Chapter 23

OUTWITTED.

All that night Sarah lay and tossed and turned, or fell into fitful slumbers, in which she had hideous dreams of the mills being burnt down, and her father with them. After a very vivid one, in which she saw the mill-owner standing, a tall, burly figure, on the top of one of the chimneys, with flames all round him which in a minute must devour him, she woke with a muffled cry, to find Naomi standing beside her with a frightened face.

'What has happened, Naomi? Tell me the worst at once,' cried Sarah.

'There's nought to tell, good or bad, so far as I know. But are you ill, Miss Sarah?' inquired the maid.

'No; I'm quite well. But the mills, and my father--are you sure that--that he's alive and well?' asked Sarah.

'So far as I know he is, and so are the mills; but no one has seen the master since yesterday, for he never came home last night. He sent to say he should stop in the mills all night,' said Naomi.

'Naomi, I must get up. Quick, get me some hot water,' cried Sarah, jumping up as she spoke.

'It's only six o'clock, miss. I shouldn't have come in and wakened you, only I thought I heard you call. You'd best go to sleep again; you're upset with all these doings, and no wonder.'

'I can't sleep, and I want to go to the mills,' declared Sarah.

But Naomi exclaimed in alarm, 'Impossible, miss! Don't you think of doing such a thing! Mr Howroyd won't hear of it, I know. Besides'--here Naomi paused, and added in a rather embarrassed manner, 'you can't, Miss Sarah.'

'I can't go to the mills--our own mills, Naomi? What do you mean? You are hiding something from me. Are they burnt down or damaged in any way?' asked Sarah anxiously.

'Not so far as I know, miss; but you can't go into them for all that. No one can,' repeated Naomi.

'Naomi, have you seen the mills to-day? Are the chimneys all standing just as usual?' demanded Sarah.

'Why, yes, to be sure they are, and smoking; and big fires they are making, too, for I saw red sparks coming out of one. Why, what's the matter, Miss Sarah? You must be getting downright nervous,' observed Naomi, for Sarah had started and given a little shiver at this last remark.

'It's nothing, only I had a horrid dream about one of the chimneys; but if you say you saw them standing, with nothing unusual about them, it's all right.' And Sarah gave a half-nervous laugh as she thought of the 'unusual' appearance they had in her dream. 'All the same, I'm going to get up; it's no use lying in bed when you can't sleep,' she continued.

While she was dressing, Sarah's thoughts recurred to the conversation she had just had with Naomi, and she suddenly remembered that the girl had never explained her mysterious statement that no one could go into Clay's Mills. So she rang her bell, and telling Naomi to do her hair, sat down on a chair while this process went on, and came to the point at once. 'I suppose father has barricaded himself and the men into the mills; but I could have got through all right,' she observed.

'The master has barricaded himself in; but the pickets set by the hands to guard the mills have barricaded every one else out, and they wouldn't let you pass if it was ever so, not for life or death, for it's been tried,' replied Naomi.

'How do you mean for life or death?' asked Sarah, bewildered at this extraordinary statement.

'What I say. One of those foreigners was taken ill and wanted a doctor, and no doctor would they let through, not even Mr Howroyd; and if any one could get round Ousebank folk it would be Mr William, for he's fair worshipped by them all for his goodness.'

'What's going to be the end of it all?' cried Sarah.

'I couldn't say, Miss Sarah. I don't know what's going on, nor I don't want to. It's safest not, and so mother thinks, for she won't have a word about it in our house; and Jane Mary has to hold her tongue there, though they do say she talks like a man at the young fellows' meetings, and is as bad or worse than they, egging them on. Not that I know anything about it,' Naomi hastened to add.

'There are none so ignorant as those that won't know, eh, Naomi?' said Sarah slyly.

'Perhaps not, miss,' agreed Naomi, as she shut her lips tightly, and was not to be induced to say any more.

Meanwhile the night at Balmoral had not been much more restful. In the morning George said to his mother in a decided tone which she had not heard him ever use, 'I am going into Ousebank, mother. I shall go and see Uncle Howroyd, and if he approves I shall try and see my father.'

'Oh my dear, my dear, don't you do it! I couldn't stay here alone--I couldn't really!' she cried, wringing her hands.

'Then come with me. We'll motor down, and at best they can only stop the car and make us turn back; but I don't think they will. Come, mother, that's not a bad idea; it will make a change, and bring you nearer to the governor, and you will see Sarah and give her a scolding for her disobedience.'

'I don't feel like scolding any one. I shall only be too thankful to have her safe by me; though who knows whether any of us are safe anywhere?' said poor little Mrs Clay, whom the events of the past week had frightened out of her wits.

'I think you exaggerate the danger. They may try to fire the house--in fact, I rather expect they will, only I fancy the police are guarding us too well for them to succeed; but as for touching us or attempting our lives, I don't for a moment believe they would do any such thing--not Ousebank men,' said George, composed as ever.

'Oh, but it isn't only Ousebank men; there are some agitators come down,' cried his mother.

'They'll not put their heads in a noose, catch them, however much they may incite other fellows to. Don't you worry, mother; trust to me. I'll take you safe to Uncle Howroyd's,' said George.

Mrs Clay meekly did as she was bid. At bottom she was rather pleased to be going near her husband and insubordinate daughter, and by the time she got into the motor her fears were calmed.

Sarah was looking out of the mill-house window when she saw the car drive up to the big gates of the little front-garden. 'Mother, oh, I am glad to see you!' she cried, as she kissed her mother affectionately.

Mrs Clay's pale cheeks grew pink with pleasure at the affectionate greeting, and she clasped her tall daughter in her arms. 'My dearie, I am glad to have you again!' she exclaimed.

'You ought to scold her well, Polly, instead of petting her; but it is always the way with the prodigal--he has the fatted calf,' said Mr Howroyd.

'George says he's going to see his father,' said Mrs Clay.

'If the pickets will let him,' observed his uncle.

'Exactly so,' said George.

'You can't possibly,' cried Sarah; 'they won't even let Uncle Howroyd through, so they certainly won't let you.'

'There's no harm in trying, anyway. I half-thought they might be unpleasant when we passed through the town; but they only scowled a bit,' observed George, as, having made his mother comfortable in an easy-chair, he kissed her and took up his hat to go.

'You are really going, dear?' said his mother.

Sarah expected her to protest with tears; but she did nothing of the kind. 'I believe,' mused Sarah, 'that she cares more for father's safety than she does for George's!' And this idea was so surprising to her that she, too, let her brother go without a protest. Not that arguments would have been any good, as his sister knew.

'That boy has more grit in him than I suspected,' said George's uncle, as he watched his nephew walk with his deliberate gait out at the gate towards the notorious mills.

'I'd have given something to go with him to see what will happen when they turn him back. George is awfully obstinate, uncle; I dare say he'll stand there and argue with them till they let him through because they're sick of him and his polite requests to be allowed to go into his own father's mills,' observed Sarah.

Mr Howroyd laughed, though it was not his usual cheery laugh. 'He'll be a cleverer fellow than I take him for if he gets past that picket, will George.'

However, half-an-hour later the telephone rang. 'It's from Clay's Mills,' Mr Howroyd informed them, 'and they're calling for you, Polly.'

'Oh dear, 'ave they 'urt 'im?' Mrs Clay cried, and flew to the telephone. 'It's George,' she announced in accents of surprise; 'an' 'e says father is quite well, an' very glad to see 'im, an' 'e shall stay a bit.'

'How did he get in? Ask him that, mother,' demanded Sarah, who was naturally curious on the point.

''E says 'e walked in,' repeated her mother.

Sarah went to the receiver herself. 'Nonsense; he couldn't.--How did you get past the pickets, George?'

'Walked past, I tell you. They argued a little, but I told them I was on their business as well as my own, and they let me walk in. They're awfully good fellows, really, and you all exaggerate their ferocity.'

Suddenly Naomi came running into the room. Howroyd's house was not so ceremoniously ordered as Balmoral; but still Sarah was a little surprised at Naomi, till she said, 'There's a balloon-ship up above Ousebank, and you never saw such a funny thing in your life. Come and see it, Miss Sarah.'

'I suppose she means an air-ship,' said Sarah; but as she had nothing else to do, and time was hanging heavy on her hands, she followed Naomi into the garden. 'Yes, it is an air-ship,' she said. 'I wonder what it is doing up here.'

'It's going towards the hill--over Balmoral. We shall see where it goes if we go up to the roof, Miss Sarah,' said Naomi, who had never seen such a thing before, and was all agog with curiosity.

To please her, Sarah went up to the roof lookout.

'Yes, it is over Balmoral, and they seem to be descending and doing manoeuvres over the house. I suppose they are going to look at it closer; but they won't be allowed in to-day, for Sykes is suspicious of a bird even. We really might be in Russia, to judge by the state of siege we are in,' she observed.

She had still more reason to make the comparison a little later, for as the two stood and watched and commented on the movements of the air-ship something dropped from it.

'What was that, Miss Sarah?' asked Naomi.

'Fire! They've outwitted us after all!' said Sarah, and she fled downstairs as hard as she could.--Uncle Howroyd, ring up the fire-brigade. They've set fire to Balmoral!' she panted.

'How do you know? Who told you so?' he inquired, evidently unbelieving, as well he might, for there was a posse of police guarding the house and grounds.

'We have seen it. They dropped fire out of an air-ship. Do send for the brigade!' cried Sarah, stamping her foot with rage at the delay.

For a moment her uncle stared at her in stupefaction; then he clapped his hand to his forehead. 'It's that agitator scoundrel that's put them up to it!' he cried; and he rang up the brigade, only to drop the receiver with a gesture of despair. 'They've had a call some miles off,' he cried.

'Uncle Howroyd, we must do something.'

'Yes,' he agreed. 'Wait a bit.'

Presently Sarah heard the mill-bell ring, and saw her uncle standing bareheaded at a window looking on his yard, in which the hands summoned from their work were gathered.

'My friends of many years, I have to ask a favour of you. My brother's house is burning, and the brigade is away. Who'll help to save a Yorkshireman's home, however much he has blundered, for a Yorkshire family?'

'We will, Mr William,' cried a hundred voices, and five minutes later there was not a man to be seen in the yard; but Sarah and Naomi, who had climbed to the lookout, saw them hurrying up the road to the hill on which Balmoral stood.

Flames were coming out of the top windows.

'They may save the lower part,' said Sarah.

'The marble staircase won't burn, will it?' asked Naomi.

Sarah laughed hysterically. 'No; but it won't be much use alone,' she remarked.

'It's going to be a big fire,' observed Naomi in an awe-struck voice.

'I'm glad my father is not there,' was Sarah's apparently irrelevant reply.

Naomi was surprised for the second time that day at Sarah's solicitude for her father. She did not know that her dream had something to do with it. Besides, Mr Mark Clay, boastful and blustering, was a different man from Mark Clay a prisoner in his own mills, with his beautiful house burning.

'Oh miss, the royal suite is on fire! See!' cried Naomi, as she saw the flames come out of that wing.

Sarah said nothing; but her lips tightened as she saw the wanton destruction of her home, and, now that she came to think of it, there were countless treasured possessions of her own there that she wanted to save.

'I wonder if I ought to tell mother?' she asked herself.

But she need not have troubled. Mrs Clay knew, and was talking about it in melancholy accents to Mary, her brother-in-law's maid. 'It's no more than I expected, Mary; an' the mills will go next,' she said.

'Let's hope not, ma'am; and now that Mr William's gone up something may be done to save it,' said Mary, who had great faith in her master.

But Mrs Clay had no faith in any human help; and when Sarah came down she found her mother dry-eyed and resigned. 'Yes, my dear, I know; it's the Lord's will. The Lord gave, an' the Lord taketh away. I began poor, an' I suppose it's 'is will I should end so. Per'aps I lay too great store by riches.'

'Never mind, mother, I'll work for you, and you shall never want, even if I have to scrub floors to support you,' said Sarah.

Mrs Clay shook her head; but the tears came now and relieved her. 'It's for you I care most, dearie. Your 'ands were never made to scrub floors or do any menial work,' she declared, as she stroked Sarah's soft, white hands.

'I don't believe anybody's hands were made to be idle, and I mean to use mine, you'll see,' she said.

'Per'aps it's not so bad as we think. We must 'ave patience,' said Mrs Clay. 'Go an' see 'ow it's goin', my dear.'