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_ CHAPTER XXII - A BLOW AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
'But work grew scarce, while bread grew dear,
And wages lessened, too;
For Irish hordes were bidders here,
Our half-paid work to do.'
CORN LAW RHYMES.
Margaret was shown into the drawing-room. It had returned into
its normal state of bag and covering. The windows were half open
because of the heat, and the Venetian blinds covered the
glass,--so that a gray grim light, reflected from the pavement
below, threw all the shadows wrong, and combined with the
green-tinged upper light to make even Margaret's own face, as she
caught it in the mirrors, look ghastly and wan. She sat and
waited; no one came. Every now and then, the wind seemed to bear
the distant multitudinous sound nearer; and yet there was no
wind! It died away into profound stillness between whiles.
Fanny came in at last.
'Mamma will come directly, Miss Hale. She desired me to apologise
to you as it is. Perhaps you know my brother has imported hands
from Ireland, and it has irritated the Milton people
excessively--as if he hadn't a right to get labour where he
could; and the stupid wretches here wouldn't work for him; and
now they've frightened these poor Irish starvelings so with their
threats, that we daren't let them out. You may see them huddled
in that top room in the mill,--and they're to sleep there, to
keep them safe from those brutes, who will neither work nor let
them work. And mamma is seeing about their food, and John is
speaking to them, for some of the women are crying to go back.
Ah! here's mamma!'
Mrs. Thornton came in with a look of black sternness on her face,
which made Margaret feel she had arrived at a bad time to trouble
her with her request. However, it was only in compliance with
Mrs. Thornton's expressed desire, that she would ask for whatever
they might want in the progress of her mother's illness. Mrs.
Thornton's brow contracted, and her mouth grew set, while
Margaret spoke with gentle modesty of her mother's restlessness,
and Dr. Donaldson's wish that she should have the relief of a
water-bed. She ceased. Mrs. Thornton did not reply immediately.
Then she started up and exclaimed--
'They're at the gates! Call John, Fanny,--call him in from the
mill! They're at the gates! They'll batter them in! Call John, I
say!'
And simultaneously, the gathering tramp--to which she had been
listening, instead of heeding Margaret's words--was heard just
right outside the wall, and an increasing din of angry voices
raged behind the wooden barrier, which shook as if the unseen
maddened crowd made battering-rams of their bodies, and retreated
a short space only to come with more united steady impetus
against it, till their great beats made the strong gates quiver,
like reeds before the wind. The women gathered round the windows,
fascinated to look on the scene which terrified them. Mrs.
Thornton, the women-servants, Margaret,--all were there. Fanny
had returned, screaming up-stairs as if pursued at every step,
and had thrown herself in hysterical sobbing on the sofa. Mrs.
Thornton watched for her son, who was still in the mill. He came
out, looked up at them--the pale cluster of faces--and smiled
good courage to them, before he locked the factory-door. Then he
called to one of the women to come down and undo his own door,
which Fanny had fastened behind her in her mad flight. Mrs.
Thornton herself went. And the sound of his well-known and
commanding voice, seemed to have been like the taste of blood to
the infuriated multitude outside. Hitherto they had been
voiceless, wordless, needing all their breath for their
hard-labouring efforts to break down the gates. But now, hearing
him speak inside, they set up such a fierce unearthly groan, that
even Mrs. Thornton was white with fear as she preceded him into
the room. He came in a little flushed, but his eyes gleaming, as
in answer to the trumpet-call of danger, and with a proud look of
defiance on his face, that made him a noble, if not a handsome
man. Margaret had always dreaded lest her courage should fail her
in any emergency, and she should be proved to be, what she
dreaded lest she was--a coward. But now, in this real great time
of reasonable fear and nearness of terror, she forgot herself,
and felt only an intense sympathy--intense to painfulness--in the
interests of the moment.
Mr. Thornton came frankly forwards:
'I'm sorry, Miss Hale, you have visited us at this unfortunate
moment, when, I fear, you may be involved in whatever risk we
have to bear. Mother! hadn't you better go into the back rooms?
I'm not sure whether they may not have made their way from
Pinner's Lane into the stable-yard; but if not, you will be safer
there than here. Go Jane!' continued he, addressing the
upper-servant. And she went, followed by the others.
'I stop here!' said his mother. 'Where you are, there I stay.'
And indeed, retreat into the back rooms was of no avail; the
crowd had surrounded the outbuildings at the rear, and were
sending forth their: awful threatening roar behind. The servants
retreated into the garrets, with many a cry and shriek. Mr.
Thornton smiled scornfully as he heard them. He glanced at
Margaret, standing all by herself at the window nearest the
factory. Her eyes glittered, her colour was deepened on cheek and
lip. As if she felt his look, she turned to him and asked a
question that had been for some time in her mind:
'Where are the poor imported work-people? In the factory there?'
'Yes! I left them cowered up in a small room, at the head of a
back flight of stairs; bidding them run all risks, and escape
down there, if they heard any attack made on the mill-doors. But
it is not them--it is me they want.'
'When can the soldiers be here?' asked his mother, in a low but
not unsteady voice.
He took out his watch with the same measured composure with which
he did everything. He made some little calculation:
'Supposing Williams got straight off when I told him, and hadn't
to dodge about amongst them--it must be twenty minutes yet.'
'Twenty minutes!' said his mother, for the first time showing her
terror in the tones of her voice.
'Shut down the windows instantly, mother,' exclaimed he: 'the
gates won't bear such another shock. Shut down that window, Miss
Hale.'
Margaret shut down her window, and then went to assist Mrs.
Thornton's trembling fingers.
From some cause or other, there was a pause of several minutes in
the unseen street. Mrs. Thornton looked with wild anxiety at her
son's countenance, as if to gain the interpretation of the sudden
stillness from him. His face was set into rigid lines of
contemptuous defiance; neither hope nor fear could be read there.
Fanny raised herself up:
'Are they gone?' asked she, in a whisper.
'Gone!' replied he. 'Listen!'
She did listen; they all could hear the one great straining
breath; the creak of wood slowly yielding; the wrench of iron;
the mighty fall of the ponderous gates. Fanny stood up
tottering--made a step or two towards her mother, and fell
forwards into her arms in a fainting fit. Mrs. Thornton lifted
her up with a strength that was as much that of the will as of
the body, and carried her away.
'Thank God!' said Mr. Thornton, as he watched her out. 'Had you
not better go upstairs, Miss Hale?'
Margaret's lips formed a 'No!'--but he could not hear her speak,
for the tramp of innumerable steps right under the very wall of
the house, and the fierce growl of low deep angry voices that had
a ferocious murmur of satisfaction in them, more dreadful than
their baffled cries not many minutes before.
'Never mind!' said he, thinking to encourage her. 'I am very
sorry you should have been entrapped into all this alarm; but it
cannot last long now; a few minutes more, and the soldiers will
be here.'
'Oh, God!' cried Margaret, suddenly; 'there is Boucher. I know
his face, though he is livid with rage,--he is fighting to get to
the front--look! look!'
'Who is Boucher?' asked Mr. Thornton, coolly, and coming close to
the window to discover the man in whom Margaret took such an
interest. As soon as they saw Mr. Thornton, they set up a
yell,--to call it not human is nothing,--it was as the demoniac
desire of some terrible wild beast for the food that is withheld
from his ravening. Even he drew hack for a moment, dismayed at
the intensity of hatred he had provoked.
'Let them yell!' said he. 'In five minutes more--. I only hope my
poor Irishmen are not terrified out of their wits by such a
fiendlike noise. Keep up your courage for five minutes, Miss
Hale.'
'Don't be afraid for me,' she said hastily. 'But what in five
minutes? Can you do nothing to soothe these poor creatures? It is
awful to see them.'
'The soldiers will be here directly, and that will bring them to
reason.'
'To reason!' said Margaret, quickly. 'What kind of reason?'
'The only reason that does with men that make themselves into
wild beasts. By heaven! they've turned to the mill-door!'
'Mr. Thornton,' said Margaret, shaking all over with her passion,
'go down this instant, if you are not a coward. Go down and face
them like a man. Save these poor strangers, whom you have decoyed
here. Speak to your workmen as if they were human beings. Speak
to them kindly. Don't 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
any-thing save the savage satisfaction of the rolling angry
murmur. She 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 forwards 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
back-ground 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 cried out:
'Th' stone were 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 rather 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
stretched on the bed. She started up as her mother entered.
'Oh, mamma, how you terrified me! I thought you were a man that
had got into the house.'
'Nonsense! The men are all gone away. There are soldiers all
round the place, seeking for their work now it is too late. Miss
Hale is lying on the dining-room sofa badly hurt. I am going for
the doctor.'
'Oh! don't, mamma! they'll murder you.' She clung to her mother's
gown. Mrs. Thornton wrenched it away with no gentle hand.
'Find me some one else to go but that girl must not bleed to
death.'
'Bleed! oh, how horrid! How has she got hurt?'
'I don't know,--I have no time to ask. Go down to her, Fanny, and
do try to make yourself of use. Jane is with her; and I trust it
looks worse than it is. Jane has refused to leave the house,
cowardly woman! And I won't put myself in the way of any more
refusals from my servants, so I am going myself.'
'Oh, dear, dear!' said Fanny, crying, and preparing to go down
rather than be left alone, with the thought of wounds and
bloodshed in the very house.
'Oh, Jane!' said she, creeping into the dining-room, 'what is the
matter? How white she looks! How did she get hurt? Did they throw
stones into the drawing-room?'
Margaret did indeed look white and wan, although her senses were
beginning to return to her. But the sickly daze of the swoon made
her still miserably faint. She was conscious of movement around
her, and of refreshment from the eau de Cologne, and a craving
for the bathing to go on without intermission; but when they
stopped to talk, she could no more have opened her eyes, or
spoken to ask for more bathing, than the people who lie in
death-like trance can move, or utter sound, to arrest the awful
preparations for their burial, while they are yet fully aware,
not merely of the actions of those around them, but of the idea
that is the motive for such actions.
Jane paused in her bathing, to reply to Miss Thornton's question.
'She'd have been safe enough, miss, if she'd stayed in the
drawing-room, or come up to us; we were in the front garret, and
could see it all, out of harm's way.'
'Where was she, then?' said Fanny, drawing nearer by slow
degrees, as she became accustomed to the sight of Margaret's pale
face.
'Just before the front door--with master!' said Jane,
significantly.
'With John! with my brother! How did she get there?'
'Nay, miss, that's not for me to say,' answered Jane, with a
slight toss of her head. 'Sarah did'----
'Sarah what?' said Fanny, with impatient curiosity.
Jane resumed her bathing, as if what Sarah did or said was not
exactly the thing she liked to repeat.
'Sarah what?' asked Fanny, sharply. 'Don't speak in these half
sentences, or I can't understand you.'
'Well, miss, since you will have it--Sarah, you see, was in the
best place for seeing, being at the right-hand window; and she
says, and said at the very time too, that she saw Miss Hale with
her arms about master's neck, hugging him before all the people.'
'I don't believe it,' said Fanny. 'I know she cares for my
brother; any one can see that; and I dare say, she'd give her
eyes if he'd marry her,--which he never will, I can tell her. But
I don't believe she'd be so bold and forward as to put her arms
round his neck.'
'Poor young lady! she's paid for it dearly if she did. It's my
belief, that the blow has given her such an ascendency of blood
to the head as she'll never get the better from. She looks like a
corpse now.'
'Oh, I wish mamma would come!' said Fanny, wringing her hands. 'I
never was in the room with a dead person before.'
'Stay, miss! She's not dead: her eye-lids are quivering, and
here's wet tears a-coming down her cheeks. Speak to her, Miss
Fanny!'
'Are you better now?' asked Fanny, in a quavering voice.
No answer; no sign of recognition; but a faint pink colour
returned to her lips, although the rest of her face was ashen
pale.
Mrs. Thornton came hurriedly in, with the nearest surgeon she
could find. 'How is she? Are you better, my dear?' as Margaret
opened her filmy eyes, and gazed dreamily at her. 'Here is Mr.
Lowe come to see you.'
Mrs. Thornton spoke loudly and distinctly, as to a deaf person.
Margaret tried to rise, and drew her ruffled, luxuriant hair
instinctly over the cut. 'I am better now,' said she, in a very
low, faint voice. I was a little sick.' She let him take her hand
and feel her pulse. The bright colour came for a moment into her
face, when he asked to examine the wound in her forehead; and she
glanced up at Jane, as if shrinking from her inspection more than
from the doctor's.
'It is not much, I think. I am better now. I must go home.'
'Not until I have applied some strips of plaster; and you have
rested a little.'
She sat down hastily, without another word, and allowed it to be
bound up.
'Now, if you please,' said she, 'I must go. Mamma will not see
it, I think. It is under the hair, is it not?'
'Quite; no one could tell.'
'But you must not go,' said Mrs. Thornton, impatiently. 'You are
not fit to go.
'I must,' said Margaret, decidedly. 'Think of mamma. If they
should hear----Besides, I must go,' said she, vehemently. 'I
cannot stay here. May I ask for a cab?'
'You are quite flushed and feverish,' observed Mr. Lowe.
'It is only with being here, when I do so want to go. The
air--getting away, would do me more good than anything,' pleaded
she.
'I really believe it is as she says,' Mr. Lowe replied. 'If her
mother is so ill as you told me on the way here, it may be very
serious if she hears of this riot, and does not see her daughter
back at the time she expects. The injury is not deep. I will
fetch a cab, if your servants are still afraid to go out.'
'Oh, thank you!' said Margaret. 'It will do me more good than
anything. It is the air of this room that makes me feel so
miserable.'
She leant back on the sofa, and closed her eyes. Fanny beckoned
her mother out of the room, and told her something that made her
equally anxious with Margaret for the departure of the latter.
Not that she fully believed Fanny's statement; but she credited
enough to make her manner to Margaret appear very much
constrained, at wishing her good-bye.
Mr. Lowe returned in the cab.
'If you will allow me, I will see you home, Miss Hale. The
streets are not very quiet yet.'
Margaret's thoughts were quite alive enough to the present to
make her desirous of getting rid of both Mr. Lowe and the cab
before she reached Crampton Crescent, for fear of alarming her
father and mother. Beyond that one aim she would not look. That
ugly dream of insolent words spoken about herself, could never be
forgotten--but could be put aside till she was stronger--for, oh!
she was very weak; and her mind sought for some present fact to
steady itself upon, and keep it from utterly losing consciousness
in another hideous, sickly swoon. _
Read next: CHAPTER XXIII - MISTAKES
Read previous: CHAPTER XXI - THE DARK NIGHT
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