Deerbrook Part 50

"No doubt, your ladyship, no doubt! We should be really afraid to go to our beds, if we had not Sir William to rely on, as Miss Miskin said to me only this morning. But, dear heart! what can Sir William, or an angel from heaven do, in some sorts of dangers? If one might ask, for one's confidential satisfaction, what does Sir William think of this affair of the church-door?"

Amidst shrugs and sighs, Miss Miskin drew quite near, to hear the fate of Deerbrook revealed by Lady Hunter. But Lady Hunter did not know the facts about the church-door, on which the inquiry was based. This only showed how secret some people could be in their designs. There was no saying what Lady Hunter might think of it; it really seemed as if Deerbrook, that had had such a good character hitherto, was going to be on a level with Popish places--a place of devastation and conflagration.

Lady Hunter looked excessively grave when she heard this; and, if possible, graver than ever, when she was told that not only had a lantern been found in the churchyard with a bit of candle left in the socket, but that a piece of charred stick, full three inches long, had been picked up close by the church-door. After hearing this, Lady Hunter would not commit herself any further. She asked for some hair-pins, with a dignified and melancholy air. While she was selecting the article, she let Mrs Howell talk on about the lantern and the stick--that no one wondered about the lantern, knowing what practices went on in the churchyard when quiet people were asleep; but that the charred stick was too alarming: only that, to be sure, anybody might be aware that those who would go into churchyards for one bad purpose would be ready enough for another; and that Heaven only knew how long the churches of the land would be safe while Lowrys were sent to Parliament, and those that sent them there were all abroad. Lady Hunter sighed emphatically, whispered her desire that the hair-pins should be set down in her account, and went away, amidst deep and mournful curtseys from those whom she left behind.

Under certain circ.u.mstances, the mind becomes so rapidly possessed of an idea, is enabled to a.s.similate it so completely and speedily, that the possessor becomes unaware how very recently the notion was received, and deals with it as an old-established thought. This must be Lady Hunter's excuse (for no other can be found) for speaking of the plot for burning Deerbrook church as one of the signs of the times which had alarmed Sir William and herself of late. She had so digested Mrs Howell's fact by the time she had reached Mr Tucker's shop, that she thus represented the case of the charred stick to Mr Tucker without any immediate sting of conscience for telling a lie. She felt rather uncomfortable when Mr Jones, the butcher, who had stepped in at Tucker's to discuss the event of the morning, observed, with deference, but with much decision, that he was sorry to hear Sir William was made uneasy by the circ.u.mstance of the charred stick having been found, as it seemed to him a very simple matter to account for. Several of the boys of the village--his own son John for one--had lately taken to the old sport of whirling round a lighted stick at the end of a string, to make a circle of fire in the dark. Sometimes it happened that a spark caught the string; and then the stick was apt to fly off, n.o.body knew where. It was an unsafe sport, certainly; and as such he had forbidden it to his son John: but there was no doubt in his mind (without defending the sport), that the stick in question had jerked itself over the churchyard wall, and had not been put there by anybody;--to say nothing of its having lain so far from the door (and in the gra.s.s, too), that it was difficult to see what could be expected to catch fire from it. Jones took up his hat from the counter, saying, that as Sir William was close at hand, he would step and tell him what he thought would ease his mind about this affair.

This movement laid open to Lady Hunter's mind the enormity of her fib: and remembering that, as far as she knew, her husband had never heard of the charred stick, she vigorously interfered to keep Mr Jones where he was, averring that Sir William had rather hear the explanation from her than from any person actually resident in Deerbrook. He had his reasons, and she must insist. Mr Jones bowed; her alarm ceased, and her compunction gradually died away.

When Mr Tucker had received his orders about the fire-guard (which occasioned his whispering that there had never been so much need in Deerbrook of guards against fire as now), Lady Hunter's footman came into the shop to say that his master was in the carriage. Sir William had sent his horse home, and would return in the chariot with his lady.

She hastened away, to prevent any chat between Sir William and Mr Jones. But, once in the carriage, in all the glory of being surrounded and watched by a number of gaping clowns and shouting boys, she could not resolve to bury herself in the seclusion of the Hall, without enjoying the bustle a little longer. She therefore suddenly discovered that she wanted to order a morning cap at Miss Nares'; and the carriage drew up in state before the milliner's door. Miss Flint, whose hair had come out of curl, from her having leaned out of an upper window to watch the commotion, now flew to the gla.s.s to pull off her curl-papers; Miss Nares herself hastily drew out of drawers and cupboards the smart things which had been huddled away under the alarm about the sacking of Deerbrook; and then threw a silk handkerchief over the tray, on which stood the elder wine and toast with which she and her a.s.sistant had been comforting themselves after the panic of the morning. All the caps were tried on with mysterious melancholy, but with some haste. Sir William must not be kept long waiting: in times like these, a magistrate's moments were valuable. Sir William was reading the newspaper, in order to convey the impression that he considered the affair of this morning a trifling one; but--

"These are strange times, Miss Nares."

"Very alarming, my lady. I am sure I don't know when we shall recover from the fright. And no further back than six weeks, I had that person in, my lady, to attend Miss Flint in a sore throat. So little were we aware!"

"I am thankful enough it was not for a broken arm," observed Miss Flint, in accents of devout grat.i.tude.

"Yes, indeed, my dear," observed Miss Nares, "it would have ruined all your prospects in life if he had done by you as he did by the Russell Taylors' nursemaid. Have you never heard that, my lady? Well! I am astonished! I find the story is in everybody's mouth. Mrs Russell Taylor's nursemaid was crossing the court, with the baby in her arms, when she tripped over the string of Master Hampden Taylor's kite. Well, my lady, she fell; and her first thought, you know, was to save the baby; so she let all her weight go on the other arm--the right--and, as you may suppose, broke it. It snapped below the elbow. The gentleman in the corner-house was sent for immediately, to set it. Now they say (you, my lady, know all about it, of course,) that there are two bones in that part of one's arm, below the elbow."

"There are so. Quite correct. There are two bones."

"Well, my lady, all the story depends upon that. The gentleman in question did set the bones; but he set them across, you see,--as it might be so." And Miss Nares arranged four pieces of whalebone on the table in the shape of a long, narrow letter X; there could not have been a better exemplification. "The consequence was, my lady, that the poor girl's hand was found, when she had got well, to be turned completely round: and, in fact, it is all but useless."

"When her hands are in her lap," observed Miss Flint, "the palm of the right lies uppermost. Ugh!"

"When she beckons the children with that hand," observed Miss Nares, "they think she means them to go further off. A girl who has to earn her bread, my lady! It is in everybody's mouth, I a.s.sure you."

"What has become of the girl?" asked Lady Hunter.

"Oh, she was got rid of--sent away--to save the credit of the gentleman in the corner-house. But these things will come out, my lady. You are aware that the Russell Taylors have for some time been employing Mr Foster, from Blickley?"

"Ah, true! I had heard of that."

With unrelaxed gravity, Lady Hunter returned to her equipage, carrying with her Miss Nares's newest cap and story.

As the carriage drew near the corner-house, the driver, as if sympathising with his lady's thoughts, made his horses go their very slowest. Lady Hunter raised herself, and leaned forward, that she might see what she could see in this dangerous abode. The spring evening sunshine was streaming in at the garden window at the back of the house; so that the party in the room was perfectly visible, in the thorough light, to any one who could surmount the obstacle of the blind. Lady Hunter saw four people sitting at dinner, and somebody was waiting on them. She could scarcely have told what it was that surprised her; but she exclaimed to Sir William--

"Good heavens! they are at dinner!"

Sir William called out angrily to the coachman to drive faster, and asked whether he meant to keep everybody out till midnight.

The Hopes were far less moved by seeing the baronet and his lady driving by, than the baronet and his lady were by seeing the Hopes dining. They had not the slightest objection to the great folks from the Hall deriving all the excitement and amus.e.m.e.nt they could from an airing through the village; and they were happily ignorant of the most atrocious stories about Hope which were now circulating from mouth to mouth, all round Deerbrook.

It was not long, however, before they found that they had been indebted to the great folks from the Hall for a certain degree of protection, partly from the equipage having drawn off the attention of some of the idlers, and partly from the people having been unwilling to indulge all their anger and impertinence in the presence of a magistrate. Scarcely half an hour had elapsed after the sound of the carriage wheels had died away, before a face was seen surmounting the blind of the windows towards the street. Presently another appeared, and another. Men below were hoisting up boys, to make grimaces at the family, and see what was going on. The shutters were closed rather earlier than usual. Philip went out to make a survey. He and Mr Grey soon returned, to advise that the ladies should quit the house, and that a guard should enter it.

The first proposition was refused; the second accepted. Mr Grey carried off all the money and small valuables. Hester and Margaret bestirred themselves to provide refreshments for Messrs. Grey and Rowland's men, who were to be ready to act in their defence. They scarcely knew what to expect; but they resolved to remain where Edward was, and to fear nothing from which he did not shrink.

There was much noise round the house--a mult.i.tude of feet and of voices.

Messengers were sent off to the Hall and to Dr Levitt, who must now be disturbed, whatever might become of his sermon. Philip brought in Mr Rowland's men, and declared he should not leave the premises again if the ladies would not be persuaded to go. He took up his station in the hall, whence he thought he could learn most of what it was that the people had intended to do, and be most ready to act as occasion might require. No one could imagine what was designed, or whether there was any design at all on foot. The only fact at present apparent was, that the crowd was every moment increasing.

Hester was stooping over the cellaret in the room where they had dined, when a tremendous crash startled her, and a stone struck down the light which stood beside her, leaving her in total darkness. Philip came to her in a moment. No one had thought of closing the shutters of the back windows; and now the garden was full of people. The house was besieged back and front; and, in ten minutes from the entrance of this first stone, not a pane of gla.s.s was left unbroken in any of the lower windows. Hope ran out, his spirit thoroughly roused by these insults; and he was the first to seize and detain one of the offenders; but the feat was rather too dangerous to bear repet.i.tion. He was recognised, surrounded, and had some heavy blows inflicted upon him. He succeeded in bringing off his man; but it was by the help of a sally of his friends from the house; and having locked up his prisoner in his dressing-room, he found it best to await the arrival of a magistrate before he went forth again.

The surgery was the most open to attack; and this being the place where the people expected to find the greatest number of dead bodies, their energies were directed towards the professional part of the premises.

The pupil took flight, and left the intruders to work their pleasure.

They found no bodies, and were angry accordingly. When the crashing of all the gla.s.s was over, the shelves and cases were torn down, and, with the table and chairs, carried out into the street, and cast into a heap.

Other wood was brought; and it was owing to the pertinacity of the mob in front of the house, in attacking the shutters, that the rioters met with no opposition in the surgery. Hope, Enderby, and their a.s.sistants, had more on their hands than they could well manage, in beating off the a.s.sailants in front. If the shutters were destroyed, the whole furniture of the house would go, and no protection would remain to anybody in it. The surgery must be left to take its chance, rather than this barrier between the women and the mob be thrown down. Whatever offensive warfare was offered from the house was from the servants, from the upper window. The women poured down a quick succession of pails of water; and Charles returned, with good aim, such stones as had found their way in. The gentlemen were little aware, for some time, that the cries of vexation or ridicule, which were uttered now and then, were caused by the feats of their own coadjutors overhead: and it was in consequence of seeing Hester and Margaret laughing in the midst of their panic that the fact became known to them.

Soon after, a bright light was visible between the crevices of the shutters, and a prodigious shout arose outside. The bonfire was kindled. Hester and Margaret went to the upper windows to see it; and when the attacks upon the shutters seemed to have ceased, Enderby joined them. There were very few faces among the crowd that were known even to Charles, whose business it was, in his own opinion, to know everybody.

Mr Tucker was evidently only looking on from a distance. Mrs Plumstead had been on the spot, but was gone--terrified into quietness by the fire, into which the rioters had threatened to throw her, if she disturbed their proceedings. She had professed to despise the idea of a ducking in the brook; but a scorching in the fire was not to be braved; so no more was heard of her this night. Three or four of the frequenters of the public-house were on the spot; but though they lent a hand to throw fresh loads of fuel on the fire, they did not take their pipes from their mouths, nor seem to be prime movers in the riot. The yellow blaze lighted up a hundred faces, scowling with anger or grinning with mirth, but they were all strange--strange as the incidents of the day. A little retired from the glare of the fire, was a figure, revealed only when the flame shot up from being freshly fed--Sir William Hunter on horseback with his immovable groom behind him. How long he had been there, n.o.body in the house could tell; nor whether he had attempted to do anything in behalf of peace and quiet. There he sat, as if looking on for his amus.e.m.e.nt, and forgetting that he had any business with the scene.

It was no wonder that Dr Levitt was not yet visible. If he should arrive by dawn, that was all that could be expected. But where were Mr Grey and Sydney? Where was Mr Rowland? Like some of Mr Hope's other neighbours, who ought to have come to his aid on such an occasion, these gentlemen were detained at home by the emotions of their families.

Sydney Grey was locked up by his tender mother as securely as Mr Hope's prisoner; and all the boy's efforts to break the door availed only to bruise him full as seriously as the mob would have done. His father was detained by the tremors of his wife, the palpitations of Sophia, and the tears and sobs of the twins, all of which began with the certainty of the first stone having been thrown, and were by no means abated by the sight of the reflection of the flames on the sky. Mr Grey found it really impossible to leave his family, as he afterwards said. He consoled himself with the thought that he had done the best he could, by sending his men. These things were exactly what his partner said. He, too, had done the best he could, in sending his men. He, too, found it impossible to leave his family. In the dusk of the evening, when the first stones had begun to fly, the carriage which was heard, in the intervals of the crashes, to roll by, contained Mrs Rowland and her children, and some one else. It may easily be imagined that it was made impossible to Mr Rowland to leave his family, to go to the a.s.sistance of the people in the corner-house.

A fresh shout soon announced some new device. A kind of procession appeared to be advancing up the street, and some notes of rude music were heard. A party was bringing an effigy of Mr Hope to burn on the pile. There was the odious thing--plain enough in the light of the fire--with the halter round its neck, a knife in the right hand, and a phial--a real phial out of Hope's own surgery, in the left!

"This is too bad to be borne," cried Enderby; while Hope, who had come up to see what others were seeing, laughed heartily at the representative of himself. "This is not to be endured. Morris, quick!

Fetch me half a dozen candles!"

"Candles, sir?"

"Yes, candles. I will put this rabble to flight. I wish I had thought of it before."

"Oh, Philip!" said Margaret, apprehensively.

"Fear nothing, Margaret. I am going to do something most eminently safe, as you will see."

He would not let any one go with him but Charles and Morris. It was some minutes before any effect from his absence was perceived; but, at length, just when the effigy had been sufficiently insulted, and was about to be cast into the flames, and Hester had begged her husband not to laugh at it any more, a roar of anguish and terror was heard from the crowd, which began to disperse in all directions. The ladies ventured to lean out of the window, to see what was the cause of the uproar.

They understood it in a moment. Mr Enderby had possessed himself of the skeleton which hung in the mahogany case in the waiting-room, had lighted it up behind the eyes and the ribs, and was carrying it aloft before him, approaching round the corner, and thus confronting the effigy. The spectre moved steadily on, while the people fled. It made straight for Sir William Hunter, who now seemed for the first time disposed to shift his place. He did so with as much slowness and dignity as were compatible with the urgency of the circ.u.mstances, edging his horse further and further into the shade. When he found, however, that the spectre continued to light its own path towards him, there was something rather piteous in the tone of his appeal:--"I am Sir William Hunter! I am--I am Sir William Hunter!" The spectre disregarding even this information, there was nothing for the baronet to do but to gallop off--his groom for once in advance of him. When they were out of sight, the spectre turned sharp round, and encountered Dr Levitt, who was now arriving just when every one else was departing. He started, as might have been expected, spoke angrily to the "idle boy" whom he supposed to be behind the case of bones, and laughed heartily when he learned who was the perpetrator, and what the purpose of the joke. He entered Hope's house, to learn the particulars of the outrage, and order off the prisoner into confinement elsewhere, his ideas being too extensively discomposed to admit of any more sermon-writing this night. Charles had already captured the effigy, and set it up in the hall: a few more pailsful of water extinguished the fire in the street; and in a quarter of an hour the neighbourhood seemed to be as quiet as usual.

"Where are you to sleep after all this fatigue?" said Hope to his wife and sister, when Dr Levitt and Philip were gone, and the men were at their supper below. "I do not believe they have left you a room which is not open to the night air. What a strange home to have put you in!

Who would have thought it a year ago?"

Hester smiled, and said she was never less sleepy. Morris believed that not a pane of gla.s.s was broken in the attics, and her ladies could sleep there, if they preferred remaining at home to stepping to Mr Grey's.

They much preferred remaining where they were: and, on examination, it was found that Margaret's room was also entire. Hope proposed to take possession of Charles's attic, for once; and Charles enjoyed the novelty of having a mattress laid down for him in a corner of the upper landing.

Morris tempted the ladies and her master to refresh themselves with tea. She piled up the fire to a Christmas height, to compensate for the draughts which blew in from the broken windows. Hope soon grew discontented with her plan.

"This will never do," said he, shivering. "You will all be ill: and n.o.body must be ill now, for I have no medicines left."

Morris murmured a wish that the physic had been forced down the people's throats.

"It is better where it is, Morris," said her master; "and we will forgive these poor people; shall we not? They are lamentably ignorant, you see."

Morris thought forgiveness was always pretty sure to come in time but it was not very easy at the moment. She thought she could get over their robbing her master of any amount of property; but she could not excuse their making him ridiculous before his lady's own eyes.

"They cannot make him ridiculous, Morris," said Hester, cheerfully.

"People who are persecuted are considered great, you know, Morris," said Margaret.

"Bravo, ladies!" cried Hope. "You keep up your own spirits, and my complacency, bravely. But seriously, Morris," he continued, perceiving that the vulgarity of the present affliction weighed down the good woman's heart; "is it not true that few of our trials--none of those which are most truly trials--seem dignified at the time? If they did, patience would be easier than it is. The death of martyrs to their faith is grand to look back upon; but it did not appear so to the best of the martyrs at the time. This little trial of ours looks provoking, and foolish, and mean, to us to-night; but whether it really is so, will depend on how we bear it; and whatever it may bring after it, grand or mean, all we have to do is to be good-humoured with it, Morris."