CHAPTER XXIV.

AFTER THE FIRE.

Before daybreak next morning John Hatfield had taken Count Litvinoff's advice, and he and several others who had borne an active part in the night's work had shaken the dust of Thornsett off their feet and taken their departure in various directions. Had they not been quite so precipitate their leave-taking might have been more dignified and less secret, for Litvinoff's confidence in his own powers of diplomacy had been more than justified. When, somewhat to his chagrin, his eloquence failed to reconcile Roland Ferrier to the idea of taking no legal steps to punish the intending incendiaries--for, in spite of the way in which the Count had watered the story down, Roland had managed to get a pretty accurate idea of the truth--he made a hasty journey over to Aspinshaw. He found Miss Stanley in a state of great excitement about the events of the night before, of which she had heard a very much embroidered and highly-coloured version.

'Oh, Count Litvinoff,' she said, coming forward to meet him, 'I am so glad you have come. I have just sent two of the servants down to Thornsett to find out who was hurt. Mr Clarke, of Thorpe, has just been here, and told us that you saved so many lives last night.'

'Saved so many lives last night!' repeated Litvinoff. 'They must have been the lives of rats and mice, then.' And he gave her a plain and unvarnished account of the whole story, from the interview of the deputation with Roland to his own visit to the man he had cut down. He had the very rare faculty of telling the exact truth in a particularly exciting way--any adventure in which he had been personally engaged he always told from some point of view not his own--so that the hearer saw him playing his part in the scene rather than heard the chief adventurer recounting his adventures.

As he skilfully put before her the picture of the one man facing the infuriated crowd, he could see her eyes sparkle with sympathy, and could read interest and admiration in her face.

'And so you were not hurt, after all?' she said. 'I am so glad. But what of the men? Will they be punished? They've got themselves into trouble, I'm afraid, poor fellows.'

'Ah!' he answered, meeting her questioning glance with an earnest expression on his serious face. 'It was about them I came to speak to you. Our friend Ferrier is determined, not unnaturally perhaps, to resent and to punish last night's madness. I've done my utmost to reason him out of his resolve to be avenged on these poor fools, but he's not in a humour to listen to reason. It will need something stronger than that to induce him to let the men escape the natural consequences of their folly.'

'Oh, but Hatfield--surely he'd not punish him?'

'Well, I advised Hatfield to make himself scarce, and I hope he's done it. It's more on behalf of the other men that I'm here.'

'Why, what can I do in the matter?'

'Your word will have great weight with young Ferrier. I want you to go to him and ask him to let the affair rest just where it is,' he said bluntly.

Clare coloured painfully. 'I go to Mr Ferrier?' she repeated. 'Count Litvinoff, you must know that that is quite impossible.'

'I know that it is difficult, Miss Stanley, but I also know that it is not impossible.'

'It is out of the question for me--you ought to know,' she hesitated, 'to ask a favour of _him_.'

'It would be an unpleasant thing for you to do, and two months ago I would rather have cut my tongue out than have asked you. But I know now--I have had it from your own lips--that you are a convert to our great faith.'

She made a movement as though she would have spoken, but he went on hurriedly:

'You may remember that what impressed you most in my fellow-countryman Petrovitch's address was the self-abnegation which ran all through it. My countryman was right. Self-abnegation is the note of the Revolution! On the first day of this new year you honoured me by asking me what good you could do. I tell you now. You can save many of these men from prison, and their wives from harder fare than the prison's, by humbling your pride and asking what will not be refused. Forgive me if I speak plainly, but it is not for my own sake I would ask you to do anything now. It is for these men, and for the sake of the cause.'

There were a few moments of painful silence. Miss Stanley frowned at the hearthrug, and Count Litvinoff sat looking at her with the expression of one who has asked a question to which he knows there can be but one answer. The answer came.

'Very well,' she said, 'I will do what you wish, for the sake of these men,' she added, becoming unnecessarily explanatory.

'I knew you would,' he said.

'But,' she went on hurriedly, 'there is one other thing I can do. I can help to make this time a little less hard to them. Will you--'

He interrupted her.

'No, no, no; my part is played. Miss Stanley must deal with that other matter by herself.'

Two hours later Clare Stanley called at Thornsett Edge, and, after a brief conversation with Roland, passed on to the village, having done the work she had set herself to do. It was, perhaps, the most painful act of her whole life. But she had performed it successfully, and so it came about that none of the men were punished, and that poor Isaac, who was a pensioner on Miss Stanley for a good many months, was the only one to suffer from that wild night's work.

Clare felt a sense of elation when the disagreeable task was over. She seemed herself to be making progress; and, though that day's enterprise had been suggested by Litvinoff, she knew that it would never have been undertaken if she had not been present when the Cleon met to discuss Socialism.

She had now an opportunity of using a little of her newly-acquired wealth, and she availed herself of it. More than one family in the village owed its salvation to her timely help, and when a week later she left for London she left behind her a sum of money in the hands of Mr Gates, to be used for the ex-mill hands--and a very grateful remembrance of her pretty, gracious, kindly ways, and of her substantial favours, too, in the hearts of these same hands and their families.

So Mrs Stanley went to Yorkshire, and Clare to London, and Aspinshaw was left desolate. Thornsett Edge was advertised as 'To let,' and Roland and his aunt took up quiet housekeeping in Chelsea. Litvinoff, by way of practising the economy which was growing more and more necessary every day, took rooms in Maida Vale. The mill hands dispersed far and wide, and the mill, the heart of Thornsett, having ceased to beat, the whole place seemed to be dead, and, presently, to decay. No one would live in the village. It was too far from any other work, and the place took upon itself a haunted, ghostly air--as if forms in white might be expected to walk its deserted streets at midnight, or to show themselves through the broken, cobwebby panes of the windows which used to be so trim and bright and clean. It was a ghastly change for the houses that, poor as they were, had been, after all, _homes_ to so many people for so many years.

* * * * *

When Alice Hatfield thought of her old home, she never thought of it but as she had last seen it--neat and cheerful with the plants in pots on the long window-ledge, and all the familiar furniture and household effects in their old places. It was pain to think of it even like that. It would have been agony to her could she have seen it naked and bare, with its well-known rooms cold and empty, its hearths grey and fireless.

And she thought of her home a good deal during the weeks when she lay ill in Mrs Toomey's upper room; for the illness that had come upon her on that Sunday when Mr Toomey had had tea with Petrovitch had been a longer and more serious affair than any one had fancied it would be. When she had first known that another life was bound up in her own, the knowledge had been almost maddening; now, the terror, the misery, and the fatigue which she had undergone when first she knew it, had themselves put an end to what had caused them, and Alice was free from the fear of the responsibility which had seemed so terrible to her. But she was not glad. She was amazed at the contradiction in her own heart, but as she lay thinking of all the past--of what she thought was her own wrong-doing, and of the home she had left--it seemed to her that what was lost to her was the only thing that could have reconciled her to her life, with all its bitter memories. If only Litvinoff's child had lain on her arm--if she could have lived in the hope of seeing it smile into her eyes--it seemed to her that she would not have wanted to die so much. And with this inexplicable weakness Mrs Toomey, strange to say, seemed to sympathise.

'There's no understanding women,' as Toomey was wont to remark.

All the expenses of Alice's illness were borne by Petrovitch, who bade Mrs Toomey spare no expense in making 'Mrs Litvinoff' as comfortable as might be. When at last Alice began to grow better he came to see her very often, brought her books and flowers, and was as tenderly thoughtful of her, as anxious to gratify her every possible wish, as a brother could have been.

'You are too good to me,' she said one day, looking at him with wet eyes as he stood by her sofa and put into her hand some delicate snowdrops. 'I do not deserve to have people so kind to me. Why is it?'

'I told you,' he answered gravely. 'I was once your husband's dearest friend, and I have a right to do all for you that I can. How did you like the book I sent you?'

Alice used to look forward to his coming. He always cheered her. He never spoke of her or of himself, but always of some matter impersonal and interesting. The books he lent her were the books that lead to talking; and as she grew stronger in body her mind strengthened too, and for the first time she tasted the delight of following and understanding the larger questions of life. Every one, even her lover, had always treated her somewhat as a child, and Petrovitch was the first person who ever seemed to think it worth while to explain things to her. She had not had the education which makes clear thinking easy; but she was young, and had still youth's faculty for learning quickly. Her growing interest in outside matters tended--as Petrovitch had meant it to do--to divert her mind from her own troubles; and when at last she was able to take up the easier and lighter work he had found for her, she was able to look at life

'With larger, other eyes.'