Writing of _North and South_ Mrs. Gaskell said: “I tried to
make both the story and the writing as quiet as I could, in
order that people might not say that they could not see what
the writer felt to be a plain and earnest truth for romantic
incident or exaggerated writing.” The earlier chapters of
_North and South_ contain some of Mrs. Gaskell’s best work.
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 nor let them work.
“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-labouring
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 gleaming, 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 out-buildings 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 work-people? In the factory there?”
“Yes! I left them cowered up in a small room, at the head of a back
flight of stairs; bidding them run all risks, and escape down there, if
they heard any attack made on the mill-doors. But it is not them—it is me
they want.”
“When can the soldiers be here?” asked his mother, in a low but not
unsteady voice.
He took out his watch with the same measured composure with which he did
everything. He made some little calculation:
“Supposing Williams got straight off when I told him, and hadn’t to dodge
about amongst them—it must be twenty minutes yet.”
“Twenty minutes!” said his mother, for the first time showing her terror
in the tones of her voice.
“Shut down the windows instantly, mother,” exclaimed he: “the gates won’t
bear such another shock. Shut down that window, Miss Hale.”
Margaret shut down her window, and then went to assist Mrs. Thornton’s
trembling fingers.
From some cause or other, there was a pause of several minutes in the
unseen street. Mrs. Thornton looked with wild anxiety at her son’s
countenance, as if to gain the interpretation of the sudden stillness
from him. His face was set into rigid lines of contemptuous defiance;
neither hope nor fear could be read there. Fanny raised herself up:
“Are they gone?” asked she, in a whisper.
“Gone!” replied he. “Listen!”
She did listen; they all could hear the one great straining breath; the
creak of wood slowly yielding; the wrench of iron; the mighty fall of the
ponderous gates. Fanny stood up tottering—made a step or two towards her
mother, and fell forwards into her arms in a fainting fit. Mrs. Thornton
lifted her up with a strength that was as much that of the will as of the
body, and carried her away.
“Thank God!” said Mr. Thornton, as he watched her out. “Had you not
better go upstairs, Miss Hale?”
Margaret’s lips formed a “No”!—but he could not hear her speak, for the
tramp of innumerable steps right under the very wall of the house, and
the fierce growl of low, deep, angry voices that had a ferocious murmur
of satisfaction in them, more dreadful than their baffled cries not many
minutes before.
“Never mind!” said he, thinking to encourage her. “I am very sorry you
should have been entrapped into all this alarm; but it cannot last long
now; a few minutes more, and the soldiers will be here.”
“Oh, God!” cried Margaret suddenly; “there is Boucher. I know his face,
though he is livid with rage—he is fighting to get to the front—look!
look!”
“Who is Boucher?” asked Mr. Thornton coolly, and coming close to the
window to discover the man in whom Margaret took such an interest. As
soon as they saw Mr. Thornton, they set up a yell—to call it not human is
nothing—it was as the demoniac desire of some terrible wild beast for the
food that is withheld from his ravening. Even he drew back for a moment,
dismayed at the intensity of hatred he had provoked.
“Let them yell!” said he. “In five minutes more——. I only hope my poor
Irishmen are not terrified out of their wits by such a fiend-like noise.
Keep up your courage for five minutes, Miss Hale.”
“Don’t be afraid for me,” she said hastily. “But what in five minutes?
Can you do nothing to soothe these poor creatures? It is awful to see
them.”
“The soldiers will be here directly, and that will bring them to reason.”
“To reason!” said Margaret quickly. “What kind of reason?”
“The only reason that does with men that make themselves into wild
beasts. By Heaven! they’ve turned to the mill-door!”
“Mr. Thornton,” said Margaret, shaking all over with her passion, “go
down this instant, if you are not a coward. Go down and face them like a
man. Save these poor strangers, whom you have decoyed here. Speak to your
workmen as if they were human beings. Speak to them kindly. Don’t let the
soldiers come in and cut down poor creatures who are driven mad. I see
one there who is. If you have any courage or noble quality in you, go
out and speak to them, man to man.”
He turned and looked at her while she spoke. A dark cloud came over his
face while he listened. He set his teeth as he heard her words.
“I will go. Perhaps I may ask you to accompany me downstairs, and bar the
door behind me; my mother and sister will need that protection.”
“Oh! Mr. Thornton! I do not know—I may be wrong—only——”
But he was gone; he was downstairs in the hall; he had unbarred the
front door; all she could do, was to follow him quickly, and fasten it
behind him, and clamber up the stairs again with a sick heart and a
dizzy head. Again she took her place by the farthest window. He was on
the steps below; she saw that by the direction of a thousand angry eyes;
but she could neither see nor hear anything save the savage satisfaction
of the rolling angry murmur. She threw the window wide open. Many in
the crowd were mere boys; cruel and thoughtless—cruel because they were
thoughtless; some were men, gaunt as wolves, and mad for prey. She knew
how it was; they were like Boucher—with starving children at home—relying
on ultimate success in their efforts to get higher wages, and enraged
beyond measure at discovering that Irishmen were to be brought in to
rob their little ones of bread. Margaret knew it all; she read it in
Boucher’s face, forlornly desperate and livid with rage. If Mr. Thornton
would but say something to them—let them hear his voice only—it seemed
as if it would be better than this wild beating and raging against the
stony silence that vouchsafed them no word, even of anger or reproach.
But perhaps he was speaking now; there was a momentary hush of their
noise, inarticulate as that of a troup of animals. She tore her bonnet
off; and bent forwards to hear. She could only see; for if Mr. Thornton
had indeed made the attempt to speak, the momentary instinct to listen
to him was past and gone, and the people were raging worse than ever.
He stood with his arms folded; still as a statue; his face pale with
repressed excitement. They were trying to intimidate him—to make him
flinch; each was urging the other on to some immediate act of personal
violence. Margaret felt intuitively that in an instant all would be
uproar; the first touch would cause an explosion, in which, among such
hundreds of infuriated men and reckless boys, even Mr. Thornton’s life
would be unsafe—that in another instant the stormy passions would have
passed their bounds, and swept all barriers of reason, or apprehension
of consequence. Even while she looked she saw lads in the background
stooping to take off their heavy wooden clogs—the readiest missile they
could find; she saw it was the spark to the gunpowder, and, with a cry,
which no one heard, she rushed out of the room, downstairs—she had lifted
the great iron bar of the door with an imperious force—had thrown the
door open wide—and was there, in face of that angry sea of men, her eyes
smiting them with flaming arrows of reproach. The clogs were arrested in
the hands that held them—the countenances, so fell not a moment before,
now looked irresolute, and as if asking what this meant. For she stood
between them and their enemy. She could not speak, but held out her arms
towards them till she could recover breath.
“Oh, do not use violence! He is one man, and you are many;” but her
words died away, for there was no tone in her voice; it was but a hoarse
whisper. Mr. Thornton stood a little on one side; he had moved away from
behind her, as if jealous of anything that should come between him and
danger.
“Go!” said she, once more (and now her voice was like a cry). “The
soldiers are sent for—are coming. Go peaceably. Go away. You shall have
relief from your complaints, whatever they are.”
“Shall them Irish blackguards be packed back again?” asked one from out
the crowd, with fierce threatening in his voice.
“Never, for your bidding!” exclaimed Mr. Thornton. And instantly the
storm broke. The hootings rose and filled the air—but Margaret did not
hear them. Her eye was on the group of lads who had armed themselves
with their clogs some time before. She saw their gesture—she knew its
meaning—she read their aim. Another moment, and Mr. Thornton might be
smitten down—he whom she had urged and goaded to come to this perilous
place. She only thought how she could save him. She threw her arms around
him; she made her body into a shield from the fierce people beyond.
Still, with his arms folded, he shook her off.
“Go away,” said he, in his deep voice. “This is no place for you.”
“It is!” said she. “You did not see what I saw.” If she thought her sex
would be a protection—if, with shrinking eyes, she had turned away from
the terrible anger of these men, in any hope that ere she looked again
they would have paused and reflected, and slunk away, and vanished—she
was wrong. Their reckless passion had carried them too far to stop—at
least had carried some of them too far; for it is always the savage
lads, with their love of cruel excitement, who head the riot—reckless to
what bloodshed it may lead. A clog whizzed through the air. Margaret’s
fascinated eyes watched its progress; it missed its aim, and she turned
sick with affright, but changed not her position, only hid her face on
Mr. Thornton’s arm. Then she turned and spoke again:
“For God’s sake! do not damage your cause by this violence. You do not
know what you are doing.” She strove to make her words distinct.
A sharp pebble flew by her, grazing forehead and cheek, and drawing a
blinding sheet of light before her eyes. She lay like one dead on Mr.
Thornton’s shoulder. Then he unfolded his arms, and held her encircled in
one for an instant:
“You do well!” said he. “You come to oust the innocent stranger. You
fall—you hundreds—on one man; and when a woman comes before you, to ask
you for your own sakes to be reasonable creatures, your cowardly wrath
falls upon her! You do well!” They were silent while he spoke. They
were watching, open-eyed and open-mouthed, the thread of dark-red blood
which wakened them up from their trance of passion. Those nearest the
gate stole out ashamed; there was a movement through all the crowd—a
retreating movement. Only one voice cried out:
“Th’ stone were meant for thee; but thou wert sheltered behind a woman!”
Mr. Thornton quivered with rage. The blood-flowing had made Margaret
conscious—dimly, vaguely conscious. He placed her gently on the doorstep,
her head leaning against the frame.
“Can you rest there?” he asked. But without waiting for her answer, he
went slowly down the steps right into the middle of the crowd. “Now kill
me, if it is your brutal will. There is no woman to shield me here. You
may beat me to death—you will never move me from what I have determined
upon—not you!” He stood amongst them, with his arms folded, in precisely
the same attitude as he had been in on the steps.
But the retrograde movement towards the gate had begun—as unreasoningly,
perhaps as blindly, as the simultaneous anger. Or, perhaps, the idea of
the approach of the soldiers, and the sight of that pale, upturned face,
with closed eyes, still and sad as marble, though the tears welled out
of the long entanglement of eyelashes, and dropped down; and, heavier,
slower plash than even tears, came the drip of blood from her wound. Even
the most desperate—Boucher himself—drew back, faltered away, scowled,
and finally went off, muttering curses on the master, who stood in his
unchanging attitude, looking after their retreat with defiant eyes. The
moment that retreat had changed into a flight (as it was sure from its
very character to do), he darted up the steps to Margaret.
She tried to rise without his help.
“It is nothing,” she said, with a sickly smile. “The skin is grazed, and
I was stunned at the moment. Oh, I am so thankful they are gone!” And she
cried without restraint.