_ CHAPTER XI - FIRST IMPRESSIONS
'There's iron, they say, in all our blood,
And a grain or two perhaps is good;
But his, he makes me harshly feel,
Has got a little too much of steel.'
ANON.
'Margaret!' said Mr. Hale, as he returned from showing his guest
downstairs; 'I could not help watching your face with some
anxiety, when Mr. Thornton made his confession of having been a
shop-boy. I knew it all along from Mr. Bell; so I was aware of
what was coming; but I half expected to see you get up and leave
the room.'
'Oh, papa! you don't mean that you thought me so silly? I really
liked that account of himself better than anything else he said.
Everything else revolted me, from its hardness; but he spoke
about himself so simply--with so little of the pretence that
makes the vulgarity of shop-people, and with such tender respect
for his mother, that I was less likely to leave the room then
than when he was boasting about Milton, as if there was not such
another place in the world; or quietly professing to despise
people for careless, wasteful improvidence, without ever seeming
to think it his duty to try to make them different,--to give them
anything of the training which his mother gave him, and to which
he evidently owes his position, whatever that may be. No! his
statement of having been a shop-boy was the thing I liked best of
all.'
'I am surprised at you, Margaret,' said her mother. 'You who were
always accusing people of being shoppy at Helstone! I don't I
think, Mr. Hale, you have done quite right in introducing such a
person to us without telling us what he had been. I really was
very much afraid of showing him how much shocked I was at some
parts of what he said. His father "dying in miserable
circumstances." Why it might have been in the workhouse.'
'I am not sure if it was not worse than being in the workhouse,'
replied her husband. 'I heard a good deal of his previous life
from Mr. Bell before we came here; and as he has told you a part,
I will fill up what he left out. His father speculated wildly,
failed, and then killed himself, because he could not bear the
disgrace. All his former friends shrunk from the disclosures that
had to be made of his dishonest gambling--wild, hopeless
struggles, made with other people's money, to regain his own
moderate portion of wealth. No one came forwards to help the
mother and this boy. There was another child, I believe, a girl;
too young to earn money, but of course she had to be kept. At
least, no friend came forwards immediately, and Mrs. Thornton is
not one, I fancy, to wait till tardy kindness comes to find her
out. So they left Milton. I knew he had gone into a shop, and
that his earnings, with some fragment of property secured to his
mother, had been made to keep them for a long time. Mr. Bell said
they absolutely lived upon water-porridge for years--how, he did
not know; but long after the creditors had given up hope of any
payment of old Mr. Thornton's debts (if, indeed, they ever had
hoped at all about it, after his suicide,) this young man
returned to Milton, and went quietly round to each creditor,
paying him the first instalment of the money owing to him. No
noise--no gathering together of creditors--it was done very
silently and quietly, but all was paid at last; helped on
materially by the circumstance of one of the creditors, a crabbed
old fellow (Mr. Bell says), taking in Mr. Thornton as a kind of
partner.'
'That really is fine,' said Margaret. 'What a pity such a nature
should be tainted by his position as a Milton manufacturer.'
'How tainted?' asked her father.
'Oh, papa, by that testing everything by the standard of wealth.
When he spoke of the mechanical powers, he evidently looked upon
them only as new ways of extending trade and making money. And
the poor men around him--they were poor because they were
vicious--out of the pale of his sympathies because they had not
his iron nature, and the capabilities that it gives him for being
rich.'
'Not vicious; he never said that. Improvident and self-indulgent
were his words.'
Margaret was collecting her mother's working materials, and
preparing to go to bed. Just as she was leaving the room, she
hesitated--she was inclined to make an acknowledgment which she
thought would please her father, but which to be full and true
must include a little annoyance. However, out it came.
'Papa, I do think Mr. Thornton a very remarkable man; but
personally I don't like him at all.'
'And I do!' said her father laughing. 'Personally, as you call
it, and all. I don't set him up for a hero, or anything of that
kind. But good night, child. Your mother looks sadly tired
to-night, Margaret.'
Margaret had noticed her mother's jaded appearance with anxiety
for some time past, and this remark of her father's sent her up
to bed with a dim fear lying like a weight on her heart. The life
in Milton was so different from what Mrs. Hale had been
accustomed to live in Helstone, in and out perpetually into the
fresh and open air; the air itself was so different, deprived of
all revivifying principle as it seemed to be here; the domestic
worries pressed so very closely, and in so new and sordid a form,
upon all the women in the family, that there was good reason to
fear that her mother's health might be becoming seriously
affected. There were several other signs of something wrong about
Mrs. Hale. She and Dixon held mysterious consultations in her
bedroom, from which Dixon would come out crying and cross, as was
her custom when any distress of her mistress called upon her
sympathy. Once Margaret had gone into the chamber soon after
Dixon left it, and found her mother on her knees, and as Margaret
stole out she caught a few words, which were evidently a prayer
for strength and patience to endure severe bodily suffering.
Margaret yearned to re-unite the bond of intimate confidence
which had been broken by her long residence at her aunt Shaw's,
and strove by gentle caresses and softened words to creep into
the warmest place in her mother's heart. But though she received
caresses and fond words back again, in such profusion as would
have gladdened her formerly, yet she felt that there was a secret
withheld from her, and she believed it bore serious reference to
her mother's health. She lay awake very long this night, planning
how to lessen the evil influence of their Milton life on her
mother. A servant to give Dixon permanent assistance should be
got, if she gave up her whole time to the search; and then, at
any rate, her mother might have all the personal attention she
required, and had been accustomed to her whole life. Visiting
register offices, seeing all manner of unlikely people, and very
few in the least likely, absorbed Margaret's time and thoughts
for several days. One afternoon she met Bessy Higgins in the
street, and stopped to speak to her.
'Well, Bessy, how are you? Better, I hope, now the wind has
changed.'
'Better and not better, if yo' know what that means.'
'Not exactly,' replied Margaret, smiling.
'I'm better in not being torn to pieces by coughing o'nights, but
I'm weary and tired o' Milton, and longing to get away to the
land o' Beulah; and when I think I'm farther and farther off, my
heart sinks, and I'm no better; I'm worse.' Margaret turned round
to walk alongside of the girl in her feeble progress homeward.
But for a minute or two she did not speak. At last she said in a
low voice,
'Bessy, do you wish to die?' For she shrank from death herself,
with all the clinging to life so natural to the young and
healthy.
Bessy was silent in her turn for a minute or two. Then she
replied,
'If yo'd led the life I have, and getten as weary of it as I
have, and thought at times, "maybe it'll last for fifty or sixty
years--it does wi' some,"--and got dizzy and dazed, and sick, as
each of them sixty years seemed to spin about me, and mock me
with its length of hours and minutes, and endless bits o'
time--oh, wench! I tell thee thou'd been glad enough when th'
doctor said he feared thou'd never see another winter.'
'Why, Bessy, what kind of a life has yours been?'
'Nought worse than many others, I reckon. Only I fretted again
it, and they didn't.'
'But what was it? You know, I'm a stranger here, so perhaps I'm
not so quick at understanding what you mean as if I'd lived all
my life at Milton.'
'If yo'd ha' come to our house when yo' said yo' would, I could
maybe ha' told you. But father says yo're just like th' rest on
'em; it's out o' sight out o' mind wi' you.'
'I don't know who the rest are; and I've been very busy; and, to
tell the truth, I had forgotten my promise--'
'Yo' offered it! we asked none of it.'
'I had forgotten what I said for the time,' continued Margaret
quietly. 'I should have thought of it again when I was less busy.
May I go with you now?' Bessy gave a quick glance at Margaret's
face, to see if the wish expressed was really felt. The sharpness
in her eye turned to a wistful longing as she met Margaret's soft
and friendly gaze.
'I ha' none so many to care for me; if yo' care yo' may come.
So they walked on together in silence. As they turned up into a
small court, opening out of a squalid street, Bessy said,
'Yo'll not be daunted if father's at home, and speaks a bit
gruffish at first. He took a mind to ye, yo' see, and he thought
a deal o' your coming to see us; and just because he liked yo' he
were vexed and put about.'
'Don't fear, Bessy.'
But Nicholas was not at home when they entered. A great
slatternly girl, not so old as Bessy, but taller and stronger,
was busy at the wash-tub, knocking about the furniture in a rough
capable way, but altogether making so much noise that Margaret
shrunk, out of sympathy with poor Bessy, who had sat down on the
first chair, as if completely tired out with her walk. Margaret
asked the sister for a cup of water, and while she ran to fetch
it (knocking down the fire-irons, and tumbling over a chair in
her way), she unloosed Bessy's bonnet strings, to relieve her
catching breath.
'Do you think such life as this is worth caring for?' gasped
Bessy, at last. Margaret did not speak, but held the water to her
lips. Bessy took a long and feverish draught, and then fell back
and shut her eyes. Margaret heard her murmur to herself: 'They
shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the
sun light on them, nor any heat.'
Margaret bent over and said, 'Bessy, don't be impatient with your
life, whatever it is--or may have been. Remember who gave it you,
and made it what it is!' She was startled by hearing Nicholas
speak behind her; he had come in without her noticing him.
'Now, I'll not have my wench preached to. She's bad enough as it
is, with her dreams and her methodee fancies, and her visions of
cities with goulden gates and precious stones. But if it amuses
her I let it abe, but I'm none going to have more stuff poured
into her.'
'But surely,' said Margaret, facing round, 'you believe in what I
said, that God gave her life, and ordered what kind of life it
was to be?'
'I believe what I see, and no more. That's what I believe, young
woman. I don't believe all I hear--no! not by a big deal. I did
hear a young lass make an ado about knowing where we lived, and
coming to see us. And my wench here thought a deal about it, and
flushed up many a time, when hoo little knew as I was looking at
her, at the sound of a strange step. But hoo's come at last,--and
hoo's welcome, as long as hoo'll keep from preaching on what hoo
knows nought about.' Bessy had been watching Margaret's face; she
half sate up to speak now, laying her hand on Margaret's arm with
a gesture of entreaty. 'Don't be vexed wi' him--there's many a
one thinks like him; many and many a one here. If yo' could hear
them speak, yo'd not be shocked at him; he's a rare good man, is
father--but oh!' said she, falling back in despair, 'what he says
at times makes me long to die more than ever, for I want to know
so many things, and am so tossed about wi' wonder.'
'Poor wench--poor old wench,--I'm loth to vex thee, I am; but a
man mun speak out for the truth, and when I see the world going
all wrong at this time o' day, bothering itself wi' things it
knows nought about, and leaving undone all the things that lie in
disorder close at its hand--why, I say, leave a' this talk about
religion alone, and set to work on what yo' see and know. That's
my creed. It's simple, and not far to fetch, nor hard to work.'
But the girl only pleaded the more with Margaret.
'Don't think hardly on him--he's a good man, he is. I sometimes
think I shall be moped wi' sorrow even in the City of God, if
father is not there.' The feverish colour came into her cheek,
and the feverish flame into her eye. 'But you will be there,
father! you shall! Oh! my heart!' She put her hand to it, and
became ghastly pale.
Margaret held her in her arms, and put the weary head to rest
upon her bosom. She lifted the thin soft hair from off the
temples, and bathed them with water. Nicholas understood all her
signs for different articles with the quickness of love, and even
the round-eyed sister moved with laborious gentleness at
Margaret's 'hush!' Presently the spasm that foreshadowed death
had passed away, and Bessy roused herself and said,--
'I'll go to bed,--it's best place; but,' catching at Margaret's
gown, 'yo'll come again,--I know yo' will--but just say it!'
'I will come to-morrow, said Margaret.
Bessy leant back against her father, who prepared to carry her
upstairs; but as Margaret rose to go, he struggled to say
something: 'I could wish there were a God, if it were only to ask
Him to bless thee.'
Margaret went away very sad and thoughtful.
She was late for tea at home. At Helstone unpunctuality at
meal-times was a great fault in her mother's eyes; but now this,
as well as many other little irregularities, seemed to have lost
their power of irritation, and Margaret almost longed for the old
complainings.
'Have you met with a servant, dear?'
'No, mamma; that Anne Buckley would never have done.'
'Suppose I try,' said Mr. Hale. 'Everybody else has had their
turn at this great difficulty. Now let me try. I may be the
Cinderella to put on the slipper after all.'
Margaret could hardly smile at this little joke, so oppressed was
she by her visit to the Higginses.
'What would you do, papa? How would you set about it?'
'Why, I would apply to some good house-mother to recommend me one
known to herself or her servants.'
'Very good. But we must first catch our house-mother.'
'You have caught her. Or rather she is coming into the snare, and
you will catch her to-morrow, if you're skilful.'
'What do you mean, Mr. Hale?' asked his wife, her curiosity
aroused.
'Why, my paragon pupil (as Margaret calls him), has told me that
his mother intends to call on Mrs. and Miss Hale to-morrow.'
'Mrs. Thornton!' exclaimed Mrs. Hale.
'The mother of whom he spoke to us?' said Margaret.
'Mrs. Thornton; the only mother he has, I believe,' said Mr. Hale
quietly.
'I shall like to see her. She must be an uncommon person, her
mother added.
'Perhaps she may have a relation who might suit us, and be glad
of our place. She sounded to be such a careful economical person,
that I should like any one out of the same family.'
'My dear,' said Mr. Hale alarmed. 'Pray don't go off on that
idea. I fancy Mrs. Thornton is as haughty and proud in her way,
as our little Margaret here is in hers, and that she completely
ignores that old time of trial, and poverty, and economy, of
which he speaks so openly. I am sure, at any rate, she would not
like strangers to know anything about It.'
'Take notice that is not my kind of haughtiness, papa, if I have
any at all; which I don't agree to, though you're always accusing
me of it.'
'I don't know positively that it is hers either; but from little
things I have gathered from him, I fancy so.'
They cared too little to ask in what manner her son had spoken
about her. Margaret only wanted to know if she must stay in to
receive this call, as it would prevent her going to see how Bessy
was, until late in the day, since the early morning was always
occupied in household affairs; and then she recollected that her
mother must not be left to have the whole weight of entertaining
her visitor. _