Cinders and Smoke #2
She succeeded in the first and failed, although one might argue that a martyred saint who did not prevent her murderers from completing their crime was equally successful, in the second. Those who raised their hand against the purest of hearts would be condemned forever.
Thornton absently rubbed a bruise darkening the back of his left arm. How he had received it, he did not know. Whatever its source, this was no badge of honor, for she had been laid low within inches of his protection.
His miserable attempt to exercise the sheer force of his will to prevent the marchers from breaking through his gates had illustrated just how thin was his influence over the broader affairs of men.
He was a fraud.
All that he had believed in…that bare-knuckles was the way of business and, thus, life…
was counterfeit. Where he had attempted like King Canute to hold back the tide, she had floated above those cobbles like Eve, Venus, or Mother Mary, her hands lifted toward the crowd in the eternal gesture of supplication.
He had shouted in anger, in possession, grounded in his rights as Master. She had barely lifted her voice above the roar, begging men who had been subjected to the worst cruelties to rediscover their humanity.
A tiny woman proved, in a minute of indescribable courage, as she leaped from behind his protective bulk that a life without love was thin porridge.
Her ardor was not the idealized romances of men and women but rather of that unique charity that had resonated through every organized faith for the past eighteen centuries.
For her efforts, because of her love for all who that night had crowded the mews between factory and house, she lay small and helpless on the divan in his office, her blood staining her dress.
His life was in tatters. His anger did not flutter high above his putative turrets.
Rather it lay in the gutter, cast down after its shaft had been snapped by other weapons.
His unworthiness in the light of her towering perfection left him bereft of any anchor in the swirling tides that pulled against his limbs.
If Miss Hale’s actions alone were not enough of a punishment, his preconceived notions had taken another telling blow.
For all his pretensions of superiority, he, John Thornton, the man who had lifted his family back into Milton’s first circle and had made Marlborough Mills a mighty force, was not the one who saved her from falling beneath the trampling boots of enraged workers.
No, that honor was reserved for Nicholas Higgins, the arch-nemesis of Milton’s laissez-faire manufacturers.
They most desired for the government to stay out of all their affairs, to leave-them-alone.
They were outraged that the Factory Acts had limited the number of hours they could force their child employees to work in a given day.
They found it radical and dangerous that working men and women would demand higher wages rather than accept the cuts that would expand mill profits.
Yet oddly, for all their protestations about Parliament’s long nose, they found comfort in being able to call upon the militia when their laborers objected too strenuously.
Nicholas Higgins was the one Milton man whose iron-strapped backbone would not let these ‘Christian’ gentlemen have their way without resistance.
As the first man in the union, Higgins was hated with a fervor akin to that heaped upon the Prophet Elijah by Ahab and Jezebel for his presumption in pointing to the industrialists’ original sin.
And, if one believed, as Thornton did, that every man could be his own master if he had only the gumption, Higgins would serve as the cardinal example of the weakness of spirit and greed ascribed to all who worked for wages by those who profited from that labor. 444
Yet, contrary to his presumed grasping nature, when havoc was exploding all about, Higgins was the man who had kept his head.
Unlike Thornton, who had been paralyzed, the grizzle-haired man had effortlessly scooped Margaret into his arms as she slid toward the coal-slimed cobbles, the trickle on her forehead glistening chocolate brown in the full moon’s watery light.
But the crowd’s taste for blood was slaked at the sight of Margaret’s, perhaps proving that they only had been seeking vengeance upon one of their oppressors.
After Higgins, trailed by Thornton, vanished through the mill’s swiftly-bolted portal, the mob evaporated as if Milton’s ash-grey April snows.
Thornton was ashamed of himself. The niggling sense that much of his worldview had been built upon shifting sands tried him, as well.
And the frigid glass against his forehead did not cool his fever.
His steps reverberated as he climbed the stairs into the high gallery.
The bass beat hearkened to his childhood when the Darkshire Regiment would march through town on its way down to Liverpool.
Back then, the enemy had been clear: the Beast, the Tyrant, the damned crappauds.
Men knew then that signing up meant you were out to kill those in Frankish blue, stinking of garlic, and mouthing heathenish words in order to keep them on the other side of the Channel.
The workingman’s enemy is well-disguised. His grand’da may hae been your grandsire’s best friend. He speaks the same language and eats the same food as you. While he may hae servants, they shop for his needs in the same markets as your woman.
The only difference? He hires. You toil.
So many of them act like they be the Duke of Devonshire, pissing rosewater and shitting sovereigns.
Higgins’ shoulders were bowed as he traced Thornton’s path up and away from the scene in the master’s office.
The physician Donaldson had arrived about twenty minutes before, dragged there by Miss Hale’s woman, Dixon.
When the trouble began, she had been below-stairs while her charge had sat to dinner with the Thorntons.
How that hard woman had found her way through the crowds of muttering men still clustered in the streets to Donaldson’s quarters was beyond Higgins’ ken.
What she said to gain safe conduct back to the mill was less of a mystery.
Nicholas Higgins had encountered her when Miss Hale would attend to Bessy.
The thought of her taking on work-hardened men and giving better than she got buoyed his battered soul.
Nay, there is little to find in this night, let alone this world, about which to smile.
At least the doctor is hopeful. He thinks the stone only grazed Miss Hale.
But while the lady may be out of danger the cause of all who tend the looms and their families, is more perilous than ever before.
The fine folks of Milton, the ladies who use acts of charity to ease their consciences and the men who relieve their guilt by supporting the vicars and preachers with the blunt they need to feed the bairns, will turn their backs on us if this violence against one of their own goes unpunished.
No, this could be the death of the union. All of us will be painted with the same brush as that poor, broken fool.555
I will, and must, give him up. There is nothing more to be done.
One short and one long flight led him up through the building’s eaves to an area that may have begun its life as a place where workers looped block and tackle arrangements above the factory floor.
Sometime in the past twenty years, though, one master or another had walled and windowed the inner side while punching through the roof on the other.
Masters could now ascend into the factory’s heavens–fittingly, thought Higgins–for a God’s eye view of the ants toiling among the gigantic machinery.
As his head cleared the final stair, Higgins was able to scan Thornton from the ankle up, his eyes gradually moving from legs to head. He was surprised to see this tall, proud man bent as though he were an ancient gaffer. The Master’s posture bespoke of great weariness—both of body and soul.
At the sound of Higgins’ footfalls, Thornton pulled away from the outer window and turned to face Higgins.
“Well, man,” Thornton challenged, “how is she?”
Higgins nodded in respect for the man’s position and his obvious distress at Miss Hale’s injury. He replied, “Better’n we might ‘ave ‘oped. Th’ doctor…”
“Doctor?” Thornton snapped, “Donaldson? Who sent for him?”
Higgins snorted, “Yes…Doctor Donaldson. Miss ‘ale’s woman, Miss Dixon, somehow got through th’ crowds…both ways…to fetch ‘im here.”
Looking skeptical, Thornton shot back, “Really? How did she manage to get past those men down below—the ones I see lurking about the gates, house, and the very doors to this building? Is she in league with them? Are we to expect an assault? A massacre? How can you stand there, man? I know you care for Miss Hale, I do! She told me about her friendship with your daughter. What if those animals breach our doors? What if they drag her out and ravage her? They will not get to her again! I swear it.”
By this point, Thornton’s voice had ripped itself ragged on the edges of his despair. He made to dash down the stairs, but Higgin’s shoulders blocked his progress. The older man planted a meaty hand on each of Thornton’s arms, holding him until he stopped struggling.
“Ye asked o’ the men you see in the courtyard, Master Thornton. They be union men. They lissen ta me. Long as we ‘ave breath, no wrecker will impose on Marlborough Mills,” Higgins said.
He continued, “While the factory be yours an’ Mr. Bell’s, each o’ us…wull, not me as I don’ work for you, don’ work for anybody…sees this place as ‘is. You may buy th’ machines, but ‘tis our sweat that keeps ‘em runnin’.
“I tol’ them ta stand guard, not ta let any ‘o those ‘ot ‘eads near th’ ‘ouse nor th’ mill. T’would never ‘low ‘arm ta come ta any ‘oo call Marlborough ‘ome, ‘specially Miss ‘ale. She is dear ta my Bessy.”