill and along the path that led to the little gate by which alone entrance to the yard could be effected. In the confusion of hurrying figures no one noticed the one figure more which, in a few strides, crossed the yard and planted itself just inside that broken door. Count Litvinoff glanced behind him and by the lurid glare of the burning timber opposite he could see the pile of straw and faggots in the room ready for the horrible bonfire. Just inside the lintel of the door something lay on the floor, gleaming redly in the firelight. He picked it up; it was a light, bright, long-handled steel hatchet.
'Aha,' he said; 'this is a gift from the gods!'
As he faced the yard, a great noise of mingled cheers and shouts went up from the crowd. It was not because they had seen their solitary opponent, but because the attack on what they thought the undefended mill was about to begin in earnest. All the active members of the riot were making for the door, headed by half-a-dozen stalwart fellows dragging blazing timbers.
'Stop!' shouted Litvinoff, in a voice that rang above the confused shouting of the crowd like a trumpet call.
And stop they did—and for quite twenty seconds held their tongues, to boot. Then arose a storm of indignation and derision when they saw that only one man stood in the way. They could not see who he was, and they cared little. The leaders made a forward movement, when—
'Stop!' he cried again, and his tones rose clear above the yells of the rioters, and were heard by timorous listeners on the hillside. 'Stop, and clear out of this as quick as you can get! Get to your homes, you fools!'
'Clear out yourself,' said a ringleader, 'or we'll clear you out!' But the forward movement had stopped. A parley had begun, and Litvinoff always felt that a chance of speaking meant for him a chance of winning.
'Put out that fire, and get back to your homes!' he cried.'I've come down here to save you from penal servitude, and I mean to do it. Not a man of you gets inside this door!'
By this time all the crowd had come up, and formed a semicircle in front of him, about fifteen yards off. They could see his face better than he could see theirs, for the light of the flames behind them fell full upon him. He was deadly pale, but he looked deadly determined too. There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes, and a gleam still more dangerous from the bright blade of the axe which he had swung up on to his shoulder. Standing on the raised step of the door he looked tall and strong and bold.
Already the effect of this lion in the path made itself felt, for a faint cheer went up from the outside edge of the crowd, and a voice cried,—
'He's right. Let un be, lads—let un be, and go yer ways home.'
'All those of you who've got any sense left turn round and put out that fire. The work you've done to-night already is worth ten years in prison.'
'Then let's finish our work, lads, and earn our wages! Ten years' good feedin's better nor a month's clemmin',' shouted a burly young fellow of some six feet.
'Well said, Isaac Potts!' cried more than one. 'Dang his cheek! Heave him out of it!'
And some half-dozen rushed forward to suit the action to the word, foremost among them Isaac Potts. In the position Litvinoff had taken up, it was impossible for more than one man to attack him at a time. As the young mill hand, armed with a piece of wood still smouldering redly, sprang to lead the attack, a woman's voice—his sweetheart's—sounded shrilly from behind the crowd,—
'Keep back, Isaac—keep back; he'll brain thee for sure!'
The warning was unheeded, or, if the young man heard it,it only urged him on. He stopped an instant, hurled the wood at Litvinoff's head, and sprang forward to follow up his missile. The aim was not a good one. The brand only hit the door lintel, struck out a shower of sparks, and fell across the step. It was an unlucky miss for Isaac. Litvinoff planted one foot firmly, and gave his axe a swing. It came down crashing through collar-bone and shoulder blade, and almost severing the arm from the body. Isaac staggered back upon the men behind him, covering them with blood as he fell. There was a silence of a moment, which seemed long. The crowd drew a deep breath.
All the devil in Litvinoff's nature was roused now.
'Come on, you madmen!' he cried, as he recovered himself and brought his axe to the shoulder again. 'Come on! Get into this room now if you can!'
But the general ambition to get into that room was a little damped somehow, and the few who had been close on Isaac's heels fell back, and left him alone, all but one man, who stood glaring into Litvinoff's eyes. He held a heavy iron bar in his hand.
'Back you go, or down you go!' shouted Litvinoff, making a step towards him, and giving the axe a swing in the air.
The man did not wait for the blow. He retreated, and joined the crowd just as the girl who had shrieked that warning tore her way through to the place where her lover was lying, and bent over him.
Litvinoff brought his weapon to his side. Then he said quietly,—
'I told you none of you should get into this room, and none of you shall, by God! if I have to treat twenty of you to the same fare as this poor fellow. If you're sane men, pick him up and see to him, and perhaps nothing worse may come to you after all. Remember that every man who does not help to put that fire out breaks the law. For Heaven's sake bereasonable men. There are some here who know me. Do you think I care for this cursed mill? I came down here to saveyou. Help me to do it.'
The moderate party was a good deal stronger by this time; the axe had been a first-rate argument.
'Well done, sir!' 'Quite right, sir!' 'Hear, hear!' went up from the crowd, and two or three men came forward. Litvinoff resumed his defensive attitude, but they were not for attack. They busied themselves with their wounded friend.
'Is John Hatfield there?' called Litvinoff, seeing that he had prevailed. 'I want him. Hatfield, can't you manage to get a dozen of your friends to put out that fire? The best thing you can do is to knock down the sheds on each side, and then it will burn itself out and do no harm.'
'We will, sir,' Hatfield answered. 'You're right; this has been a mad night's work.'
All danger of further riot was at an end. The men who had been foremost in the work of destruction had made off as quickly as possible, and those who were left worked zealously under Hatfield's orders. The wounded man was carried off on a shutter to the nearest cottage. The fire was effectually put out with water from the reservoir. The men loafed off in twos and threes, and darkness and quiet settled down once more on Thornsett. Litvinoff and Hatfield remained till the last lingerer had left. Then Hatfield said,—
'Ah suppose this means the 'sizes for a goodish few o' us.'
'I hope not,' Litvinoff answered; 'I'll do my best for you—that is, I shall not know who was here to-night. But I advise you to clear out as early as you can to-morrow, and, if your friends who were in this business are wise, they'll do the same. Where have they taken that fellow I knocked over? I'd better go and see after him.'
They turned their back on the mill, and climbed the hill tothe cottage, where the doctor who had been sent for was already busy with his patient.
'Is he going to live?' Litvinoff asked sharply.
'I think so,' was the answer; 'the greatest danger is loss of blood. He has been bleeding like a bull.'
'Oh, you must pull him through it, doctor,' said the Count. He slipped some gold into the hand of the woman who owned the cottage. 'Let him have everything the doctor orders, and you'll do all you can, I know. I'll be down to-morrow.'
He looked towards the girl who was crouching at the head of the bed as though he would have spoken to her, but seemed to think better of it, and rejoined Hatfield outside.
'I think he'll be all right,' he said, holding his hand out. 'Good-bye, Hatfield; don't forget what I said. Drop me a line to the Post Office, Charing Cross, London, to say where you are; and do let me beg of you, if it's only for your wife's sake, not to get mixed up in any more of this sort of thing. It must be on a much bigger scale before it'll be successful, my boy,' he ended, resuming his most frivolous manner, and turning away.
'I think I deserve a cigar,' he said to himself, as he started on the long return walk, by the road this time. And he lighted one accordingly.
About a quarter of a mile from Thornsett he met Roland Ferrier, who was walking quickly along, Gates by his side.
'Where have you come from?' the former asked abruptly. 'Here's Gates tells me the men are burning the mill, and I don't know what beside.'
'Oh, no, no,' the Count answered lightly; 'there's been a little orating and so forth, in which I have borne a distinguished part, but it's all over now. They wound up with a hymn or two, and went home to their wives. Come along back. I'll tell you all about it when we get in,' and, catching an arm of each, he wheeled them round and marched them back to Thornsett Edge.
CHAPTER XXIV.
AFTER THE FIRE.
BEFORE daybreak next morning John Hatfield had taken Count Litvinoff's advice, and he and several others who had borne an active part in the night's work had shaken the dust of Thornsett off their feet and taken their departure in various directions. Had they not been quite so precipitate their leave-taking might have been more dignified and less secret, for Litvinoff's confidence in his own powers of diplomacy had been more than justified. When, somewhat to his chagrin, his eloquence failed to reconcile Roland Ferrier to the idea of taking no legal steps to punish the intending incendiaries—for, in spite of the way in which the Count had watered the story down, Roland had managed to get a pretty accurate idea of the truth—he made a hasty journey over to Aspinshaw. He found Miss Stanley in a state of great excitement about the events of the night before, of which she had heard a very much embroidered and highly-coloured version.
'Oh, Count Litvinoff,' she said, coming forward to meet him, 'I am so glad you have come. I have just sent two of the servants down to Thornsett to find out who was hurt. Mr Clarke, of Thorpe, has just been here, and told us that you saved so many lives last night.'
'Saved so many lives last night!' repeated Litvinoff. 'They must have been the lives of rats and mice, then.' And he gaveher a plain and unvarnished account of the whole story, from the interview of the deputation with Roland to his own visit to the man he had cut down. He had the very rare faculty of telling the exact truth in a particularly exciting way—any adventure in which he had been personally engaged he always told from some point of view not his own—so that the hearer saw him playing his part in the scene rather than heard the chief adventurer recounting his adventures.
As he skilfully put before her the picture of the one man facing the infuriated crowd, he could see her eyes sparkle with sympathy, and could read interest and admiration in her face.
'And so you were not hurt, after all?' she said. 'I am so glad. But what of the men? Will they be punished? They've got themselves into trouble, I'm afraid, poor fellows.'
'Ah!' he answered, meeting her questioning glance with an earnest expression on his serious face. 'It was about them I came to speak to you. Our friend Ferrier is determined, not unnaturally perhaps, to resent and to punish last night's madness. I've done my utmost to reason him out of his resolve to be avenged on these poor fools, but he's not in a humour to listen to reason. It will need something stronger than that to induce him to let the men escape the natural consequences of their folly.'
'Oh, but Hatfield—surely he'd not punish him?'
'Well, I advised Hatfield to make himself scarce, and I hope he's done it. It's more on behalf of the other men that I'm here.'
'Why, what can I do in the matter?'
'Your word will have great weight with young Ferrier. I want you to go to him and ask him to let the affair rest just where it is,' he said bluntly.
Clare coloured painfully. 'I go to Mr Ferrier?' she repeated. 'Count Litvinoff, you must know that that is quite impossible.'
'I know that it is difficult, Miss Stanley, but I also know that it is not impossible.'
'It is out of the question for me—you ought to know,' she hesitated, 'to ask a favour ofhim.'
'It would be an unpleasant thing for you to do, and two months ago I would rather have cut my tongue out than have asked you. But I know now—I have had it from your own lips—that you are a convert to our great faith.'
She made a movement as though she would have spoken, but he went on hurriedly:
'You may remember that what impressed you most in my fellow-countryman Petrovitch's address was the self-abnegation which ran all through it. My countryman was right. Self-abnegation is the note of the Revolution! On the first day of this new year you honoured me by asking me what good you could do. I tell you now. You can save many of these men from prison, and their wives from harder fare than the prison's, by humbling your pride and asking what will not be refused. Forgive me if I speak plainly, but it is not for my own sake I would ask you to do anything now. It is for these men, and for the sake of the cause.'
There were a few moments of painful silence. Miss Stanley frowned at the hearthrug, and Count Litvinoff sat looking at her with the expression of one who has asked a question to which he knows there can be but one answer. The answer came.
'Very well,' she said, 'I will do what you wish, for the sake of these men,' she added, becoming unnecessarily explanatory.
'I knew you would,' he said.
'But,' she went on hurriedly, 'there is one other thing I can do. I can help to make this time a little less hard to them. Will you—'
He interrupted her.
'No, no, no; my part is played. Miss Stanley must deal with that other matter by herself.'
Two hours later Clare Stanley called at Thornsett Edge, and, after a brief conversation with Roland, passed on to the village, having done the work she had set herself to do. It was, perhaps, the most painful act of her whole life. But she had performed it successfully, and so it came about that none of the men were punished, and that poor Isaac, who was a pensioner on Miss Stanley for a good many months, was the only one to suffer from that wild night's work.