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.