North and South
image of Master Frederick. I could find in my heart to put you in a
passion any day just to see his stormy look coming like a great cloud
over your face. But now you go out, Miss. I’ll watch over Missus; and as
for master, his books are company enough for him, if he should come in.”
“I will go,” said Margaret. She hung about Dixon for a minute or so, as
if afraid and irresolute; then, suddenly kissing her, she went quickly
out of the room.
“Bless her!” said Dixon. “She’s as sweet as a nut. There are three
people I love; its Missus, Master Frederick, and her. Just them three.
That’s all. The rest be hanged, for I don’t know what they’re in the
world for. Master was born, I suppose, for to marry missus. If I thought
he loved her properly, I might get to love him in time. But he should
ha’ made a deal more on her, and not been always reading, reading,
thinking, thinking. See what it has brought him to. Many a one who never
reads or thinks either, gets to be Rector, and Dean, and what not; and I
daresay master might, if he’d just minded missus, and let the weary
reading and thinking alone.—There she goes” (looking out of the window
as she heard the front door shut). “Poor young lady! her clothes look
shabby to what they did when she came to Helstone a year ago. Then she
hadn’t so much as a darned stocking or a cleaned pair of gloves in all
her wardrobe. And now—!”
CHAPTER XVII.
WHAT IS A STRIKE?
“There are briars besetting every path,
Which call for patient care;
There is a cross in every lot,
And an earnest need for prayer.”
ANON.
Margaret went out heavily and unwillingly enough. But the length of a
street—yes, the air of a Milton Street—cheered her young blood before
she reached her first turning. Her step grew lighter, her lip redder.
She began to take notice, instead of having her thoughts turned so
exclusively inward. She saw unusual loiterers in the streets: men with
their hands in their pockets sauntering along; loud-laughing and
loud-spoken girls clustered together, apparently excited to high
spirits, and a boisterous independence of temper and behaviour. The more
ill-looking of the men—the discreditable minority—hung about on the
steps of the beer-houses and gin-shops, smoking, and commenting pretty
freely on every passer-by. Margaret disliked the prospect of the long
walk through these streets, before she came to the fields which she had
planned to reach. Instead, she would go and see Bessy Higgins. It would
not be so refreshing as a quiet country walk, but still it would perhaps
be doing the kinder thing.
Nicholas Higgins was sitting by the fire smoking, as she went in. Bessy
was rocking herself on the other side.
Nicholas took the pipe out of his mouth, and standing up, pushed his
chair towards Margaret; he leant against the chimney-piece in a lounging
attitude, while she asked Bessy how she was.
“Hoo’s rather down i’ th’ mouth in regard to spirits, but hoo’s better
in health. Hoo doesn’t like this strike. Hoo’s a deal too much set on
piece and quietness at any price.”
“This is th’ third strike I’ve seen,” said she, sighing, as if that was
answer and explanation enough.
“Well, third time pays for all. See if we don’t dang th’ masters this
time. See if they don’t come and beg us to come back at our own price.
That’s all. We’ve missed it afore time, I grant yo’; but this time we’n
laid our plans desperate deep.”
“Why do you strike?” asked Margaret. “Striking is leaving off work till
you get your own rate of wages, is it not? You must not wonder at my
ignorance; where I come from I never heard of a strike.”
“I wish I were there,” said Bessie, wearily. “But it’s not for me to get
sick and tired o’ strikes. This is the last I’ll see. Before it’s ended
I shall be in the Great City—the Holy Jerusalem.”
“Hoo’s so full of th’ life to come, hoo cannot think of th’ present. Now
I, yo see, am bound to do the best I can here. I think a bird i’ th’
hand is worth two i’ th’ bush. So them’s the different views we take on
th’ strike question.”
“But,” said Margaret, “if the people struck, as you call it, where I
come from, as they are mostly all field labourers, the seed would not be
sown, the hay got in, the corn reaped.”
“Well?” said he. He had resumed his pipe, and put his “well” in the form
of an interrogation.
“Why,” she went on, “what would become of the farmers?”
He puffed away. “I reckon, they’d have either to give up their farms, or
to give fair rate of wage.”
“Suppose they could not, or would not do the last; they could not give
up their farms all in a minute, however much they might wish to do so;
but they would have no hay, nor corn to sell that year; and where would
the money come from to pay the labourers’ wages the next?”
Still puffing away. At last he said:
“I know nought of your ways down South. I have heerd they’re a pack of
spiritless, down-trodden men; welly clemmed to death; too dazed wi’
clemming to know when they’re put upon. Now, it’s not so here. We known
when we’re put upon; and we’en too much blood in us to stand it. We just
take our hands fro’ our looms, and say, ‘Yo’ may clem us, but yo’ll not
put upon us, my masters!’ And be danged to ’em, they shan’t this time!”
“I wished I lived down South,” said Bessy.
“There’s a deal to bear there,” said Margaret. “There are sorrows to
bear everywhere. There is very hard bodily labour to be gone through,
with very little food to give strength.”
“But it’s out of doors,” said Bessy. “And away from the endless, endless
noise, and sickening heat.”
“It’s sometimes in heavy rain, and sometimes in bitter cold. A young
person can stand it; but an old man gets racked with rheumatism, and
bent and withered before his time; yet he must just work on the same, or
else go to the workhouse.”
“I thought yo were so taken wi’ the ways of the South country.”
“So I am,” said Margaret, smiling a little, as she found herself thus
caught. “I only mean, Bessy, there’s good and bad in everything in this
world; and as you felt the bad up here, I thought it was but fair you
should know the bad down there.”
“And yo say they never strike down there?” asked Nicholas abruptly.
“No!” said Margaret; “I think they have too much sense.”
“An’ I think,” replied he, dashing the ashes out of his pipe with so
much vehemence that it broke, “it’s not that they’ve too much sense, but
that they’ve too little spirit.”
“Oh, father!” said Bessy, “what have ye gained by striking? Just think
of that first strike when mother died—how we all had to clem—you the
worst of all; and yet many a one went in every week at the same wage,
till all were gone in that there was work for; and some went beggars all
their lives at after.”
“Ay,” said he. “That there strike was badly managed. Folk got into th’
management of it, as were either fools or not true men. Yo’ll see, it’ll
be different this time.”
“But all this time you’ve not told me what you’re striking for,” said
Margaret, again.
“Why, yo see, there’s five or six masters who have set themselves again
paying the wages they’ve been paying these two years past, and
flourishing upon, and getting richer upon. And now they come to us, and
say we’re to take less. And we won’t. We’ll just clem them to death
first; and see who’ll work for ’em then. They’ll have killed the goose
that laid ’em the golden eggs, I reckon.”
“And so you plan dying, in order to be revenged upon them!”
“No,” said he, “I dunnot. I just look forward to the chance of dying at
my post sooner than yield. That’s what folk call fine and honourable in
a soldier, and why not in a poor weaver-chap?”
“But,” said Margaret, “a soldier dies in the cause of the Nation—in the
cause of others.”
He laughed grimly. “My lass,” said he, “yo’re but a young wench, but
don’t yo think I can keep three people—that’s Bessy, and Mary, and
me—on sixteen shillings a week? Dun yo think it’s for mysel’ I’m
striking work at this time? It is just as much in the cause of others as
yon soldier—only m’appen, the cause he dies for is just that of
somebody he never clapt eyes on, nor heerd on all his born days, while I
take up John Boucher’s cause, as lives next door but one, wi’ a sickly
wife, and eight childer, none on ’em factory age; and I don’t take up
his cause only, though he’s a poor good-for-nought, as can only manage
two looms at a time, but I take up th’ cause o’ justice. Why are we to
have less wage now, I ask, than two year ago?”
“Don’t ask me,” said Margaret; “I am very ignorant. Ask some of your
masters. Surely they will give you a reason for it. It is not merely an
arbitrary decision of theirs, come to without reason.”
“Yo’re just a foreigner, and nothing more,” said he, contemptuously.
“Much yo know about it. Ask th’ masters! They’d tell us to mind our own
business, and they’d mind theirs. Our business being, yo understand, to
take the bated wage, and be thankful; and their business to bate us down
to clemming point, to swell their profits. That’s what it is.”
“But,” said Margaret, determined not to give way, although she saw she
was irritating him, “the state of trade may be such as not to enable
them to give you the same remuneration.”
“State o’ trade! That’s just a piece o’ masters’ humbug. It’s rate o’
wages I was talking of. Th’ masters keep th’ state o’ trade in their own
hands; and just walk it forward like a black bug-a-boo, to frighten
naughty children with into being good. I’ll tell you it’s their
part,—their cue, as some folks call it,—to beat us down, to swell
their fortunes; and it’s ours to stand up and fight hard,—not for
ourselves alone, but for them round about us—for justice and fair play.
We help to make their profits, and we ought to help spend ’em. It’s not
that we want their brass so much this time, as we’ve done many a time
afore. We’n getten money laid by; and we’re resolved to stand and fall
together; not a man on us will go in for less wage than th’ Union says
is our due. So I say, ‘hooray for the strike,’ and let Thornton, and
Slickson, and Hamper, and their set look to it!”
“Thornton!” said Margaret. “Mr. Thornton of Marlborough Street?”
“Aye! Thornton o’ Marlborough Mill, as we call him.”
“He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he not? What sort of
a master is he?”
“Did yo’ ever see a bulldog? Set a bulldog on hind legs, and dress him
up in coat and breeches, and yo’n just getten John Thornton.”
“Nay,” said Margaret, laughing, “I deny that. Mr. Thornton is plain
enough, but he’s not like a bulldog, with its short broad nose, and
snarling upper lip.”
“No! not in look, I grant yo. But let John Thornton get hold on a
notion, and he’ll stick to it like a bulldog; yo might pull him away wi’
a pitchfork ere he’d leave go. He’s worth fighting wi’, is John
Thornton. As for Slickson, I take it, some o’ these days he’ll wheedle
his men back wi’ fair promises; that they’ll just get cheated out of as
soon as they’re in his power again. He’ll work his fines well out on
’em, I’ll warrant. He’s as slippery as an eel, he is. He’s like a
cat,—as sleek, and cunning, and fierce. It’ll never be an honest up and
down fight wi’ him, as it will be wi’ Thornton. Thornton’s as dour as a
door-nail; an obstinate chap, every inch on him,—th’ oud bulldog!”
“Poor Bessy!” said Margaret, turning round to her. “You sigh over it
all. You don’t like struggling and fighting as your father does, do
you?”
“No!” said she, heavily. “I’m sick on it. I could have wished to have
had other talk about me in my latter days, than just the clashing and
clanging and clattering that has ever wearied a’ my life long, about
work and wages, and masters, and hands, and knobsticks.”
“Poor wench! latter days be farred! Thou’rt looking a sight better