“I don’t know. Something unusual seemed going on; but this street is quite empty, I think.”
She went across the yard and put up the steps to the house door. There was no near sound—no steam engine at work with beat and pant—no click of machinery, no mingling and clashing of many sharp voices; but far away, the ominous gathering roar, deep-clamouring.
XXII
A Blow and Its Consequences
But work grew scarce, while bread grew dear,
Corn Law Rhymes
And wages lessened, too;
For Irish hordes were bidders here,
Our half-paid work to do.
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
