CHAPTER I.

THE FIRST OF THE STORM

The year 1861 had closed in thick clouds and a great darkness, with the mutter of war in the far west, and with the threatening of famine at home. The year 1862 dawned, but with a dawn so dark as scarce to be distinguishable from profoundest midnight.

‘Earth turned in her sleep for pain.’

January, February, dragged slowly by, and times only grew worse. Few chimneys smoked, no workers tramped through the streets; faces were pinched, fires burnt low and meagre in the bitter weather; money was not forthcoming, clothes were few, pleasures were at an end. Men paused and waited, as it were, while the thunder growled and the first heavy drops of the storm began to fall, slowly and deliberately, and then faster and ever faster, till none could escape the universal drenching.

One bitter morning, in the beginning of March, Myles and Mary Heywood turned out to their daily work. A furious, stinging wind, and a driving, scourging rain, saluted them as they entered the long sloping street leading to the factory. Myles pulled his collar up about his ears, and Mary folded her shawl more tightly round her, pulling it also farther over her face. They walked in silence, and did not look at each other. In truth, both their hearts were sad as sad could be. They were entirely changed from the well-to-do, untroubled, noble-looking brother and sister who, six or seven months ago, had walked home together in the heat of the August afternoon. What a hot, plentiful blaze of sunlight then! what cold, what wet, what inclemency of elements now! The contrast was pointed and searching, and went home to both.

For months now, Myles’s heart had been growing bitterer and harder, and more rebellious; ever since that evening on which Sebastian Mallory had come and interrupted his talk with Adrienne. He had not seen her often since then, or rather had not visited her often since then; but on the few occasions when he had done so, she was changed. He had seen the change distinctly, had seen how her eye wavered and her colour changed under his piercing glance, for he could look at her steadily enough now, without bashfulness, and with a gaze of desperate, hopeless inquiry, which, he thought, must burn her secret from her heart. With each visit, each conversation with her, he had grown more hopeless, more despairingly certain that what little part or lot he had ever had in her life, had now vanished--was done with for ever more. Once, strolling aimlessly along, he had seen her come out of a shop, and had been going to speak to her, when Sebastian Mallory had come up, smiling, and lifting his hat, and fixing his eyes upon her face.

The sight had been quite enough for Myles, who had plunged his hands into his pockets, and turned away with bitterness in his heart. Once or twice--he did not know how often--he had purposely and pointedly spoken to her of Sebastian, and had even asked her a question or two about her former acquaintance with him, and had watched cruelly and unflinchingly to see how she took it. And she had taken it just as he had expected, with downcast eyes, a heightened colour, and a sudden confused silence. He had been satisfied with his experiment; now he had given over going to Mr. Blisset’s house, saying to himself,

‘If she cares for us, and is worth anything, she will come--she will come, if it is only to see Mary. By this I shall know her. If she comes I’ll keep quiet, and try to be satisfied with her--friendship. And if she does not come--I’ll hate her; no, I’ll think no more of her--I’ll forget her, and rid myself of this plague that has been with me ever since I knew her.’

Adrienne did not come; days and weeks went by, and she came not, and Myles did not hate her; he did not cease to think of her. His ‘plague’ tormented him more grievously than ever, and his life was miserable. His days were long; there was only half the usual work to fill them. The weary afternoons and evenings were unutterably long. He sat at home with his books open before him, or he took his way to the reading-room, and sat with more books open before him, and stared at them, and knew nothing about what was in them, while the chimes played ‘Life let us cherish!’ and Myles thought of the hundreds, now daily augmenting, dwelling in the houses beneath those chimes, to whom, in their destitution, the tune must have seemed a sort of melodious mockery. ‘Life let us cherish!’ while the men across the Atlantic were locked in the deadly grip of war, and the cotton manufacture in England was coming steadily, surely to a stand-still. A few more throbs of its mighty pulse--a few more desperate struggles to break through the paralysis that was creeping over it, and then the iron lungs, the great throbbing heart of it, its huge limbs, its vast arteries, would be quiescent--for who should venture to say how long? It was a deadly prospect.

With these various causes of distress gnawing perseveringly at his heart, the young man might well be silent, as he set his teeth against the wind, and stooped his head to shield his face from the rain.

While Mary, on her side, had cause enough and to spare of unhappiness. The poor girl’s heart was full to bursting of a dread fear that she had had for many weeks now, and concerning which she had not breathed a word to any one.

‘That it should ha’ begun just now!’ she thought to herself; ‘just when times is hard, and work is short, and I can none get him all he should have.’

She kept up a brave face; worked out her daily task at her looms, and her much harder, heart-breaking task at home; had caresses, and smiles, and tender words for Edmund, and a good face to turn to poor Myles, in his gloom, which oppressed her faithful heart like a chill hand laid upon it. She had her meed of consolation for Harry Ashworth, who said he was growing deafer and deafer. She had her own private astonishment at Adrienne’s long absence, but no thought that Adrienne meant any slight or ill-will to her or hers.

Still, her secret cares had thinned her cheeks, and taught her lips to assume a sadder curve; had placed a line or two upon her frank, calm brow, and lent a quiet pensiveness to her dark-brown eyes. It had always been a good face--now it had the dignity and pathos of well-borne sorrow.

They entered the great gas-lighted room. Myles went off to his part of the mill and Mary to hers. How hot and overpowering it felt, after the bitter rawness of the outside air! She cast aside her shawl, and set her looms going, and in a few minutes the old accustomed roar of the machinery had somewhat soothed her; and her monotonous, weary pondering over ways and means, and sharp, stinging fears as to some dread event hovering in the near future, had been somewhat dissipated by attention to her work and the chat of a fellow factory-worker.

‘I reckon we’st soon have to shut up shop here, Mary,’ said the latter. ‘I yeard Wilson say as how we couldn’t hold out mich longer.’

‘Eh, what?’ said Mary, with a start--‘eh, I hope not, lass. What mun we do, if we’ve no work?’

The other girl shrugged her shoulders.

‘I’ve yeard say, too, as if we do have any work, it’ll be wi’ Surats, and I mun say I’d rayther have none at all. I conno’ work yon stuff.’

‘I care nowt at all, whether it’s Surats, or what it is, so as I’ve summat to do, and summat to earn,’ said Mary.

‘Thou may work twelve hours a day at Surats, and not earn above six shillin’ a week,’ said her companion cynically; and then the conversation ceased, and Mary was left to her reflections.

At eight they went home to breakfast, and at half-past they were at their work again, and continued at it until half-past twelve, when Wilson put his head into the room, and called out,

‘All the hands in this here room will please wait a few minutes in the big yard. I’ve got something to say to you.’

The same announcement had been made in the different rooms, and the result was, all the hands were assembled and waiting, some curiously, some apathetically, for the communication that was coming.

Wilson jumped upon a lorrie which stood in the yard, and in a clear, distinct voice, read out from a paper he held in his hand this announcement:--

‘I hereby give notice that on and after Friday, March the --th, this factory will be closed, owing to the present condition of the cotton trade, in consequence of the American war. At the same time, as I am anxious to keep my hands together, and to save them as much as possible from distress, I undertake, for the present at least, and until other circumstances should make a change desirable, to furnish them with the means of subsistence, and such of them as are my tenants will not be pressed for rent until the times improve. Each head of a family is requested to attend in the warehouse of this mill on the afternoon of Monday next, at three o’clock, when the conditions of relief will be made known, and the names and addresses of all in receipt thereof taken down. I request you earnestly, and with perfect confidence, to try, all of you, during this present trouble, to act together, and assist me in the preservation of order and the relief of distress.

‘SEBASTIAN MALLORY.’

There was a short silence; then murmurs; then, from some lips, an attempt at a cheer. Some girls and women were wiping their eyes with their aprons, and one or two men waved their hats: exclamations and murmurs arose all around. ‘Eh, but that’s reet-down kind, that is!’ ‘Th’ chap is a good sort!’ ‘Well, we needna fear to clem just yet!’ and so on. The gratitude was very real, if expressed with true Lancashire reticence and absence of effusion. But almost greater than the gratitude was the gloom--the sense of shame and degradation--the feeling that this was a draught too bitter for any amount of sugaring to sweeten, and that they had done nothing to deserve to have to swallow it. Sebastian had done wisely in committing to Wilson the delivery of the message. Wilson seemed to the work-people almost as one of themselves; he, too, must suffer somewhat from this calamity. The humiliation would have been too intense had Sebastian read the announcement himself. He, like hundreds of other masters, was making money--netting large profits at this stage of the crisis. His piled-up warehouses would be emptied at profitable prices of the accumulated results of last year’s over-production, while the impossibility of getting at the stores of cotton which were undoubtedly reposing in large quantities in Manchester and Liverpool warehouses, relieved him from the immediate expense of working, and of paying wages. That part of the ‘panic,’ as it was and is always called by the work-people, was one of unmitigated severity for the poor man--for the worker--capital added hugely to her stores. Yet every employer of any foresight was troubled to know what was to become of his work-people during the great distress--such skilful, practised, deft-handed, soft-fingered work-people as no other corner of the world could supply to him--work-people who, if they once got scattered, or emigrated, or separated from their labour, could not be replaced--the choicest of craftsmen and craftswomen. This was a hard subject during all the years of the cotton famine--how keep the operatives together, provide for them, prevent them from becoming demoralised by the enforced idleness, combined with the living on money not earned by themselves? It was a problem which, all must confess, was nobly solved.

At this precise time, though the distress was daily augmenting in an appalling manner, though each week saw a greater number of factories closed entirely, yet the organised system of relief--that gigantic machinery whose equal the world had never before seen--was not yet in existence.

Sebastian, after long consultations with Mr. Sutcliffe, had come to the conclusion, for the present at least, to support his own work-people, and the result of that resolution was the paper just now read out by Wilson.

Slowly the hands dispersed. Mary Heywood, seeing her brother near the big gate, joined him there, and glanced rather doubtfully up into his face. Doubt rapidly changed to dismay: he was white as death; his lips tight-set; his great dark eyes absolutely scintillating with passion. The words she had been about to speak to him died upon her lips.

‘Thou go home, lass! I’ve a little business to do before I come after thee, but I’ll not be long,’ said he, so quietly and calmly that her heart beat a little less rapidly, and without a word she obeyed, leaving him there in the yard, he conscious only of one purpose, and of a burning restlessness until that purpose should be accomplished.

He waited by the gates, looking at no one, speaking to no one, until he saw that all the hands had filed out, and that Wilson was left alone in the office, locking things up. A few swift, striding steps brought him inside the little room. Wilson looked up.

‘Hey, Myles! Is that you? Do you want something?’

‘Yes. I just want to tell you to take my name--and my sister’s too--off the books. We shall not work here any more.’

‘Oh! but you will. This here is only a temporary stoppage, you know. Times must mend, though they look bad enough now, and Mallory’s won’t go to smash so easily.’

‘I shall never work here again, I tell you, nor Mary either. Take our names off the books, if you please; and look you, Wilson, if anybody comes round to my house offering me relief in’--a spasm twitched his pain-set lips--‘the master’s name, I’ll kick him out--so you’re warned.’

‘My certy, Myles! You’re mad to talk i’ that way. You’ve ne’er thought about it. How are you to live without relief? And when such a handsome arrangement has been made----’

‘That’s nothing to the point. Please to do as I ask, and remember, I’ll keep my word.’

He turned on his heel and left the yard. Wilson looked after him, watching the proud, elastic figure, haunted by the remembrance of the deadly paleness of the face, and the sombre, despairing gloom of the eyes.

Wilson acted as became a wary man, who did not choose to commit himself--shook his head, and murmured,

‘Ay, ay, my good chap, but you’ll have to eat humble-pie sooner or later--and why not sooner?’

Evidently, the characters of Myles and his easy-going old friend were fundamentally unlike.

Meantime Myles, breathing rather more freely, and with a faint return of colour to his cheek, took his way home, feeling that now, if he met Sebastian Mallory, he could look him in the face as defiantly as he chose. There was something almost exquisite in the sense that, though only a few pounds stood between him and destitution, yet he was no longer in any way dependent upon Mallory.

Arrived at home, he found the kitchen empty; the dinner half ready (not such an abundant dinner, even now, as it once had been), the table spread. He sat down moodily, and waited; and presently Mary came down looking very sad indeed. She had not been crying, but there was something in her eyes speaking of a grief and fear beyond tears.

‘Well, my lass, where’s Edmund?’

‘Edmund’s in bed, Myles.’

‘In bed!’ he echoed, looking up in some surprise; ‘why, what ails him?’

‘The same thing as has been ailin’ him this six-week. I dunnot know what it may be. Th’ doctor calls it low fever.’

‘The doctor!’ he echoed again, more astonished still. ‘What’s the meaning of this, Molly?’

‘Eh, Myles, if thou’d none been so wrapped up in summat all this time, thou might ha’ seen as the lad were fair pinin’ away.’

She could hardly finish her words, but sat down upon the rocking-chair, and covered her face with her hands for a moment, while he looked at her with a haggard gaze. A hundred trifles came into his mind now, crowding quickly forward--Mary’s pre-occupation--Edmund’s passive silence and flushed face--and he had never seen it. Brute that he was!

‘And to-day he’s that weak, he can’t sit up no longer,’ continued Mary, raising her face from her hands and looking sadly before her; ‘and I’m sore fleyed he’ll ne’er be strong again, that I am.’

Then she rose, and began to finish the few preparations for dinner, though, sooth to say, no two people ever made ready for a meal with less appetite. She began to talk, as she thought cheerfully.

‘When I heard Wilson read out as factory would stop o’ Friday, my heart fair sank within me, when I thowt o’ yon lad, and us wi’out a penny to earn, but, eh! I could ha’ cried wi’ joy afore he’d done. Yon Mr. Mallory mun be a reet good-hearted chap, and our Edmund winnot clem now.’

‘Mary!’ he exclaimed, starting up, and speaking in so strange a voice that she looked at him involuntarily, and saw again the look--the pale face, the scintillating eyes--which had so terrified her an hour before, at the mill-gate. He stepped across the room to her, and grasped her arm. ‘Never thou name such a thing again. I told Wilson to take my name, and thy name, off the books, and to send anybody round here, poking into my affairs, if he dared. I’d die like a dog before I’d take bit or sup from _him_, or let any of those that belonged to me do it.’

‘Why, whatever----’ she began, but he went on, forcibly moderating his voice,

‘Molly, I never could have thought to hear such a word from thee. Hast thought what it means? It means that we--seven hundred and more of us--shall go like beggars every day, and take that man’s money, and eat his bread, and do nothing for it. Thou’rt mazed with thy trouble,’ he added soothingly, ‘or thou’d never have dreamt of it.’

‘But how mun we live?’ she asked, seeing only that they were Mr. Mallory’s work-people, and that he prized their services, and like a generous master desired to help them until better times came round again. ‘Thou wert always so set against th’ master, lad; but when we’re like to starve, what mun we do?’

Neither Mary nor Myles, it may have been observed, made any mention of their mother, or spoke as if she could relieve them. Later in the distress Mary went to her mother, and represented their situation. Mrs. Hoyle replied sententiously that her money was sunk in her husband’s business, and she had no longer any control over it, which was indeed true: she had put it entirely in his power immediately after marrying him, and it remained there, for towards the close of 1863 Mrs. Hoyle, who had believed that she was doing well for herself in her marriage, died of a rapid, sudden illness, and her money passed away from her children, and into her husband’s hands, for ever.

‘We’re not like to starve yet,’ replied Myles, to his sister’s last remark. ‘I’ve got over ten pounds put by--it ought to have been more, but I wasn’t as careful as I should have been; and you’ve something of your own, I know. It’s true, we’d meant to keep it, but in these times we’ll most of us have to use up what we put by.’

‘Eh, lad!’ answered Mary, with sorrowful embarrassment, ‘mine were such a bit! And I’ve drawn it all out, for to buy yon lad his bits of things as he must have. Doctor ordered them, and I saw as thou were moithered wi’ summat, so I didn’t ax thee, but just used up my own bit o’ brass. It’s all gone--all but a few shillin’s.’

He dropped her arm, and turned aside. This then was the prospect--a sick brother to cherish, himself and his sister to support; the rent to pay; and a little over ten pounds between them and destitution. Undaunted though his spirit was, it was fain to stand appalled before these facts, until at last, turning round, he said,

‘I’ll think about what can be done, Mary. Ten pounds will last a good while, and thou’rt so clever at managing, and all that.’

Mary was silent. She knew how quickly ten pounds would vanish, where there was an invalid to be cared for; and the regular weekly sum which Myles had haughtily refused, seemed, now that it was out of her reach, to assume the proportions of absolute wealth.

‘Myles,’ she said, ‘I know thou mun have some reason for what thou’rt doing, but _I’ve_ no grudge against the master. I don’t see why I shouldn’t take the relief and help Ned a bit ... thou needna know nowt about it.’

‘Mary!’ He paused, choked back some passionate emotion, and looked at her. There rushed over his mind, as by an inspiration, the conviction that what he had said, what he had proposed to do, was a mean, tyrannical way of making others suffer for his own private grudge. Mary’s mind was to be kept on the rack as to ways and means; Edmund’s comforts were to be stinted, or stopped, because he, Myles, hated Sebastian Mallory, and, knowing his sister would obey him, despotically said, ‘You will take no help from him.’

Certainly, to know that Mary and Edmund were subsisting upon Mr. Mallory’s bounty, while he was idle, would be anguish almost as keen as to sit down and subsist upon that bounty himself; but anguish, it seemed, prevailed a good deal in the world. It had to be borne by some people--what right had he to shift his portion upon the shoulders of a loving woman and a cripple boy? He cried shame upon himself. His cheek flushed, and he hesitated no longer. He had begun to speak passionately; he finished calmly.

‘I had not thought of that. You are right, Molly. You’d better do so. It will be bad for me to bear’ (how bad, his pale face and drawn lips foretold), ‘but it’s best so. This is a great trouble that has come upon us, and we must be as great as we can to meet it, I suppose. I shall look out and see if I can find anything to do--perhaps away from here. I’m sure it’s the best thing I could do. It’s a great mistake my being here at all.’

This speech, with the misery and bitterness underlying its acquiescence in her wish, seemed to freeze Mary’s heart within her. She could not understand it, yet it seemed to forebode evil and misery and woe to her. She looked at Myles, in whose whole attitude was something alien and strange. For a moment a fearful weight and foreboding oppressed her; then, breaking suddenly loose from it, she ran up to him with a cry of love, flung her arms around his neck, and kissed him eagerly.

‘Eh, Myles, hush, hush! Thou munnot talk like that. I’d clem sooner nor take a penny from any one thou didn’t like. It were only that I were quite disheartened, like, wi’ wondering what I were to do in these hard times, now yon lad is so poorly. But for thee to go away and leave us--the best brother’--a hug--‘ay, the vary best, ever a lass had--my certy, don’t say nowt about it again.’

She was half laughing, half crying. As for Myles, the clasp of her warm arms about his neck seemed to unstiffen it; the pressure of her face upon his breast appeared to loosen a load of pent-up feeling. He put his arm round her waist, and kissed her soft brown hair again and again, and once more the feeling rushed over him that this was true hearty love, and that he was a fool to distress himself for that other love, which would never be his.

‘Don’t take on so, there’s a dear lass. Do just as you like about the relief. Say nothing to me about it, and I shall know nothing about it. There’s a reason why I can take neither bit nor sup from young Mallory--a reason I can’t tell you, and that will never be removed. A crumb of his bread would choke me.’

‘Why, has he done thee any wrong?’

‘None at all, and means me no wrong; it’s what they call circumstances, Molly. They come rather hard upon a fellow sometimes, that’s all. Come! the dinner must be well-nigh cold. Let’s have it, and then I’ll go up and sit wi’ poor Ned a bit.’

It was a dark prospect which opened before them; yet, after this conversation, they both felt lighter of heart, and better prepared to meet it.