The Prophet's Mantle

'Count Litvinoff, I can hear no more of this. Please talk of something else.'

'Ah! now yet once more I have offended you. It is part of my unhappy lot that whenever I speak in earnest I offend you. But I can't talk of something else to-day. I must say adieu, Miss Stanley. If I stayed I should disobey you, and I cannot disobey you.'

'Good-bye, then,' said Clare, extending her hand.

He caught her hand, held it tightly an instant, bent over it as though he were about to raise it to his lips, then dropped it as if it had burned him. 'Adieu,' he said, 'I know that in England the hand-shake means forgivenness, and that once more I am forgiven—for speaking the truth—and that I may see you again.'

Clare did not gainsay it, and he left the room.

Count Litvinoff was marching back to Thornsett with a very elate step, and a good deal of military swagger, and Clare had resumed her thinking—she was thinking of him, and he was thinking of her. He thought aloud, as usual.

'H'm,' he said to the grey stone walls on each side of him, and to the plovers who were wheeling and screaming overhead, 'la belle was offended, but not so much. When she thinks over it she will say,—"He is not a good patriot and friend of liberty, this Litvinoff, for he forgets his mistress, La Révolution; therefore he is unfaithful." Ay, but she will add, "He only forgets her when I am near, and he is only unfaithful for me," C'est bien—c'est bien—c'est très bien!' he added, vaulting a gate and making a short cut home.

CHAPTER XXI.

FRIENDS IN COUNCIL

GOING out again, John?' spoke Mrs Hatfield, a little plaintively, as her husband rose and took down his hat from its peg, ten days after Thornsett Mill had been closed. Not closed for a day on account of a wedding, as had once been suggested, but closed, it might be for ten years, or practically for ever.

'Ay, lass,' said her husband shortly, but not unkindly; 'Ah should go clean daft if Ah stayed i' the house. Lazying about don't suit me—it's only my betters as takes their pleasure i' that way.'

'Tha'lt do no good down at t' Spotted Cow,' returned Mrs Hatfield, compressing her lips; 'tha might as well be idle i' tha own house as wi' all they gomerils—spending tha money too, as if tha was i' full work.'

'Well,' he said, pausing with his hand on the back of the settle where she sat, 'we'll all have to be shifting out o' this soon, and tha knows, lass, as Ah were never one to drink nor to talk out o' season. Ah mun hear where the lads is going for work. It won't ne'er do for us a' to be going the same way.'

'It seems hard tha should have to go after work at tha time o' life, John. But likely it's as hard for Rowley and Dick as for thee and me. Poor lads, poor lads! Ah, Heaven help us a' in this hard world.'

'They're fur enow fro' want, tha may be sure, or they wouldn't ha' sacrificed the mill to their mucky pride. It's little they care who starves, so long as they have enow. Tha must remember as what they'd call being poor we'd call being rich. "Hard up" for a gentleman ud be enow and to spare for a working man.'

And he went out, slamming the door behind him, and his wife took up her knitting with a sigh. She could rarely follow her husband in his reasonings, but troubles are not the less hard to bear because we don't clearly see their causes. They had saved a little money, but that would soon be gone, and then there would be nothing before them but 'the house.' Both their sons were away—one a sailor, and the other in a warehouse in Liverpool—but neither was earning enough to be able to help their parents. Vaguely she hoped that her husband might take it into his head to go to London for work. An idea is prevalent in the provinces that in London there is work for every one, and besides, Alice had written from London, and there would be a chance of finding her poor lost child and bringing her back.

The sudden closing of the mill made affairs indeed terribly serious for most of the men in Thornsett. It was in the middle of winter, when journeying was not pleasant, nor work easy to get; and though the 'hands' employed in the mill had been told that it would close, very, very few among them had made any effort to secure other work before the time for closing came. Perhaps it had seemed to them that the closing of the mill was one of those calamities too terrible to happen. But it had happened, and after ten days of idleness the men were beginning to see clearly what it would mean to them. For there was no other work to be got within anything like easy reach of the village; and even if work could be obtained somewhere else, the little community must be broken up, and each family must separate itself from friends and neighbours and relatives in order to journey thither. This alone is thought a terrible calamity for middle-class men and women, but it is the least of the troubles which are always hanging over the heads of the workers. The exodus that must shortly take place had not yet begun, but every one knew that it could not now be long delayed; and Potters and the few other tradespeople being, of course, involved in the general distress, could no longer give credit. This had never been withheld in slack times, when the shopkeepers knew that good ones were certain to come in which the scores would be wiped off or reduced very considerably; but now there was no chance of things growing brighter again, and even the small accounts then owing were not very likely ever to be paid.

During the past ten days, as the men's money was being spent, and as the want of work gave them more time to reason on the causes of their trouble, a strong feeling of resentment had been growing up among them against the two young masters, who had held, as it were, the happiness, the comfort, perhaps the lives, of all these men in their hands, and had thrown all to the dogs rather than humble their own insensate pride and abate their own insensate obstinacy. This feeling had found vent, not only in the scowls and black looks on which Litvinoff had commented, but in certain faint groans and hisses with which Roland had been greeted on more than one occasion when he passed down the village street.

What right had these two, on whose forbearance and good fellowship hung the fate of all these families, to go quarrelling with each other?

'It's a' their darn'd selfishness,' Murdoch was saying, just as Hatfield kicked open the door of the tap-room at the Spotted Cow, and passed in. 'What's the odds to them if we clem or if we dunna't?'

'It's my belief,' said Potters bitterly, 'as they done it to show their independence.'

'They might have hit on a cheaper way,' growled Hatfield, as Murdoch and Sigley made room for him to sit between them.

'Cheaper! why, what's cheaper nor our flesh and blood?' asked Murdoch, with a snarl. 'They can afford to chuck a little o' that away. They can get more of it when they want it easy enow.'

'Ay, that's it, lad,' said Hatfield. 'It's the flesh and blood o' some o' us that's here still, and more o' us that's dead and gone, that's made the bit o' money they'll live on for the rest o' their days.'

'Well, I don't quite see that,' muttered Sigley, with his usual meekness. 'They've always paid fair wages.'

'Yes,' answered Hatfield. 'Ah never said they took it for nothing. They paid for it right enow, but they bought it cheap, lad—they bought it cheap, and they sold it at a good profit. We've nowt but our flesh and blood to sell, and now we mun carry it to another market.'

'If you mean your work,' put in the landlord, 'I don't see as you ought to talk i' that way. They paid you your own price for your work, anyhow.'

'No,' said Hatfield. 'They paid us what we was forced to take.'

'Thou'dst always some sense i' tha head, John,' broke in old Murdoch approvingly. 'Tha was na here when.... D'ye mind, Bolt, the night after t'owd master's burying, tha made the lads drink t' young masters' health? Ask them to drink it now!'

The murmur of ironical assent which went round the room showed that Murdoch had expressed the sense of the meeting. He had been rising in importance daily, ever since the announcement of the mill's closing. He had always been the prophet of calamity, and now that his worst prophecies had been more than fulfilled he was looked upon as little less than inspired.

'Well,' said Bolt deprecatingly, 'who could ha' foreseen things turning out i' this way? And as for asking them to drink their healths, why they ain't their masters now. So where's the use?'

'It do seem hard, it do,' murmured Sigley, who went to chapel regularly, 'when a man have saved up a bit to have it all swept away in a rushing, mighty wind, and us left, like Pharaoh's lean kine, to make bricks without straw. The whole creation groaneth!…'

'Well, don't groan here,' interrupted Murdoch grimly; 'tha'd best do tha groanin' wi' the rest o' creation at t' chapel; and well mayst tha groan there if tha hears tell o' cows makin' bricks.'

'Them as don't believe in the Bible,' said Sigley impressively, giving voice to a very popular belief, 'can't look for a blessing.'

'Nor yet them as does, it seems.'

'What ah was going to say was this—as we should take comfort, thinking as we ain't the only ones.'

'Comfort, tha loon!—that's the hell of it! Damn the man, says I, as can find comfort i' t' thought o' other men's misery!'

It was Hatfield who spoke, and as he spoke he brought his fist down on the table with a bang that made the glasses ring.

'How tha does take on, John,' said Bolt. 'What Sigley meant was only as it shows you ain't to blame, seeing as so many others is in the same fix.'

Sigley did not confirm this interpretation. He only shook his head, with the air of one who had meant something much more pious and profound.

'You're wrong again,' said Hatfield loudly. He had risen and faced the room, which was now pretty full. While this talk had been going on, men had dropped in by twos and threes, and all that had been said had been listened to with profound attention. 'You're wrong again! It is our faults, and the faults of all like us. Our fathers might have altered it. We might alter it now if we had but the spunk to take it in hand; and, if we don't, them as comes after us will, and'll curse us for leaving them the work to do. Didn't none o' ye ever hear tell o' the elephant that lets himself be led and mastered by one he could smash with a shake o' his poll? And why? Because, the books tell us, he doesna know his own strength. But he doesna fare so bad as we. He gets well fed and well looked after because it costs summat to replace him, and we lets oursels be led and drove and starved, when it suits 'em, by a set as we could chase out o' the world to-morrow if we but stood together and acted like men.'

A thrill of excited sympathy ran through the room as old Murdoch shouted,—

'Right again! That's it, John; tha's got it! A score thousand o' your pattern and there'd be an end to men being turned out o' their homes to clem i' midwinter because two young devils both wants the same lass!'

'It's all very well, Hatfield,' said Potters sourly; 'but tha's one face for us and another face for t' gentlefolk. That warn't no working man as I've see comin' out o' your house time and again this last three week.'

'No, he ain't. He's more o' the right stuff in his little finger nor you and all like you put together has got in your whole bodies. There, take that, Potters!'

'Whatever he's got in him, he seems pretty thick with young Roland Ferrier,' said a man who had not spoken before.

'He did his best to stop their quarrelling,' Hatfield answered hotly; 'because he knew what it would be for all o' us; and he's been chased out o' his own country and lost nearly all his brass for standing up for the likes o' we.'

'Yes, I've had a bit o' talk with him, too; that's true enough.'

'Ay! he's no fool, nor no coward neither.'

'He's a true friend o' working men, he is, if he is a Count.'

Litvinoff, it will be seen, had not lost his opportunities while he had been at Thornsett, for nearly every man present had something to say in his favour.

'But seeing as he's such a friend o' Mr Roland's, why don't he do something to stop this set-out?'

'What can he do?'

'He might speak to him about it.'

'Look'ee here, lads,' said Clayton, an old man who had not spoken before, 'ah've been a-turnin' o' this thing over i' my head, and this is what ah come to. If so be as young Ferrier's like to listen to any one, would he listen first to a new-fangled furrin' chap, or to all o' us honest lads as has known him since he was so high? Has any of you spoke to him? Has any one of you put it straight to him—this is the way of it, and this and this? M'appen this fooling o' theirs was just through ignorance. They might ha' thought it didna matter to any but them, and if once they knowed a' as it means, m'appen they'd think better owt, and let things go the old way.'

'Old heads is worth most, arter all,' said John Bolt, who was of a hopeful nature and turned to the new idea as a relief from his former visions of empty benches and deserted bar,—of a time when there would be nothing to chalk up but his own losses, and when adulterated beer would seem what it was, a drug in the market. 'Why shouldn't some of you do as he says, and go and see him and speak him reasonable?'

A great difference of opinion arose at once on the new idea, but nearly all were in their hearts glad to try a new chance, and at last old Clayton, from whom the suggestion had come, said,—

'Well, sithee, if any of you lads'll come wi' me, dang me if I'll not go this very night—this very minute.'

'You'd better all go,' advised Potters; 'it would be more telling like.'

'All o' us isn't here,' murmured Sigley.

'Get 'em here,' said Clayton shortly. 'If two or three o' ye was to go round and tell the other lads what's towards, they'd come too, and we'd have one more try at getting things righted here, afore we all turns different ways and never sees each other's faces again.'

No sooner said than done. Men are ready at all times to follow any one who will act, or even to act themselves if prompted with sufficient energy. In less than half an hour over a hundred men were assembled outside the Spotted Cow, and were prepared to go up to Thornsett Edge to try to open again the doors of the workshop which a dead hand had closed against them. But their faith was strong in the power of a young and living hand, and they went with a new hope in their hearts.

'We'll all go up,' said old Clayton, who had assumed the position of leader, 'but only a few of us had best go in. Let's see—you, and you, and you. You'll be one, Hatfield, and Murdoch makes five.'

'Not me,' snarled Murdoch sourly; 'no eatin' dirt for me. I ain't never humbled myself to no man, and I ain't a-goin' to begin now, to a young chap as ah worked along o' his father manys a long day.'

'Not me, neither,' said Hatfield, 'for ah know aforehand as it's too late. But don't you mind us. Go your own way, and here's luck to you.'

He and Murdoch stood at the door with Bolt and Potters, and a few more who, not having been employed in the mill, were considered not to have any place in the deputation. They watched the crowd out of sight up the steep street, and the women turned out to watch their men go by. It was a clear, frosty night, and bitterly cold, but most of the women rolled their bare arms in their aprons and stood talking in little knots after the procession had passed out of sight. They were more hopeful than their husbands, for women are naturally more trusting than men and believe more in the possibility of altering facts by emotional influences.

To Murdoch and Hatfield, in spite of their assumption of indifference, the time seemed very long as it went by and brought them no news of their comrades. After half an hour Bill suggested that they should stroll up the hill to meet the others and learn how it fared with them.

CHAPTER XXII.

A FORLORN HOPE

IF the frequenters of the Spotted Cow had only known, this was about the most unpropitious moment for obtaining a hearing for their petition. A hearing was all they could possibly obtain for it, but that they did not know either.

Litvinoff's host had not found him as great a comfort as he had expected. For one thing, the Count's almost universal sympathy seemed unaccountably to stop short at Roland Ferrier. The young man felt that he had been terribly ill-used and naturally expected every one else to see things in the same light, and it was 'riling' to find all the sympathy of his guest turned, not towards him, but towards his workmen, which did not seem reasonable; for, as Roland said, they could get other work, but where was he to get another mill? Then he did not like a certain change which he noticed in the other's tone when he spoke of Miss Stanley. He had sympathy enough for her, goodness knows—a trifle too much Roland sometimes thought.

For Litvinoff to be a bore was impossible; but still it did happen rather often that he would bring forward political economy of the most startling pattern when the other wanted to talk literature, or art, or personal grievances.

On this particular night Roland had been led, much against his will, into a discussion of the nature which Litvinoff so much affected, and he had to admit to himself that, as usual, he had much the worst of it.

'It's all very well,' he said (people always say, 'It's all very well,' when they can find no other answer to an argument); 'it's all very well, and that sort of thing may do for Russia, but you will never get an economic or any other revolution here— Why what the deuce is all that row?'

'That row' was a tramping of many feet on the gravel, and a hum of voices just outside the window.

Litvinoff, who was sitting nearer the window, rose and looked through the laths of the venetian blinds.

'Well, my dear Ferrier,' he said, turning round with a smile, 'it strikes me that there is a revolution in England, and that it has begun at Thornsett. The whole population of Derbyshire appears to have assembled in your front garden—yes, that's it, evidently,' he went on, as a ring was given to the door bell, 'and they are going to try gentle measures to begin with, just as I have always advised,' he concluded, for the ring was not a loud one.

Roland had risen from his easy-chair and had made towards the window, when the door opened and the maid announced that Clayton and one or two of the hands wanted to speak to Mr Ferrier.

'Show them in,' said Roland curtly; and, as she withdrew, 'One or two,' echoed Litvinoff; 'that young woman's ideas on the subject of numbers are limited and primitive. Now, Ferrier, just repeat those arguments you have been using against me, and I doubt not, so lucid and convincing are they, that they will reconcile Clayton and the "hands" here to the starvation that awaits them.'

Only three men followed old Clayton as he entered the room.

'Well, my men,' said Roland Ferrier, turning to them, and with a faint irritation in his tone, as Litvinoff, leaning one elbow on the mantelpiece, waved a recognition to the deputation, 'What can I do for you at this time of night?'

'Well, sir,' began Clayton, 'me and my mates here has come to speak to you for ourselves and them as is outside.'

'Who are numerous and noisy,' murmured the Count softly to himself.

'Well, go on,' said Roland, chafing.

'We knows well enow,' continued the old man, 'as it ain't all your doing as t' mill's to stop, but we thowt as you might work things so as to make it easier for us. It's on'y nat'ral as you shouldn't know till it's put to you what stoppin' work 'ill mean to most of us. What 'ill it mean? Why, hard want is what it 'ill mean, and clemming to more nor one. So wot we've come to ask is, won't you keep the works on till summer comes, and let the stoppin' be a bit less sudden like, and give us time to get other work? This is bitter weather, and it's bitter hard as we must all leave our homes just because—' He paused in some confusion.

'Because what?' asked Roland sharply.

'Because our masters has fell out,' struck in No. 2 of the deputation.

'Look here, my men,' Roland stamped his foot impatiently, 'I thought I made it perfectly clear to you a month ago that the closing of this mill was no fault of mine. Do you take me for a born fool? Do you suppose I should throw away this money if I could help it? Don't you know I lose as much as any of you? As much? I lose more than all of you put together.'

'Oh, just division of profits!' murmured Litvinoff confidentially to the clock on the mantelpiece.

'You've had long enough notice of this,' Roland went on, casting a goaded glance at Litvinoff; 'why didn't you get work elsewhere?'

'We hoped it 'ud blow over. We thought perhaps you'd make it up with Mr Richard; and we thought to-night as perhaps, if we told you straight out, you'd go to him.'

'Damn!' hissed Roland, between his teeth. 'I wish,' he went on, raising his voice, 'you wouldn't talk about things you don't understand. What's the use of coming up like this in the middle of the night, interfering in my private affairs; for I'd have you know my brother and I have a perfect right to close the mill or keep it open as we choose. As for you, Clayton, you're old enough to know better than to come up here at midnight with all the riff-raff of the village at your heels.'

'No more riff-raff than yourself!' this from the youngest deputy.

'Hold tha noise, Jim!' said old Clayton. 'The other lads has come up, sir, because they thought there mout be some good news, and they'd like to hear 'em as soon as mout be.'

'Well, they've had their tramp for nothing. That's all the news I've got for them, and much good may it do them.'

'Well, well, sir,' said Clayton, 'we didn't mean no harm. I'll tell 'em what you say. Good-night, sir!'

'Good-night, Clayton!' Roland spoke a little more gently. 'I'm sorry I can do nothing for you.'

The deputation turned to go. Litvinoff walked across the room and shook hands with each man as he passed out of the door.

'Good-night, my friends!' he said. 'Keep your tempers. This unfortunate business is no one's fault. It's the fault of the system we all live under.'

The door closed upon the last man. Roland turned angrily on his guest.

'I can't imagine,' he said, with asperity, 'how a man who is so sensible about most things can take the part of these unreasonable idiots!'

'My dear Ferrier,' relighting the cigar which had gone out in the excitement of the moment, 'of course I've the very greatest sympathy with you in this painful business, and I know how little it is your fault, but now, as always, I'm on the side of the workers, and you know I never disguise my views.'

'So it appears,' Roland was beginning, when the murmur of voices outside gave place to a single voice—that of one of the deputies, who seemed to be speaking to the men. Ferrier and his guest could hear the shuffling of many feet on the gravel as the men crowded round the speaker. When he stopped there was a tumult of hissing and yelling and groaning—a noise as of a very Pandemonium let loose.

Roland turned to Litvinoff.

'I hope you're proud of your precious protégés?' he said, and at the same moment a voice outside cried,—

'Let's smash the cursed walls in!'

Old Clayton's voice sounded thin and shrill above the uproar.

'Don't be fools, lads! Come away! Let un alone! Come home! We'll do no good here.'

The men seemed to hesitate a minute, and then to obey, reluctantly moving towards the gate.

'They have gone without doing anything very serious, you see,' said the Count; but even as he spoke a big stone, thrown by some strong hand, came crashing through the window, and rolled, muddy and grey, on to the edge of the soft fur hearthrug.

'Damn!' cried Roland furiously, 'I'll have the fellow who did that, anyway.'

He made a dash for the door, but Litvinoff caught him by the shoulders, and there was a struggle, silent and brief, which ended in Roland's standing still, and looking at the other savagely.

'Stay where you are, for God's sake!' shouted the Count; 'they've only done you five shillings' worth of damage now, but they'll perhaps add murder to it if you go outside. Do be reasonable, Ferrier. There, they've gone now; and if you went out you couldn't identify the man who did it.'