“You forget!” said Margaret. “I don’t know much of Boucher; but the only time I saw him it was not his own sufferings he spoke of, but those of his sick wife—his little children.”
“True! but he were not made of iron himsel’. He’d ha’ cried out for his own sorrows, next. He were not one to bear.”
“How came he into the Union?” asked Margaret innocently. “You don’t seem to have much respect for him; nor gained much good from having him in.”
Higgins’s brow clouded. He was silent for a minute or two. Then he said, shortly enough:
“It’s not for me to speak o’ th’ Union. What they does they does. Them that is of a trade mun hang together; and if they’re not willing to take their chance along wi’ th’ rest, th’ Union has ways and means.”
Mr. Hale saw that Higgins was vexed at the turn the conversation had taken, and was silent. Not so Margaret, though she saw Higgins’s feeling as clearly as he did. By instinct she felt that if he could but be brought to express himself in plain words, something clear would be gained on which to argue for the right and the just.
“And what are the Union’s ways and means?”
He looked up at her, as if on the point of dogged resistance to her wish for information. But her calm face, fixed on his, patient and trustful, compelled him to answer.
“Well! If a man doesn’t belong to th’ Union, them as works next looms as orders not to speak to him—if he’s sorry or ill it’s a’ the same; he’s out o’ bounds; he’s none o’ us; he comes among us, he works among us, but he’s none o’ us. I’ some places them’s fined who speaks to him. Yo’ try that, miss; try living a year or two among them as looks away if yo’ look at ’em; try working within two yards o’ crowds o’ men, who, yo’ know, have a grinding grudge at yo’ in their hearts—to whom if yo’ say yo’r glad, not an eye brightens, nor a lip moves—to whom if your heart’s heavy, yo’ can never say nought, because they’ll ne’er take notice on your sighs or sad looks (and a man’s no man who’ll groan out loud ’bout folk asking him what’s the matter?)—just yo’ try that, miss—ten hours for three hundred days, and yo’ll know a bit what the Union is.”
“Why!” said Margaret, “what tyranny this is! Nay, Higgins, I don’t care one straw for your anger. I know you can’t be angry with me if you would, and I must tell you the truth: that I never read, in all the history I have read, of a more slow, lingering torture than this. And you belong to the Union! And you talk of the tyranny of the masters!”
“Nay,” said Higgins, “yo’ may say what yo’ like. The dead stand between yo’ and every angry word o’ mine. D’ye think I forget who’s lying there, and how hoo loved yo’? And it’s th’ masters as has made us sin, if th’ Union is a sin. Not this generation maybe, but their fathers. Their fathers ground our fathers to the very dust; ground us to powder! Parson! I reckon I’ve heerd my mother read out a text, ‘The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and th’ chidren’s teeth are set on edge.’ Its so wi’ them. In those days of sore oppression th’ Unions began; it were a necessity. It’s a necessity now, according to me. It’s a withstanding of injustice, past, present, or to come. It may be like war; along wi’ it come crimes; but I think it were a greater crime to let it alone. Our only chance is binding men together in one common interest; and if some are cowards and some are fools, they mun come along and join the great march, whose only strength is in numbers.”
“Oh!” said Mr. Hale, sighing, “your Union in itself would be beautiful, glorious—it would be Christianity itself—if it were but for an end which affected the good of all, instead of that of merely one class as opposed to another.”
“I reckon it’s time for me to be going, sir,” said Higgins, as the clock struck ten.
“Home?” said Margaret very softly. He understood her, and took her offered hand. “Home, miss. Yo’ may trust me, tho’ I am one o’ th’ Union.”
“I do trust you most thoroughly, Nicholas.”
“Stay!” said Mr. Hale, hurrying to the bookshelves. “Mr. Higgins! I’m sure you’ll join us in family prayer?”
Higgins looked at Margaret, doubtfully. Her grave sweet eyes met his; there was no compulsion, only deep interest in them. He did not speak, but he kept his place.
Margaret the Churchwoman, her father the Dissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm.
XXIX
A Ray of Sunshine
Some wishes crossed my mind and dimly cheered it,
Coleridge
And one or two poor melancholy pleasures,
Each in the pale unwarming light of hope,
Silvering its flimsy wing, flew silent by—
Moths in the moonbeam!
The next morning brought Margaret a letter from Edith. It was affectionate and inconsequent like the writer. But the affection was charming to Margaret’s own affectionate nature; and she had grown up with the inconsequence, so she did not perceive it. It was as follows:—
“Oh, Margaret, it is worth a journey from England to see my boy! He is a superb little fellow, especially in his caps, and most especially in the one you sent him, you good, dainty-fingered, persevering little lady! Having made all the mothers here envious, I want to show him to somebody new, and hear a fresh set of admiring expressions; perhaps, that’s all the reason; perhaps it is not—nay, possibly, there is just a little cousinly love mixed with it; but I do want you so much
