Chapter 29

“Yo’ needn’t trouble yoursel’, sir,” said Nicholas. “Their book-stuff goes in at one ear and out at t’other. I can make nought on’t. Afore Hamper and me had this split, th’ overlooker telled him I were stirring up th’ men to ask for higher wages; and Hamper met me one day in th’ yard. He’d a thin book i’ his hand, and says he, ‘Higgins, I’m told you’re one o’ those damned fools that think you can get higher wages for asking for ’em; ay, and keep ’em up too, when you’ve forced ’em up. Now, I’ll give yo’ a chance and try if yo’ve any sense in yo’. Here’s a book written by a friend o’ mine, and if yo’ll read it yo’ll see how wages find their own level, without either masters or men having aught to do with them; except the men cut their own throats wi’ striking, like the confounded noodles they are.’ Well, now, sir, I put it to yo’, being a parson, and having been in th’ preaching line, and having had to try and bring folk o’er to what yo’ thought was a right way o’ thinking—did yo’ begin by calling ’em fools and such like, or didn’t yo’ rayther give ’em such kind words at first, to make ’em ready for to listen and be convinced, if they could; and in yo’r preaching, did yo’ stop every now and then, and say, half to them and half to yo’rsel’, ‘But yo’r such a pack o’ fools, that I’ve a strong notion it’s no use my trying to put sense into yo’?’ I were not i’ th’ best state, I’ll own, for taking in what Hamper’s friend had to say—I were so vexed at the way it were put to me;—but I thought, ‘Come, I’ll see what these chaps has got to say, and try if it’s them or me as is th’ noodle.’ So I took th’ book and tugged at it; but, Lord bless yo’, it went on about capital and labour, and labour and capital, till it fair sent me off to sleep. I ne’er could rightly fix i’ my mind which was which; and it spoke on ’em as if they was vartues or vices; and what I wanted for to know were the rights o’ men, whether they were rich or poor—so be they only were men.”

“But for all that,” said Mr. Hale, “and granting to the full the offensiveness, the folly, the unchristianness of Mr. Hamper’s way of speaking to you in recommending his friend’s book, yet if it told you what he said it did, that wages find their own level, and that the most successful strike can only force them up for a moment, to sink in far greater proportion afterwards, in consequence of that very strike, the book would have told you the truth.”

“Well, sir,” said Higgins, rather doggedly; “it might, or it might not. There’s two opinions go to settling that point. But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to me if I couldna take it in. I daresay there’s great truth in yon Latin book on your shelves; but it’s gibberish and not truth to me, unless I know the meaning o’ the words. If yo’, sir, or any other knowledgable, patient man comes to me, and says he’ll larn me what the words mean, and not blow me up if I’m a bit stupid, or forget how one thing hangs on another—why, in time I may get to see the truth of it; or I may not. I’ll not be bound to say I shall end in thinking the same as any man. And I’m not one who think truth can be shaped out in words, all neat and clean, as th’ men at th’ foundry cut out sheet-iron. Same bones won’t go down wi’ every one. It’ll stick here i’ this man’s throat, and there i’ t’others. Let alone that, when down, it may be too strong for this one, too weak for that. Folk who sets up to doctor th’ world wi’ their truth, mun suit different for different minds; and be a bit tender i’ th’ way of giving it too, or the poor sick fools may spit it out i’ their faces. Now Hamper first gi’es me a box on my ear, and then he throws his big bolus at me, and says he reckons it’ll do me no good, I’m such a fool, but there it is.”

“I wish some of the kindest and wisest of the masters would meet some of you men, and have a good talk on these things; it would, surely, be the best way of getting over your difficulties, which, I do believe, arise from your ignorance—excuse me, Mr. Higgins—on subjects which it is for the mutual interests of both masters and men should be well understood by both. I wonder”—(half to his daughter) “if Mr. Thornton might not be induced to do such thing?”

“Remember, papa,” said she in a very low voice, “what he said one day,—about governments, you know.” She was unwilling to make any clearer allusion to the conversation they had held on the mode of governing work-people—by giving men intelligence enough to rule themselves, or by a wise despotism on the part of the master—for she saw that Higgins had caught Mr. Thornton’s name, if not the whole of the speech: indeed, he began to speak of him.

“Thornton! He’s the chap as wrote off at once for these Irishers; and led to th’ riot that ruined th’ strike. Even Hamper wi’ all his bullying, would ha’ waited a while—but it’s a word and a blow wi’ Thornton. And, now, when th’ Union would ha’ thanked him for following up th’ chase after Boucher, and them chaps as went right again our commands, it’s Thornton who steps forrard and coolly says that, as th’ strike’s at an end, he, as party injured, doesn’t want to press the charge again the rioters. I thought he’d ha’ carried his point, and had his revenge in an open way; but says he (one in court telled me his very words) ‘they are well known; they will find the natural punishment of their conduct, in the difficulty they will meet wi’ in getting employment. That will be severe enough.’ I only wish they’d cotched Boucher, and had him up before Hamper. I see th’ oud tiger setting on him! would he ha’ let him off? Not he!”

“Mr. Thornton was right,” said Margaret. “You are angry against Boucher, Nicholas; or else you would be the first to see, that where the natural punishment would be severe enough for the offence, any farther punishment would be something like revenge.”

“My daughter is no great friend of Mr. Thornton’s,” said Mr. Hale, smiling at Margaret; while she, as red as any carnation, began to work with double diligence, “but I believe what she says is the truth. I like him for it.”

“Well, sir, this strike has been a weary bit o’ business to me; and yo’ll not wonder if I’m a bit put out wi’ seeing it fail, just for a few men who would na suffer in silence, and aou’d out, brave and firm.”

“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.