North and South
Page 318'Here we go up, up, up;
And here we go down, down, downee!'
NURSERY SONG.
Meanwhile, at Milton the chimneys smoked, the ceaseless roar and
mighty beat, and dizzying whirl of machinery, struggled and
strove perpetually. Senseless and purposeless were wood and iron
and steam in their endless labours; but the persistence of their
monotonous work was rivalled in tireless endurance by the strong
crowds, who, with sense and with purpose, were busy and restless
in seeking after--What? In the streets there were few
loiterers,--none walking for mere pleasure; every man's face was
set in lines of eagerness or anxiety; news was sought for with
fierce avidity; and men jostled each other aside in the Mart and
in the Exchange, as they did in life, in the deep selfishness of
competition.
There was gloom over the town. Few came to buy, and
those who did were looked at suspiciously by the sellers; for
credit was insecure, and the most stable might have their
fortunes affected by the sweep in the great neighbouring port
among the shipping houses. Hitherto there had been no failures in
Milton; but, from the immense speculations that had come to light
that some Milton houses of business must suffer so severely that
every day men's faces asked, if their tongues did not,
'What news? Who is gone? How will it affect me?' And if two or three
spoke together, they dwelt rather on the names of those who were
safe than dared to hint at those likely, in their opinion, to go;
for idle breath may, at such times, cause the downfall of some
who might otherwise weather the storm; and one going down drags
many after. 'Thornton is safe,' say they. 'His business is
large--extending every year; but such a head as he has, and so
prudent with all his daring!'
Then one man draws another aside,
and walks a little apart, and, with head inclined into his
neighbour's ear, he says, 'Thornton's business is large; but he
has spent his profits in 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.
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,
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 as
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.