Summer waned. Already the beech-wood began to turn red, and the little
yellow autumn flowers to show themselves all over the common, while in
the midst of them looked up the large purple eye of the ground-thistle.
The mornings grew hazy and dewy. We ceased to take Muriel out with us
in our slow walk along John's favourite "terrace" before any one else
was stirring. Her father at first missed her sorely, but always kept
repeating that "early walks were not good for children." At last he
gave up the walk altogether, and used to sit with her on his knee in
front of the cottage till breakfast-time.
After that, saying with a kind of jealousy "that every one of us had
more of his little daughter than he," he got into a habit of fetching
her down to the mill every day at noon, and carrying her about in his
arms, wherever he went, during the rest of his work.
Many a time I have seen the rough, coarse, blue-handed, blue-pinafored
women of the mill stop and look wistfully after "master and little
blind miss." I often think that the quiet way in which the Enderley
mill people took the introduction of machinery, and the peaceableness
with which they watched for weeks the setting up of the steam-engine,
was partly owing to their strong impression of Mr. Halifax's goodness
as a father, and the vague, almost superstitious interest which
attached to the pale, sweet face of Muriel.
Enderley was growing dreary, and we began to anticipate the cosy
fireside of Longfield.
"The children will all go home looking better than they came; do you
not think so, Uncle Phineas?--especially Muriel?"
To that sentence I had to answer with a vague assent; after which I was
fain to rise and walk away, thinking how blind love was--all love save
mine, which had a gift for seeing the saddest side of things.
When I came back, I found the mother and daughter talking mysteriously
apart. I guessed what it was about, for I had overheard Ursula saying
they had better tell the child--it would be "something for her to look
forward to--something to amuse her next winter."
"It is a great secret, mind," the mother whispered, after its
communication.
"Oh, yes!" The tiny face, smaller than ever, I thought, flushed
brightly. "But I would much rather have a little sister, if you
please. Only"--and the child suddenly grew earnest--"will she be like
me?"
"Possibly; sisters often are alike."
"No, I don't mean that; but--you know?" And Muriel touched her own
eyes.
"I cannot tell, my daughter. In all things else, pray God she may be
like you, Muriel, my darling--my child of peace!" said Ursula,
embracing her with tears.
After this confidence, of which Muriel was very proud, and only
condescended, upon gaining express permission, to re-confide it to me,
she talked incessantly of the sister that was coming, until "little
Maud"--the name she chose for her--became an absolute entity in the
household.
The dignity and glory of being sole depositary of this momentous fact,
seemed for a time to put new life--bright human life--into this little
maid of eleven years old. She grew quite womanly, as it were; tried to
help her mother in a thousand little ways, and especially by her own
solitary branch of feminine industry--poor darling! She set on a pair
of the daintiest elfin socks that ever were knitted. I found them,
years after--one finished, one with the needles (all rusty) stuck
through the fine worsted ball, just as the child had laid it out of her
hand. Ah, Muriel, Muriel!
The father took great delight in this change, in her resuming her
simple work, and going about constantly with her mother.
"What a comfort she will be to Ursula one day--an eldest daughter
always is. So will she: will she not, Uncle Phineas?"
I smiled assentingly. Alas! his burthens were heavy enough! I think I
did right to smile.
"We must take her down with us to see the steam-engine first worked. I
wish Ursula would have gone home without waiting for to-morrow. But
there is no fear--my men are so quiet and good-humoured. What in most
mills has been a day of outrage and dread, is with us quite a festival.
Boys, shall you like to come? Edwin, my practical lad, my lad that is
to carry on the mills--will you promise to hold fast by Uncle Phineas,
if I let you see the steam-engine work?"
Edwin lifted up from his slate bright, penetrating eyes. He was quite
an old man in his ways--wise even from his babyhood, and quiet even
when Guy snubbed him; but, I noticed, he did not come to "kiss and make
friends" so soon as Guy. And though Guy was much the naughtiest, we
all loved him best. Poor Guy! he had the frankest, warmest, tenderest
boy-heart, always struggling to be good, and never able to accomplish
it.
"Father," cried Guy, "I want to see the steam-engine move, but I'll not
be a baby like Edwin; I'll not hold Uncle Phineas' hand."
Hereupon ensued one of those summer storms which sometimes swept across
the family horizon, in the midst of which Muriel and I stole out into
the empty church, where, almost in the dark--which was no dark to
her--for a long hour she sat and played. By and by the moon looked in,
showing the great gilt pipes of the organ, and the little fairy figure
sitting below.
Once or twice she stooped from the organ-loft to ask me where was
Brother Anselmo, who usually met us in the church of evenings, and whom
to-night--this last night before the general household moved back to
Longfield--we had fully expected.
At last he came, sat down by me, and listened. She was playing a
fragment of one of his Catholic masses. When it ended, he called
"Muriel!"
Her soft, glad answer came down from the gallery.
"Child, play the 'Miserere' I taught you."
She obeyed, making the organ wail like a tormented soul. Truly, no
tales I ever heard of young Wesley and the infant Mozart ever surpassed
the wonderful playing of our blind child.
"Now, the 'Dies Irae.'--It will come," he muttered, "to us all."
The child struck a few notes, heavy and dolorous, filling the church
like a thunder-cloud, then suddenly left off, and opening the
flute-stop, burst into altogether different music.
"That is Handel--'I know that my Redeemer liveth.'"
Exquisitely she played it, the clear treble notes seemed to utter like
a human voice the very words:
"I know that my Redeemer liveth, and He shall stand
at the latter day upon the earth.
And though worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh
shall I see God."
With that she ceased.
"More, more!" we both cried.
"Not now--no more now."
And we heard her shutting up the stops and closing the organ lid.
"But my little Muriel has not finished her tune?"
"She will, some day," said the child.
So she came down from the organ-loft, feeling her way along the aisles;
and we all went out together, locking the church-door.
Lord Ravenel was rather sad that night; he was going away from Luxmore
for some time. We guessed why--because the earl was coming. Bidding us
good-bye, he said, mournfully, to his little pet, "I wish I were not
leaving you. Will you remember me, Muriel?"
"Stoop down; I want to see you."
This was her phrase for a way she had of passing her extremely
sensitive fingers over the faces of those she liked. After which she
always said she "saw" them.
"Yes; I shall remember you."
"And love me?"
"And love you, Brother Anselmo."
He kissed, not her cheek or mouth, but her little child-hands,
reverently, as if she had been the saint he worshipped, or, perhaps,
the woman whom afterwards he would learn to adore. Then he went away.
"Truly," said the mother, in an amused aside to me, as with a kind of
motherly pride she watched him walk hastily down between those
chestnut-trees, known of old--"truly, time flies fast. Things begin to
look serious--eh, father? Five years hence we shall have that young
man falling in love with Muriel."
But John and I looked at the still, soft face, half a child's and half
an angel's.
"Hush!" he said, as if Ursula's fancy were profanity; then eagerly
snatched it up and laughed, confessing how angry he should be if
anybody dared to "fall in love" with Muriel.
Next day was the one fixed for the trial of the new steam-engine; which
trial being successful, we were to start at once in a post-chaise for
Longfield; for the mother longed to be at home, and so did we all.
There was rather a dolorous good-bye, and much lamenting from good Mrs.
Tod, who, her own bairns grown up, thought there were no children
worthy to compare with our children. And truly, as the three boys
scampered down the road--their few regrets soon over, eager for
anything new--three finer lads could not be seen in the whole country.
Mrs. Halifax looked after them proudly--mother-like, she gloried in her
sons; while John, walking slowly, and assuring Mrs. Tod over and over
again that we should all come back next summer, went down the steep
hill, carrying, hidden under many wraps and nestled close to his warm
shoulder, his little frail winter-rose--his only daughter.
In front of the mill we found a considerable crowd; for the time being
ripe, Mr. Halifax had made public the fact that he meant to work his
looms by steam, the only way in which he could carry on the mill at
all. The announcement had been received with great surprise and
remarkable quietness, both by his own work-people and all along
Enderley valley. Still there was the usual amount of contemptuous
scepticism, incident on any new experiment. Men were peering about the
locked door of the engine-room with a surly curiosity; and one village
oracle, to prove how impossible it was that such a thing as steam could
work anything, had taken the trouble to light a fire in the yard and
set thereon his wife's best tea-kettle, which, as she snatched angrily
away, scalded him slightly, and caused him to limp away swearing, a
painful illustration of the adage, that "a little knowledge is a
dangerous thing."
"Make way, my good people," said Mr. Halifax; and he crossed the
mill-yard, his wife on his arm, followed by an involuntary murmur of
respect.
"He be a fine fellow, the master; he sticks at nothing," was the
comment heard made upon him by one of his people, and probably it
expressed the feeling of the rest. There are few things which give a
man more power over his fellows than the thoroughly English quality of
daring.
Perhaps this was the secret why John had as yet passed safely through
the crisis which had been the destruction of so many mill-owners,
namely, the introduction of a power which the mill-people were
convinced would ruin hand-labour. Or else the folk in our valley, out
of their very primitiveness, had more faith in the master; for
certainly, as John passed through the small crowd, there was only one
present who raised the old fatal cry of "Down with machinery!"
"Who said that?"
At the master's voice--at the flash of the master's eye--the little
knot of work-people drew back, and the malcontent, whoever he was,
shrunk into silence.
Mr. Halifax walked past them, entered his mill, and unlocked the door
of the room which he had turned into an engine-room, and where, along
with the two men he had brought from Manchester, he had been busy
almost night and day for this week past in setting up his machinery.
They worked--as the Manchester fellows said they had often been obliged
to work--under lock and key.
"Your folk be queer 'uns, Mr. Halifax. They say there's six devils
inside on her, theer."
And the man pointed to the great boiler which had been built up in an
out-house adjoining.
"Six devils, say they?--Well, I'll be Maister Michael Scot--eh,
Phineas?--and make my devils work hard."
He laughed, but he was much excited. He went over, piece by piece, the
complicated but delicate machinery; rubbed here and there at the
brass-work, which shone as bright as a mirror; then stepped back, and
eyed it with pride, almost with affection.
"Isn't it a pretty thing?--If only I have set it up right--if it will
but work."
His hands shook--his cheeks were burning--little Edwin came peering
about at his knee; but he pushed the child hastily away; then he found
some slight fault with the machinery, and while the workmen rectified
it stood watching them, breathless with anxiety. His wife came to his
side.
"Don't speak to me,--don't, Ursula. If it fails I am ruined."
"John!"--she just whispered his name, and the soft, firm fold of her
fingers closed round his, strengthening, cheering. Her husband faintly
smiled.
"Here!"--He unlocked the door, and called to the people outside. "Come
in, two of you fellows, and see how my devils work. Now then! Boys,
keep out of the way; my little girl"--his voice softened--"my pet will
not be frightened? Now, my men--ready?"
He opened the valve.
With a strange noise, that made the two Enderley men spring back as if
the six devils were really let loose upon them, the steam came rushing
into the cylinder. There was a slight motion of the piston-rod.
"All's right! it will work?"
No, it stopped.
John drew a deep breath.
It went on again, beginning to move slowly up and down, like the strong
right arm of some automaton giant. Greater and lesser cog-wheels
caught up the motive power, revolving slowly and majestically, and with
steady, regular rotation, or whirling round so fast you could hardly
see that they stirred at all. Of a sudden a soul had been put into
that wonderful creature of man's making, that inert mass of wood and
metal, mysteriously combined. The monster was alive!
Speechless, John stood watching it. Their trial over, his energies
collapsed; he sat down by his wife's side, and taking Muriel on his
knee, bent his head over hers.
"Is all right, father?" the child whispered.
"All quite right, my own."
"You said you could do it, and you have done it," cried his wife, her
eyes glowing with triumph, her head erect and proud.
John dropped his lower, lower still. "Yes," he murmured; "yes, thank
God."
Then he opened the door, and let all the people in to see the wondrous
sight.
They crowded in by dozens, staring about in blank wonder, gaping
curiosity, ill-disguised alarm. John took pains to explain the
machinery, stage by stage, till some of the more intelligent caught up
the principle, and made merry at the notion of "devils." But they all
looked with great awe at the master, as if he were something more than
man. They listened open-mouthed to every word he uttered, cramming the
small engine-room till it was scarcely possible to breathe, but keeping
at a respectful distance from the iron-armed monster, that went
working, working on, as if ready and able to work on to everlasting.
John took his wife and children out into the open air. Muriel, who had
stood for the last few minutes by her father's side, listening with a
pleasing look to the monotonous regular sound, like the breathing of
the demon, was unwilling to go.
"I am very glad I was with you to-day,--very glad, father," she kept
saying.
He said, as often--twice as often--that next summer, when he came back
to Enderley, she should be with him at the mills every day, and all day
over, if she liked.
There was now nothing to be done but to hasten as quickly and as
merrily as possible to our well-beloved Longfield.
Waiting for the post-chaise, Mrs. Halifax and the boys sat down on the
bridge over the defunct and silenced water-fall, on the muddy steps of
which, where the stream used to dash musically over, weeds and long
grasses, mingled with the drooping water-fern, were already beginning
to grow.
"It looks desolate, but we need not mind that now," said Mrs. Halifax.
"No," her husband answered. "Steam power once obtained, I can apply it
in any way I choose. My people will not hinder; they trust me, they
like me."
"And, perhaps, are just a little afraid of you. No matter, it is
wholesome fear. I should not like to have married a man whom nobody
was afraid of."
John smiled; he was looking at the horseman riding towards us along the
high road. "I do believe that is Lord Luxmore. I wonder whether he
has heard of my steam-engine. Love, will you go back into the mill or
not?"
"Certainly not." The mother seated herself on the bridge, her boys
around her; John avouched, with an air like the mother of the Gracchi,
or like the Highland woman who trained one son after another to fight
and slay their enemy--their father's murderer.
"Don't jest," said Ursula. She was much more excited than her husband.
Two angry spots burnt on her cheeks when Lord Luxmore came up, and, in
passing, bowed.
Mrs. Halifax returned it, haughtily enough. But at the moment a loud
cheer broke out from the mill hard by, and "Hurrah for the master!"
"Hurrah for Mr. Halifax!" was distinctly heard. The mother smiled,
right proudly.
Lord Luxmore turned to his tenant--they might have been on the best
terms imaginable from his bland air.
"What is that rather harsh noise I hear, Mr. Halifax?"
"It is my men cheering me."
"Oh, how charming! so grateful to the feelings. And WHY do they cheer
you, may I ask?"
John briefly told him, speaking with perfect courtesy as he was
addressed.
"And this steam-engine--I have heard of it before--will greatly
advantage your mills?"
"It will, my lord. It renders me quite independent of your stream, of
which the fountains at Luxmore can now have the full monopoly."
It would not have been human nature if a spice of harmless malice--even
triumph--had not sparkled in John's eye, as he said this. He was
walking by the horse's side, as Lord Luxmore had politely requested him.
They went a little way up the hill together, out of sight of Mrs.
Halifax, who was busy putting the two younger boys into the chaise.
"I did not quite understand. Would you do me the favour to repeat your
sentence?"
"Merely, my lord, that your cutting off of the water-course has been to
me one of the greatest advantages I ever had in my life; for which,
whether meant or not, allow me to thank you."
The earl looked full in John's face, without answering; then spurred
his horse violently. The animal started off, full speed.
"The children. Good God--the children!"
Guy was in the ditch-bank, gathering flowers--but Muriel--For the first
time in our lives, we had forgotten Muriel.
She stood in the horse's path--the helpless, blind child. The next
instant she was knocked down.
I never heard a curse on John Halifax's lips but once--that once. Lord
Luxmore heard it too. The image of the frantic father, snatching up
his darling from under the horse's heels, must have haunted the earl's
good memory for many a day.
He dismounted, saying, anxiously, "I hope the little girl is not
injured? It was accident--you see--pure accident."
But John did not hear; he would scarcely have heard heaven's thunder.
He knelt with the child in his arms by a little runnel in the
ditch-bank. When the water touched her she opened her eyes with that
wide, momentary stare so painful to behold.
"My little darling!"
Muriel smiled, and nestled to him. "Indeed, I am not hurt, dear
father."
Lord Luxmore, standing by, seemed much relieved, and again pressed his
apologies.
No answer.
"Go away," sobbed out Guy, shaking both his fists in the nobleman's
face. "Go away--or I'll kill you--wicked man! I would have done it if
you had killed my sister."
Lord Luxmore laughed at the boy's fury--threw him a guinea, which Guy
threw back at him with all his might, and rode placidly away.
"Guy--Guy--" called the faint, soft voice which had more power over him
than any other, except his mother's. "Guy must not be angry. Father,
don't let him be angry."
But the father was wholly occupied in Muriel--looking in her face, and
feeling all her little fragile limbs, to make sure that in no way she
was injured.
It appeared not; though the escape seemed almost miraculous. John
recurred, with a kind of trembling tenacity, to the old saying in our
house, that "nothing ever harmed Muriel."
"Since it is safe over, and she can walk--you are sure you can, my
pet?--I think we will not say anything about this to the mother; at
least not till we reach Longfield."
But it was too late. There was no deceiving the mother. Every change
in every face struck her instantaneously. The minute we rejoined her
she said:
"John, something has happened to Muriel."
Then he told her, making as light of the accident as he could; as,
indeed, for the first ten minutes we all believed, until alarmed by the
extreme pallor and silence of the child.
Mrs. Halifax sat down by the roadside, bathed Muriel's forehead and
smoothed her hair; but still the little curls lay motionless against
the mother's breast,--and still to every question she only answered
"that she was not hurt."
All this while the post-chaise was waiting.
"What must be done?" I inquired of Ursula; for it was no use asking
John anything.
"We must go back again to Enderley," she said decidedly.
So, giving Muriel into her father's arms, she led the way, and, a
melancholy procession, we again ascended the hill to Rose Cottage door.