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 or 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 upstairs 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-laboured 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 gleamed, 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 workpeople? In the factory there?”

“Yes! I left them cowed 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 steady 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 that

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 back 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 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

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 ascendancy 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 instinctively 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.