Shirley, Charlotte Brontë [free children's ebooks online .txt] 📗

a feeble mixture of women and children diluted their thin ranks; their masters, who roared to follow them through the divided flood, were a set of pampered Ethiops, about as strong and brutal as the lions of Libya. They were armed, horsed, and charioted; the poor Hebrew wanderers were afoot. Few of them, it is likely, had better weapons than their shepherds’ crooks or their masons’ building-tools; their meek and mighty leader himself had only his rod. But bethink you, Robert Moore, right was with them; the God of battles was on their side. Crime and the lost archangel generalled the ranks of Pharaoh, and which triumphed? We know that well. ‘The Lord saved Israel that day out of the hand of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore’⁠—yea, ‘the depths covered them, they sank to the bottom as a stone.’ The right hand of the Lord became glorious in power; the right hand of the Lord dashed in pieces the enemy!”

“You are all right; only you forget the true parallel. France is Israel, and Napoleon is Moses. Europe, with her old overgorged empires and rotten dynasties, is corrupt Egypt; gallant France is the Twelve Tribes, and her fresh and vigorous Usurper the Shepherd of Horeb.”

“I scorn to answer you.”

Moore accordingly answered himself⁠—at least, he subjoined to what he had just said an additional observation in a lower voice.

“Oh, in Italy he was as great as any Moses! He was the right thing there, fit to head and organize measures for the regeneration of nations. It puzzles me to this day how the conqueror of Lodi should have condescended to become an emperor, a vulgar, a stupid humbug; and still more how a people who had once called themselves republicans should have sunk again to the grade of mere slaves. I despise France! If England had gone as far on the march of civilization as France did, she would hardly have retreated so shamelessly.”

“You don’t mean to say that besotted imperial France is any worse than bloody republican France?” demanded Helstone fiercely.

“I mean to say nothing, but I can think what I please, you know, Mr. Helstone, both about France and England; and about revolutions, and regicides, and restorations in general; and about the divine right of kings, which you often stickle for in your sermons, and the duty of nonresistance, and the sanity of war, and⁠—”

Mr. Moore’s sentence was here cut short by the rapid rolling up of a gig, and its sudden stoppage in the middle of the road. Both he and the rector had been too much occupied with their discourse to notice its approach till it was close upon them.

“Nah, maister; did th’ wagons hit home?” demanded a voice from the vehicle.

“Can that be Joe Scott?”

“Ay, ay!” returned another voice; for the gig contained two persons, as was seen by the glimmer of its lamp. The men with the lanterns had now fallen into the rear, or rather, the equestrians of the rescue-party had outridden the pedestrians. “Ay, Mr. Moore, it’s Joe Scott. I’m bringing him back to you in a bonny pickle. I fand him on the top of the moor yonder, him and three others. What will you give me for restoring him to you?”

“Why, my thanks, I believe; for I could better have afforded to lose a better man. That is you, I suppose, Mr. Yorke, by your voice?”

“Ay, lad, it’s me. I was coming home from Stilbro’ market, and just as I got to the middle of the moor, and was whipping on as swift as the wind (for these, they say, are not safe times, thanks to a bad government!), I heard a groan. I pulled up. Some would have whipt on faster; but I’ve naught to fear that I know of. I don’t believe there’s a lad in these parts would harm me⁠—at least, I’d give them as good as I got if they offered to do it. I said, ‘Is there aught wrong anywhere?’ ‘Deed is there,’ somebody says, speaking out of the ground, like. ‘What’s to do? Be sharp and tell me,’ I ordered. ‘Nobbut four on us ligging in a ditch,’ says Joe, as quiet as could be. I telled ’em more shame to ’em, and bid them get up and move on, or I’d lend them a lick of the gig-whip; for my notion was they were all fresh. ‘We’d ha’ done that an hour sin’, but we’re teed wi’ a bit o’ band,’ says Joe. So in a while I got down and loosed ’em wi’ my penknife; and Scott would ride wi’ me, to tell me all how it happened; and t’ others are coming on as fast as their feet will bring them.”

“Well, I am greatly obliged to you, Mr. Yorke.”

“Are you, my lad? You know you’re not. However, here are the rest approaching. And here, by the Lord, is another set with lights in their pitchers, like the army of Gideon; and as we’ve th’ parson wi’, us⁠—good evening, Mr. Helstone⁠—we’se do.”

Mr. Helstone returned the salutation of the individual in the gig very stiffly indeed. That individual proceeded⁠—

“We’re eleven strong men, and there’s both horses and chariots amang us. If we could only fall in wi’ some of these starved ragamuffins of frame-breakers we could win a grand victory. We could iv’ry one be a Wellington⁠—that would please ye, Mr. Helstone⁠—and sich paragraphs as we could contrive for t’ papers! Briarfield suld be famous. But we’se hev a column and a half i’ th’ Stilbro Courier ower this job, as it is, I dare say. I’se expect no less.”

“And I’ll promise you no less, Mr. Yorke, for I’ll write the article myself,” returned the rector.

“To be sure⁠—sartainly! And mind ye recommend weel that them ’at brake t’ bits o’ frames, and teed Joe Scott’s legs wi’ band, suld be hung without benefit o’ clergy. It’s a hanging matter, or suld be. No doubt o’ that.”

“If I judged them I’d give them short shrift!” cried Moore. “But