The Carbonels Part 22

"Bless my soul and honour, Miss Sophy. You here! The mistress, she's gone with the children to Mr Pearson's, and you'll be in time to catch her up if you look sharp enough."

"I shall not run away. Some one ought to try to protect my brother's property."

"Now, don't 'ee, don't 'ee, Miss Sophy. You'll do no good with that lot, and only get hurt yourself."

But Sophy was not to be persuaded. She went manfully out to the gate, and shut it in the face of the disguised men, who came swaggering up towards it.

"What's your business here?" she demanded, in her young, clear voice.

"Come, young woman," said a man in a false nose and a green smock-frock, but whose voice had a town sound in it, and whose legs and feet were those of no rustic, "clear out of the way, or it will be the worse for you!"

"What have you to do here on my brother's ground?" again asked Sophy, standing there in her straw bonnet and pink cotton frock.

"We don't want to do nothing, miss,"--and that voice she knew for Dan Hewlett's--"but to have down that new-fangled machine as takes away the work from the poor."

"What work of yours did it ever take away, Dan Hewlett?" said she.

"Look here! it makes bread cheaper--"

She had thought before of the chain of arguments, but they would not come in the face of the emergency; and besides, she felt that her voice would not carry her words beyond the three or four men who were close to the gate. She might as well have spoken to the raging sea when, as the gate was shaken, she went on with a fresh start, "I call it most cowardly and ungrateful--"

At that moment she was seized from behind by two great brawny arms, and borne backward, struggling helplessly like a lamb in a bear's embrace.

She saw that, not only was the gate burst in, but that the throng were pressing in from the garden side, and she was not released until she was set down in Mrs Pucklechurch's kitchen, and a gruff voice said, rather as if to a little child, "Bide where you be, and no one will go for to hurt you."

It was a huge figure, with a woman's bonnet stuck upright over his chalked face, and a red cloak covering his smock-frock, and he was gone the next moment, while Mrs Pucklechurch, screaming and sobbing, clutched at Sophy, and held her tight, with, "Now, don't, Miss Sophy, don't ye! Bide still, I say!"

"But, Edmund's machine! His things and all!" gasped Sophy, still struggling.

"Bless you, miss, you can't do nothing with the likes of them, the born rascals; you would, may be, get a stone yourself and what would the master say to that?"

"Oh! what are they doing now?" as a wild hurrah arose, and all sorts of confused noises. Mrs Pucklechurch had locked the door on her prisoner, but she was equally curious, and anxious for her old man; so, with one accord, they hurried up the stairs together, and looked out at an upper window, whence they could only see a wild crowd of hats, smock-frocks, and women's clothes gathering about a heap where the poor machine used to stand, and whence a cloud of smoke began to rise, followed by a jet of flame, fed no doubt by the quant.i.ty of straw and chaff lying about.

Sophy and Betty both shrieked and exclaimed, but Betty's mind was chiefly full of her old man, and she saw his straw hat at last. He was standing in front of the verandah, before the front door, and, as they threw the window open, they heard his gruff voice--

"Not I. Be off with you! I baint a-going to give my master's property to a lot of rapscallion thieves and robbers like you, as should know better."

Then came the answer, "We don't want none of his property. Only his guns and his money for the cause of the people." And big sticks were brandished, and the throng thickened.

"Oh, don't ye hurt he!" screamed Betty. "He that never did you no harm!

Don't ye! Oh, Dan Hewlett! Oh-oh!"

"Then throw us out the guns, old woman," called up the black-faced figure, "and we'll let him be."

"If you do," shouted Pucklechurch--and then there was a rush in on him, and they could see no more, for he must have backed under the verandah.

Betty made a dash for the front stairs, to come to his help, Sophy after her; but, before they could even tumble to the bottom, there was a change in the cries--

"The soldiers! the soldiers! Oh-hoo-hoo-hoo!" There was a scamper and a scurry, a trampling of horses. The two trembling hands, getting in each other's way, unfastened the door, which was not even locked, and beheld Pucklechurch gathering himself up with a bleeding head, a cloud of smoke and flame, and helmets and silver lace glancing through it.

There had been no need to read the Riot Act; the enemy were tearing along all ways over the fields, except a few whom the hors.e.m.e.n had intercepted. Dan Hewlett and the black-faced leader, without his long nose, were two; the other three were--among the loudest, poor Softy Sam, who had been yelling wildly--big lads, or young men, one from Downhill, the others nearer home, howling and sobbing and praying to be let go.

Captain Carbonel's first thought was whether Pucklechurch was hurt, but the old man was standing up scratching his head, and Betty hovering over him. Then his eyes fell on his sister-in-law, and he exclaimed--

"You here, Sophy! Your sister is very anxious!"

But the fire was by this time getting ahead, and no one could attend to anything else. The prisoners were put into the servants' hall, and locked in; the horses were tied up at a safe distance, the poor things rearing with alarm at the flame; the men were, under Sir Harry Hartman and Captain Carbonel's orders, made to form a line from the pond, and hand on the pails and buckets that were available; but these were not very many, though the numbers of helpers were increased by the maids, who had crept back from the orchard, and by the shepherd and some even of the mob, conscious that they had been only lookers on, and "hadn't done no harm."

It was a dry season, and the flames spread, catching the big barn, and then seeming to fly in great flakes like a devouring winged thing to the Pucklechurches' thatch. Betty and her husband flew to fling out their more valued possessions, and were just in time to save them; but thence the fire, just as the water in the nearest pond was drying up, caught a hold on the dairy and the old thatched part of the farmhouse.

Bellowings were heard from the captives that they would be burnt alive, and some one, it was never known who, let them out, for no sign of them appeared when all was over, though their prison was untouched by the fire. For even at that moment the Poppleby fire-engine galloped up the road, and was hailed with shouts of joy. It had a hose long enough to reach down to the brook in the meadow, and the hissing bursts of water poured down did at last check the flames before they had done much harm to the more modern portion of the house, though all the furniture was lying tumbled about in heaps on the lawn--Mary's piano, with the baby's cradle full of crockery on the top of it, and Edmund's writing desk in the middle of a was.h.i.+ng stand all upside down.

The first thing Edmund did when the smoke wreaths alone were lingering about, was to send his groom down to the cellar, with a jug in his hand, to bring up some beer, which he proceeded to hand in the best breakfast-cups to all and sundry of the helpers, including Sir Harry Hartman, Sophy helping in the distribution with all her might.

"Miss Carbonel, I think?" said Sir Harry, courteously, as she gave him the cup. "Were you the garrison?"

Sophy laughed. "Yes, sir, except old Pucklechurch and his wife."

"Then I may congratulate you on being the bravest woman in Uphill," said the old gentleman, raising his hat.

It was getting dark, and they had to consider what was next to be done.

Captain Carbonel was anxious about his wife and children, and Sir Harry was urging him to bring them to his house, while Mr Grantley, from Poppleby, who had come up on the alarm, urged the same upon him. It ended in a guard being told off, consisting of c.o.x, the constable of Uphill, who had emerged from no one knew where, the Downhill constable, and the shepherd, with one of the yeomen, who were to be entertained by Pucklechurch and the cook, and prevent any mischief being done to the scattered furniture before morning. The Pucklechurches and Mrs Mole, with Barton, were doing their best to bring in and attend to the live stock, all of which had been saved by Pucklechurch's care.

Then they rode off together, Sophy and the housemaid having already started across the fields, bearing whatever necessary baggage they could collect or carry for Mrs Carbonel and the little ones.

Mrs Carbonel was at the door when her husband rode up, having only just managed to hush off her little Mary to sleep, and left her and the baby with Rachel Mole to watch over them. Poor thing, she had been in a terrible state of anxiety and terror for all these hours, so much the worse because of the need of keeping her little girl from being agitated by seeing her alarm or hearing the cries, exclamations, and fragments of news that Mrs Pearson and her daughters were rus.h.i.+ng about with.

When she saw him first, and Sophy a moment afterwards, she sprang up to him as he dismounted, and greeted him with a burst of sobs and thankful tears.

"Why, Mary, Mary, what's this? One would think I had been in a general engagement. You, a soldier's wife! No; n.o.body's a hair the worse!

Here is Sir Harry Hartman wondering at you."

To hear of the presence of a stranger startled Mrs Carbonel into recovering herself, with "I beg your pardon," and her pretty courtesy, with the tears still on her face; while the old gentleman kindly spoke of the grievous afternoon she had had, and all the time Mr and Mrs Pearson were entreating him to do them the honour to come in and drink a gla.s.s of wine--for cake and wine were then considered to be _the thing_ to offer guests in a farmhouse.

Sir Harry, aware of what farmhouse port was apt to be, begged for a gla.s.s of home-brewed ale instead, but came in readily, hoping to persuade Mrs Carbonel to send for the Poppleby post-chaise, and let him take her and her children home. She was afraid, however, to disturb little Mary, and Mrs Pearson reckoned on housing them for the night, besides which his park was too far-off. So it was settled that Sophy, for whom there really was no room, should go to Poppleby Parsonage with Mr Grantley for the night, and she and Sir Harry only tarried to talk over the matter, and come to an understanding of the whole as far as might be.

"Who warned you?" asked the captain.

"The last person I should expect--Tirzah Todd, good woman," said Mrs Carbonel. "She came and called me, and helped me over the hedges."

"And Hoglah came after me," said Sophy, "and told me to come here, only I could not."

"You were the heroine of the whole, Miss Carbonel," said Sir Harry.

"Oh, don't say so; I didn't do any good at all," said Sophy, becoming much ashamed of her attempt at haranguing. "Old Pucklechurch was the one, for he saved all the dear cows and horses, and was nearly letting himself be killed in the defence. But, oh! all the rest of them. To think of them treating us so after everything!"

"Most likely they were compelled," said gentle Mrs Carbonel.

"They will hear of it again," said Sir Harry. "Could you identify them, Miss Carbonel?"

"A good many," said Sophy, "though they had their faces chalked--that horrid Dan Hewlett for one."

"There can be no doubt of him, for he was one of the prisoners that got away," said Captain Carbonel, in a repressive manner. "He has always been a mischievous fellow; but the remarkable thing is that it was his son who came to summon us this morning--John Hewlett, a very good, steady lad. By-the-by, has any one seen him? I sent him home by the Elchester coach. I wonder what has become of him."