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!”