Starvecrow Farm Part 3

"I suppose you think it is you that stops them?"

"No, ma'am, no," with a modest smile. "I don't stop them. I leave that to the yeomanry--old England's bulwark and their country's pride! But when the yeomanry 've done their part, I take them, and the law pa.s.ses upon them. And when they have been hung or transported and an example made, then you sleep comfortably in your beds. That is what I do. And I think I may say that next to Mr. Nadin of Manchester, who is the greatest man in our line out of London, I have done as much in that way as another."

Mrs. Gilson sniffed contemptuously.

"Well," she said, "if you have never done more than you've done since you've been here, it's a wonder the roof's on! Though what you expected to do, except keep a whole skin, pa.s.ses me! There's the _Chronicle_ in today, and such talks of riots at Glasgow and Paisley, and such meetings here and alarms there, it is a wonder to me"--with sarcasm--"they can do without you! To judge by what I hear, Lancashire way is just a kettle of troubles and boiling over, and bread that price everybody is wanting to take the old King's crown off his head."

"And his head off his body, ma'am!" Mr. Bishop added solemnly.

"So that it's little good you and your yeomanry seem to have done at Manchester, except get yourselves abused!"

"Ma'am, the King's crown is on his head," Mr. Bishop retorted, "and his head is on his body!"

"Well? Not that his head is much good to him, poor mad gentleman!"

"And King Louis, ma'am, years ago--what of him? The King of France, ma'am? Crown gone, head gone--all gone! And why? Because there was not a good blow struck in time, ma'am! Because, poor, foolish foreigner, he had no yeomanry and no Bow Street, ma'am! But the Government, the British Government, is wiser. They are brave men--brave n.o.blemen, I should say," Mr. Bishop amended with respect,--"but with treason and misprision of treason stalking the land, with the lower orders, that should behave themselves lowly and reverently to all their betters, turned to ramping, roaring Jacobins seeking whom they may devour, and whose machine they may break, my lords would not sleep in their beds--no, not they, brave men as they are--if it were not for the yeomanry and the runners." He had to pause for breath.

Mrs. Gilson coughed dryly.

"Leather's a fine thing," she said, "if you believe the cobbler."

"Well," Mr. Bishop answered, nodding his head confidently, "it's so far true you'd do ill without it."

But Mrs. Gilson was equal to the situation.

"Ay, underfoot," she said. "But everything in its place. My man, he be mad upon tod-hunting; but I never knew him go to Manchester 'Change to seek one."

"No?" Mr. Bishop held his pipe at arm's length, and smiled at it mysteriously. "Yet I've seen one there," he continued, "or in such another place."

"Where?"

"Common Garden, London."

"It was in a box, then."

"It was, ma'am," Mr. Bishop replied, with smiling emphasis. "It was in a box--'safe bind, safe find,' ma'am. That's the motto of my line, and that was it precisely! More by token it's not outside the bounds of possibility you may see"--he glanced towards the door as he knocked his pipe against his top-boot--"one of my tods in a box before morning."

Mrs. Gilson shot out her underlip and looked at him darkly. She never stooped to express surprise; but she was surprised. There was no mistaking the ring of triumph in the runner's tone; yet of all the unlikely things within the landlady's range none seemed more unlikely than that he should flush his game there. She had asked herself more than once why he was there; and why no coach stopped, no chaise changed horses, no rider pa.s.sed or bagman halted, without running the gauntlet of his eye. For in that country of lake and mountain were neither riots nor meetings; and though Lancashire lay near, the echoes of strife sounded but weakly and fitfully across Cartmel Sands. Mills might be burning in Cheadle and Preston, men might be drilling in Bolland and Whitewell, sedition might be preaching in Manchester, all England might be in a flame with dear bread and no work, Corbett's Twopenny Register and Orator Hunt's declamations--but neither the glare nor the noise had much effect on Windermere. Mr. Bishop's presence there seemed superfluous therefore; seemed---- But before she could come to the end of her logic, her staid waiting-maid appeared, demanding four pennyworth of old Geneva for the gentleman in Mr.

Rogers's room; and when she was serving, Mrs. Gilson took refuge in incredulity.

"A man must talk if he can't do," she said--"if he's to live."

Mr. Bishop smiled, and patted his buckskin breeches with confidence.

"You'll believe ma'am," he said, "when you see him walk into the coach with the handcuffs on his wrists."

"Ay, I shall!"

The innuendo in the landlady's tone was so plain that her husband, who had entered while she was rinsing the noggin in which she had measured the gin, chuckled audibly. She turned an awful stare on him, and he collapsed. The Bow Street runner was less amenable to discipline.

"You sent the lad, Tom?" he asked.

The landlord nodded, with an apprehensive eye on his wife.

"He should be back"--Mr. Bishop consulted a huge silver watch--"by eleven."

"Ay, sure."

"Where has he gone?" Mrs. Gilson asked, with an ominous face.

She seldom interfered in stable matters; but if she chose, it was understood that no department was outside her survey.

"Only to Kendal with a message for me," Bishop answered.

"At this time of the night?"

"Ma'am"--Mr. Bishop rose and tapped his red waistcoat with meaning, almost with dignity--"the King has need of him. The King--G.o.d bless and restore him to health--will pay, and handsomely. For the why and the wherefore he has gone, his majesty's gracious prerogative is to say nothing"--with a smile. "That is the rule in Bow Street, and for this time we'll make it the rule under Bow Fell, if you please.

Moreover, what he took I wrote, ma'am, and as he cannot read and I sent it to one who will give it to another, his majesty will enjoy his prerogative as he should!"

There was a spark in Mrs. Gilson's eye. Fortunately the runner saw it, and before she could retort he slipped out, leaving the storm to break about her husband's head. Some who had known Mr. Gilson in old days wondered how he bore his life, and why he did not hang himself--Mrs.

Gilson's tongue was so famous. And more said he had reason to hang himself. Only a few, and they the wisest, noted that he who had once been Long Tom Gilson grew fat and rosy; and these quoted a proverb about the wind and the shorn lamb. One--it was Bishop himself, but he had known them no more than three weeks--said nothing when the question was raised, but tapped his nose and winked, and looked at Long Tom as if he did not pity him overmuch.

CHAPTER III

A WEDDING MORNING

In one particular at least the Bow Street runner was right. The Government which ruled England in that year, 1819, was made up of brave men; whether they were wise men or great men, or far-seeing men, is another question. The peace which followed Waterloo had been welcomed with enthusiasm. Men supposed that it would put an end to the enormous taxation and the strain which the nation had borne so gallantly during twenty years of war. The G.o.ddess of prosperity, with her wings of silver and her feathers of gold, was to bless a people which had long known only paper money. In a twinkling every trade was to flourish, every cla.s.s to be more comfortable, every man to have work and wage, plenty and no taxes.

Instead, there ensued a period of want and misery almost without a parallel. During the war the country had been self-supporting, wheat had risen, land suitable and unsuitable had been enclosed and tilled.

Bread had been dear but work had been plentiful. Now, at the prospect of open ports, wheat fell, land was left derelict, farmers were ruined, labourers in thousands went on the rates. Nor among the whirling looms of Lancashire or the furnaces of Staffordshire were things better. Government orders ceased with the war, while the exhausted Continent was too poor to buy. Here also thousands were cast out of work.

The cause of the country's misfortunes might be this or that. Whatever it was, the working cla.s.ses suffered greater hardships than at any time during the war; and finding no anxiety to sympathise in a Parliament which represented their betters, began to form--ominous sign--clubs, and clubs within clubs, and to seek redress by unlawful means. An open rising broke out in the Fen country, and there was fighting at Littleport and Ely. There were riots at Spa Fields in London, where murder was committed; and there were riots again, which almost amounted to a rebellion, in Derbyshire. At Stock-port and in Birmingham immense mob meetings took place. In the northern counties the sky was reddened night after night by incendiary fires. In the Midlands looms were broken and furnaces extinguished. In Lancashire and Yorkshire the air was sullen with strikes and secret plottings, and spies, and cold and famine.

In the year 1819 things came to a kind of head. There was a meeting at Manchester in August. It was such a meeting as had never been seen in England. There were sixty thousand at it, there were eighty thousand, there were ninety thousand--some said one, some said the other. It was so large, at any rate, that it was difficult to say that it was not dangerous; and beyond doubt many there would have s.n.a.t.c.hed at the least chance of rapine. Be that as it may, the magistrates, in the face of so great a concourse, lost their heads. They ordered a small force of yeomanry to disperse the gathering. The yeomanry became entangled--a second charge was needful: the mult.i.tude fled every way.

In ten minutes the ground was clear; but six lives were lost and seventy persons were injured.

At once all England was cleft into parties--that which upheld the charge, and that which condemned it. Feelings which had been confined to the lower orders spread to the upper; and while from this date the section which was to pa.s.s the Reform Bill took new shape, underground more desperate enterprises were breeding. Undismayed the people met at Paisley and at Glasgow, and at each place there were collisions with, the soldiery.

Mr. Bishop had grounds, therefore, for his opinion of the Government of which he shared the favour with the yeomanry--their country's bulwark and its pride. But it is a far cry to Windermere, and no offset from the storm which was convulsing Lancashire stirred the face of the lake when Henrietta opened her window next morning and looked out on the day which was to change all for her. The air was still, the water grey and smooth, no gleam of sun showed. Yet the general aspect was mild; and would have been cheerful, if the more distant prospect which for the first time broke upon Henrietta's eyes had not raised it and her thoughts to the sublime. Beyond the water, above the green slopes and wooded k.n.o.bs which fringed the lake, rose, ridge behind ridge, a wall of mountains. It stretched from the Peak of Coniston on the left, by the long snow-flecked screes of Bow Fell, to the icy points of the Langdales on the right--a new world, remote, clear, beautiful, and still: so still, so remote, that it seemed to preach a sermon--to calm the hurry of her morning thoughts, and the tumult of youth within her. She stood awhile in awe. But her hair was about her shoulders, she was only half-dressed; and by-and-by, when her first surprise waned, she bethought herself that _he_ might be below, and she drew back from the window with a blush. What more likely, what more loverlike, than that he should be below? Waiting--on this morning which was to crown his hopes--for the first sight of her face, the first opening of her lattice, the gleam of her white arm on the sill?

Had it been summer, and had the rose-tree which framed the window been in bloom, what joy to drop with trembling fingers a bud to him, and to know that he would treasure it all his life--her last maiden gift! And he? Surely he would have sent her an armful to await her rising, that as she dressed she might plunge her face into their perfume, and silently plighting her troth to him, renew the pure resolves which she had made in the night hours!

But when she peeped out shyly, telling herself that she was foolish to blush, and that the time for blushing was past, she failed to discover him. There was a girl--handsome after a dark fashion--seated on a low wall on the farther side of the road; and a group of four or five men were standing in front of the inn door, talking in excited tones.

Conceivably he might be one of the men, for she could hear them better than she could see them--the door being a good deal to one side. But when she had cautiously opened her window and put out her head--her hair by this time being dressed--he was not among them.