It was no cheering spectacle. These premises were now a mere blot of desolation on the fresh front of the summer dawn. All the copse up the Hollow was shady and dewy, the hill at its head was green; but just here, in the centre of the sweet glen, Discord, broken loose in the night from control, had beaten the ground with his stamping hoofs, and left it waste and pulverized. The mill yawned all ruinous with unglazed frames; the yard was thickly bestrewn with stones and brickbats; and close under the mill, with the glittering fragments of the shattered windows, muskets and other weapons lay here and there. More than one deep crimson stain was visible on the gravel, a human body lay quiet on its face near the gates, and five or six wounded men writhed and moaned in the bloody dust.
Miss Keeldar’s countenance changed at this view. It was the after-taste of the battle, death and pain replacing excitement and exertion. It was the blackness the bright fire leaves when its blaze is sunk, its warmth failed, and its glow faded.
“This is what I wished to prevent,” she said, in a voice whose cadence betrayed the altered impulse of her heart.
“But you could not prevent it; you did your best – it was in vain,” said Caroline comfortingly. “Don’t grieve, Shirley.”
“I am sorry for those poor fellows,” was the answer, while the spark in her glance dissolved to dew. “Are any within the mill hurt, I wonder? Is that your uncle?”
“It is, and there is Mr. Malone; and, O Shirley, there is Robert!”
“Well” (resuming her former tone), “don’t squeeze your fingers quite into my hand. I see. There is nothing wonderful in that. We knew he, at least, was here, whoever might be absent.”
“He is coming here towards us, Shirley!”
“Towards the pump, that is to say, for the purpose of washing his hands and his forehead, which has got a scratch, I perceive.”
“He bleeds, Shirley. Don’t hold me. I must go.”
“Not a step.”
“He is hurt, Shirley!”
“Fiddlestick!”
“But I must go to him. I wish to go so much. I cannot bear to be restrained.”
“What for?”
“To speak to him, to ask how he is, and what I can do for him.”
“To tease and annoy him; to make a spectacle of yourself and him before those soldiers, Mr. Malone, your uncle, et cetera. Would he like it, think you? Would you like to remember it a week hence?”
“Am I always to be curbed and kept down?” demanded Caroline, a little passionately.
“For his sake, yes; and still more for your own. I tell you, if you showed yourself now you would repent it an hour hence, and so would Robert.”
“You think he would not like it, Shirley?”
“Far less than he would like our stopping him to say good night, which you were so sore about.”
“But that was all play; there was no danger.”
“And this is serious work; he must be unmolested.”
“I only wish to go to him because he is my cousin – you understand?”
“I quite understand. But now, watch him. He has bathed his forehead, and the blood has ceased trickling. His hurt is really a mere graze; I can see it from hence. He is going to look after the wounded men.”
Accordingly Mr. Moore and Mr. Helstone went round the yard, examining each prostrate form. They then gave directions to have the wounded taken up and carried into the mill. This duty being performed, Joe Scott was ordered to saddle his master’s horse and Mr. Helstone’s pony, and the two gentlemen rode away full gallop, to seek surgical aid in different directions.
Caroline was not yet pacified.
“Shirley, Shirley, I should have liked to speak one word to him before he went,” she murmured, while the tears gathered glittering in her eyes.
“Why do you cry, Lina?” asked Miss Keeldar a little sternly. “You ought to be glad instead of sorry. Robert has escaped any serious harm; he is victorious; he has been cool and brave in combat; he is now considerate in triumph. Is this a time – are these causes for weeping?”
“You do not know what I have in my heart,” pleaded the other—“what pain, what distraction – nor whence it arises. I can understand that you should exult in Robert’s greatness and goodness; so do I, in one sense, but in another I feel so miserable. I am too far removed from him. I used to be nearer. Let me alone, Shirley. Do let me cry a few minutes; it relieves me.”
Miss Keeldar, feeling her tremble in every limb, ceased to expostulate with her. She went out of the shed, and left her to weep in peace. It was the best plan. In a few minutes Caroline rejoined her, much calmer. She said, with her natural, docile, gentle manner, “Come, Shirley, we will go home now. I promise not to try to see Robert again till he asks for me. I never will try to push myself on him. I thank you for restraining me just now.”
“I did it with a good intention,” returned Miss Keeldar.
“Now, dear Lina,” she continued, “let us turn our faces to the cool morning breeze, and walk very quietly back to the rectory. We will steal in as we stole out. None shall know where we have been or what we have seen tonight; neither taunt nor misconstruction can consequently molest us. Tomorrow we will see Robert, and be of good cheer; but I will say no more, lest I should begin to cry too. I seem hard towards you, but I am not so.”
Chapter XX Tomorrow
The two girls met no living soul on their way back to the rectory. They let themselves in noiselessly; they stole upstairs unheard – the breaking morning gave them what light they needed. Shirley sought her couch immediately; and though the room was strange – for she had never slept at the rectory before – and though the recent scene was one unparalleled for excitement and terror by any it had hitherto been her lot to witness, yet scarce was her head laid on the pillow ere a deep, refreshing sleep closed her eyes and calmed her senses.
Perfect health was Shirley’s enviable portion. Though warm-hearted and sympathetic, she was not nervous; powerful emotions could rouse and sway without exhausting her spirit. The tempest troubled and shook her while it lasted, but it left her elasticity unbent, and her freshness quite unblighted. As every day brought her stimulating emotion, so every night yielded her recreating rest. Caroline now watched her sleeping, and read the serenity of her mind in the beauty of her happy countenance.
For herself, being of a different temperament, she could not sleep. The commonplace excitement of the tea-drinking and school-gathering would alone have sufficed to make her restless all night; the effect of the terrible drama which had just been enacted before her eyes was not likely to quit her for days. It was vain even to try to retain a recumbent posture; she sat up by Shirley’s side, counting the slow minutes, and watching the June sun mount the heavens.
Life wastes fast in such vigils as Caroline had of late but too often kept – vigils during which the mind, having no pleasant food to nourish it, no manna of hope, no hived-honey of joyous memories, tries to live on the meagre diet of wishes, and failing to derive thence either delight or support, and feeling itself ready to perish with craving want, turns to philosophy, to resolution, to resignation; calls on all these gods for aid, calls vainly – is unheard, unhelped, and languishes.
Caroline was a Christian; therefore in trouble she framed many a prayer after the Christian creed, preferred it with deep earnestness, begged for patience, strength, relief. This world, however, we all know, is the scene of trial and probation; and, for any favourable result her petitions had yet wrought, it seemed to her that they were unheard and unaccepted. She believed, sometimes, that God had turned His face from her. At moments she was a Calvinist, and, sinking into the gulf of religious despair, she saw darkening over her the doom of reprobation.