Delphi Complete Works of the Brontes Charlotte, Emily, Anne Brontë (Illustrated) (69 page)

“The curates, sir.”

“What! all of them?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Been dining here?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That will do.”

With these words a person entered — a middle-aged man, in black. He walked straight across the kitchen to an inner door, opened it, inclined his head forward, and stood listening. There was something to listen to, for the noise above was just then louder than ever.

“Hey!” he ejaculated to himself; then turning to Mr. Gale — “Have you often this sort of work?”

Mr. Gale had been a churchwarden, and was indulgent to the clergy.

“They’re young, you know, sir — they’re young,” said he deprecatingly.

“Young! They want caning. Bad boys — bad boys! And if you were a Dissenter, John Gale, instead of being a good Churchman, they’d do the like — they’d expose themselves; but I’ll —
 
— “

By way of finish to this sentence, he passed through the inner door, drew it after him, and mounted the stair. Again he listened a few minutes when he arrived at the upper room. Making entrance without warning, he stood before the curates.

And they were silent; they were transfixed; and so was the invader. He — a personage short of stature, but straight of port, and bearing on broad shoulders a hawk’s head, beak, and eye, the whole surmounted by a Rehoboam, or shovel hat, which he did not seem to think it necessary to lift or remove before the presence in which he then stood —
he
folded his arms on his chest and surveyed his young friends, if friends they were, much at his leisure.

“What!” he began, delivering his words in a voice no longer nasal, but deep — more than deep — a voice made purposely hollow and cavernous — “what! has the miracle of Pentecost been renewed? Have the cloven tongues come down again? Where are they? The sound filled the whole house just now. I heard the seventeen languages in full action: Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, Cappadocia, in Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians; every one of these must have had its representative in this room two minutes since.”

“I beg your pardon, Mr. Helstone,” began Mr. Donne; “take a seat, pray, sir. Have a glass of wine?”

His civilities received no answer. The falcon in the black coat proceeded, —

“What do I talk about the gift of tongues? Gift, indeed! I mistook the chapter, and book, and Testament — gospel for law, Acts for Genesis, the city of Jerusalem for the plain of Shinar. It was no gift but the confusion of tongues which has gabbled me deaf as a post.
You
, apostles? What! you three? Certainly not; three presumptuous Babylonish masons — neither more nor less!”

“I assure you, sir, we were only having a little chat together over a glass of wine after a friendly dinner — settling the Dissenters!”

“Oh! settling the Dissenters, were you? Was Malone settling the Dissenters? It sounded to me much more like settling his co-apostles. You were quarrelling together, making almost as much noise — you three alone — as Moses Barraclough, the preaching tailor, and all his hearers are making in the Methodist chapel down yonder, where they are in the thick of a revival. I know whose fault it is. — It is yours, Malone.”

“Mine, sir?”

“Yours, sir. Donne and Sweeting were quiet before you came, and would be quiet if you were gone. I wish, when you crossed the Channel, you had left your Irish habits behind you. Dublin student ways won’t do here. The proceedings which might pass unnoticed in a wild bog and mountain district in Connaught will, in a decent English parish, bring disgrace on those who indulge in them, and, what is far worse, on the sacred institution of which they are merely the humble appendages.”

There was a certain dignity in the little elderly gentleman’s manner of rebuking these youths, though it was not, perhaps, quite the dignity most appropriate to the occasion. Mr. Helstone, standing straight as a ramrod, looking keen as a kite, presented, despite his clerical hat, black coat, and gaiters, more the air of a veteran officer
 
chiding his subalterns than of a venerable priest exhorting his sons in the faith. Gospel mildness, apostolic benignity, never seemed to have breathed their influence over that keen brown visage, but firmness had fixed the features, and sagacity had carved her own lines about them.

“I met Supplehough,” he continued, “plodding through the mud this wet night, going to preach at Milldean opposition shop. As I told you, I heard Barraclough bellowing in the midst of a conventicle like a possessed bull; and I find
you
, gentlemen, tarrying over your half-pint of muddy port wine, and scolding like angry old women. No wonder Supplehough should have dipped sixteen adult converts in a day — which he did a fortnight since; no wonder Barraclough, scamp and hypocrite as he is, should attract all the weaver-girls in their flowers and ribbons, to witness how much harder are his knuckles than the wooden brim of his tub; as little wonder that
you
, when you are left to yourselves, without your rectors — myself, and Hall, and Boultby — to back you, should too often perform the holy service of our church to bare walls, and read your bit of a dry discourse to the clerk, and the organist, and the beadle. But enough of the subject. I came to see Malone. — I have an errand unto thee, O captain!”

“What is it?” inquired Malone discontentedly. “There can be no funeral to take at this time of day.”

“Have you any arms about you?”

“Arms, sir? — yes, and legs.” And he advanced the mighty members.

“Bah! weapons I mean.”

“I have the pistols you gave me yourself. I never part with them. I lay them ready cocked on a chair by my bedside at night. I have my blackthorn.”

“Very good. Will you go to Hollow’s Mill?”

“What is stirring at Hollow’s Mill?”

“Nothing as yet, nor perhaps will be; but Moore is alone there. He has sent all the workmen he can trust to Stilbro’; there are only two women left about the place. It would be a nice opportunity for any of his well-wishers to pay him a visit, if they knew how straight the path was made before them.”

“I am none of his well-wishers, sir. I don’t care for him.”

“Soh! Malone, you are afraid.”

“You know me better than that. If I really thought there was a chance of a row I would go: but Moore is a strange, shy man, whom I never pretend to understand; and for the sake of his sweet company only I would not stir a step.”

“But there
is
a chance of a row; if a positive riot does not take place — of which, indeed, I see no signs — yet it is unlikely this night will pass quite tranquilly. You know Moor has resolved to have new machinery, and he expects two wagon-loads of frames and shears from Stilbro’ this evening. Scott, the overlooker, and a few picked men are gone to fetch them.”

“They will bring them in safely and quietly enough, sir.”

“Moore says so, and affirms he wants nobody. Some one, however, he must have, if it were only to bear evidence in case anything should happen. I call him very careless. He sits in the counting-house with the shutters unclosed; he goes out here and there after dark, wanders right up the hollow, down Fieldhead Lane, among the plantations, just as if he were the darling of the neighbourhood, or — being, as he is, its detestation — bore a ‘charmed life,’ as they say in tale-books. He takes no warning from the fate of Pearson, nor from that of Armitage — shot, one in his own house and the other on the moor.”

“But he should take warning, sir, and use precautions too,” interposed Mr. Sweeting; “and I think he would if he heard what I heard the other day.”

“What did you hear, Davy?”

“You know Mike Hartley, sir?”

“The Antinomian weaver? Yes.”

“When Mike has been drinking for a few weeks together, he generally winds up by a visit to Nunnely vicarage, to tell Mr. Hall a piece of his mind about his sermons, to denounce the horrible tendency of his doctrine of works, and warn him that he and all his hearers are sitting in outer darkness.”

“Well, that has nothing to do with Moore.”

“Besides being an Antinomian, he is a violent Jacobin and leveller, sir.”

“I know. When he is very drunk, his mind is always running on regicide. Mike is not unacquainted with history, and it is rich to hear him going over the list of tyrants of whom, as he says, ‘the revenger of blood has obtained satisfaction.’ The fellow exults strangely in murder done on crowned heads or on any head for political reasons. I have already heard it hinted that he seems to have a queer hankering after Moore. Is that what you allude to, Sweeting?”

“You use the proper term, sir. Mr. Hall thinks Mike has no personal hatred of Moore. Mike says he even likes to talk to him and run after him, but he has a
hankering
that Moore should be made an example of. He was extolling him to Mr. Hall the other day as the mill-owner with the most brains in Yorkshire, and for that reason he affirms Moore should be chosen as a sacrifice, an oblation of a sweet savour. Is Mike Hartley in his right mind, do you think, sir?” inquired Sweeting simply.

“Can’t tell, Davy. He may be crazed, or he may be only crafty, or perhaps a little of both.”

“He talks of seeing visions, sir.”

“Ay! He is a very Ezekiel or Daniel for visions. He came just when I was going to bed last Friday night to describe one that had been revealed to him in Nunnely Park that very afternoon.”

“Tell it, sir. What was it?” urged Sweeting.

“Davy, thou hast an enormous organ of wonder in thy cranium. Malone, you see, has none. Neither murders nor visions interest him. See what a big vacant Saph he looks at this moment.”

“Saph! Who was Saph, sir?”

“I thought you would not know. You may find it out. It is biblical. I know nothing more of him than his name and race; but from a boy upwards I have always attached a personality to Saph. Depend on it he was honest, heavy, and luckless. He met his end at Gob by the hand of Sibbechai.”

“But the vision, sir?”

“Davy, thou shalt hear. Donne is biting his nails, and Malone yawning, so I will tell it but to thee. Mike is out of work, like many others, unfortunately. Mr. Grame, Sir Philip Nunnely’s steward, gave him a job about the priory. According to his account, Mike was busy hedging rather late in the afternoon, but before dark, when he heard what he thought was a band at a distance — bugles, fifes, and the sound of a trumpet; it came from the forest, and he wondered that there should be music there. He looked up. All amongst the trees he saw moving objects, red, like poppies, or white, like may-blossom. The wood was full of them; they poured out and filled the park. He then perceived they were soldiers — thousands and tens of thousands; but they made no more noise than a swarm of midges on a summer evening. They formed in order, he affirmed, and marched, regiment after regiment, across the park. He followed them to Nunnely Common; the music still played soft and distant. On the common he watched them go through a number of evolutions. A man clothed in scarlet stood in the centre and directed them. They extended, he declared, over fifty acres. They were in sight half an hour; then they marched away quite silently. The whole time he heard neither voice nor tread — nothing but the faint music playing a solemn march.”

“Where did they go, sir?”

“Towards Briarfield. Mike followed them. They seemed passing Fieldhead, when a column of smoke, such as might be vomited by a park of artillery, spread noiseless over the fields, the road, the common, and rolled, he said, blue and dim, to his very feet. As it cleared away he looked again for the soldiers, but they were vanished; he saw them no more. Mike, like a wise Daniel as he is, not only rehearsed the vision but gave the interpretation thereof. It signifies, he intimated, bloodshed and civil conflict.”

“Do you credit it, sir?” asked Sweeting.

“Do you, Davy? — But come, Malone; why are you not off?”