Shirley. Charlotte Bronte

felt heaving under the hills of the northern counties. But, as is usual in such cases, nobody took much notice. When a food-riot broke out in a manufacturing town, when a gig mill was burnt to the ground, or a manufacturer’s house was attacked, the furniture thrown into the streets, and the family forced to flee for their lives, some local measures were or were not taken by the local magistracy. A ringleader was detected, or more frequently suffered to elude detection; newspaper paragraphs were written on the subject, and there the thing stopped. As to the sufferers, whose sole inheritance was labour, and who had lost that inheritance – who could not get work, and consequently could not get wages, and consequently could not get bread – they were left to suffer on, perhaps inevitably left. It would not do to stop the progress of invention, to damage science by discouraging its improvements; the war could not be terminated; efficient relief could not be raised. There was no help then; so the unemployed underwent their destiny – ate the bread and drank the waters of affliction.

      Misery generates hate. These sufferers hated the machines which they believed took their bread from them; they hated the buildings which contained those machines; they hated the manufacturers who owned those buildings. In the parish of Briarfield, with which we have at present to do, Hollow’s Mill was the place held most abominable; Gérard Moore, in his double character of semi-foreigner and thorough-going progressist, the man most abominated. And it perhaps rather agreed with Moore’s temperament than otherwise to be generally hated, especially when he believed the thing for which he was hated a right and an expedient thing; and it was with a sense of warlike excitement he, on this night, sat in his counting house waiting the arrival of his frame-laden wagons. Malone’s coming and company were, it may be, most unwelcome to him. He would have preferred sitting alone; for he liked a silent, sombre, unsafe solitude. His watchman’s musket would have been company enough for him; the full-flowing beck in the den would have delivered continuously the discourse most genial to his ear.

      With the queerest look in the world had the manufacturer for some ten minutes been watching the Irish curate, as the latter made free with the punch, when suddenly that steady gray eye changed, as if another vision came between it and Malone. Moore raised his hand.

      “Chut!” he said in his French fashion, as Malone made a noise with his glass. He listened a moment, then rose, put his hat on, and went out at the counting house door.

      The night was still, dark, and stagnant: the water yet rushed on full and fast; its flow almost seemed a flood in the utter silence. Moore’s ear, however, caught another sound, very distant but yet dissimilar, broken and rugged – in short, a sound of heavy wheels crunching a stony road. He returned to the counting house and lit a lantern, with which he walked down the mill yard, and proceeded to open the gates. The big wagons were coming on; the dray horses’ huge hoofs were heard splashing in the mud and water. Moore hailed them.

      “Hey, Joe Scott! Is all right?”

      Probably Joe Scott was yet at too great a distance to hear the inquiry. He did not answer it.

      “Is all right, I say?” again asked Moore, when the elephant-like leader’s nose almost touched his.

      Someone jumped out from the foremost wagon into the road; a voice cried aloud, “Ay, ay, divil; all’s raight! We’ve smashed ’em.”

      And there was a run. The wagons stood still; they were now deserted.

      “Joe Scott!” No Joe Scott answered. “Murgatroyd! Pighills! Sykes!” No reply. Mr. Moore lifted his lantern and looked into the vehicles. There was neither man nor machinery; they were empty and abandoned.

      Now Mr. Moore loved his machinery. He had risked the last of his capital on the purchase of these frames and shears which tonight had been expected. Speculations most important to his interests depended on the results to be wrought by them. Where were they?

      The words “we’ve smashed ’em” rang in his ears. How did the catastrophe affect him? By the light of the lantern he held were his features visible, relaxing to a singular smile – the smile the man of determined spirit wears when he reaches a juncture in his life where this determined spirit is to feel a demand on its strength, when the strain is to be made, and the faculty must bear or break. Yet he remained silent, and even motionless; for at the instant he neither knew what to say nor what to do. He placed the lantern on the ground, and stood with his arms folded, gazing down and reflecting.

      An impatient trampling of one of the horses made him presently look up. His eye in the moment caught the gleam of something white attached to a part of the harness. Examined by the light of the lantern this proved to be a folded paper – a billet. It bore no address without; within was the superscription:—

      “To the Divil of Hollow’s Miln.”

      We will not copy the rest of the orthography, which was very peculiar, but translate it into legible English. It ran thus:—

      “Your hellish machinery is shivered to smash on Stilbro’ Moor, and your men are lying bound hand and foot in a ditch by the roadside. Take this as a warning from men that are starving, and have starving wives and children to go home to when they have done this deed. If you get new machines, or if you otherwise go on as you have done, you shall hear from us again. Beware!”

      “Hear from you again? Yes, I’ll hear from you again, and you shall hear from me. I’ll speak to you directly. On Stilbro’ Moor you shall hear from me in a moment.”

      Having led the wagons within the gates, he hastened towards the cottage. Opening the door, he spoke a few words quickly but quietly to two females who ran to meet him in the passage. He calmed the seeming alarm of one by a brief palliative account of what had taken place; to the other he said, “Go into the mill, Sarah – there is the key – and ring the mill bell as loud as you can. Afterwards you will get another lantern and help me to light up the front.”

      Returning to his horses, he unharnessed, fed, and stabled them with equal speed and care, pausing occasionally, while so occupied, as if to listen for the mill bell. It clanged out presently, with irregular but loud and alarming din. The hurried, agitated peal seemed more urgent than if the summons had been steadily given by a practised hand. On that still night, at that unusual hour, it was heard a long way round. The guests in the kitchen of the Redhouse were startled by the clamour, and declaring that “there must be summat more nor common to do at Hollow’s Miln,” they called for lanterns, and hurried to the spot in a body. And scarcely had they thronged into the yard with their gleaming lights, when the tramp of horses was heard, and a little man in a shovel hat, sitting erect on the back of a shaggy pony, “rode lightly in,” followed by an aide-de-camp mounted on a larger steed.

      Mr. Moore, meantime, after stabling his dray horses, had saddled his hackney, and with the aid of Sarah, the servant, lit up his mill, whose wide and long front now glared one great illumination, throwing a sufficient light on the yard to obviate all fear of confusion arising from obscurity. Already a deep hum of voices became audible. Mr. Malone had at length issued from the counting house, previously taking the precaution to dip his head and face in the stone water jug; and this precaution, together with the sudden alarm, had nearly restored to him the possession of those senses which the punch had partially scattered. He stood with his hat on the back of his head, and his shillelah grasped in his dexter fist, answering much at random the questions of the newly-arrived party from the Redhouse. Mr. Moore now appeared, and was immediately confronted by the shovel hat and the shaggy pony.

      “Well, Moore, what is your business with us? I thought you would want us tonight – me and the hetman here (patting his pony’s neck), and Tom and his charger. When I heard your mill bell I could sit still no longer, so I left Boultby to finish his supper alone. But where is the enemy? I do not see a mask or a smutted face present; and there is not a pane of glass broken in your windows. Have you had an attack, or do you expect one?”

      “Oh, not at all! I have neither had one nor expect one,” answered Moore coolly. “I only ordered the bell to be rung because I want two or three neighbours to stay here in the Hollow while I and a couple or so more go over to Stilbro’ Moor.”

      “To Stilbro’ Moor! What to do? To meet the wagons?”

      “The wagons are come home an hour ago.”

      “Then