Front matter (continued 4)

His table was spread with a snowy cloth, and with the preparations for a tea of a distinctly convivial character. There was jam, and more than one kind of cake; and the room was further brightened by bunches of chrysanthemums. Chairs were drawn round the fire in an inviting-looking circle. The least cheerful object in the room was the owner of it, who sat in his usual chair between the fire and the writing-table. He looked pale and weary, for the frosty weather had strongly renewed the pain in a wound in his breast—an old wound, and a wound that had just missed being a deadly one. Contrary to his usual custom, he was neither reading nor writing. The pipe he had been smoking had gone out, and his thoughts were far back in the past, among the memories which had re-awakened with that aching in his breast. His thoughts went further back than the date of that wound,—went back to the days before he had lost friends, home, and country. He saw again in fancy the brilliant gaiety of the winters in St Petersburg, he heard again the exquisite music of the concerts and the opera,—the balls where Majesty itself had deigned to be present, with anxious brow and uneasy, restless eyes. His memory dwelt longest on a certain torchlight fête on the Neva, when the ice had been a yard thick, and when the élite had been shut off from the common herd by walls made of blocks of solid ice, between which fir trees were planted; when coloured lamps and Chinese lanterns had thrown indescribable magic over the crowd of bright military uniforms and the exquisite toilettes of lovely women who had never in all their lives been troubled by any thought of what their dresses cost. And even at this distance he could not think without half a pang of a certain fair-faced girl, with golden hair, who, in her sapphire velvet and swansdown, had been the star of that fête to his boyish eyes. And she had been kind to him on this the last evening he had spent near her before his new faiths and duties had separated him from her for ever. That was the first loss his creed had cost him. He wondered what would be the last—life itself perhaps. Then he fell to thinking how these beliefs of his had grown up. How the reading of a certain book—an English book—had done for his mind what a successful operation for cataract does for one nearly blind—had shown him the facts of life, no longer half hidden in a mist of falsity, but in all their naked truth and ugliness. How for a time he had closed his eyes again and had tried hard to live on in the life of luxury, beauty, love, and (now he knew) selfishness which had been his by 'right of birth.' He remembered the night when, belated miles from his home, and overtaken by a snowstorm, he had sought refuge in a peasant's hut, how he had talked to his hosts, how one visit had led to many, and how what he had learned from these miserable serfs had forbidden him to forget or to set aside the teaching of the great author whose book had first set him thinking. He remembered that time, perhaps the happiest in his life, when he first began to write—when the ideas which had so long been seething in his brain had found literary expression. He remembered the joy with which he had corrected his first proof, the pride with which he read his first article in a magazine. So thoroughly back in the old time was he that he had stretched out his hand towards this very magazine, which stood bound on a bookshelf, when a heavy foot sounded on the stairs, and a moment after a knock at the door heralded the entrance of Mr Toomey, whom Petrovitch came forward to greet with an almost courtly welcome.

'But your wife,' he said; 'can she not come? I trust all is well with her?'

'All's well with her, and thanking you for the question; but all's not well with that young woman o' yours.'

'Of mine? I do not happen to possess a young woman, my good Toomey.'

'I suppose you and me and my Mary Jane possesses about equal shares of her, then, for I saved her from keeping company with the dead cats and dogs, and you sent her to our place, and now my missus is let in for looking arter her.'

'Come to the fire. I hope it's nothing serious.'

'I don't rightly know. My missus told me I should be better out of the way, and I sent the doctor in as I came by.'

'I am very sorry,' said Petrovitch, 'but I am sure poor Mrs Litvinoff could not be in better hands than those of your good, kind wife.'

It was noticeable that he never spoke of Alice save as Mrs Litvinoff.

'You've a snug little place up here, sir,' said Toomey, looking round him. 'And do you really like reading—those sort of books, I mean,' pointing to Hegel's 'Logic,' which lay open on the table.

'I like doing better than reading, but one must read much to be able to do little in the line of work I am on at present.'

'Your line of work,' said Toomey, glancing admiringly at his host, 'is a thing as I never can get to understand. How it's done, I mean. Now, paving is straightforward. When you've got a paving-stone you know what it is you've got, and how far it'll go, but words is such shifty things, and how you manage to make 'em fit into each other so as to make 'em mean what you mean is what gets over me.'

'Perhaps I don't always make them mean what I mean. Judging by the way people misunderstand what I say—ah! here is Hirsch,' as the door opened, 'and Pewtress too. How are you? Now we're all here but Mr Vernon.'

'He's coming upstairs now,' said Pewtress, the stone-mason with the intellectual forehead, who had been at Mrs Quaid's at the last meeting of the Cleon.

Mr Hirsch seemed to be in more genial mood than he had been in any of those brief conversations which we hitherto had occasion to report. He had shaved himself—he even appeared to have combed his hair—and he shook hands with Toomey quite warmly and cordially.

The host had gone half-way down the stairs to meet his fourth guest—a lame boy, whose crutches made it not easy for him to mount to the height of Petrovitch's nest. He now returned with him on his arm—and after a general introduction of him to the others they all sat down to tea.

Eustace Vernon was a lad of about eighteen, with a pale, highbred-looking face—a rather shy but pleasant manner. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Petrovitch, and since his first acquaintance with the Socialist had made a point of being present at all the meetings on social subjects that he could get to hear of, and could find time to attend. For even the wild enthusiasm of the revolutionary in his teens will not go the length of working a Buddhist miracle and enabling the youthful devotee to be at more than one meeting at the same time. Petrovitch was amused and a little touched by the lad's undisguised homage—and knowing himself to be responsible for the inflammation of the young man's mind, felt bound to keep watch lest he should get into trouble before his newly-kindled fire had had time to burn itself down into steadiness.

As the meal went on it was noticeable that Vernon's love of liberty was not inconsistent with a child-like devotion to strawberry jam.

Petrovitch might have kept a school of instruction for the benefit of those who are always making such desperate efforts to 'annihilate class distinctions'—efforts which usually take place on Saturday afternoons, and are mostly the dismallest of failures. Under his influence his four guests—born in different parts of the world, and drawn from different social grades—talked together with the ease of club acquaintances.

'I had hoped,' said Petrovitch by-and-by, 'to have had a lady here to pour tea out for you, but fate has been unpropitious; Mrs Toomey was not able to come.'

'I regret her,' said Hirsch. 'It always does me much pleasure to meet our good friend's good wife.'

Toomey looked flattered, but a little uncomfortable under this tribute.

'She would have liked to come,' said he, trying to look straight at the other, but only succeeding in fixing one eye on the Austrian, while the other searched the depths of the jam pot with an obstinacy which made Vernon, who had the same in hand, simmer with warm awkwardness. 'She would have liked to come, but the young woman as lodges with us—that Mrs Let-em-off—is ill, and the missus wouldn't leave her.'

'Ah, Mrs Litvinoff, it is you mean. I willed to ask you of her.'

'I beg your pardon,' said Vernon, glad to join in the conversation, as a means of getting away from Toomey's eye. 'Is that any relation of Count Litvinoff? I know him. Splendid fellow, isn't he?'

'I don't think as she's a blessed countess,' said Toomey doubtfully, while Hirsch cast a significant glance of question at his host.

'Oh,' said Petrovitch, 'there are more Litvinoffs than one. It is not an uncommon name. I myself know more than one family of that name.'

'Of course you know the Count,' said Vernon, turning to him. 'What wonderful adventures he has had. He seems to be a man of splendid character. It must have cost him something to give up his social position and go in for the Revolution.'

'So far as I know Michael Litvinoff, he has never done more than his clear duty.'

'What does he do for the Revolution now?' growled Hirsch.

'Well, he does all that any one can do in England. There's not much else to be done besides talking.'

Vernon ended with a sigh, as of one who yearned for the barricades.

'Oh, yes; he'll talk,' said Hirsch discontentedly, and took a large bite of bread and butter.

'You are quite right, Mr Vernon,' said Petrovitch. 'He talks, and talks well; and, as you say, there is here no other means of helping the cause. And where you have such freedom of speech as in England a man's tongue is his best weapon, and ought, under existing circumstances, to be his only one.'

'The great reforms,' said Hirsch—'have they been carried by the tongue, or by the pike and the musket?'

'In this England enough has been carried by the tongue to leave good hopes for the future,' said Petrovitch.

'I am glad to hear you express those opinions,' said Pewtress, who spoke with some deliberation, and chose his words carefully. 'I have noticed that most of the foreigners I have had the pleasure of meeting do not quite understand the condition of affairs here.'

'Do not misunderstand me,' said Petrovitch, rising from the table. 'I consider force to be the last refuge of the oppressed and the wretched—only to be tried when everything else has failed—but then perfectly legitimate.'

'Hear, hear,' cried Vernon enthusiastically, as they all rose; 'that's more like yourself, Petrovitch! And as for Count Litvinoff, I can't help admiring him, if it's only for what he's gone through.'

'For that,' said Hirsch, who seemed to have grown grumpier and grumpier ever since Litvinoff's name had been introduced, 'you, Petrovitch, have had adventures better to hear about than any of his. Did Mr Vernon ever hear how you escaped from Tieff?'

'If Mr Vernon has, I have not,' said Pewtress, as they gathered round the fire. 'If our kind host will tell us the story, I am sure we shall all follow it with a great deal of interest.'

'I am quite willing to tell you about that little affair, but I fancy I've told it once or twice before,' said Petrovitch, handing round a box of thick, short Russian cigarettes, to which his friends all helped themselves; 'and there is no greater bore than the man who will always be telling of his own deeds and adventures.'

'You, at any rate, never speak of yours,' said Vernon, fixing his large eyes on Petrovitch; 'do tell us, please.'

'I assure you I was not refusing "pour me faire prier," and if we are all comfortable I will tell you with pleasure the little there is to tell. Toomey, you have no light.'

'All right, sir,' said Toomey, picking up a hot coal in his fingers and lighting his cigarette therefrom as his host began.

'During the year or so that I was in the fortress of Petro-Paolovski I never encouraged the slightest hopes of escape, for in the first place I, for a long time, suffered from a bad gunshot wound, and, secondly, because it is known only too well among us that escape from Petro-Paolovski is impossible. When, for some unknown reason, the Government sent me to Tieff, my health was improved, and so were my chances of getting away, and from the moment I entered the prison doors I never lost an opportunity of making and maturing a plan of escape. Escaping from a Russian prison is not quite such a desperate business for one of us as it would be for one of you, for you would be like a blind man in a strange house; but those of us who are judged to be the most likely subjects for arrest make it a rule to have the plan of every prison and fortress at our finger-tips.'

'What a marvellous organisation yours is,' said the stone-mason, more as an excuse for escaping a moment from the martyrdom of the unaccustomed cigarette than by way of saying anything original.

'Yes, the war is fairly well organised on both sides,' Petrovitch replied; 'but at present they have the big battalions.'

'But your plans,' struck in Vernon, impatient of the interruption.

'Yes. Well, my knowledge of Tieff told me that there was one way, and one way only, of leaving it, and that was by the way I had come in—by the front gate, and to get to the front gate one had to cross the courtyard, and between my cell and the courtyard lay obstacles too many to be calculated and dangers too great to be faced.'

'And you at once began to calculate them and to face them,' cried Vernon admiringly.

'Rather to elude them,' Petrovitch went on, ignoring the boy's compliment. 'As I could not meet them in detail I thought it better to surmount them in "the lump," as I think I have heard you call it in England. Now the thing that had given me most hope when I heard I was coming to Tieff was that I happened to know that the resident doctor of the prison was, not exactly one of us, but one who sympathised with us secretly—there are many such, who are unwilling to take an active part in the struggle, but who, short of that, help us in many ways—for instance, with money, and especially by hiding those of us who happen to be "wanted." We call them the Ukrivatelli—the concealers.'

'I hope there's lots of them sort, sir,' said Toomey, surreptitiously abandoning his cigarette in favour of the more familiar but slightly stronger smelling 'cutty.' 'But don't they get theirselves into trouble?'

'Yes, if they are found out,' answered Petrovitch; 'but they seldom are. They are a very large class, and are often men whose official rank or social position places them beyond suspicion. My wound still needed attention, and I soon managed to convey to the doctor a suggestion that daily exercise in a prison courtyard was a first-rate specific for gunshot wounds. He seemed to think so too, and before the end of the week I was told that I should have to walk every day for an hour in the only place where a walk of a dozen consecutive yards was possible—in the courtyard.'

'It was no use getting into the courtyard unless I had some prospect of getting out of it, and straight into some perfectly safe refuge. This was a matter that took some weeks to arrange, and during that time I never turned my eyes to the gate. The doctor, though he was willing to help me, was not willing to risk his own safety by carrying too many letters, and a whole code of signals had to be arranged. Luck seldom favours the right side; but I think I was certainly lucky, for just when I began to take my daily exercise the right wing of the prison had to be repaired, and consequently the gates of the courtyard were open all day for the carts of building materials, etc., which had to come in and out. This must have seemed tolerably safe to the authorities, as I was the only prisoner who "took exercise," and there were two sentries to whom was allotted the pleasing duty of watching me. They had a pretty easy time of it for these three weeks, for I used to crawl up and down the yard in a feeble and dejected sort of way, as though I had hardly the strength to put one foot before the other. I always leaned on a stick, and did my best to appear to be at my last gasp. I was well-nigh tired of waiting, so often my escape seemed almost close at hand, and then something happened, and all our plans had to be made over again. Innumerable ideas were suggested, but abandoned for one reason or another. At last it was definitely settled that at a certain signal I was to make for the gate and rush out—that a carriage was to be waiting just outside, and that one or two of our friends were to be there promiscuously, to give false information in judicious doses, as it might be called for. The gate was almost exactly in the middle of the courtyard, and the beat of sentry No. 1 was from the gate to the end of the yard and back, and that of sentry No. 2 from the other end of the yard to the gate and back—thus the face of one of them was always towards the gate. At length the day came when I might expect the signal—this was to be nothing more dramatic and startling than the smallest piece of paper that could well be seen—stuck on the shaft of one of the builder's carts. Cart after cart went by, my hour was nearly up, and I began to feel pretty sure that either the signal was not to be given that morning, or else that it had been given and I had missed seeing it. This last alternative was becoming a maddening certainty, when yet another cart came crawling in, and on the shaft, luckily on the side to which my walk had now brought me, was lightly stuck a little piece of white paper. Once more luck was my friend, for the sentry on the same side of the gate as myself was marching from the gate, and between me and the one walking towards the gate was the cart. Had any one not in the secret been watching me from one of the prison windows at that moment he would certainly have thought that I was the subject of a miraculous cure, for in what seemed to me about half-a-dozen bounds I was at the side of the cart, out of the gate, and in one of two carriages which were passing at the time.'

'And what steps did the authorities take?' asked Pewtress, in the perfectly unexcited and matter-of-fact tone of a School Board inspector.

'Well,' said Petrovitch, laughing a little, 'I was not there at the time, but my friends told me that what followed was well worth seeing. A few seconds after my disappearance the two sentries and the whole of the guard from the guard-room inside the prison came swarming into the street, and there was a most delightful hue-and-cry and clamour. About a hundred yards away to the right a carriage was making off at a mad pace, and after this went the whole posse; with the lieutenant of the guard at their head. They must have been immensely relieved when they saw it pull up opposite the house of a well-known and irreproachable doctor. When, panting and exultant, they surrounded the carriage, they found inside it a surprised and indignant gentleman, who had driven in hot haste to fetch Dr. Seroff to his sick daughter, who had taken a turn for the worse.'

'And were you under the seat, Mr Peter Hitch?' inquired the interested Toomey.

'Not exactly. I had been driven off in the other carriage, which went at a quiet trot, eminently suited to my delicate state of health.'

'The gentleman who went for the doctor, I presume, was "one of you"?' put in Vernon.

'He was of the Ukrivatelli,' said Petrovitch, 'and I am afraid he had a bad time of it for a day or two. He was promptly taken where I had come from, and I fear the young lady's sick-room was invaded by a corporal's guard, but our friend and his family were so evidently innocent that the authorities had nothing left but to put up with their loss, and to grin and bear it, as you say.'

'But where did the other carriage take you?'

'Into the next street, to the most orthodox house in the town, the residence of a district judge, whence after spending a week I made for the frontier with passport quite in order, a clean chin, a strong French accent, and very black eyebrows. So ends the story, which I am afraid hasn't been a very exciting one.'

'The quite truth of it is its interest,' said Hirsch; 'to Count Litvinoff must you go for pure excitement.'

'You don't seem to like this Count Let-em-off, Mr Hearse,' said Toomey curiously; 'I thought he was a rare good 'un.'

'You're right, Toomey. He's done us good service.' This Petrovitch spoke with a certain emphasis, and with his eyes not on Toomey, but on Hirsch.

'I don't know whether it's indiscreet to ask,' said Vernon, 'but I wish you would tell us how it was you got arrested.'

'Ah! that's a long story,' returned Petrovitch, 'and one which, as it concerns others beside myself, I don't feel justified in telling.' Then as the boy coloured and looked embarrassed, he added kindly, 'There wasn't the slightest indiscretion in the question, and some other time, perhaps, I shall be able to answer it. But, since adventures are the order of the evening, you should get Hirsch to tell you some of his. He has had more than Othello.'

The Austrian was beginning to protest that nothing had ever happened to him, when a rustle of silk on the stairs outside silenced him, and the men all looked at each other inquiringly in the moment that elapsed before the door was opened and disclosed the velvet bonnet and abundant flounces of Mrs Quaid. Mr Quaid was there, too, but he did not take the eye or captivate the attention. That was Mrs Quaid's department.

'My dear Mr Petrovitch, how can I apologise enough for our intrusion? The maid gave us no idea that you were entertaining. Ah! here's Mr Pewtress. How do you do? And Mr Vernon, too. How delightful! Why, we're all among friends. And you won't think me quite an old marplot if I stay for a few moments, for I really have something special to say to you.'

'It's very good of you to honour me with a call,' said Petrovitch, wondering intensely what had brought her there.

'We have been to see some friends at Regent's Park, and we are going on to dine with the Pagets—(you know the Pagets, Mr Petrovitch? No! Ah, I must introduce you; they are such sweet people, quite devoted to our side)—and so we thought we would call as we passed to ask you if you will come and dine with us on Tuesday. You'll excuse an informal invitation, I know. I thought if we came ourselves to ask you we should be more likely to succeed.'

'You are very kind,' said Petrovitch, wondering whether he could find any means of evading an acceptance.

'I had hoped to have had your fellow-countryman, Count Litvinoff, there to meet you; but I hear he has just gone to Derbyshire; so unfortunate. I suppose he has gone to stay with the Stanleys. He saved Mr Stanley's life, you know—Mr Stanley—perhaps you remember his daughter, the sweet girl who sat next you at our house.'

It appeared that Petrovitch did remember the lady in question.

The other men had formed a knot at the other side of the fire.

'You know,' said Mrs Quaid, lowering her voice discreetly, as she glanced at them, 'my daughter Cora thinks that there will be a match there before long. I do so hope that dear interesting Count has not lost all his property. From what I hear he is very well off.'

'Gentlemen of your opinions ought not to marry,' said Mr Quaid, striking in, much to his wife's surprise. He did not usually advance independent opinions, being emphatically 'Mrs Quaid's husband,' and nothing more.

'Why?' asked Petrovitch, amused.

'Because your lives are so constantly in danger.'

'There's not much danger in Derbyshire,' broke in Hirsch, in spite of Petrovitch's restraining eye.

'Ah, well,' said Mrs Quaid, 'I do hope, if anything does come of it, that he will settle down quietly in England. There is so much that wants doing here. We want good, brave workers to strive to bridge over the terrible gulf between the classes.'

Toomey, suddenly recalled to a sense of the 'gulf'—which he had quite lost sight of under the influence of Petrovitch's tact—felt a painfully renewed consciousness of his boots, his hands, and his Sunday clothes.

Vernon, who knew Mrs Quaid, and delighted to 'draw' her, would not for the world have missed such an opportunity of amusing himself and his friends. By a skilful question or two he led the lady on to her favourite subject—that of education. She could discuss this question with eloquence, and at any length; but no matter how her discussions began, they always ended by placing her and her hearers in a difficulty. She was quite clear that before we could educate our children we must be educated ourselves, which, on the face of it, seemed reasonable; but, then, who was there to educate us? To that question no answer could ever be found; and in the meantime, what was to become of the rising generation? She had nearly reached this point when her husband, who had been present before when she trotted round this circle of argument, and for whom the repetition of the performance had no charms, brought the conversation back to the world of possibilities by renewing the invitation for Tuesday, which Petrovitch, after a little hesitation, accepted.

When the gros grain silk had swept down the uncarpeted stairs, and Petrovitch had accompanied it to the front door and received the last nod of farewell from the imposing plume in the velvet bonnet, he returned to his room, to find the spirits of his friends visibly higher, except those of Vernon, who felt that he had been done out of the cream of his proposed joke.

The evening slipped by pleasantly enough, but there were no more adventures told, nor was Count Litvinoff mentioned again, until one by one all the guests had departed except Hirsch.

He stayed on, smoking in silence, and his host, equally silent, sat on the opposite side of the fire, regarding it fixedly.

'Well,' said Hirsch, at last turning his eyes towards the other, 'what of this marriage that the large lady speaks of so confidently—this "sweet Clare" who is to be the Countess Litvinoff? That also is to be for the cause? With that also you are satisfied? That also is to be permitted, sanctioned, what you call approved?'

'No,' said Petrovitch slowly. 'No; that is not to be.'

CHAPTER XIX.

AN HONEST MAN AND A BRAVE ONE.

HANK God!' was Count Litvinoff's inward ejaculation, as, followed by Roland, he sprang through the laurel bushes into the gravel path that skirted the lawn. For what he saw was not what he had feared to see. Clare was safe. She was standing on the last of the stone steps that led down from the verandah, her hands clasped over her eyes, as if to shut out some intolerable sight.

On the lawn before her, half-a-dozen yards off, in brown shooting suit and gaiters, lay her father, face downwards, on the grass, his gun beside him, and his two sporting dogs sniffing round the hand that had held it.

The two young men were at his side in an instant, and had half raised him by the time Clare had shaken off the horror that had paralysed her and had sprung towards them. Roland glanced at Mr Stanley's face, and, passing his arm round the old man's neck, drew his head towards him, and bent over it in such a manner as to keep it from her eyes.

'Take her in, Litvinoff,' he said, still bending forward; 'make her go in.'

'Come in, Miss Stanley; you can do no good here,' said Litvinoff, rising and taking the girl by the arm. She shook him off.

'Let me alone,' she cried. 'How dare you interfere? Let me go to my father.'

'Miss Stanley, be reasonable. You can do much more good in the house. Don't you know we must bring your father in?—and your mother must be told.'

But Mrs Stanley needed no telling. From the window she had seen—when the barking of the dogs told of Mr Stanley's near approach—how Clare had run out bareheaded to meet him—how he had stopped in the middle of the lawn, as if expecting her to come to him—how he had taken his gun from his shoulder, and dropped the butt on the ground—how there had been a flash, a report, and how he had fallen. Now she came out.

'Go in,' she said to Clare, 'and send for Doctor Bailey. Thomas can go on Red Robin.'

By this time the servants were gathering from all directions.

'Come,' Litvinoff spoke in a low voice, but a voice of authority, and led her towards the stable-yard. Coming round the corner they met Thomas.

'Oh, Thomas—' she began, when Litvinoff interrupted.

'Saddle Red Robin, and ride for Doctor Bailey—ride fast for your life! Now, Miss Stanley, for Heaven's sake don't give way; keep up. They may want linen for bandages, and brandy.'

She looked at him with wide-open, frightened eyes, but she obeyed him; and when those things were brought she stood looking mutely at him, like a child asking for directions.

'Sit down,' he said; and, pouring out some brandy-and-water, held it to her lips.

'Drink, and then you will be able, perhaps, to be of some use.'

They were in the drawing-room. Litvinoff noticed, even at that moment, the hundred dainty tokens of a cultivated woman's daily presence. As he set down the glass, past the closed door came the heavy tread of the men who were bringing the master back to his home.

Then Clare rose up. 'I will go to my father,' she said, turning a white, resolute face towards the door. 'Twenty of you shall not stop me!'

Litvinoff caught her two hands and held them tightly.

'Wait, wait; they are getting him to his bed. You would only be in the way. Trust me, Miss Stanley. I would not keep you from him if you could be of any use to him. You may be of real service by-and-by.'

'Very well,' she said; 'I will do what you tell me. But, oh, tell me all you know; tell me where he's hurt; did you see? Will it be dangerous? For pity's sake tell me what you saw, whether—'

Here the door opened, and Roland came in. Her eyes searched his face for re-assurance, but found there something more terrible than her worst fears, and as he opened his lips to speak she cried in a high-pitched voice, quite unlike her own, as she held out her hands as if to keep off something, 'Don't tell me—don't tell me anything—let me go!'

And as Roland stood aside she rushed from the room. Litvinoff closed the door.

'He's dead,' said Roland.

'I know. I knew that directly I put my hand on him. I have had my hand on a man shot dead before to-day.'

Roland sat down on a low chair. It was the one Clare had occupied half-an-hour before. There on the little table by it lay her work-basket, and some pretty useless bit of sewing, and all the little gilt working implements which she had put down when she went to meet her father. Roland's eye fell on them, and he groaned.

'Good God, Litvinoff, what a terrible thing! What a frightful blow for them!'

'Does Mrs Stanley know?'

'Yes.'

'How soon can the doctor be here?'

'In half-an-hour; but he'll be no good when he does come.'

'Not for him, but Miss Stanley may need him. Her face as she passed out of the door was not reassuring.'

Roland groaned again.

'What a horrible world it is!' he said.

His father dead, his brother estranged, his sweetheart lost to him, and now this new calamity had fallen near him. 'It never rains but it pours.' And it seemed to be raining misfortunes in Firth Vale.

'It is a horrible world,' said the other; 'but reflecting on that truth will not aid anyone just now. Is there nothing we can do?'

'Not that I know of, but we won't go till the doctor comes.'

'Certainly not; and in the meantime let me suggest that a little of this brandy would not be amiss, if you don't want him to find a patient in you. You look uncommonly shaky.'

Roland accepted the suggestion and the proffered glass.

'Miss Stanley's mother seems to have her wits about her?'

'Yes, Mrs Stanley's a sensible woman—but she's not Miss Stanley's mother. Mr Stanley was married twice.'

'There are no other children?'

'No.'

'Poor woman,' said Litvinoff, sincerely enough, though for a certain reason he was not displeased to hear that Clare was an only child. 'He seems to have been a rich man,' went on Litvinoff, glancing round the room.

'Yes, he had more than he knew what to do with. It seems hard that he should have had to leave it all so suddenly,' said Roland, growing sentimental.

'It is a great pity men have to leave their wealth behind them. If they could only take it with them, there would not be so many young people growing up in vicious idleness.' Then, as it suddenly occurred to him that this might possibly be considered personal, he went on in his most approved didactic manner,—'Since death is inevitable, how lucky we ought to think it that so few people have anything to live for. I believe to a great many people the best thing in life is the certainty that some day or other they'll get out of it.'

Roland did not answer. There are moments when moral reflections are particularly hateful.

The doctor arrived sooner than they had hoped, the man-servant having met him about half-way between Aspinshaw and his own house, but of course he could only confirm what they all knew. The whole contents of the gun had lodged in the lungs, and death must have been instantaneous. He asked the two young men a good many questions as to the manner of the accident, but of course they had not seen it, and were unable to throw any light on the cause of the disaster. He must have been carrying the gun full-cock, and the concussion, when he brought the butt down on the ground, must have started it.

'Mrs Stanley bears up wonderfully well.'

'And his daughter?' put in Litvinoff.

'Well, the poor child's crushed at present, but she'll soon be all right. Young hearts soon throw off their troubles, thank Heaven! I shall have to trouble you two gentlemen at the inquest,' he said, as he got into his gig and was driven off.

Roland Ferrier and Michael Litvinoff walked home almost in silence, consumed a dinner enlivened by Miss Letitia's comments on the events of the day, and, when she had retired in tears, passed one of the most melancholy evenings in the recollection of either. Roland did his best to perform the difficult part of genial host to the guest who had been introduced to Thornsett under such inauspicious circumstances; but he was a young man who had not that within him which enables men to resist the influence of the immediately surrounding circumstances, and his attempt was a dead failure. Litvinoff could, perhaps, have succeeded with a desperate effort in raising the cloud of gloom that hung over them both, but it did not seem to him that the game was quite worth the candle, and he let it alone.

Under the circumstances there could be no shooting, and none of such social entertainments as would certainly otherwise have enlivened his visit, and the prospect of his first Christmas in an English country-house looked very bleak.

'I suppose one mustn't smoke here,' he said aloud to himself, when, the long evening over, he reached his bedroom, and sank down into an easy-chair before the brightly-burning fire. 'That antiquated lady is the sort of person who would go mad if she smelt smoke in one of the bedrooms. It is a great bore. I want to think—and how the deuce am I to think if I can't smoke!—and I must think. Yes, it must be done; they must put it down to my foreign ways,' he added, as he drew out his cigar-case and lighted up.

Something in his surroundings reminded him of that night in October when he had saved the life of the man who was now lying dead at Aspinshaw.

'Poor old boy,' he said, 'I didn't renew his lease of life for very long, after all; but I expect he lived long enough to have done almost as much for me as he could have done had he lived longer. Perhaps my "views," as he would have called them, will not stand so much in the way now. My crushed young host told me that she is beginning to share those views and to be enthusiastic—thanks to that mysterious entity, Petrovitch. I owe him that; I wonder if I owe him anything else? I do owe many sums to many people. He had me for ten pounds, though, any way. Pardieu! I hope he won't try that again, or I shall have to stay down here permanently. I shall attend a funeral in a few days, I suppose. I wonder when I shall attend a marriage? She was obedient to-day—a good sign. Things will go smoother so.'

He puffed at his cigar in silence a few minutes, then he spoke aloud again, 'And so that was John Hatfield, and he is one of us—or half one of us. By Jove! that makes me feel a cursed traitor—that merits death. Well, I'm not afraid of that, anyhow, nor of anything that may come after. I've got memories enough to make a hell of my own here, and death would be the end of them, at any rate, not the beginning. And yet one must live, I suppose, though I don't feel so sure of that to-night. Poor little girl—dear little girl! I wish you were the heiress of Aspinshaw. The real heiress is pretty and charming, and a lady,' with a rather bitter laugh, 'and she is beginning to have "views;" but somehow I can't get you out of my head to-night.' He moved his hand to and fro before his eyes, as though to clear away the smoke. Then he rose. 'Curses on conscience—curses on principle!' he said; 'I must see if sleep will do it;' and he went to bed.

During the next few days there was nothing to do except to call at Aspinshaw every day and ask after Mrs and Miss Stanley. This was an obvious duty, but as an occupation it was not engrossing. On the second day, young Ferrier offered to 'show his guest over' the mill, and Litvinoff, always glad of a new experience, joyfully consented. The mill was charmingly situated in a little hollow in the hills, with a big reservoir above it and a little stream below. On one side was a wood, where a good many hollies kept up the impression of greenness, though all the other trees were sere and brown. On the other side was a very steep incline which shot up almost like a high wall, and was bare and rugged and rocky, and from the top some rude steps cut out of the grey rock led down to the mill. While the workings of the machinery were being explained, and the various processes exhibited, it did not escape the Count's observation that the men looked particularly discontented, and that there was none of that deferential submission in their manner to Roland which he had been accustomed to see in the manner of workmen towards their masters.

'What's the matter with the men?' Litvinoff asked, as they walked back to Thornsett. 'They looked uncommonly disagreeable. My friend John Hatfield doesn't appear to be the only one who is dissatisfied with the munificent two pounds a week.'

'John Hatfield! What a memory you have for names. Oh, they're not dissatisfied with the amount of their wages. On the contrary, they only wish they could go on at the same rate. But they soon won't have any at all from me. The mill stops working at the end of the year, and they've somehow got it into their heads that I'm responsible for it, whereas it's just about as much my fault as it is that tree's.'

'Is it any one's fault?'

'You know that it is my brother's. He made the quarrel, and forced it on me, knowing what the results would be.'

'And the results to these men will be—'

'Starvation, I'm afraid, for some of them, poor fellows, and very short commons for them all; but it's rather hard that I should be blamed for it.'

'Oh, beautiful system!' said Litvinoff; 'splendid organisation of industry! Two brothers quarrel about nothing in particular, and a hundred men and their families have to starve in consequence.'

'It's not the fault of the system, but of my father's will and my brother's mad temper; but anyhow it is not my fault.'

'Well, your father's will is distinctly part of the system; but, as you say, you are not to blame. No, Ferrier; you are certainly the most hardly done by. As to these "hands," as you call them, qu'importe? It is you who are to be pitied. It is so much harder to be blamed than to starve.'

'What a cool fellow you are, Litvinoff!' Roland laughed, but was yet a little nettled too, for, like all Englishmen, he hated irony. 'You're always mocking at something or somebody. But perhaps you forget that I shall have hardly anything to live on either—a wretched hundred a year or so.'

'A hundred a year,' said the Count, in the tone of one who is dealing with a difficult arithmetical problem, 'is just about two pounds a week. Now the other day you said that two pounds a week was "not so bad" for a man with a family; and, with all your misfortunes, you are not what you English people call "a family man."'

'But then you must remember how differently those sort of people are brought up.'

'I do remember it.'

'They don't have the same needs as we do.'

'Don't they?'

'No. What do they care about music or art or poetry or travelling? Fortunately for them they haven't the tastes that run away with money.'

'They have a taste for food and for warmth, I suppose,' the Count was beginning, when Roland interrupted him.

'There, Litvinoff, it's no good; you'll never convert me. I'm a Radical, not a Socialist. Let's talk about something else.'

'By all means. To return to John Hatfield. I noticed in the mill to-day that he did not participate in the general scowl.'

'No. I don't think he bears me any ill-will. Our relations with the Hatfields are peculiar. When my mother died—it was before my aunt came to live with us—Mrs Hatfield took charge of my brother and me, and was a sort of foster-mother to us. Her daughter Alice was our playfellow, and a dear little girl she was.'

'Was that the girl you said had—well, not acted very wisely?' asked the Count, feeling an insensate longing to talk about Alice, or to hear some one else do so.

'Yes; that was the girl,' said Roland. 'She was as sweet a little girl as you would wish to see.'

Litvinoff mentally endorsed this statement to the full. Aloud he said,—

'What was it—the old story?'

'Yes. She met some fellow at Liverpool; I suppose lost her heart to him, and gave the world for love, and considered it well lost, as they say. Damn the brute! I wish I had the handling of him. I should like to have half an hour with him without the gloves.'

Litvinoff was conscious of an insane desire to give Roland his wish, and try which was the better man, but he said quietly,—

'You don't know him, then? I suppose nothing has been heard or seen of her?'

'No, only—it's rather funny—when I went to the Agora that night I fancied I saw her face, but it must have been fancy.'

'Of course; unless,' added the other, goaded by the Imp of the Perverse—'unless her lover was a gentleman interested in social reform.'

'Not he,' said Roland contemptuously; 'more likely some fool of a counter-jumper or clerk. You know I looked upon her quite as my sister, and I was very fond of her, and all that.'

'Yes?' interrogatively.

Roland had not meant to say anything more; but after that 'yes' he found himself going on,—

'And that's why it's so deuced hard that my brother should blame me for it. Upon my soul, I seem fated to be blamed by everybody I know for everything any one else has done!'

'That, then, was your brother's accusation?'

'Yes. At least if it wasn't I can make neither head nor tail of anything he said. But I didn't mean to have said anything about it—it's too preposterous! I don't know how it is, but I'm always finding myself telling you things that I didn't mean to tell any one. I wonder how it is? Natural affinity, I suppose.'

'I suppose it's because you know I am interested in you,' said Litvinoff cordially, as they turned in at the gate of Thornsett Edge.

'It will be very dull for you here,' said Roland, beating the shrubs lightly with his ash stick as they walked up the path; 'and, I am sorry to say I shall have to be out this evening. I must go down to our solicitor to arrange about several things. You won't think me an awful bear?'

'Don't mention it; I shall be very well amused, I doubt not. I can take a walk if I find I miss you very much, and then I shall be sure to lose myself, and there is some excitement to be got out of that.'

That evening John Hatfield was sitting on the oak settle by his hearth, his wife with her knitting in the substantial rocking-chair opposite. The interior was cosy and bright enough. A high wooden screen protected the inmates from any cold air that might else have come through the door, which opened straight from the house-place into the street. A short red curtain hung in front of the long low window, that was nearly as wide as the room itself. There was a chintz flounce to the chimney-piece, and a bright round table, on three legs, in the middle of the room. There was a good deal of shining brass about, and a few pieces of old china. Mrs Hatfield, a small fair woman, with grey, short-sighted eyes, had more lines in her face than her years should have traced there. But the poor age much more rapidly than the rich. Significant reflection. And every trouble leaves its signet on our faces, and Mrs Hatfield's trouble had been a heavy one, and its traces were easily discernible. So thought Count Litvinoff, as he tapped at the door and entered John Hatfield's house, and the thought was not a pleasant one. Derbyshire was certainly not the place to come to for pleasant thoughts, or pleasant incidents either.

'Is't thee, man?' said Hatfield, leaning forward to discern the features of his visitor in the comparative gloom by the door where he stood. 'Come in—come to the fire. Here, lass, this is the chap I telled ye on.'

As Litvinoff held out his hand to Mrs Hatfield her husband went on,—

'Ay, shake his hand, lass; you don't so often get to shake hands wi' an honest man, and a brave man—'

Alice's father speaking of him to Alice's mother! Another pleasant incident for Count Litvinoff!

CHAPTER XX.

IMPROVING PROSPECTS.

LARE STANLEY was the mistress of Aspinshaw, and of a good deal of bricks and mortar, stocks and shares, and Three per Cent. Consols besides. Mrs Stanley was comfortably provided for, but it was Clare who was to profit by the hard work, the self-denial and forethought of some three generations of Stanleys, or, as some might think, of their greed, their grasping, and their over-reaching of their less crafty fellow-men.

The will that had laid the burden of wealth upon her, at an age when most young women of her class are engaged in constant differences with their parents and guardians on the subject of pin-money, had been the one act of eccentricity of Mr Stanley's whole life.

For some days her grief for her father's loss had been too absorbing to permit of her thinking of much else besides, but on this first day of the new year she felt more able to think, and as she sat alone by the drawing-room fire she began for the first time to realise her position. About one thing she had made up her mind; she must leave this horrible house, where the shadow had fallen on her which she felt just then could never be lifted again.

Between Clare and her father's second wife there had always been perfectly cordial relations, but they were not bound together by any ties of love.

Mrs Stanley had always done her duty to her husband and his child, but hers was a cold nature, and not one which had drawn out Clare's heart towards itself. She was now going to stay with her own relatives, and was perfectly willing to take her step-daughter with her; but the girl decided, without much need for reflection, that there would be many things better than to be buried alive in a Yorkshire village, with no one more congenial to talk to than Mrs Stanley or Mrs Stanley's relations, whom Clare had been wont to term 'the fossils.'

An unposted letter lay on the little table at her elbow, in which she had accepted an invitation to spend an indefinite time with the Quaids. She thought that in London, away from the associations of the recent past, she would be better able to plan out the course of her future life. She knew that that course would now be a very different one from what it would have been had she had the planning of it three months ago, before she met Count Litvinoff or spent that evening at the Cleon. She was sorrowfully glad that her father's will was what it was, for she was conscious in a vague sort of way that wealth meant power, and she was determined that in her hands it should mean power to do good and to make others happy. Her plans went no further than this at present, and she knew that even to carry this out she would need teaching and help and counsel from those who had more experience of the world and its needs than she had. It was, perhaps, this thought that had mainly influenced her in her acceptance of Mrs Quaid's very kind and cordial invitation, for Marlborough Villa was not the most unlikely place in the world at which to meet some one who had just that which she lacked. There she had first been forced to think; perhaps there she would first be taught how to act.

Why does one never learn at school the things one needs when one leaves it? 'How much there is to know—how much there is for me to learn,' she said to herself, with a little sigh, leaning forward and gazing into the glowing fire, resting her elbow on her knee and her cheek on her clasped hands.

She started and rose at a loud, clanging ring of the door-bell. As she had expected, the servant announced 'Count Litvinoff.' He came forward with a low and deferential bow.

'You must forgive me,' he said, 'for calling on you on Sunday afternoon, which, I believe, is not the rule in England; but I heard that you were leaving Aspinshaw to-morrow, and I could not run the risk of not seeing you again.'

'We are always pleased to see you,' said Clare; 'but I am not going to London for some time yet. There will be a good deal of law business, I suppose, and it is not fair to carry the trouble of that to my friend's house. Is Mr Roland well?'

'He is on duty,' said Litvinoff; 'he has gone to a chapel with his aunt, which is good of him, as his views are not that way.'

Clare drew a breath of relief. She had not felt comfortable in Roland's presence since that interview with Litvinoff in the National Gallery.

'I myself shall be returning to London in a few weeks,' the young man went on. 'I have already stayed as long as I at first intended to do, but now Ferrier is good enough to wish me to stay until the household at Thornsett Edge is broken up.'

'Ah, yes, I had forgotten that. What a horrible thing! What are they going to do?'

'I believe Mr Roland will live with his aunt at Chelsea.'

'We seem to be all going to London,' said Clare, with an effort to be as cheerful as possible.

'True; but London is so vast, and in it I know so few people whom you are likely to know, that I feel I might as well be going back to Siberia for any chance I shall have of seeing you.' This with the air of one who would as soon go to Siberia as not while he was about it.

'Oh, I daresay we shall see each other,' she answered, leaning back in her chair and trifling with a big screen of peacock's feathers, which she had idly taken up. 'I'm going to stay with a lady who is madly anxious to know you.'

Count Litvinoff looked intensely surprised, as though that had been almost impossible.

'I think I told you about her,' she continued; 'Mrs Quaid, who belongs to the Cleon, you know, where I heard all about Socialism, you remember?'

'Oh, yes, I remember,' said Litvinoff, which was true. He did.

'I do hope I shall see you again, because you and Mr Petrovitch are the only two people I know who can help me.'

'It is a great privilege my fellow-countryman shares with me, Miss Stanley. May I be the first to hear of what help you stand in need?'

'I daresay you have heard,' she answered, 'that my father'—here her voice trembled a little—'has left me nearly all his money, and it is mine now, though I am not of age.'

Ah, no, Count Litvinoff had certainly not heard that.

'And then, you see,' she went on, knitting her brows under the stress of the difficulty she found in putting her thoughts into words, 'the question is, what am I to do with it? A little time ago I should have found it easy enough to do with it what every one else does; but I have been thinking a great deal—a very great deal lately—ever since I heard Mr Petrovitch; and now I feel the responsibility of it so much more than I should have done before.'

Count Litvinoff thought to himself that that was the sort of responsibility he was admirably adapted to share. He merely looked sympathetic, and Miss Stanley went on.

'And then I feel sure money may be a fearful curse if one doesn't use it properly. Of course, I can't disguise from myself that this money was made in the usual way, and that others have lost all that my father and his father have gained, and I wish I could think of some way in which it might give as much happiness as it would have done had it been left in the hands of the workers who toiled to produce it. You are one who should be able to advise me. What shall I do?'

Litvinoff's hair almost stood on end. This was getting his own coin back with a vengeance.

'My dear Miss Stanley,' he said gravely, 'if I were to advise you in the only way which seems possible to me now, your friends would all look upon me as your worst enemy—as an adventurer, as a rogue. Whereas I desire to be looked on as your faithful friend and servant—as the man who, more than all others, would go through fire and water to do you the slightest service.'

'I should hardly have thought you would have cared what my friends or anybody else thought of you,' was Miss Stanley's only reply to this fervid declaration.

'Under most circumstances,' said the Count, with a little wave of his hand, 'I do care for nothing and for nobody; but'—he went on, with a slight tremor in his voice—'rather than incur the dislike of any one whom you respect and love, I would abjure every principle, and sacrifice every cause.'

'I asked for advice,' said Clare, not seeing her way to a more direct answer.

'I know you did,' he spoke rapidly, dropping into a foreign accent; 'and I—I cannot give it you, Miss Stanley. Let me tell you one thing. You know—you have heard, you have read—how in Russia, when money is wanted for our cause, it is the duty of some of us to get it—to persuade it out of those who have. That has often been my duty, and I have never failed. I have taken, over and over again, all, all from those as young as you, and have left them with nothing. I have had to raise enthusiasm by every means, to urge to self-sacrifice, and then to take unsparingly. There are men now, my friends, who, if they knew that you—rich, young, enthusiastic—had asked me for advice, and that I had refused to give it, would say, "Michael Litvinoff has become traitor," and would kill me like a rat. But,' he went on, rising and stretching out his clenched fist, 'did I know that a legion of such men were outside that door, armed and waiting for me, and hearing every word I speak, I would still say that for no cause in the world must you make sacrifices or must you suffer; and I would still say that I would serve you before all causes.'

'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.

OING 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.

F 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.'

Roland turned away, and flung himself sulkily into a chair by the fire.

'I suppose you're right,' he said; 'but I shall be deuced glad to be out of the whole thing.'

It was perhaps as well for Roland's self-esteem and peace of mind that he did not hear the strictures that were passed upon him by the men as they returned towards the village. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick, but when a new-born hope is killed, and killed cruelly and suddenly, there comes sometimes something more terrible than heart-sickness and more dangerous.

The moon had flung aside the slight mist which had covered her face earlier in the evening, and now shone full on the valley, towards which the crowd were making their way. As they turned the corner which brought them in sight of the mill whose doors none of them were to pass again, a burst of curses and oaths broke from the men and fell on the still air, violating and outraging the peace and beauty of the night.

At this moment Hatfield and Murdoch, walking together from the village to meet them, came up and were promptly informed of the result of the interview.

'Ay, ay, lads!' said old Murdoch. 'What did Ah tell ye? as Ah thowt.' Then looking down at the mill he pointed towards it, and went on in a loud voice, 'Ye shall best have another try now. Go down and beg o' t' door-posts o' t' owd mill to take ye on again. Ye'll be as likely to get a good hearing fro' them as ye were fro' t' young puppy up yonder; and they'll not be laughing at ye as soon as yer turned, anyway.'

This last suggestion had the effect that Murdoch probably wished it to have. At once a dozen voices were raised for going back to Thornsett Edge, and not leaving a pane of glass in the window-sashes. The man who had thrown the stone before at once became a small hero, and met with numerous offers of assistance in going back and completing the work he had begun. Not a few of the men were excited by drink as well as by rage, having taken considerably more than was good for them before they started on the forlorn hope, and the excitement of these men communicated itself by those mysterious means which only manifest themselves on these occasions to the men who were sober. Roland Ferrier's words, passing from mouth to mouth, had been added to and altered so much that in the prevailing state of mind each man felt that he personally had been insulted and outraged by the man of whom he had asked the small favour of being allowed to continue to work until the winter-tide had passed. The idea of returning and wrecking the Ferriers' house became every moment more and more popular, and the crowd had actually faced round and begun that swaying movement which in an undisciplined body always, for a moment or two, precedes a start, when Hatfield spoke out at the top of his voice,—

'See here,' he said. 'In a few weeks now we shall all be gone to different parts, some on us to "the house." Most like, when that's done, when we're tramping the country far an' wide, and seeking the work we're turned out of here, they two'—pointing towards Thornsett Edge—''ll get tired o' goin' without their brass so long, maybe, an' 'ill make up the quarrel, and come back and start the mill again, with a new lot o' hands, to live i' our homes and eat the bread we're done out off.'

This new view of the case was received with a moment's silence by the hands; then a voice from the rear spoke out,—'Na, na, they 'ont, not if I can stop it; let's break t' ow'd mill to bits, and give the new hands the job to build it up again afore they work it.'

This suggestion, probably because its adoption was a trifle less dangerous than wrecking a house, some of whose inmates were young men—possibly young men with firearms—was received with almost unanimous applause. In less time than it takes to tell, a hundred pieces of the rock of which the Derbyshire walls are built had begun to rattle on the roof and smash the windows of the mill below, and two or three pairs of strong arms had torn away a huge boulder of grey stone which, held in its place by creepers and earth, overhung the descent, and had set it rolling down the steep decline. It bounded on to the slated roof of the mill, and with a great crash went right through it, leaving a large black gap. Then the men set up a yell that made the country round ring again. When it had died away old Murdoch, who was beside himself with excitement, shouted out, 'Why waste yer time i' chuckin' stones at the danged place, lads? Get down t' hill and burn it to the ground.' Another yell of approval greeted the proposition, and in a few seconds the hill-top was deserted, and the crowd, swayed by an irresistible impulse, was scrambling down the rocky decline and making for the mill.

The shout that had been sent up when the hole had been knocked in the roof had reached the quick ears of Count Litvinoff sitting smoking in silence opposite his host. He got out of his chair. 'I have a bit of a headache to-night,' he said, 'I don't think arguing agrees with me. I'll just go and take a turn across the moor.'

'All right,' said Roland. 'I won't turn in till you come back.'

Litvinoff sauntered out of the room and across the hall, took a stout oak stick from the hall-stand, and, opening the front-door, strolled leisurely down the carriage drive. But directly he was out in the road he pulled his hat down tightly upon his ears, vaulted a low stone wall and set off running in the direction of the mill as though a thousand devils were following at his heels.

CHAPTER XXIII.

FIRE!

O run at full speed across a Derbyshire moor by the uncertain light of a wintry moon is a feat not unattended with difficulty and danger, especially when the runner is not quite accustomed to the course; but it would have taken greater pitfalls than even those moors present to have made Count Litvinoff choose a longer and easier way. For when that shout had been borne to him on the wind he scented excitement and danger, and excitement and danger were to him as the breath of life. He was almost certain that the men meant mischief, and he intended to do his best to prevent it. His sympathies really were, as he had told Roland, entirely with them, and he was genuinely anxious that they should not add a criminal prosecution for riot to their other troubles. At the same time he looked forward with some pleasure to the scene in which he was now hastening to take a part.

He had been in a fretful and irritable state of mind ever since he had left London, and he cordially welcomed a row, and did not care much if in that row he got a knock on the head that would put an end to his visit and his life at the same time. At any rate, the situation offered a chance of action, and it was action more than anything that he had been longing for lately.

As he got nearer the valley in which the mill lay he was able to form a better idea of what was toward, for the shouts seemed to get louder and louder. He quickened his pace at the moment when he reached the brow of the hill, from the foot of which all the noise and clamour arose, and paused, looking down; a lurid flash of flame lighted up for an instant the semi-darkness before him, and as suddenly died out again.