They needed this gleam of brightness in-doors, for out-of-doors,

even to their uninstructed eyes, there was a gloomy brooding

appearance of discontent. Mr. Hale had his own acquaintances

among the working men, and was depressed with their earnestly

told tales of suffering and long-endurance. They would have

scorned to speak of what they had to bear to any one who might,

from his position, have understood it without their words. But

here was this man, from a distant county, who was perplexed by

the workings of the system into the midst of which he was thrown,

and each was eager to make him a judge, and to bring witness of

his own causes for irritation. Then Mr. Hale brought all his

budget of grievances, and laid it before Mr. Thornton, for him,

with his experience as a master, to arrange them, and explain

their origin; which he always did, on sound economical

principles; showing that, as trade was conducted, there must

always be a waxing and waning of commercial prosperity; and that

in the waning a certain number of masters, as well as of men,

must go down into ruin, and be no more seen among the ranks of

the happy and prosperous. He spoke as if this consequence were so

entirely logical, that neither employers nor employed had any

right to complain if it became their fate: the employer to turn

aside from the race he could no longer run, with a bitter sense

of incompetency and failure--wounded in the struggle--trampled

down by his fellows in their haste to get rich--slighted where he

once was honoured--humbly asking for, instead of bestowing,

employment with a lordly hand. Of course, speaking so of the fate

that, as a master, might be his own in the fluctuations of

commerce, he was not likely to have more sympathy with that of

the workmen, who were passed by in the swift merciless

improvement or alteration who would fain lie down and quietly die

out of the world that needed them not, but felt as if they could

never rest in their graves for the clinging cries of the beloved

and helpless they would leave behind; who envied the power of the

wild bird, that can feed her young with her very heart's blood.

Margaret's whole soul rose up against him while he reasoned in

this way--as if commerce were everything and humanity nothing.

She could hardly, thank him for the individual kindness, which

brought him that very evening to offer her--for the delicacy

which made him understand that he must offer her privately--every

convenience for illness that his own wealth or his mother's

foresight had caused them to accumulate in their household, and

which, as he learnt from Dr. Donaldson, Mrs. Hale might possibly

require. His presence, after the way he had spoken--his bringing

before her the doom, which she was vainly trying to persuade

herself might yet be averted from her mother--all conspired to

set Margaret's teeth on edge, as she looked at him, and listened

to him. What business had he to be the only person, except Dr.

Donaldson and Dixon, admitted to the awful secret, which she held

shut up in the most dark and sacred recess of her heart--not

daring to look at it, unless she invoked heavenly strength to

bear the sight--that, some day soon, she should cry aloud for her

mother, and no answer would come out of the blank, dumb darkness?

Yet he knew all. She saw it in his pitying eyes. She heard it in

his grave and tremulous voice. How reconcile those eyes, that

voice, with the hard-reasoning, dry, merciless way in which he

laid down axioms of trade, and serenely followed them out to

their full consequences? The discord jarred upon her

inexpressibly. The more because of the gathering woe of which she

heard from Bessy. To be sure, Nicholas Higgins, the father, spoke

differently. He had been appointed a committee-man, and said that

he knew secrets of which the exoteric knew nothing. He said this

more expressly and particularly, on the very day before Mrs.

Thornton's dinner-party, when Margaret, going in to speak to

Bessy, found him arguing the point with Boucher, the neighbour of

whom she had frequently heard mention, as by turns exciting

Higgins's compassion, as an unskilful workman with a large family

depending upon him for support, and at other times enraging his

more energetic and sanguine neighbour by his want of what the

latter called spirit. It was very evident that Higgins was in a

passion when Margaret entered. Boucher stood, with both hands on

the rather high mantel-piece, swaying himself a little on the

support which his arms, thus placed, gave him, and looking wildly

into the fire, with a kind of despair that irritated Higgins,

even while it went to his heart. Bessy was rocking herself

violently backwards and forwards, as was her wont (Margaret knew

by this time) when she was agitated, Her sister Mary was tying on

her bonnet (in great clumsy bows, as suited her great clumsy

fingers), to go to her fustian-cutting, blubbering out loud the

while, and evidently longing to be away from a scene that

distressed her. Margaret came in upon this scene. She stood for a

moment at the door--then, her finger on her lips, she stole to a

seat on the squab near Bessy. Nicholas saw her come in, and

greeted her with a gruff, but not unfriendly nod. Mary hurried

out of the house catching gladly at the open door, and crying

aloud when she got away from her father's presence. It was only

John Boucher that took no notice whatever who came in and who

went out.




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