North and South

HE DARK NIGHT.

“On earth is known to none
The smile that is not sister to a tear.”
ELLIOTT.

Margaret and her father walked home. The night was fine, the streets
clean, and with her pretty white silk, like Leezie Lindsay’s gown o’
green satin, in the ballad, “kilted up to her knee,” she was off with
her father—ready to dance along with the excitement of the cool, fresh
night air.

“I rather think Thornton is not quite easy in his mind about this
strike. He seemed very anxious to-night.”

“I should wonder if he were not. But he spoke with his usual coolness to
the others, when they suggested different things, just before we came
away.”

“So he did after dinner as well. It would take a good deal to stir him
from his cool manner of speaking; but his face strikes me as anxious.”

“I should be, if I were he. He must know of the growing anger and hardly
smothered hatred of his workpeople, who all looked upon him as what the
Bible calls a ‘hard man,’—not so much unjust as unfeeling; clear in
judgment, standing upon his ‘rights’ as no human being ought to stand,
considering what we and all our petty rights are in the sight of the
Almighty. I am glad you think he looks anxious. When I remember
Boucher’s half mad words and ways, I cannot bear to think how coolly Mr.
Thornton spoke.”

“In the first place, I am not so convinced as you are about that man
Boucher’s utter distress; for the moment, he was badly off, I don’t
doubt. But there is always a mysterious supply of money from these
Unions; and, from what you said, it was evident the man was of a
passionate, demonstrative nature, and gave strong expression to all he
felt.”

“Oh, papa!”

“Well! I only want you to do justice to Mr. Thornton, who is, I suspect,
of an exactly opposite nature—a man who is far too proud to show his
feelings. Just the character I should have thought beforehand, you would
have admired, Margaret.”

“So I do—so I should; but I don’t feel quite so sure as you do of the
existence of those feelings. He is a man of great strength of
character—of unusual intellect, considering the few advantages he has
had.”

“Not so few. He has led a practical life from a very early age, has been
called upon to exercise judgment and self-control. All that developes
one part of the intellect. To be sure, he needs some of the knowledge of
the past, which gives the truest basis for conjecture as to the future;
but he knows this need—he perceives it, and that is something. You are
quite prejudiced against Mr. Thornton, Margaret.”

“He is the first specimen of a manufacturer—of a person engaged in
trade—that I had ever the opportunity of studying, papa. He is my first
olive: let me make a face while I swallow it. I know he is good of his
kind, and by and by I shall like the kind. I rather think I am already
beginning to do so. I was very much interested by what the gentlemen
were talking about, although I did not understand half of it. I was
quite sorry when Miss Thornton came to take me to the other end of the
room, saying she was sure I should be uncomfortable at being the only
lady among so many gentlemen. I had never thought about it, I was so
busy listening; and the ladies were so dull, papa—oh, so dull! Yet I
think it was clever too. It reminded me of our old game of having each
so many nouns to introduce into a sentence.”

“What do you mean, child?” asked Mr. Hale.

“Why, they took nouns that were signs of things which gave evidence of
wealth,—housekeepers, under-gardeners, extent of glass, valuable lace,
diamonds, and all such things; and each one formed her speech so as to
bring them all in, in the prettiest accidental manner possible.”

“You will be as proud of your one servant when you get her, if all is
true about her that Mrs. Thornton says.”

“To be sure, I shall. I felt like a great hypocrite to-night, sitting
there in my white silk gown, with my idle hands before me, when I
remembered all the good, thorough, house-work they had done to-day. They
took me for a fine lady, I’m sure.”

“Even I was mistaken enough to think you looked like a lady, my dear,”
said Mr. Hale, quietly smiling.

But smiles were changed to white and trembling looks when they saw
Dixon’s face, as she opened the door.

“Oh, master!—Oh, Miss Margaret! Thank God you are come! Dr. Donaldson
is here. The servant next door went for him, for the charwoman is gone
home. She’s better now; but, oh sir! I thought she’d have died an hour
ago.”

Mr. Hale caught Margaret’s arm to steady himself from falling. He looked
at her face, and saw an expression upon it of surprise and extremest
sorrow, but not the agony of terror that contracted his own unprepared
heart. She knew more than he did, and yet she listened with that
hopeless expression of awed apprehension.

“Oh! I should not have left her—wicked daughter that I am!” moaned
forth Margaret, as she supported her trembling father’s hasty steps
upstairs. Dr. Donaldson met them on the landing.

“She is better now,” he whispered. “The opiate has taken effect. The
spasms were very bad: no wonder they frightened your maid; but she’ll
rally this time.”

“This time! Let me go to her!” Half an hour ago Mr. Hale was a
middle-aged man; now his sight was dim, his senses wavering, his walk
tottering, as if he were seventy years of age.

Dr. Donaldson took his arm, and led him into the bedroom. Margaret
followed close. There lay her mother, with an unmistakeable look on her
face. She might be better now; she was sleeping, but Death had signed
her for his own, and it was clear that ere long he would return to take
possession. Mr. Hale looked at her for some time without a word. Then he
began to shake all over, and, turning away from Dr. Donaldson’s anxious
care, he groped to find the door; he could not see it, although several
candles, brought in the sudden affright, were burning and flaring there.
He staggered into the drawing-room, and felt about for a chair. Dr.
Donaldson wheeled one to him, and placed him in it. He felt his pulse.

“Speak to him, Miss Hale. We must rouse him.”

“Papa!” said Margaret, with a crying voice that was wild with pain.
“Papa! Speak to me!” The speculation came again into his eyes, and he
made a great effort.

“Margaret, did you know of this? Oh, it was cruel of you!”

“No, sir, it was not cruel!” replied Dr. Donaldson, with quick decision.
“Miss Hale acted under my directions. There may have been a mistake, but
it was not cruel. Your wife will be a different creature to-morrow, I
trust. She has had spasms, as I anticipated, though I did not tell Miss
Hale of my apprehensions. She has taken the opiate I brought with me;
she will have a good long sleep; and to-morrow that look which has
alarmed you so much will have passed away.”

“But not the disease?”

Dr. Donaldson glanced at Margaret. Her bent head, her face raised with
no appeal for a temporary reprieve, showed that quick observer of human
nature that she thought it better that the whole truth should be told.

“Not the disease. We cannot touch the disease, with all our poor vaunted
skill. We can only delay its progress—alleviate the pain it causes. Be
a man, sir—a Christian. Have faith in the immortality of the soul,
which no pain, no mortal disease, can assail or touch!”

But all the reply he got was in the choked words, “You have never been
married, Dr. Donaldson; you don’t know what it is,” and in the deep,
manly sobs, which went through the stillness of the night like heavy
pulses of agony.

Margaret knelt by him, caressing him with tearful caresses. No one, not
even Dr. Donaldson, knew how the time went by. Mr. Hale was the first to
dare to speak of the necessities of the present moment.

“What must we do?” asked he. “Tell us both. Margaret is my staff—my
right hand.”

Dr. Donaldson gave his clear, sensible directions. No fear for
to-night—nay, even peace for to-morrow, and for many days yet. But no
enduring hope of recovery. He advised Mr. Hale to go to bed, and leave
only one to watch the slumber, which he hoped would be undisturbed. He
promised to come again early in the morning. And, with a warm and kindly
shake of the hand, he left them.

They spoke but few words; they were too much exhausted by their terror
to do more than decide upon the immediate course of action. Mr. Hale was
resolved to sit up through the night, and all that Margaret could do was
to prevail upon him to rest on the drawing-room sofa. Dixon stoutly and
bluntly refused to go to bed; and, as for Margaret, it was simply
impossible that she should leave her mother, let all the doctors in the
world speak of “husbanding resources,” and “one watcher only being
required.” So, Dixon sat, and stared, and winked, and drooped, and
picked herself up again with a jerk, and finally gave up the battle, and
fairly snored. Margaret had taken off her gown and tossed it aside with
a sort of impatient disgust, and put on her dressing-gown. She felt as
if she never could sleep again; as if her whole senses were acutely
vital, and all endued with double keenness, for the purpose of watching.
Every sight and sound—nay, even every thought, touched some nerve to
the very quick. For more than two hours, she heard her father’s restless
movements in the next room. He came perpetually to the door of her
mother’s chamber, pausing there to listen, till she, not hearing his
close unseen presence, went and opened it to tell him how all went on,
in reply to the questions his baked lips could hardly form. At last he,
too, fell asleep, and all the house was still. Margaret sat behind the
curtain thinking. Far away in time, far away in space, seemed all the
interests of past days. Not more than thirty-six hours ago, she cared
for Bessy Higgins and her father, and her heart was wrung for Boucher;
now, that was all like a dreaming memory of some former
life;—everything that had passed out of doors seemed dissevered from
her mother, and therefore unreal. Even Harley Street appeared more
distinct; there she remembered, as if it were yesterday, how she had
pleased herself with tracing out her mother’s features in her Aunt
Shaw’s face,—and how letters had come, making her dwell on the thoughts
of home with all the longing of love. Helstone, itself, was in the dim
past. The dull gray days of the preceding winter and spring, so
uneventless and monotonous, seemed more associated with what she cared
for now above all price. She would fain have caught at the skirts of
that departing time, and prayed it to return, and give her back what she
had too little valued while it was yet in her possession. What a vain
show Life seemed! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting! It
was as if from some aërial belfry, high up above the stir and jar of the
earth, there was a bell continually tolling, “All are shadows!—all are
passing!—all is past!” And when the morning dawned, cool and gray, like
many a happier morning before—when Margaret looked one by one at the
sleepers, it seemed as if the terrible night were unreal as a dream; it,
too, was a shadow. It, too, was past.

Mrs. Hale herself was not aware when she awoke, how ill she had been the
night before. She was rather surprised at Dr. Donaldson’s early visit,
and perplexed by the anxious faces of husband and child. She consented
to remain in bed that day, saying she certainly was tired; but, the
next, she insisted on getting up; and Dr. Donaldson gave his consent to
her returning into the drawing-room. She was restless and uncomfortable
in every position, and before night she became very feverish. Mr. Hale
was utterly listless, and incapable of deciding on anything.

“What can we do to spare mamma such another night?” asked Margaret on
the third day.

“It is to a certain degree, the reaction after the powerful opiates I
have been obliged to use. It is more painful for you to see than for her
to bear, I believe. But, I think, if we could get a water-bed it might
be a good thing. Not but what she will be better to-morrow; pretty much
like herself as she was before this attack. Still, I should like her to
have a water-bed. Mrs. Thornton has one, I know. I’ll try and call there
this afternoon. Stay,” said he, his eye catching on Margaret’s face,
blanched with watching in a sick room, “I’m not sure whether I can go;
I’ve a long round to take. It would do you no harm to have a brisk walk
to Marlborough Street, and ask Mrs. Thornton if she can spare it.”

“Certainly,” said Margaret. “I could go while mamma is asleep this
afternoon. I’m sure Mrs. Thornton would lend it to us.”

Dr. Donaldson’s experience told him rightly. Mrs. Hale seemed to shake
off the consequences of her attack, and looked brighter and better this
afternoon than Margaret had ever hoped to see her again. Her daughter
left her after dinner, sitting in her easy chair, with her hand lying in
her husband’s, who looked more worn and suffering than she by far.
Still, he could smile now—rather slowly, rather faintly, it is true;
but a day or two before, Margaret never thought to see him smile again.

It was about two miles from their house in Crampton Crescent to
Marlborough Street. It was too hot to walk very quickly. An August sun
beat straight down into the street at three o’clock in the afternoon.
Margaret went along, without noticing anything very different from usual
in the first mile and a half of her journey; she was absorbed in her own
thoughts, and had learnt by this time to thread her way through the
irregular stream of human beings that flowed through Milton streets.
But, by and by, she was struck with an unusual heaving among the mass of
people in the crowded road on which she was entering. They did not
appear to be moving on, so much as talking, and listening, and buzzing
with excitement without much stirring from the spot where they might
happen to be. Still, as they made way for her, and, wrapt up in the
purpose of her errand, and the necessities that suggested it, she was
less quick of observation than she might have been, if her mind had been
at ease. She had got into Marlborough Street before the full conviction
forced itself upon her, that there was a restless, oppressive sense of
irritation abroad among the people; a thunderous atmosphere, morally as
well as physically, around her. From every narrow lane opening out on
Marlborough Street came up a low distant roar, as of myriads of fierce
indignant voices. The inhabitants of each poor squalid dwelling were
gathered round the doors and windows, if indeed they were not actually
standing in the middle of the narrow ways—all with looks intent towards
one point. Marlborough Street itself was the focus of all those human
eyes, that betrayed intensest interest of various kinds; some fierce
with anger, some lowering with relentless threats! some dilated with
fear, or imploring entreaty; and as Margaret reached the small
side-entrance by the folding doors, in the great dead wall of
Marlborough mill-yard, and waited the porter’s answer to the bell, she
looked round and heard the first long far-off roll of the tempest;—saw
the first slow-surging wave of the dark crowd come, with its threatening
crest, tumble over, and retreat, at the far end of the street, which a
moment ago seemed so full of repressed noise, but which now was
ominously still; all these circumstances forced themselves on Margaret’s
notice, but did not sink down into her pre-occupied heart. She did not
know what they meant—what was their deep significance; while she did
know, did feel the keen sharp pressure of the knife that was soon to
stab her through and through by leaving her motherless. She was trying
to realise that, in order that, when it came, she might be ready to
comfort her father.

The porter opened the door cautiously, not nearly wide enough to admit
her.

“It’s you, is it, ma’am?” said he, drawing a long breath, and widening
the entrance, but still not opening it fully. Margaret went in. He
hastily bolted it behind her.

“Th’ folk are all coming up here, I reckon?” asked he.

“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.