Cinders and Smoke #4
“You say you are building a better world. I ask you, for whom? I would imagine ‘tis for the likes of you, not us. Woe betides any who gets in the way of you and your dreams.
“And I must ask you, of what do you dream? A golden city or piles of gold?
“You and your ilk are blessed with the riches wrung from our very bones, the muscles of the damned.
“You see us as nothing more than the animals you need to make the cloth you sell to pay for your houses and drink. You would cast us off in an instant and damn us for being lazy if age and injury kept us from working all out.
“Miss Hale considers us men.”
Thornton was staggered by the way that Higgins’ voice dropped from the ferocity of a Dissenter preacher crying out eternal damnation into a reverence akin to when Papists speak of the Holy Mother.
The memory of Margaret’s sanctity–her compassion–curdled his insides as he recalled her responses to the trials of Milton’s workers and their families.
Higgins was not finished. He flared back to life, but his ire was subdued, seeking to illuminate rather than indict.
“I have lived in this town for more than thirty years. Little has floated down the canals that I know nothing about. So, I have a fair idea of your story. You were not born into scandal. That came to you later.
“You, Master John Thornton, fought and reclaimed your honor, your family’s good name. You paid your da’s debts.
“Yet you cannot tell me that you did not ever want another penny or shilling from the men who controlled your time and sweat. Is that not the way of things; men who labor seek a tiny bit more daily bread?”
Thornton fought back if only to try to salvage some of his pride, “Then find a second position. I did. I ran deliveries for other shops before my day at the draper’s began, then I would grub a few more pence after hours!”
Higgins appraised the younger man, pursed his lips, and sarcastically replied, “And who might you be to suggest that a man who works fourteen out of twenty-four on your looms ought to find ways to fill the other ten hours with more labor?
“How might you react if I fell asleep down below and ended up destroying machinery worth hundreds?
“Who are you to despise us, to say with conviction that we are trying to steal what is yours?
Exactly what is that? The yarn will not spin itself.
The fabric will not miraculously fly finished onto the rolls.
Without men at the stations, women replacing the spindles, and bairns crawling underneath, you would have nothing.
“You mill-masters accuse us of stealing what is yours?
What might that be? The price you get after you conspire to gouge the middlemen, who then must jack up their prices to merchants?
The goods become so dear that workingmen cannot even afford to buy a shirt cut out of the cloth they themselves made?
“What about your theft of what is ours?
“You are so proud that you ‘reclaimed your family’s honor.’ Yet what have you done with that good name?
“Have you raised it up so that men like Slickson and Hamper will settle at your table, all the while plotting to destroy you?
“Are you like the slave masters of old, profiting from those without choice, only different in that your conscience is clear of the stain caused by owning another human?
“Or have you tried to find a way to uphold your principals—and I know them to be upright, for if they were otherwise you could not work with Mr. Bell and Reverend Hale—to improve the lives of all in Milton?
“Have you been a good steward of your wealth, or have you simply used it to pursue your own pleasure?”
Thornton heard out Higgins while unsuccessfully seeking to ignore thoughts of the woman who lay injured downstairs. But Margaret Hale, even unconscious, would not allow him that luxury. He listened with new clarity, and Thornton was ashamed of himself.
He had drunk deeply from the gospel bruited by self-righteous vicars nurtured by the ruling classes. These holy men were imbued not with the Holy Spirit but rather with the lust for mammon that echoed that of their well-heeled masters.
For the first time, he understood Mr. Hale’s rejection of his cleric’s living.
Thornton, in his rush to eradicate his incipient shame, had lost his way. The path that led him from his father’s study on that awful day was bending back around to deposit him in that blood-stained seat of power with the muzzle planted against his temple.
He had become like Hamper and the others, marking his success, not in the bridges he had built, but rather, by the number of digits in his bank account. Thornton was treading the trail of moneyed men like Marley and Scrooge. His end could be as dire.666
He had seen his past. He knew his present. He was terrified of the future.
Somehow, he understood that he had been offered an opportunity to alter what he feared might otherwise become a foregone conclusion.
He whispered, “What must I do?”
Higgins replied simply, softly, “Exagoras Agapis.”777
Thornton squared on Higgins and stared, shocked that this rough-edged man knew Greek, let alone Greek that he, Thornton, was only just beginning to learn in Hale’s bookroom.
“What did you say?” Thornton asked.
Higgins suppressed a smile, secretly enjoying the discomfiture of the young man, so full of himself, as was the nature of men without snow in their hair.
“I said Exagoras Agapis. That is, sir, the love which causes us to redeem ourselves, to become the best version of who we are. ‘Tis something I heard the Countess of Matlock say when I was in the company of my uncle, the old Bosun over at Selkirk Castle,” Higgins answered.
He added, “I know something about you, Master Thornton. You have never dealt unfairly with any man—either another master or workingmen like me. If you can be accused of pride, t’would be over this. You always believe you are treating one and all decently, as you would expect yourself to be treated.
“After all, would you not hold yourself in disdain if you complained at your lot or blamed others for your situation? You measure every man with the same stick.
“And the difficulty lies in the fact not all men measure up to your standards. Your pride thus becomes something worse: a prideful nature that leads you to scorn those who may not have your drive.
“You need to find your way back to that caring man with justifiable pride in his accomplishments, but also one who is more tolerant of his lessers. You have lost your way and are seen as a proud man who cares only for himself and his reputation.
“You will have to find the right trail, or you will never convince Miss Hale that you are the type of man who has a place in her future.
“You have to redeem yourself and become the good man I know you can be.”
Higgins’ fatherly advice sent Thornton back into a deep study. Nicholas left him in peace.
Then a sensation—one that had been unnoticed in its absence—resumed. This was the constant of every textile mill that had been missing at Marlborough for several days.
The vibrations of machinery tremored the floorboards.
Higgins noticed that Thornton snapped into his professional guise as the building shivered. The Master first leaned against the windows overlooking the files of looms lining the floor below. Then he freed a latch which allowed him to swing the frame inward.
The roar of wheels and pulleys drowned out the clicking of shuttles flying between strands of wool and cotton.
Higgins acknowledged his look and slipped back into his deep Darkshire cant as his recent life stepped into the forefront.
“Buh-leve me, I am nay scab, but t’it seemed foolhardy to hae ye paying all these men and feeding’ their women and bairns in the bargain—and hon’r’ble man ye are, ye be payin’ ‘em a full wage—an’ not hae them do naught to earn their own bread.
“Ye hae a fact’ry full ‘o yarn, an’ attic full ‘o workers, an’ a desk full ‘o ord’rs. I foun’ their lead man an’, once’t I were sure ‘e’d not break the mill, tol’ ‘im ta git ta work. Th’ machines were still set up from when the boys turned out.
“Think ‘o this as a one-time-only situation, an act ‘o mercy. They be runnin’ only what wuz al’rdy goin’. Should be ‘nuff ta cov’r their keep for a few days ‘til we git this sorted.
“Our argument is with ye, nae with them. They be ‘ere because they be starvin’ o’er their looms by Dublin Castle. Me da and uncle wouldn’a allow that. They’d be o’ the thinkin’ that food was part ‘o th’ answer, but work, too.
“The ol’ Bosun would’ve talked with ‘is betters up at Selkirk and down at Netherfield, the May-zon the Rochets call it. The Earls and Countesses wouldn’a ‘lowed any ta starve.
“Ol’ Darcy and even his boy, that new hopped up Earl ‘o Pemberley, would’a open’d their granaries to feed th’ Irish, if only ‘cuz Mrs. Elizabeth, may God rest her soul, would have insisted on it.
“I met the Darcys back in the Twenties when the place I wuz workin’ closed up ‘cuz the owner refused ta switch from water ta steam. The Bosun dragged me up ta Selkirk’s stables and tried ta put me ta work shovelin’ horse dung.
I tell ya this now, Master Thornton, I be a power loom lead man. I ‘ad a big ‘ead, but I vow that t’was fur good reason. Knew whut t’was doin’, I did. Standin’ behind the southbound end o’ a northbound ‘orse was no way, fur as I was concerned, ta live.”
Thornton smiled at the thought of the grizzled weaver as a youngster trying to fit in as a groom on one of the great Derbyshire estates. He heartily agreed with Higgins that life as a stable hand was no way for a town-bred boy to exist.
Further conversation and thoughts were disrupted when Dr. Donaldson joined them in their lair.
Margaret grimaced. She evaluated her appearance with her eyes closed. The pain radiating from her temple sketched itself across the planes of her face. No expression she bore could be pleasant, she mused, so she settled upon defining her countenance as grimacing.