North and South

ROUGHT IRON AND GOLD.

“We are the trees whom shaking fastens more.”
GEORGE HERBERT.

Mr. Thornton left the house without coming into the dining-room again.
He was rather late, and walked rapidly out to Crampton. He was anxious
not to slight his new friend by any disrespectful unpunctuality. The
church-clock struck half-past seven as he stood at the door awaiting
Dixon’s slow movements; always doubly tardy when she had to degrade
herself by answering the door-bell. He was ushered into the little
drawing-room, and kindly greeted by Mr. Hale, who led him up to his
wife, whose pale face, and shawl-draped figure made a silent excuse for
the cold languor of her greeting. Margaret was lighting the lamp when he
entered, for the darkness was coming on. The lamp threw a pretty light
into the centre of the dusky room, from which, with country habits, they
did not exclude the night-skies, and the outer darkness of air. Somehow,
that room contrasted itself with the one he had lately left; handsome,
ponderous, with no sign of female habitation, except in the one spot
where his mother sate, and no convenience for any other employment than
eating and drinking. To be sure, it was a dining-room; his mother
preferred to sit in it; and her will was a household law. But the
drawing-room was not like this. It was twice—twenty times as fine; not
one quarter as comfortable. Here were no mirrors, not even a scrap of
glass to reflect the light, and answer the same purpose as water in a
landscape; no gilding; a warm, sober breadth of colouring, well relieved
by the dear old Helstone chintz-curtains and chair covers. An open
davenport stood in the window opposite the door; in the other there was
a stand, with a tall white china vase, from which drooped wreaths of
English ivy, pale green birch, and copper-coloured beech-leaves. Pretty
baskets of work stood about in different places: and books, not cared
for on account of their binding solely, lay on one table, as if recently
put down. Behind the door was another table decked out for tea, with a
white table-cloth, on which flourished the cocoa-nut cakes, and a basket
piled with oranges and ruddy American apples, heaped on leaves.

It appeared to Mr. Thornton that all these graceful cares were habitual
to the family; and especially of a piece with Margaret. She stood by the
tea-table in a light-coloured muslin gown, which had a good deal of pink
about it. She looked as if she was not attending to the conversation,
but solely busy with the tea-cups, among which her round ivory hands
moved with pretty, noiseless, daintiness. She had a bracelet on one
taper arm, which would fall down over her round wrist. Mr. Thornton
watched the replacing of this troublesome ornament with far more
attention than he listened to her father. It seemed as if it fascinated
him to see her push it up impatiently until it tightened her soft flesh;
and then to mark the loosening—the fall. He could almost have
exclaimed—“There it goes again!” There was so little left to be done
after he arrived at the preparation for tea, that he was almost sorry
the obligation of eating and drinking came so soon to prevent him
watching Margaret. She handed him his cup of tea with the proud air of
an unwilling slave; but her eye caught the moment when he was ready for
another cup; and he almost longed to ask her to do for him what he saw
her compelled to do for her father, who took her little finger and thumb
in his masculine hand, and made them serve as sugar-tongues. Mr.
Thornton saw her beautiful eyes lifted to her father, full of light,
half-laughter, and half-love, as this bit of pantomime went on between
the two, unobserved as they fancied, by any. Margaret’s head still
ached, as the paleness of her complexion, and her silence might have
testified; but she was resolved to throw herself into the breach, if
there was any long untoward pause, rather than that her father’s friend,
pupil, and guest should have cause to think himself in any way
neglected. But the conversation went on; and Margaret drew into a
corner, near her mother, with her work, after the tea-things were taken
away; and felt that she might let her thoughts roam, without fear of
being suddenly wanted to fill up a gap.

Mr. Thornton and Mr. Hale were both absorbed in the continuation of some
object which had been started at their last meeting. Margaret was
recalled to a sense of the present by some trivial, low-spoken remark of
her mother’s; and on suddenly looking up from her work, her eye was
caught by the difference of outward appearance between her father and
Mr. Thornton, as betokening such distinctly opposite natures. Her father
was of slight figure, which made him appear taller than he really was,
when not contrasted, as at this time, with the tall, massive frame of
another. The lines in her father’s face were soft and waving, with a
frequent undulating kind of trembling movement passing over them,
showing every fluctuating emotion; the eyelids were large and arched,
giving to the eyes a peculiar languid beauty which was almost feminine.
The brows were finely arched, but were by the very size of the dreamy
lids, raised to a considerable distance from the eyes. Now, in Mr.
Thornton’s face the straight brows fell low over the clear, deep-set,
earnest eyes, which without being unpleasantly sharp, seemed intent
enough to penetrate into the very heart and core of what he was looking
at. The lines in the face were few but firm, as if they were carved in
marble, and lay principally about the lips, which were slightly
compressed, over a set of teeth so faultless and beautiful as to give
the effect of sudden sunlight when the rare bright smile, coming in an
instant and shining out of the eyes, changed the whole look from the
severe and resolved expression of a man ready to do and dare everything,
to the keen, honest, enjoyment of the moment, which is seldom shown so
fearlessly and instantaneously except by children. Margaret liked this
smile; it was the first thing she had admired in this new friend of her
father’s; and the opposition of character, shown in all these details
of appearance she had just been noticing, seemed to explain the
attraction they evidently felt towards each other.

She rearranged her mother’s worsted-work, and fell back into her own
thoughts—as completely forgotten by Mr. Thornton as if she had not been
in the room, so thoroughly was he occupied in explaining to Mr. Hale the
magnificent power, yet delicate adjustment of the might of the
steam-hammer, which was recalling to Mr. Hale some of the wonderful
stories of subservient genii in the Arabian Nights—one moment
stretching from earth to sky and filling all the width of the horizon,
at the next obediently compressed into a vase small enough to be borne
in the hand of a child.

“And this imagination of power, this practical realisation of a gigantic
thought, came out of one man’s brain in our good town. That very man has
it within him to mount, step by step, on each wonder he achieves to
higher marvels still. And I’ll be bound to say, we have many among us
who, if he were gone, could spring into the breach and carry on the war
which compels, and shall compel, all material power to yield to
science.”

“Your boast reminds me of the old lines—

‘I’ve a hundred captains in England,’ he said,
‘As good as ever was he.’”

At her father’s quotation Margaret looked suddenly up, with inquiring
wonder in her eyes. How in the world had they got from the cog-wheels to
Chevy Chace?

“It is no boast of mine,” replied Mr. Thornton; “it is plain
matter-of-fact. I won’t deny that I am proud of belonging to a town—or
perhaps I should rather say a district—the necessities of which give
birth to such grandeur of conception. I would rather be a man toiling,
suffering—nay, failing and successless—here, than lead a dull
prosperous life in the old worn grooves of what you call more
aristocratic society down in the South, with their slow days of careless
ease. One may be clogged with honey and unable to rise and fly.”

“You are mistaken,” said Margaret, roused by the aspersion on her
beloved South to a fond vehemence of defence, that brought the colour
into her cheeks and the angry tears into her eyes. “You do not know
anything about the South. If there is less adventure or less progress—I
suppose I must not say less excitement—from the gambling spirit of
trade, which seems requisite to force out these wonderful inventions,
there is less suffering also. I see men here going about in the streets
who look ground down by some pinching sorrow or care—who are not only
sufferers but haters. Now, in the South we have our poor, but there is
not that terrible expression in their countenances of a sullen sense of
injustice which I see here. You do not know the South, Mr. Thornton,”
she concluded, collapsing into a determined silence, and angry with
herself for having said so much.

“And may I say you do not know the North?” asked he, with an
inexpressible gentleness in his tone, as he saw that he had really hurt
her. She continued resolutely silent; yearning after the lovely haunts
she had left far away in Hampshire, with a passionate longing that made
her feel her voice would be unsteady and trembling if she spoke.

“At any rate, Mr. Thornton,” said Mrs. Hale, “you will allow that Milton
is a much more smoky, dirty town than you will ever meet with in the
South.”

“I’m afraid I must give up its cleanliness,” said Mr. Thornton, with the
quick gleaming smile. “But we are bidden by parliament to burn our own
smoke; so I suppose, like good little children, we shall do as we are
bid—some time.”

“But I think you told me you had altered your chimneys so as to consume
the smoke, did you not?” asked Mr. Hale.

“Mine were altered by my own will, before parliament meddled with the
affair. It was an immediate outlay, but it repays me in the saving of
coal. I’m not sure whether I should have done it, if I had waited until
the act was passed. At any rate, I should have waited to be informed
against and fined, and given all the trouble in yielding that I legally
could. But all laws which depend for their enforcement upon informers
and fines, become inert from the odiousness of the machinery. I doubt if
there has been a chimney in Milton informed against for five years past,
although some are constantly sending out one-third of their coal in what
is called here unparliamentary smoke.”

“I only know it is impossible to keep the muslin blinds clean here above
a week together; and at Helstone we have had them up for a month or
more, and they have not looked dirty at the end of that time. And as for
hands—Margaret, how many times did you say you had washed your hands
this morning before twelve o’clock? Three times, was it not?”

“Yes, mamma.”

“You seem to have a strong objection to acts of parliament and all
legislation affecting your mode of management down here at Milton,” said
Mr. Hale.

“Yes, I have; and many others have as well. And with justice, I think.
The whole machinery—I don’t mean the wood and iron machinery now—of
the cotton trade is so new that it is no wonder if it does not work well
in every part all at once. Seventy years ago what was it? And now what
it is not? Raw, crude materials came together; men of the same level, as
regarded education and station, took suddenly the different position of
masters and men, owing to the motherwit, as regarded opportunities and
probabilities, which distinguished some, and made them far-seeing as to
what great future lay concealed in that rude model of Sir Richard
Arkwright’s. The rapid development of what might be called a new trade,
gave those early masters enormous power of wealth and command. I don’t
mean merely over the workmen; I mean over purchasers—over the whole
world’s market. Why, I may give you, as an instance, an advertisement,
inserted not fifty years ago in a Milton paper, that so-and-so (one of
the half-dozen calico-printers of the time) would close his warehouse at
noon each day; therefore, that all purchasers must come before that
hour. Fancy a man dictating in this manner the time when he would sell
and when he would not sell. Now, I believe, if a good customer chose to
come at midnight, I should get up, and stand hat in hand to receive his
orders.”

Margaret’s lip curled, but somehow she was compelled to listen; she
could no longer abstract herself in her own thoughts.

“I only name such things to show what almost unlimited power the
manufacturers had about the beginning of this century. The men were
rendered dizzy by it. Because a man was successful in his ventures,
there was no reason that in all other things his mind should be
well-balanced. On the contrary, his sense of justice, and his
simplicity, were often utterly smothered under the glut of wealth that
came down upon him; and they tell strange tales of the wild extravagance
of living indulged in on gala-days by those early cotton-lords. There
can be no doubt, too, of the tyranny they exercised over their
work-people. You know the proverb, Mr. Hale, ‘Set a beggar on horseback,
and he’ll ride to the devil,’—well, some of these early manufacturers
did ride to the devil in a magnificent style—crushing human bone and
flesh under their horses’ hoofs without remorse. But by-and-by came a
reaction; there were more factories, more masters; more men were wanted.
The power of masters and men became more evenly balanced; and now the
battle is pretty fairly waged between us. We will hardly submit to the
decision of an umpire, much less to the interference of a meddler with
only a smattering of the knowledge of the real facts of the case, even
though that meddler be called the High Court of Parliament.”

“Is there necessity for calling it a battle between the two classes?”
asked Mr. Hale. “I know, from your using the term, it is one which gives
a true idea of the real state of things to your mind.”

“It is true; and I believe it to be as much a necessity as that prudent
wisdom and good conduct are always opposed to, and doing battle with
ignorance and improvidence. It is one of the great beauties of our
system, that a working-man may raise himself into the power and position
of a master by his own exertions and behaviour; that, in fact, every one
who rules himself to decency and sobriety of conduct, and attention to
his duties, comes over to our ranks; it may not be always as a master,
but as an overlooker, a cashier, a book-keeper, a clerk, one on the side
of authority and order.”

“You consider all who are unsuccessful in raising themselves in the
world, from whatever cause, as your enemies, then, if I understand you
rightly,” said Margaret, in a clear, cold voice.

“As their own enemies, certainly,” said he, quickly, not a little
piqued by the haughty disapproval her form of expression and tone of
speaking implied. But, in a moment, his straightforward honesty made him
feel that his words were but a poor and quibbling answer to what she had
said, and, be she as scornful as she liked, it was a duty he owed to
himself to explain, as truly as he could, what he did mean. Yet it was
very difficult to separate her interpretation, and keep it distinct from
his meaning. He could best have illustrated what he wanted to say by
telling them something of his own life; but was it not too personal a
subject to speak about to strangers? Still, it was the simple
straightforward way of explaining his meaning; so, putting aside the
touch of shyness that brought a momentary flush of colour into his dark
cheek, he said:

“I am not speaking without book. Sixteen years ago, my father died under
very miserable circumstances. I was taken from school, and had to become
a man (as well as I could) in a few days. I had such a mother as few are
blest with; a woman of strong power, and firm resolve. We went into a
small country town, where living was cheaper than in Milton, and where I
got employment in a draper’s shop (a capital place, by the way, for
obtaining a knowledge of goods). Week by week, our income came to
fifteen shillings, out of which three people had to be kept. My mother
managed so that I put by three out of these fifteen shillings regularly.
This made the beginning; this taught me self-denial. Now that I am able
to afford my mother such comforts as her age, rather than her own wish,
requires, I thank her silently on each occasion for the early training
she gave me. Now when I feel that in my own case it is no good luck, nor
merit, nor talent,—but simply the habits of life which taught me to
despise indulgences not thoroughly earned,—indeed, never to think twice
about them,—I believe that this suffering, which Miss Hale says is
impressed on the countenances of the people of Milton, is but the
natural punishment of dishonestly-enjoyed pleasure, at some former
period of their lives. I do not look on self-indulgent, sensual people
as worthy of my hatred; I simply look upon them with contempt for their
poorness of character.”

“But you have the rudiments of a good education,” remarked Mr. Hale.
“The quick zest with which you are now reading Homer, shows me that you
do not come to it as an unknown book: you have read it before, and are
only recalling your old knowledge.”

“That is true,—I had blundered along it at school; I dare say, I was
even considered a pretty fair classic in those days, though my Latin and
Greek have slipt away from me since. But I ask you, what preparation
were they for such a life as I had to lead? None at all. Utterly none at
all. On the point of education, any man who can read and write starts
fair with me in the amount of really useful knowledge that I had at that
time.”

“Well! I don’t agree with you. But there I am perhaps somewhat of a
pedant. Did not the recollection of the heroic simplicity of the Homeric
life nerve you up?”

“Not one bit!” exclaimed Mr. Thornton, laughing. “I was too busy to
think about any dead people, with the living pressing alongside of me,
neck to neck, in the struggle for bread. Now that I have my mother safe
in the quiet peace that becomes her age, and duly rewards her former
exertions, I can turn to all that old narration and thoroughly enjoy
it.”

“I dare say, my remark came from the professional feeling of there being
nothing like leather,” replied Mr. Hale.

When Mr. Thornton rose up to go away, after shaking hands with Mr. and
Mrs. Hale, he made an advance to Margaret to wish her good-bye in a
similar manner. It was the frank familiar custom of the place; but
Margaret was not prepared for it. She simply bowed her farewell;
although the instant she saw the hand, half put out, quickly drawn back,
she was sorry she had not been aware of the intention. Mr. Thornton,
however, knew nothing of her sorrow, and, drawing himself up to his full
height, walked off, muttering as he left the house—

“A more proud, disagreeable girl I never saw. Even her great beauty is
blotted out of one’s memory by her scornful ways.”