North and South
not bear the dulness of the life; you don’t know what it is; it would
eat you away like rust. Those that have lived there all their lives, are
used to soaking in the stagnant waters. They labour on from day to day,
in the great solitude of steaming fields—never speaking or lifting up
their poor, bent, downcast heads. The hard spadework robs their brain of
life; the sameness of their toil deadens their imagination; they don’t
care to meet to talk over thoughts and speculations, even of the
weakest, wildest kind, after their work is done; they go home brutishly
tired, poor creatures! caring for nothing but food and rest. You could
not stir them up into any companionship, which you get in a town as
plentiful as the air you breathe, whether it be good or bad—and that I
don’t know; but I do know, that you of all men are not one to bear a
life among such labourers. What would be peace to them, would be eternal
fretting to you. Think no more of it, Nicholas, I beg. Besides, you
could never pay to get mother and children all there—that’s one good
thing.”
“I’ve reckoned for that. One house mun do for us a’, and the furniture
o’ t’other would go a good way. And men theer mun have their families to
keep—m’appen six or seven childer. God help ’em!” said he, more
convinced by his own presentation of the facts than by all Margaret had
said, and suddenly renouncing the idea, which had but recently formed
itself in a brain worn out by the day’s fatigue and anxiety. “God help
’em! North an’ South have each getten their own troubles. If work’s sure
and steady theer, labour’s paid at starvation wages; while here we’n
rucks o’ money coming in one quarter, and ne’er a farthing th’ next. For
sure, th’ world is in a confusion that passes me or any other man to
understand; it needs fettling, and who’s to fettle it if it’s as yon
folks say, and there’s nought but what we see?”
Mr. Hale was busy cutting bread and butter; Margaret was glad of this,
for she saw that Higgins was better left to himself: that if her father
began to speak ever so mildly on the subject of Higgins’s thoughts, the
latter would consider himself challenged to an argument, and would feel
himself bound to maintain his own ground. She and her father kept up an
indifferent conversation until Higgins, scarcely aware whether he ate or
not, had made a very substantial meal. Then he pushed his chair away
from the table, and tried to take an interest in what they were saying;
but it was of no use; and he fell back into dreamy gloom. Suddenly,
Margaret said (she had been thinking of it for some time, but the words
had stuck in her throat), “Higgins have you been to Marlborough Mills to
seek for work?”
“Thornton’s?” asked he. “Ay, I’ve been at Thornton’s”
“And what did he say?”
“Such a chap as me is not like to see the measter. Th’ o’erlooker bid me
go and be d——d.”
“I wish you had seen Mr. Thornton,” said Mr. Hale. “He might not have
given you work, but he would not have used such language.”
“As to th’ language, I’m welly used to it; it dunnot matter to me. I’m
not nesh mysel’ when I’m put out. It were th’ fact that I were na wanted
theer, no more nor ony other place, as I minded.”
“But I wish you had seen Mr. Thornton,” repeated Margaret. “Would you go
again—it’s a good deal to ask, I know—but would you go to-morrow and
try him? I should be so glad if you would.”
“I’m afraid it would be of no use,” said Mr. Hale, in a low voice. “It
would be better to let me speak to him.” Margaret still looked at
Higgins for his answer. Those grave soft eyes of hers were difficult to
resist. He gave a great sigh.
“It would tax my pride above a bit; if it were for mysel’, I could stand
a deal o’ clemming first; I’d sooner knock him down than ask a favour
from him. I’d a deal sooner be flogged mysel’; but yo’re not a common
wench, axing yo’r pardon, nor yet have yo’ common ways about yo’. I’ll
e’en make a wry face, and go at it to-morrow. Dunna yo’ think that he’ll
do it. That man has it in him to be burnt at the stake afore he’ll give
in. I’ll do it for yo’r sake, Miss Hale, and it’s first time in my life
as e’er I give way to a woman. Neither my wife nor Bess could e’er say
that much again me.”
“All the more do I thank you,” said Margaret, smiling. “Though I don’t
believe you: I believe you have just given way to wife and daughter as
much as most men.”
“And as to Mr. Thornton,” said Mr. Hale, “I’ll give you a note to him,
which, I think I may venture say, will ensure you a hearing.”
“I thank yo’ kindly, sir, but I’d as lief stand on my own bottom. I
dunnot stomach the notion of having favour curried for me, by one as
doesn’t know the ins and outs of the quarrel. Meddling ’twixt master and
man is liker meddling ’twixt husband and wife than aught else: it takes
a deal of wisdom to do ony good. I’ll stand guard at the lodge door.
I’ll stand there fro’ six in the morning till I get speech on him. But
I’d liefer sweep th’ streets, if paupers had na’ got hold on that work.
Dunna yo’ hope, miss. There’ll be more chance o’ getting milk out of a
flint. I wish yo’ a very good night, and many thanks to yo’.”
“You’ll find your shoes by the kitchen fire; I took them there to dry,”
said Margaret.
He turned round and looked at her steadily, and then he brushed his lean
hand across his eyes and went his way.
“How proud that man is!” said her father, who was a little annoyed at
the manner in which Higgins had declined his intercession with Mr.
Thornton.
“He is,” said Margaret; “but what grand makings of a man there are in
him, pride and all.”
“It’s amusing to see how he evidently respects the part in Mr.
Thornton’s character which is like his own.”
“There’s granite in all these northern people, papa, is there not?”
“There was none in poor Boucher, I am afraid; none in his wife either.”
“I should guess by their tones that they had Irish blood in them. I
wonder what success he’ll have to-morrow. If he and Mr. Thornton would
speak out together as man to man—if Higgins would forget that Mr.
Thornton was a master, and speak to him as he does to us—and if Mr.
Thornton would be patient enough to listen to him with his human heart,
not with his master’s ears—”
“You are getting to do Mr. Thornton justice at last, Margaret,” said her
father, pinching her ear.
Margaret had a strange choking at her heart, which made her unable to
answer, “Oh!” thought she, “I wish I were a man, that I could go and
force him to express his disapprobation, and tell him honestly that I
knew I deserved it. It seems hard to lose him as a friend just when I
had begun to feel his value. How tender he was with dear mamma! If it
were only for her sake, I wish he would come, and then at least I should
know how much I was abased in his eyes.”
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
PROMISES FULFILLED.
“Then proudly, proudly up she rose,
Tho’ the tear was in her e’e,
Whate’er ye say, think what ye may,
Ye’s get na word frae me!”
SCOTCH BALLAD.
It was not merely that Margaret was known to Mr. Thornton to have spoken
falsely,—though she imagined that for this reason only was she so
turned in his opinion,—but that this falsehood of hers bore a distinct
reference in his mind to some other lover. He could not forget the fond
and earnest look that had passed between her and some other man—the
attitude of familiar confidence, if not of positive endearment. The
thought of this perpetually stung him; it was a picture before his
eyes, wherever he went and whatever he was doing. In addition to this
(and he ground his teeth as he remembered it), was the hour, dusky
twilight; the place, so far away from home, and comparatively
unfrequented. His nobler self had said at first, that all this last
might be accidental, innocent, justifiable; but once allow her right to
love and be beloved (and had he any reason to deny her right?—had not
her words been severely explicit when she cast his love away from her?),
she might easily have been beguiled into a longer walk, on to a later
hour than she had anticipated. But that falsehood! which showed a fatal
consciousness of something wrong, and to be concealed, which was unlike
her. He did her that justice, though all the time it would have been a
relief to believe her utterly unworthy of his esteem. It was this that
made the misery—that he passionately loved her, and thought her, even
with all her faults, more lovely and more excellent than any other
woman; yet he deemed her so attached to some other man, so led away by
her affection for him, as to violate her truthful nature. The very
falsehood that stained her, was a proof how blindly she loved
another—this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man—while he himself was
rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of
fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude!—how he would
have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond
detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in
which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen
how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He
remembered, point by point, the sharpness of her words—“There was not a
man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more
readily than for him.” He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting
bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with
nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to
himself.
Mr. Thornton was conscious that he had never been so irritable as he was
now, in all his life long; he felt inclined to give a short abrupt
answer, more like a bark than a speech, to every one that asked him a
question; and this consciousness hurt his pride: he had always piqued
himself on his self-control, and control himself he would. So the manner
was subdued to a quiet deliberation, but the matter was even harder and
sterner than common. He was more than usually silent at home; employing
his evenings in a continual pace backwards and forwards, which would
have annoyed his mother exceedingly if it had been practised by any one
else; and did not tend to promote any forbearance on her part even to
this beloved son.
“Can you stop—can you sit down for a moment? I have something to say to
you, if you would give up that everlasting walk, walk, walk.”
He sat down instantly, on a chair against the wall.
“I want to speak to you about Betsy. She says she must leave us; that
her lover’s death has so affected her spirits she can’t give her heart
to her work.”
“Very well. I suppose other cooks are to be met with.”
“That’s so like a man. It’s not merely the cooking, it is that she knows
all the ways of the house. Besides, she tells me something about your
friend Miss Hale.”
“Miss Hale is no friend of mine. Mr. Hale is my friend.”
“I am glad to hear you say so, for if she had been your friend, what
Betsy says would have annoyed you.”
“Let me hear it,” said he, with the extreme quietness of manner he had
been assuming for the last few days.
“Betsy says, that the night on which her lover—I forget his name—for
she always calls him ‘he’——”
“Leonards.”
“The night on which Leonards was last seen at the station—when he was
last seen on duty, in fact—Miss Hale was there, walking about with a
young man who, Bessy believes, killed Leonards by some blow or push.”
“Leonards was not killed by any blow or push.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I distinctly put the question to the surgeon of the Infirmary.
He told me there was an internal disease of long standing, caused by
Leonards’ habit of drinking to excess; that the fact of his becoming
rapidly worse while in a state of intoxication, settled the question as