North and South
extending it; he has no capital laid by; his machinery is new within
these two years, and has cost him—we won’t say what!—a word to the
wise!” But that Mr. Harrison was a croaker,—a man who had succeeded to
his father’s trade-made fortune, which he had feared to lose by altering
his mode of business to any having a larger scope; yet he grudged every
penny made by others more daring and far-sighted.
But the truth was, Mr. Thornton was hard pressed. He felt it acutely in
his vulnerable point—his pride in the commercial character which he had
established for himself. Architect of his own fortunes, he attributed
this to no special merit or qualities of his own, but to the power,
which he believed that commerce gave to every brave, honest, and
persevering man, to raise himself to a level from which he might see and
read the great game of worldly success, and honestly, by such
far-sightedness, command more power and influence than in any other mode
of life. Far away, in the East and in the West, where his person would
never be known, his name was to be regarded, and his wishes to be
fulfilled, and his word pass like gold. That was the idea of
merchant-life with which Mr. Thornton had started. “Her merchants be
like princes,” said his mother, reading the text aloud, as if it were a
trumpet-call to invite her boy to the struggle. He was but like many
others—men, women, and children—alive to distant, and dead to near
things. He sought to possess the influence of a name in foreign
countries and far-away seas,—to become the head of a firm that should
be known for generations; and it had taken him long silent years to come
even to a glimmering of what he might be now, to-day, here in his own
town, his own factory, among his own people. He and they had led
parallel lives—very close, but never touching—till the accident (or so
it seemed) of his acquaintance with Higgins. Once brought face to face,
man to man, with an individual of the masses around him, and (take
notice) out of the character of master and workman, in the first
instance, they had each begun to recognise that “we have all of us one
human heart.” It was the fine point of the wedge; and until now, when
the apprehension of losing his connection with two or three of the
workmen whom he had so lately begun to know as men,—of having a plan or
two, which were experiments lying very close to his heart, roughly
nipped off without trial,—gave a new poignancy to the subtle fear that
came over him from time to time; until now, he had never recognised how
much and how deep was the interest he had grown of late to feel in his
position of manufacturer, simply because it led him into such close
contact, and gave him the opportunity of so much power, among a race of
people strange, shrewd, ignorant; but, above all, full of character and
strong human feeling.
He reviewed his position as a Milton manufacturer. The strike a year and
a half ago,—or more, for it was now untimely wintry weather, in a late
spring,—that strike, when he was young, and he now was old—had
prevented his completing some of the large orders he had then on hand.
He had locked up a good deal of his capital in new and expensive
machinery, and he had also bought cotton largely, for the fulfilment of
these orders, taken under contract. That he had not been able to
complete them, was owing in some degree to the utter want of skill on
the part of the Irish hands whom he had imported; much of their work was
damaged and unfit to be sent forth by a house which prided itself on
turning out nothing but first-rate articles. For many months, the
embarrassment caused by the strike had been an obstacle in Mr.
Thornton’s way; and often, when his eye fell on Higgins, he could have
spoken angrily to him without any present cause, just from feeling how
serious was the injury that had arisen from this affair in which he was
implicated. But when he became conscious of this sudden, quick
resentment, he resolved to curb it. It would not satisfy him to avoid
Higgins; he must convince himself that he was master over his own anger,
by being particularly careful to allow Higgins access to him, whenever
the strict rules of business, or Mr. Thornton’s leisure permitted. And
by-and-bye, he lost all sense of resentment in wonder how it was, or
could be, that two men like himself and Higgins, living by the same
trade, working in their different ways at the same object, could look
upon each other’s position and duties in so strangely different a way.
And thence arose that intercourse, which, though it might not have the
effect of preventing all future clash of opinion and action, when the
occasion arose, would, at any rate, enable both master and man to look
upon each other with far more charity and sympathy, and bear with each
other more patiently and kindly. Besides this improvement of feeling,
both Mr. Thornton and his workmen found out their ignorance as to
positive matters of fact, known heretofore to one side, but not to the
other.
But now had come one of those periods of bad trade, when the market
falling brought down the value of all large stocks; Mr. Thornton’s fell
to nearly half. No orders were coming in; so he lost the interest of the
capital he had locked up in machinery; indeed, it was difficult to get
payment for the orders completed; yet there was the constant drain of
expenses for working the business. Then the bills became due for the
cotton he had purchased; and money being scarce, he could only borrow at
exorbitant interest, and yet he could not realise any of his property.
But he did not despair; he exerted himself day and night to foresee and
to provide for all emergencies; he was as calm and gentle to the women
in his home as ever; to the workmen in his mill he spoke not many words,
but they knew him by this time; and many a curt, decided answer was
received by them rather with sympathy for the care they saw pressing
upon him, than with the suppressed antagonism which had formerly been
smouldering, and ready for hard words and hard judgments on all
occasions. “Th’ measter’s a deal to potter him,” said Higgins, one day,
as he heard Mr. Thornton’s short, sharp inquiry, why such a command had
not been obeyed; and caught the sound of the suppressed sigh which he
heaved in going past the room where some of the men were working.
Higgins and another man stopped over-hours that night, unknown to any
one, to get the neglected piece of work done; and Mr. Thornton never
knew but that the overlooker, to whom he had given the command in the
first instance, had done it himself.
“Eh! I reckon I know who’d ha’ been sorry for to see our measter sitting
so like a piece o’ grey calico! Th’ oud parson would ha’ fretted his
woman’s heart out, if he’d seen the woeful looks I have seen on our
measter’s face,” thought Higgins, one day, as he was approaching Mr.
Thornton in Marlborough Street.
“Measter,” said he, stopping his employer in his quick resolved walk,
and causing that gentleman to look up with a sudden annoyed start, as if
his thoughts had been far away.
“Have yo’ heerd aught of Miss Marget lately?”
“Miss—who?” replied Mr. Thornton.
“Miss Marget—Miss Hale—th’ oud parson’s daughter—yo’ known who I mean
well enough—if yo’ll only think a bit—” (there was nothing
disrespectful in the tone in which this was said).
“Oh yes!” and suddenly the wintry frost-bound look of care had left Mr.
Thornton’s face, as if some soft summer gale had blown all anxiety away
from his mind; and though his mouth was as much compressed as before,
his eyes smiled out benignly on his questioner.
“She’s my landlord now, you know, Higgins. I hear of her through her
agent here, every now and then. She’s well and among friends—thank you,
Higgins.” That “thank you” lingered after the other words, and yet came
with so much warmth of feeling, let in a new light to the acute Higgins.
It might be but a will-o’-th’-wisp, but he thought he would follow it
and ascertain whither it would lead him.
“And she’s not getten married, measter?”
“Not yet.” The face was cloudy once more. “There is some talk of it, as
I understand, with a connection of the family.”
“Then she’ll not be for coming to Milton again, I reckon.”
“No!”
“Stop a minute, measter.” Then going up confidentially close, he said,
“Is th’ young gentleman cleared?” He enforced the depth of his
intelligence by a wink of the eye, which only made things more
mysterious to Mr. Thornton.
“Th’ young gentleman, I mean—Master Frederick, they ca’ed him—her
brother as was over here, yo’ known.”
“Over here.”
“Ay, to be sure, at th’ missus’s death. Yo’ need na be feared of my
telling; for Mary and me, we knowed it all along, only we held our
peace, for we got it through Mary working in th’ house.”
“And he was over. It was her brother.”
“Sure enough, and I reckoned yo’ knowed it, or I’d never ha’ let on. Yo’
knowed she had a brother?”
“Yes, I know all about him. And he was over at Mrs. Hale’s death?”
“Nay! I’m not going for to tell more. I’ve maybe getten them into
mischief already, for they kept it very close. I nobbut wanted to know
if they’d getten him cleared?”
“Not that I know of. I know nothing. I only hear of Miss Hale, now, as
my landlord, and through her lawyer.”
He broke off from Higgins, to follow the business on which he had been
bent when the latter first accosted him; leaving Higgins baffled in his
endeavour.
“It was her brother,” said Mr. Thornton to himself. “I am glad. I may
never see her again; but it is a comfort—a relief—to know that much. I
knew she could not be unmaidenly; and yet I yearned for conviction. Now
I am glad!”
It was a little golden thread running through the dark web of his
present fortunes; which were growing ever gloomier and more gloomy. His
agent had largely trusted a house in the American trade, which went
down, along with several others, just at this time, like a pack of
cards, the fall of one compelling other failures. What were Mr.
Thornton’s engagements? Could he stand?
Night after night he took books and papers into his own private room,
and sate up there long after the family were gone to bed. He thought no
one knew of this occupation of the hours he should have spent in sleep.
One morning, when daylight was stealing in through the crevices of his
shutters, and he had never been in bed, and, in hopeless indifference of
mind, was thinking that he could do without the hour or two of rest,
which was all that he should be able to take before the stir of daily
labour began again, the door of his room opened, and his mother stood
there, dressed as she had been the day before. She had never laid
herself down to slumber any more than he. Their eyes met. Their faces
were cold and rigid, and wan, from long watching.
“Mother! why are you not in bed?”
“Son John,” said she, “do you think I can sleep with an easy mind, while
you keep awake full of care? You have not told me what your trouble is;
but sore trouble you have had these many days past.”
“Trade is bad.”
“And you dread——”
“I dread nothing,” replied he, drawing up his head, and holding it
erect. “I know that no man will suffer by me. That was my anxiety.”
“But how do you stand? Shall you—will it be a failure?” her steady
voice trembling in an unwonted manner.
“Not a failure. I must give up business, but I pay all men. I might
redeem myself—I am sorely tempted—”
“How? Oh, John! keep up your name—try all risks for that. How redeem
it?”
“By a speculation offered to me, but full of risk; but, if successful,
placing me high above water-mark, so that no one need ever know the
strait I am in. Still, if it fails—”
“And if it fails,” said she, advancing, and laying her hand on his arm,