North and South
let the soldiers come in and cut down poor creatures who are driven mad.
I see one there who is. If you have any courage or noble quality in you,
go out and speak to them, man to man!”
He turned and looked at her while she spoke. A dark cloud came over his
face while he listened. He set his teeth as he heard her words.
“I will go. Perhaps I may ask you to accompany me downstairs, and bar
the door behind me; my mother and sister will need that protection.”
“Oh! Mr. Thornton! I do not know—I may be wrong—only—”
But he was gone; he was downstairs in the hall; he had unbarred the
front door; all she could do, was to follow him quickly, and fasten it
behind him, and clamber up the stairs again with a sick heart and a
dizzy head. Again she took her place by the farthest window. He was on
the steps below; she saw that by the direction of a thousand angry eyes;
but she could neither see nor hear anything save the savage satisfaction
of the rolling angry murmur. See threw the window wide open. Many in the
crowd were mere boys; cruel and thoughtless,—cruel because they were
thoughtless; some were men, gaunt as wolves, and mad for prey. She knew
how it was; they were like Boucher,—with starving children at
home—relying on ultimate success in their efforts to get higher wages,
and enraged beyond measure at discovering that Irishmen were to be
brought in to rob their little ones of bread. Margaret knew it all; she
read it in Boucher’s face, forlornly desperate and livid with rage. If
Mr. Thornton would but say something to them—let them hear his voice
only—it seemed as if it would be better than this wild beating and
raging against the stony silence that vouchsafed them no word, even of
anger or reproach. But perhaps he was speaking now; there was a
momentary hush of their noise, inarticulate as that of a troop of
animals. She tore her bonnet off, and bent forward to hear. She could
only see; for if Mr. Thornton had indeed made the attempt to speak, the
momentary instinct to listen to him was past and gone, and the people
were raging worse than ever. He stood with his arms folded; still as a
statue; his face pale with repressed excitement. They were trying to
intimidate him—to make him flinch; each was urging the other on to some
immediate act of personal violence. Margaret felt intuitively, that in
an instant all would be uproar; the first touch would cause an
explosion, in which, among such hundreds of infuriated men and reckless
boys, even Mr. Thornton’s life would be unsafe,—that in another instant
the stormy passions would have passed their bounds, and swept away all
barriers of reason, or apprehension of consequence. Even while she
looked, she saw lads in the background stooping to take off their heavy
wooden clogs—the readiest missile they could find; she saw it was the
spark to the gunpowder, and, with a cry, which no one heard, she rushed
out of the room, down stairs,—she had lifted the great iron bar of the
door with an imperious force—had thrown the door open wide—and was
there, in face of that angry sea of men, her eyes smiting them with
flaming arrows of reproach. The clogs were arrested in the hands that
held them—the countenances, so fell not a moment before, now looked
irresolute, and as if asking what this meant. For she stood between them
and their enemy. She could not speak, but held out her arms towards them
till she could recover breath.
“Oh, do not use violence! He is one man, and you are many”; but her
words died away, for there was no tone in her voice; it was but a hoarse
whisper. Mr. Thornton stood a little on one side; he had moved away from
behind her, as if jealous of anything that should come between him and
danger.
“Go!” said she, once more (and now her voice was like a cry). “The
soldiers are sent for—are coming. Go peaceably. Go away. You shall have
relief from your complaints, whatever they are.”
“Shall them Irish blackguards be packed back again?” asked one from out
the crowd, with fierce threatening in his voice.
“Never, for your bidding!” exclaimed Mr. Thornton. And instantly the
storm broke. The hootings rose and filled the air,—but Margaret did not
hear them. Her eye was on the group of lads who had armed themselves
with their clogs some time before. She saw their gesture—she knew its
meaning—she read their aim. Another moment, and Mr. Thornton might be
smitten down,—he whom she had urged and goaded to come to this
perilous place. She only thought how she could save him. She threw her
arms around him; she made her body into a shield from the fierce people
beyond. Still, with his arms folded, he shook her off.
“Go away,” said he, in his deep voice. “This is no place for you.”
“It is,” said she. “You did not see what I saw.” If she thought her sex
would be a protection,—if, with shrinking eyes she had turned away from
the terrible anger of these men, in any hope that ere she looked again
they would have paused and reflected, and slunk away, and vanished,—she
was wrong. Their reckless passion had carried them too far to stop—at
least had carried some of them too far; for it is always the savage
lads, with their love of cruel excitement, who head the riot—reckless
to what bloodshed it may lead. A clog whizzed through the air.
Margaret’s fascinated eyes watched its progress; it missed its aim, and
she turned sick with affright, but changed not her position, only hid
her face on Mr. Thornton’s arm. Then she turned and spoke again:
“For God’s sake! do not damage your cause by this violence. You do not
know what you are doing.” She strove to make her words distinct.
A sharp pebble flew by her, grazing forehead and cheek, and drawing a
blinding sheet of light before her eyes. She lay like one dead on Mr.
Thornton’s shoulder. Then he unfolded his arms, and held her encircled
in one for an instant:
“You do well!” said he. “You come to oust the innocent stranger. You
fall—you hundreds—on one man; and when a woman comes before you, to
ask you for your own sakes to be reasonable creatures, your cowardly
wrath falls upon her! You do well!” They were silent while he spoke.
They were watching, open-eyed and open-mouthed, the thread of dark-red
blood which wakened them up from their trance of passion. Those nearest
the gate stole out ashamed; there was a movement through all the
crowd—a retreating movement. Only one voice called out:
“Th’ stone was meant for thee; but thou wert sheltered behind a woman!”
Mr. Thornton quivered with rage. The blood-flowing had made Margaret
conscious—dimly, vaguely conscious. He placed her gently on the
door-step, her head leaning against the frame.
“Can you rest there?” he asked. But without waiting for her answer, he
went slowly down the steps right into the middle of the crowd. “Now kill
me, if it is your brutal will. There is no woman to shield me here. You
may beat me to death—you will never move me from what I have determined
upon—not you!” He stood amongst them with his arms folded, in precisely
the same attitude as he had been in on the steps.
But the retrograde movement towards the gate had begun—as
unreasoningly, perhaps as blindly, as the simultaneous anger. Or,
perhaps, the idea of the approach of the soldiers, and the sight of that
pale, upturned face, with closed eyes, still and sad as marble, though
the tears welled out of the long entanglement of eyelashes, and dropped
down; and, heavier, slower plash than even tears, came the drip of blood
from her wound. Even the most desperate—Boucher himself—drew back,
faltered away, scowled, and finally went off, muttering curses on the
master, who stood in his unchanging attitude, looking after their
retreat with defiant eyes. The moment that retreat had changed into a
flight (as it was sure from its very character to do), he darted up the
steps to Margaret.
She tried to rise without his help.
“It is nothing,” she said, with a sickly smile. “The skin is grazed, and
I was stunned at the moment. Oh, I am so thankful they are gone!” And
she cried without restraint.
He could not sympathise with her. His anger had not abated; it was
rising the more as his sense of immediate danger was passing away. The
distant clank of the soldiers was heard: just five minutes too late to
make this vanished mob feel the power of authority and order. He hoped
they would see the troops, and be quelled by the thought of their narrow
escape. While these thoughts crossed his mind, Margaret clung to the
doorpost to steady herself: but a film came over her eyes—he was only
just in time to catch her. “Mother—mother!” cried he; “Come down—they
are gone, and Miss Hale is hurt!” He bore her into the dining-room, and
laid her on the sofa there; laid her down softly, and looking on her
pure white face, the sense of what she was to him came upon him so
keenly that he spoke it out in his pain:
“Oh, my Margaret—my Margaret! no one can tell what you are to me!
Dead—cold as you lie there, you are the only woman I ever loved! Oh,
Margaret—Margaret!”
Inarticulately as he spoke, kneeling by her, and rather moaning than
saying the words, he started up, ashamed of himself, as his mother came
in. She saw nothing, but her son a little paler, a little sterner than
usual.
“Miss Hale is hurt, mother. A stone has grazed her temple. She has lost
a good deal of blood, I’m afraid.”
“She looks very seriously hurt,—I could almost fancy her dead,” said
Mrs. Thornton, a good deal alarmed.
“It is only a fainting-fit. She has spoken to me since.” But all the
blood in his body seemed to rush inwards to his heart as he spoke, and
he absolutely trembled.
“Go and call Jane,—she can find me the things I want; and do you go to
your Irish people, who are crying and shouting as if they were mad with
fright.”
He went. He went away as if weights were tied to every limb that bore
him from her. He called Jane; he called his sister. She should have all
womanly care, all gentle tendance. But every pulse beat in him as he
remembered how she had come down and placed herself in foremost
danger—could it be to save him? At the time, he had pushed her aside,
and spoken gruffly; he had seen nothing but the unnecessary danger she
had placed herself in. He went to his Irish people, with every nerve in
his body thrilling at the thought of her, and found it difficult to
understand enough of what they were saying to soothe and comfort away
their fears. There, they declared, they would not stop; they claimed to
be sent back.
And so he had to think, and talk, and reason.
Mrs. Thornton bathed Margaret’s temples with eau de Cologne. As the
spirit touched the wound, which till then neither Mrs. Thornton nor Jane
had perceived, Margaret opened her eyes; but it was evident she did not
know where she was, nor who they were. The dark circles deepened, the
lips quivered and contracted, and she became insensible once more.
“She has had a terrible blow,” said Mrs. Thornton. “Is there any one who
will go for a doctor?”
“Not me, ma’am, if you please,” said Jane, shrinking back. “Them rabble
may be all about; I don’t think the cut is so deep, ma’am, as it looks.”
“I will not run the chance. She was hurt in our house. If you are a
coward, Jane, I am not. I will go.”
“Pray, ma’am, let me send one of the police. There’s ever so many come
up, and soldiers too.”
“And yet you’re afraid to go! I will not have their time taken up with
our errands. They’ll have enough to do to catch some of the mob. You
will not be afraid to stop in this house,” she asked contemptuously,
“and go on bathing Miss Hale’s forehead, shall you? I shall not be ten
minutes away.”
“Couldn’t Hannah go, ma’am?”
“Why Hannah? Why any but you? No, Jane, if you don’t go, I do.”
Mrs. Thornton went first to the room in which she had left Fanny