all the food of every kind that there was in the house, and give it to him out of the parlour-window. She obeyed — I marvel now to think of it — but she implicitly obeyed. Only I heard her fix the bar to the closed front door, and go back, with a strange, sharp sob, to her station at the hall-window.
“Now, my lads, come in!” and he unlocked the gate.
They came thronging up the steps, not more than two score, I imagined, in spite of the noise they had made. But two score of such famished, desperate men, God grant I may never again see!
John divided the food as well as he could among them; they fell to it like wild beasts. Meat, cooked or raw, loaves, vegetables, meal; all came alike, and were clutched, gnawed, and scrambled for, in the fierce selfishness of hunger. Afterwards there was a call for drink.
“Water, Jael; bring them water.”
“Beer!” shouted some.
“Water,” repeated John. “Nothing but water. I’ll have no drunkards rioting at my master’s door.”
And, either by chance or design, he let them hear the click of his pistol. But it was hardly needed. They were all cowed by a mightier weapon still — the best weapon a man can use — his own firm indomitable will.
At length all the food we had in the house was consumed. John told them so; and they believed him. Little enough, indeed, was sufficient for some of them; wasted with long famine, they turned sick and faint, and dropped down even with bread in their mouths, unable to swallow it. Others gorged themselves to the full, and then lay along the steps, supine as satisfied brutes. Only a few sat and ate like rational human beings; and there was but one, the little, shrill-voiced man, who asked me if he might “tak a bit o’ bread to the old wench at home?”
John, hearing, turned, and for the first time noticed me.
“Phineas, it was very wrong of you; but there is no danger now.”
No, there was none — not even for Abel Fletcher’s son. I stood safe by John’s side, very happy, very proud.
“Well, my men,” he said, looking round with a smile, “have you had enough to eat?”
“Oh, ay!” they all cried.
And one man added —“Thank the Lord!”
“That’s right, Jacob Baines: and, another time, trust the Lord. You wouldn’t then have been abroad this summer morning”— and he pointed to the dawn just reddening in the sky —“this quiet, blessed summer morning, burning and rioting, bringing yourselves to the gallows, and your children to starvation.”
“They be nigh that a’ready,” said Jacob, sullenly. “Us men ha’ gotten a meal, thankee for it; but what’ll become o’ the little ‘uns at home? I say, Mr. Halifax,” and he seemed waxing desperate again, “we must get some food somehow.”
John turned away, his countenance very sad. Another of the men plucked at him from behind.
“Sir, when thee was a poor lad I lent thee a rug to sleep on; I doan’t grudge ‘ee getting on; you was born for a gentleman, sure-ly. But Master Fletcher be a hard man.”
“And a just one,” persisted John. “You that work for him, did he ever stint you of a halfpenny? If you had come to him and said, ‘Master, times are hard, we can’t live upon our wages,’ he might — I don’t say that he would — but he MIGHT even have given you the food you tried to steal.”
“D’ye think he’d give it us now?” And Jacob Baines, the big, gaunt, savage fellow, who had been the ringleader — the same, too, who had spoken of his “little ‘uns”— came and looked steadily in John’s face.
“I knew thee as a lad; thee’rt a young man now, as will be a father some o’ these days. Oh! Mr. Halifax, may ‘ee ne’er want a meal o’ good meat for the missus and the babbies at home, if ee’ll get a bit o’ bread for our’n this day.”
“My man, I’ll try.”
He called me aside, explained to me, and asked my advice and consent, as Abel Fletcher’s son, to a plan that had come into his mind. It was to write orders, which each man presenting at our mill, should receive a certain amount of flour.
“Do you think your father would agree?”
“I think he would.”
“Yes,” John added, pondering —“I am sure he would. And besides, if he does not give some, he may lose all. But he would not do it for fear of that. No, he is a just man — I am not afraid. Give me some paper, Jael.”
He sat down as composedly as if he had been alone in the counting-house, and wrote. I looked over his shoulder, admiring his clear, firm hand-writing; the precision, concentrativeness, and quickness, with which he first seemed to arrange and then execute his ideas. He possessed to the full that “business” faculty, so frequently despised, but which, out of very ordinary material, often makes a clever man; and without which the cleverest man alive can never be altogether a great man.
When about to sign the orders, John suddenly stopped. “No; I had better not.”
“Why so?”
“I have no right; your father might think it presumption.”
“Presumption? after to-night!”
“Oh, that’s nothing! Take the pen. It is your part to sign them, Phineas.”
I obeyed.
“Isn’t this better than hanging?” said John to the men, when he had distributed the little bits of paper — precious as pound-notes — and made them all fully understand the same. “Why, there isn’t another gentleman in Norton Bury, who, if you had come to burn HIS house down, would not have had the constables or the soldiers, have shot down one-half of you like mad dogs, and sent the other half to the county gaol. Now, for all your misdoings, we let you go quietly home, well fed, and with food for children, too. WHY, think you?”
“I don’t know,” said Jacob Baines, humbly.
“I’ll tell you. Because Abel Fletcher is a Quaker and a Christian.”
“Hurrah for Abel Fletcher! hurrah for the Quakers!” shouted they, waking up the echoes down Norton Bury streets; which, of a surety, had never echoed to THAT shout before. And so the riot was over.
John Halifax closed the hall-door and came in-unsteadily — staggering. Jael placed a chair for him — worthy soul! she was wiping her old eyes. He sat down, shivering, speechless. I put my hand on his shoulder; he took it and pressed it hard.
“Oh! Phineas, lad, I’m glad; glad it’s safe over.”
“Yes, thank God!”
“Ay, indeed; thank God!”
He covered his eyes for a minute or two, then rose up pale, but quite himself again.
“Now let us go and fetch your father home.”
We
