_A STRANGE NIGHT_
It was a sultry August night, and Bride felt no disposition for
sleep. She had acquired during her mother’s long illness the habit
of wakefulness during the earlier hours of the night, when she was
frequently beside the sick-bed, ministering to the wants of the
patient. Since death had robbed her of that office, she had fallen into
the habit of spending the earlier hours of the night in meditation and
prayer, together with a study of the Scriptures; and to-night, after
her old nurse had brushed out her abundant hair, and arranged it for
the night, and after she had exchanged her dress for a long straight
wrapper which was both cooler and more comfortable, she dismissed the
old servant with a few sweet words of thanks, and setting her windows
wide open to the summer night, knelt down beside the one which looked
out over the moonlit bay, and was soon lost to all outward impression
by her absorption in her own prayerful meditations.
The hour of midnight had boomed from the clock-tower before she
moved, and then she was aroused less by that sound than by a gradual
consciousness that there was in the sky, to which her eyes were
frequently raised, a glow that was not of the moon, but was more
ruddy in tone, and seemed to absorb into itself the softer and whiter
light. As she remarked this, her thoughts came back to earth again,
and rising from her knees, she leaned out of the window, and then
crossed the room hastily towards that other window looking away in the
direction of Pentreath, and then at once she understood.
A tall column of fire arose from behind the belt of woodland which hid
the distant town, a beautiful but awful pillar of fire, reaching up as
it seemed to the very heavens, and swaying gently to and fro in the
light summer breeze. For a few moments Bride stood gazing at it with
eyes in which pain and wonderment were gathering, and then a stifled
exclamation broke from her lips.
“God forgive them!--that is the work of incendiaries!”
She stood rigid and motionless a few moments longer, and then with
rapid fingers she began unfastening her wrapper, and clothing herself
in one of her dark walking dresses. Her heart was beating fast and
furiously. Her face was very pale, for she was taking a resolution that
cost her a great effort; but she seemed to see her duty clearly mapped
out before her, and she came of a race that was not wont to shrink from
the path of duty because the road was rough.
Few knew better than did Lady Bride Marchmont the temper of the rude
fisher-folk of St. Bride’s Bay. From her childhood she had been wont to
accompany her mother down to that cluster of cottages and hovels which
formed the little community, and she had grown up with an intuitive
understanding of the people, and their ways and methods of thought,
which had been matured and deepened by her many talks with Abner. She
knew full well that, although in the main kindly men individually,
there was a vein of ferocity running through the fibre of their nature,
which a certain class of events always awoke to active life. Thirty
years back these men, or their fathers, were professionally wreckers,
and it had needed long patience, and all the gentle influence of
the Duchess and her helpers, to break them of this terrible sin. Of
late years deliberate wrecking had to a very great extent died out,
but there was still in the hearts of the fishermen an irradicable
conviction that when “Providence” did send a vessel to pieces on their
iron-bound coast, the cargo of that vessel became their lawful prey;
and they were careless enough, in striving to outwit the authorities
and secure the booty, of any loss of human life which might have
been averted by prompt measures on their part. They made it rather
a principle than otherwise to let the crew drown before their eyes
without any attempt at rescue. When the crew were saved, they had a way
of claiming the contents of the ship if any came ashore, and that was a
notion altogether foreign to the ideas of the fishermen of St. Bride.
The same instinct of plunder awoke within them when any misfortune
occurred in the neighbourhood; and wherever there was booty to be had
for the taking, there were the hardy fisher-folk of the place likely to
be found. Bride realised in a moment that if they saw the glow of this
fire, and understood its meaning as she did, they would set off at once
to join the band of marauders and incendiaries; and as every addition
to such a band brings a fresh access of lawlessness and a growing sense
of power, the very fact of the arrival of this reinforcement was likely
enough to result in fresh outrage, and fresh scenes of destruction and
horror.
Whilst standing rigid and silent, watching that terrible pillar of
flame, Bride had turned the matter over in her mind, and resolved upon
her own course of action. She knew the fishermen well, and knew their
nature--at once soft and passionate, gentle and ferocious. Were she
to alarm the household and get her father to send down a number of the
servants to try and stop them by force from marching to join the riot,
she knew that nothing but fighting and disaster would ensue. There
was a long-standing and instinctive feud between the servants of the
castle, many of whom were not natives of the place, and the rugged
fisher-folk of the bay. The servants despised the fishermen, and the
fishermen hated the servants. No good could possibly result from such a
course of action. But Bride knew every man amongst them. She had gone
fearlessly in and out of their houses since childhood. She had sailed
in their boats on the bay, she had visited their wives in sickness, and
had clothed their children with the work of her own hands. They loved
her in their own rough way. She knew that well, and she was a power in
their midst, as her mother had been before her. They might be stayed by
her pleading words, when no attempt at force would do more than whet
their desire after battle and plunder. If she went alone, she had a
chance with them; if she stayed to get help, all would be lost.
Her resolution was taken in less time than it has taken to read these
lines. Donning her plainest dress and cloak, and softly summoning
from the anteroom a great hound, who was the invariable companion of
her lonely walks, she opened another door into one of the turreted
chambers of the castle, and found her way down a spiral staircase,
lighted by broad squares of moonlight from unclosed windows, to a door
at the base, the bolts of which she drew back easily--for this was her
own ordinary mode of access to the gardens--and found herself out in
the soft night-air with the moon overhead, and that glow in the sky
behind her which told such a terrible tale of its own. There were two
ways from the castle to the fishing-village lying out of sight beneath
the shelter of the cliff. One was the long and roundabout way of the
zigzag carriage-drive, leading through the grounds and out by the
lodge upon the road, from which a bye-lane led down to the shore. The
other was a far shorter, but a rough and in some seasons a perilous
track--a narrow pathway formed by a jutting ledge of rock, extending
by one of nature’s freaks from a little below the great terrace in
front of the castle right round the angle of the bluff, and so to St.
Bride’s Bay itself. A long, long flight of steps led down from the
sea-terrace of Penarvon to the beach below, where the castle boats lay
at anchor, or were housed within their commodious boat-house, according
to weather and season; and from one spot as you descended these steps
a sure-footed person could step upon the ledge of rock which formed
the pathway round the headland. Bride was familiar from childhood with
this path, and had traversed it too often and too freely to feel the
smallest fear now. The moonlight was clear and intense. She knew every
foot of the way, and even the hound who followed closely in her wake
was too well used to the precarious ledge to express any uneasiness
when his mistress led the way down to it.
With rapid and fearless precision Bride made the transit round the
rocky headland, and saw the waters of the bay lying still and calm at
her feet. The ledge of rock sloped rapidly down on this side of the
bluff, and very quickly Bride found herself quite close to the hamlet,
which lay like a sleeping thing beneath the sheltering crags. Her heart
gave a bound of relief. All was still as yet. Perhaps the men had not
realised what was passing, and were all at home and asleep. She paused
a moment, reconnoitring, wondering whether she would do better to go
forward or back. But the sight of a light shining steadily in one
window, and a shadow passing to and fro within the room it lighted,
convinced her that something was astir, and decided her to go on.
She knew the cottage well. It was that of the old woman who went by
the name of Mother Clat. Bride knew that if any mischief were afoot,
she would be the first to know it; nay, it was like enough it would
be hatched and discussed beneath her very roof. Even now the worst
characters of the place, the boldest of the men, and those most bent on
riot and plunder, might be gathered together there; but the knowledge
of this probability did no deter Bride, who had all the resolute
fearlessness of her race and temperament; and she went composedly
forward and knocked at the outer door.
“Coom in wi’ ye,” answered a familiar voice, and Bride lifted the latch
and entered.
A fire of peat turves glowed on the open hearth, over which a pot was
hanging; but the room was empty, save for the old woman herself, who
gazed in unaffected amaze at the apparition of the slim black-robed
girl with her white face and shining eyes.
“Loramassy! ef it ban’t t’ Laady Bride hersen! Mercy on us! What’s
brought she doon heer at such a time! My pretty laady, you ’a no beznez
out o’ your bed sech a time as this. You shudden ’ave abin an’ gone vor
tu leave t’ castle to-night!”
“Why not?” asked Bride, coming forward towards the fire, and looking
full at the woman, who shrank slightly under the penetrating gaze.
“What is going on abroad to-night, Mother Clat? I know that something
is?”
“Fegs! I’m thinking the dowl himsel’s abroad these days,” answered the
woman uneasily. “The bwoys are that chuck vull o’ mischief. Theer’s no
holdin’ un when ’e gets un into ’is maw. It du no manner o’ gude to
clapper-claw un. ’T on’y maakes un zo itemy’s a bear wi’ a zore yed.”
“Where are the men?” asked Bride quietly. The woman eyed the girl
uneasily and not without suspicion, but the expression of her face
seemed to reassure her.
“Ye dwawnt mean no harm to the bwoys ef so be as I tellee?” she
answered tentatively.
“No, indeed,” answered Bride earnestly. “I want to keep them from harm
all I can. I am so terribly afraid they are running into it themselves.
I hoped I should be in time to stop it. Oh, I fear I am too late!”
“Crimminy!” ejaculated the old woman, with admiration in her voice and
eyes, “ef yu came to try an’ stop they bwoys from mischief, yu are a
righy bold un!--that yu be! But ’tidden no use tu argufy widden. I did
go for tu try mysen: but twarn’t no use. Et gwoeth agin the grain o’
men-folk tu listen tu a woman--let alone a bit of a gurl like yu, my
laady.”
“I think they would have listened to me if I could have found them in
time,” said Bride softly, with a great regret in her eyes. “You mean
they have all gone off to join the rioters over at Pentreath?”
“They’ve abin tu Pentreath ever sin’ yestereen. Yu’ve coom tu late, my
pretty laady. Du ee go back now. ’Tidden no place for yu heer. What
ud his Graace say ef he heard you was tu St. Bride’s at this time o’
night?”
The woman was so manifestly uneasy that the girl suspected something,
though she knew not what. As she stood looking into the fire, Mother
Clat still urging her to be gone, it suddenly occurred to her that
possibly the rioters had other plans than those whispered designs
against the mills of Pentreath. Had not her own father angered one
section of the community by the introduction of machinery upon the
land? And when the spirit of revolt was aroused and well whetted by
scenes of outrage, might not one lead to others?
Looking straight at the old woman with the grave direct glance which
made this girl a power sometimes with those about her, she asked
clearly and steadily--
“Do you mean that you are expecting the men back? that they are bent on
doing mischief here? Do not try and deceive me. It is always best to
speak the truth.”
The old woman cowered before the girl, as she never cowered in the
midst of the rude rough men, even when they were in their cups, and
threatened her with rough ferocity.
“Yu nidden be glumpy wi’ I,” she half whimpered, “I an’t adued nawt but
try to keep un back. I twold un it ud coom tu no gude. They’d better
letten bide. But I be terrabul aveared they means mischief. It’s awl
along o’ that Zaul. He’ve abin arufyin’, and aggin’ un on, and now they
du zay as ’e’s leadin’ un the dowl on’y knaws wheer; and they’re fair
’tosticated wi’t all!”
Bride started a little, as though something had stung her, and a look
of keen pain came into her face.
“Saul,” she said softly, “Abner’s boy! Ah! what a sorrow it will be for
him! And that is Eustace’s doing! It was he who is responsible, not the
poor hot-headed youth himself. O Eustace! Eustace! will you ever see
the danger of the path you are treading, and the peril into which you
are leading others?”
The woman was loth to speak at first, but the charm of Bride’s
gentleness, and her absolute sense of security in the goodwill of the
young lady, overcame her reticence at last, and she told the girl all
she knew. It was not much; but she had gathered from some news that
reached her at dusk that she might expect a party some time in the
small hours of the morning, who would stand in need of refreshment,
but would pay her well for her trouble. Reading between the lines of
the message, she had got a shrewd notion that the marauders under Saul
Tresithny would pay a visit to the neighbourhood of St. Bride’s that
night, and it might be presumed that the Duke’s new machinery might
suffer in consequence. This was by no means certain, however. The
Duke was known to take precautions not possible for smaller farmers
with fewer servants and less issue at stake, and it might be that the
attack would be made upon the smaller men, who would less easily recoup
themselves for the loss. Of that the woman knew nothing; as a matter
of fact, she did not know, but only guessed, that an attack might be
made at all. She had soon come to an end of such information as she
possessed, and Bride was left to consider what she ought to do under
the circumstances.
Should she go home and rouse her father’s men? or would that only
bring about the very collision she so much wished to avoid? Was
the information received sufficient for her to act upon, or had it
originated with the woman herself, who was evidently not in the
confidence of the men? Musing for a few moments over this question,
Bride made a quick resolve, and after saying a brief but kindly
farewell to Mother Clat, who was anxiously studying her face all the
while, she slipped out of the cottage, and along the silent little
street of the village beneath the cliff, till she found herself upon
the bit of rough road which led upwards from the shore, through a
narrow gully, towards the church and the rectory.
Bride knew the habits of Mr. Tremodart. He was seldom in bed before
one or two o’clock in the morning. He was a man of eccentric ways,
and almost invariably after his supper at half-past eight, sat down
to smoke in one of his untidy rooms, and at ten o’clock started out
on a long walk over the moors or along the cliffs, coming home about
midnight, and sitting up with a book for an hour or two later. It was
not much after one o’clock now, and she had good hopes of catching him
before he retired. With all his peculiarities, and his lack of the
spirituality that was to Bride as the breath of life, the Cornishman
was a shrewd, hard-headed man, with a large fund of common-sense, and
a wide experience of St. Bride’s folks and their ways. He would be by
far the best person to acquaint with the danger of the hour. He was
(as was usual in those days) magistrate as well as clergyman, had a
secular as well as sacred charge over his people. To her great relief,
as she unlatched the garden-gate, she saw him standing out in his
untidy plot of ground and looking at the red light in the sky. As her
light footfall fell upon his ear, he turned with a start, and his face
expressed a great amazement when he saw who had come to disturb his
solitude at such an hour.
“Lady Bride! Will wonders never cease! And what are yu doing out here
alone at this time of night, my child? It is hardly fit yu should be
abroad with no protector but your dog. Is anything amiss at home? And
why did yu not send rather than come?”
In a few words Bride told the story of her evening’s vigil and
its result, the clergyman standing and looking down at her in the
moonlight, and making patterns on the gravel with the point of his
stick.
“The foolish lads! the foolish, wrong-headed lads! they will bring
mischief on their heads one of these days, I take it. Well, well, well,
it is perhaps less their fault than those who egg them on, and puzzle
their heads by half-truths. Dear, dear, we must stop the mischief if we
can. I wonder now where they are like to go first. To the Duke’s, think
you, Lady Bride? ’Twas he who first brought in this new machinery, and
there would be most glory in destroying his property, as they would
think it, poor misguided souls!”
“Yes, but they know my father’s men have firearms, and that the dogs
are left loose in the great yard where the machines are kept, and that
there is always one man sleeping in the room by the great alarm-bell
that was put up, who would rouse the whole castle if he heard any sound
of attack.”
“If they know that, they are hardly likely to be daring enough to try
to injure his Grace’s property,” remarked Mr. Tremodart thoughtfully.
“But there are several more in their black books--Farmer Teazel, for
instance--and that misguided young Tresithny, whom yu say is at the
head of all this, knows the place well, and would be able to lead them
to it.”
“Oh, I cannot believe it of Saul!” cried Bride, with a note of pain in
her voice, “to turn into a leader of cowardly mobs, after the teaching
and the training he has had! It doesn’t seem possible; yet I fear it
is too true. And it is, I fear, the doing of my cousin Eustace. Oh, it
seems too sad that we should first lead them on to riot, and then sit
in judgment upon them for what we have taught them to do.”
“I must see if I cannot stop this before it has come to a matter
for the magistrates,” said Mr. Tremodart, with a firm look upon his
face; “if things go too far, it becomes a hanging matter for the
ringleaders--examples are made, and the people intimidated by the
hanging of those who lead them. We must not let Abner’s grandson finish
his life upon the gallows if we can help it. So come with me, Lady
Bride; I will see you to the gate of your home, and then go and meet
these lads if they do pay us a visit. They will most likely take the
direct road for some distance, and the night is very still. I think I
shall find them out by the tramp of their feet. I have good ears for
sound.”
Bride knew that, and walked rapidly by his side up the steep road
trending upwards towards the castle; but when the lodge gate was
reached, and he would have opened it for her, she paused and placed her
hand upon his arm.
“I cannot,” she said; “I must go on. I must see the end of this.
Indeed, I shall get no harm. Nobody will lay a finger on me. No, do
not refuse me; do not think me self-willed, but I must go with you.
Something within me tells me I must. Mr. Tremodart, it has been the
doing of a Marchmont that Saul Tresithny and these poor ignorant
fishermen are abroad with evil intent to-night. You must not hinder me
from striving to do my share to avert the threatened danger, and I know
I shall not be hurt. You will be with me, and no one will lay a finger
on either of us. They may not listen to us; but they will not hurt us.
Our West-Country men are not savages.”
Mr. Tremodart rubbed his chin and shook his head in some perplexity.
He did not think the delicate girl was suited to the task in hand,
and he rather feared what the Duke might say when this night’s work
came to his ears; but then it was very difficult for him to overcome
the resistance of Lady Bride, whose rank and standing gave her an
importance of her own quite independent of that exercised by her strong
personality.
“I will tell my father that it was my own doing,” said Bride quietly,
observing his hesitation, and taking his arm, she led him onwards, he
yielding the point, because he did not exactly know what else to do,
having no authority over her to insist on her return.
The walk was a swift but silent one. The road lay white beneath their
feet, and the moon, which was now sinking in the sky, threw long
strange shadows over the world. The track grew rougher as it rose upon
the down-land, but both were good walkers, and did not heed. The great
hound paced silently behind them as they moved, till all at once it
lifted up its huge head, and after sniffing the air suspiciously for a
while, broke into a low deep bay.
At that sound both pedestrians stopped and listened intently, and in
a few brief moments they heard a noise. It was not the sound of the
measured tramping they had expected first to hear, but rather that of
voices--voices in confabulation or dispute, sometimes low and confused,
sometimes rising higher and higher, as if in angry debate--the voices
of a multitude, as was testified by the continual hum, in addition to
the more distinct sounds of argument or strife. The moon just now had
passed behind a cloud, and the moor was very dark, but Mr. Tremodart
and Bride walked swiftly and silently forward, leaving the road for the
soft grass, as they deflected their course, so as to come near to the
spot where the colloquy was being held. Their footsteps made no sound,
and Bride held the hound by the collar and hushed him into silence.
Very soon they had approached near enough to hear what was passing, and
to catch every word of a harangue being delivered in a voice which both
of them knew only too well.
“I tell yu yu are cowards to think only of duing what is safest and
easiest for yourselves. Are we fighting for ourselves, or for our
miserable and oppressed brothers? Men, we are bound together in a great
undertaking; and if we stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight, and
are true tu ourselves and tu each other all over the land, no power
can stand against us. We are bound together tu overthrow tyrants and
oppressors--the great ones of the earth, who fatten upon our misery and
grind us to the very dust. Those are our enemies, and all of yu know it
as well as I. And now to-night, when the power is in our hands, are we
to disgrace our cause by falling upon men only a little better off than
ourselves, and wrecking their goods and bringing them to misery? No--I
say no. I say that would be a coward act. And those who want to go to
yon upland farm, and ruin a man who was once as one of us, till by his
industry he raised himself to comfort, or his father before him, must
go alone. I will not be with him. There is one man only in these parts
upon whose goods I will lay a hand, and that is the Duke of Penarvon.
He is the type tu us of that wealth and power we are banded together
tu overthrow, and I will lead yu on tu his place and lay down my life
in the struggle with all joy. But I will knock down the first man who
tries to go to the farm, and yu men in the crowd who owe the farmer a
grudge and hound the rest on to attack him, yu best know whether or not
I can keep my word!”
There was dead silence after this speech, which was evidently the
culminating oration of a hot debate, and a voice from the crowd called
out--
“Us ban’t agwain’ vur tu be a-killed by the Duke’s men an’ theer
guns--we’m had enough o’ guns. We’ll de dalled ef we du! Ef we can’t
have a slap at t’old varmer’s ’chines, us’ll gwo home tu our beds. Be
yu agwaine to take we theer or ban’t yu?”
“I’ll not take yu tu the varm, nor yet stand by and zee yu gwo!”
answered Saul hotly, lapsing from the dignity of speaker into that of a
common disputer, and for a minute the battle raged again; but perhaps
the crowd from Pentreath had about tired itself out, for there was no
very determined resistance to Saul’s resolute opposition, and evidently
no disposition in the mob to run the gauntlet of the Duke’s well-known
and organised opposition to such attacks.
In the darkness of the night--darkest before the dawn--the crowd slowly
melted away, slowly at first, but with considerable rapidity, as the
men realised that they were hungry, and tired, and cold, and that
many of them had plunder from the burning mill to secrete before the
authorities came in search of them. Before the moon shone out again
the mob had melted like snow before the sun, and Mr. Tremodart and
Bride, whose figures seemed to rise up out of the very ground before
the astonished gaze of one man left standing alone upon the moor, found
themselves face to face with Saul Tresithny, who looked in the white
low moonlight as though confronted by veritable wraiths.
“Saul,” said Bride, coming one step forward, “why do you hate my father
so much? What ill has he ever done to you, or to any in St. Bride?”
The man made no attempt to reply, till the glance fixed full upon him
seemed to draw the answer, but without his own volition.
“It is not he himself I hate,” he said, speaking with difficulty, “it
is the whole system he supports. He is one of the enemies of the cause
of the people. He and all his class are barriers and bulwarks against
our freedom. You do not understand; you could not. But we do, and Mr.
Marchmont will tell you all, if you ask him. He knows. It is not the
men themselves we hate, but the power they hold over us. We will not
have it longer. We will break the yoke off our neck.”
At this moment the sound of galloping horse-hoofs was heard along the
soft turf, and the three standing in the moonlight saw a young officer
of dragoons, followed by three mounted troopers, heading straight for
them.
“That’s the fellow!” cried the officer; “seize him, men, and make him
fast. I thought we’d run him to earth here. That’s your man. See he
does not escape you!”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]