Looking back upon their past life of plenty, and their present empty homes and famished11 faces, little wonder that this misguided body of men grew to find that something of the old Satan was in them yet. A great deal of it, too. Perhaps remorse12 held its full share with them. They had intended that it should be so entirely13 for the better when they threw up work; and it had turned out so surprisingly for the worse. They had meant to return to work on their own terms; earning more and toiling14 less: they had been led to believe that this result lay in their own hands, and was as safe and certain as that the sun shone overhead at noonday. Instead of that--here they were, in as deplorable a condition as human beings could well be; Time had been, not very long ago either, that the false step might have been redeemed15; Richard North had offered them work again on the old terms. Ay, and he had once conceded a portion of their demands--as they remembered well. But that time and that offer had gone by for ever. Fresh men (few though they were) had taken their places, and they themselves were starving and helpless.
The feeling against these new men was bitter enough; it was far more bitter against the small number of old workmen who had gone back again. We are told that the heart of man is desperately16 wicked: our own experience shows us that it is desperately selfish. They saw the employed men doing the work which once was theirs; they saw them wearing good coats, eating good food. They themselves had neither one nor the other; and work they had rejected. It would not have seemed quite so hard had the work altogether left the place: but to see these others doing it and living in comfort was more than mortal temper could brook17.
This was not all. The men unreasonably18 held to it that these others having taken work again, was the cause why they themselves were kept out of it. Richard North would ha' come-to, they said, if these curs hadn't went sneaking19 back again to lick his hand. If all had held out, Dick North must ha' given in. And this they repeated so constantly, in their ire, one to another, that at last they grew to believe it. It was quite wrong, and they were wholly mistaken: for had Richard North not begun again cautiously as he did, and on the old terms, he would not have recommenced at all: but the men refused to see this, and held to their idea, making it a greater grievance20 than the want of food. It is so convenient to have something substantial on which to throw blame: and unlimited21 power and permission to punch the obnoxious22 head would have afforded intense gratification. Oh, it was very hard to bear. To see this small knot of men re-established in work, and to know that it was their own work once, and might have been theirs still! Peeping through hedges, hiding within doorways23, standing24 sulkily or derisively25 in the open ground, they would watch the men going to and fro, guarded by the two policemen. Many a bitter word, many a silent threat was levelled at the small band. Murder had been done from a state of mind not half as bad as they were cherishing.
"What be you looking at, with those evil frowns on your faces?"
A group of malcontents, gazing from a corner of North Inlet at the daily procession, found this question suddenly sounding on their ears. Mrs. Gass had stepped out of a dwelling26 close by, and put it to them. Their eyes were following the escorted men coming home to their twelve-o'clock dinner, so that they had not observed her.
They turned to her, and dropped their threatening expression. A man named Poole, not too much respected in the most prosperous times, and one of the worst of the malcontents, answered boldly too.
"We was taking the measure o' that small lot o' convic's. Wishing we could brand 'em."
"Ah," said Mrs. Gass. "It strikes me some of you have been wishing it before to-day. I should like to give you a bit of advice, my men; and you, especially, Poole. Take care you don't become convicts yourselves."
"For two pins, I'd do what 'ud make me one," was the rejoinder of Poole, who was in a more defiant27 mood than even he often dared exhibit. He was a large, thick-set man, with shaggy light hair and a brick-dust complexion28. His clothes, originally fustian29, had been worn and torn and patched until they now hardly held together.
"You are a nice jail-bird, Poole! I don't think you ever were much better than one," added Mrs. Gass. To which candid30 avowal31 Poole only replied by a growl33.
"These hard times be enough to make jail-birds of all of us," interposed another, Foster; but speaking civilly. "Why don't the Government come down and interfere34, and prevent our work being took out of our hands by these rascals35?"
"You put the work out of your own hands," said Mrs. Gass. "As to interference, I should have thought you'd had about enough of that, by this time. If you had not suffered them fine Trades' unionists to interfere with you, my men, you'd have been in full work now, happy and contented36 as the day's long."
"What we did, we did for the best."
"What you did, you did in defiance37 of common sense, and of the best counsels of your best friends," she said. "How many times did your master show you what the upshot would be if you persisted in throwing up your work?--how much breath did I waste upon you, as I'm doing now, asking you all to avoid a strike--and after the strike had come, day after day begging you to end it?--could any picture be truer than mine when I said what you'd bring yourselves to?--rags, and famine, and desolate38 homes. Could any plight be worse than this that you've dropped into now?"
"No, it couldn't," answered Foster. "It's so bad that I say Government ought to interfere for us."
"If I was Government, I should interfere on one point--and that's with them agitating39 unionists," bravely spoke40 Mrs. Gass. "I should put them down a bit."
"This is a free country, ma'am," struck in Ketler, who made one of the group.
"Well, I used to think it was, Ketler," she said; "but old ways seem to be turned upside down. What sort of freedom do you enjoy just now?--how much have you had of it since you bound yourselves sworn members of the Trades' unions? You have wanted to work and they haven't let you: you'd like to be clothed and fed as you used to be and to clothe and feed your folks at home, and they prevent your exercising the means by which you may do it. What freedom or liberty is there in that?--Come, Ketler, tell me, as a reasonable man."
"If the Trades' unions could do as they wish, there'd be work and comfort for all of us."
"I doubt that, Ketler."
"But they can't do it," added Ketler. "The masters be obstinate41 and won't let 'em."
"That's just it," said Mrs. Gass. "If the Trades' unions held the world in their hands, and there were no such things as masters and capital, why then they might have their own way. But the masters have their own interests to look after, their business and capital to defend: and the two sides are totally opposed one to the other, and squabbling is all that comes of it, or that ever will come of it. You lose your work, the masters lose their trade, the unionists fight it out fiercer than ever--and, between it all, the commerce of the country is coming to an end. Now, my men, that is the bare truth; and you can't deny it if you talk till midnight."
"'Twouldn't be no longer much of a free country, if the Government put down the Trades' unions," spoke a man satirically; one Cattleton.
"But it ought to put down their arbitrary way of preventing others working that want to work," maintained Mrs. Gass. "The unionists be your worst enemies. I'm speaking, as you know I have been all along, of the heads among 'em who make laws for the rest; not of poor sheep like yourselves who have joined the society in innocence42. If the heads like to live without work themselves, and can point out a way by which others can live without it, well and good; there's no law against that, nor oughtn't to be; but what I say Government ought to put down is this--their forcing you men to reject work when it's offered you. It's a sin and a shame that, through them, the country should be brought to imbecility, and you, its once free and brave workmen, to beggary."
"The thought has come over me at times that under the new state of things we are no better than slaves," confessed Ketler, his eyes wearing an excited look.
"Now you've just said it, Ketler," cried Mrs. Gass, triumphantly43. "Slaves. That's exactly what you are; and I wish to my heart all the workmen in England could open their eyes to the truth of it. You took a vow32 to obey the dictates44 of the Trades' union; it has bound you hand and foot, body and soul. If a job of work lay to your hand, you dare not take it up; no, not though you saw your little ones dying of famine before your eyes. It's the worst kind of slavery that ever fell on the land. Press-gangs used to be bad enough, but this beats 'em hollow."
There was no reply from any of the men. Mrs. Gass had been a good friend to their families even recently; and the old habits of respect to her, their mistress, still held sway. Perhaps some of them, too, silently assented45 to her reasoning.
"It's that that I'd have put down," she resumed. "Let every workman be free to act on his own judgment46, to take work or to leave it. Not but what it's too late to say so: as far as I believe, the mischief47 has gone too far to be remedied."
"It be mighty48 fine for the masters to cry out and say the Trades' unions is our enemies! Suppose we choose to call 'em our friends?" spoke Poole.
"Put it so, Poole, if you like," said Mrs. Gass equably. "The society's your friend, let's say. How has it showed its friendship? what has it done for you?"
Mr. Poole did not condescend49 to say.
"It's not hard to answer, Poole. The proofs, lie on the surface; not one of you but may read 'em off-hand. It threw you all out of good work that you had held for years under a good master, that you might probably have held, to the last day of your lives. It dismantled50 your homes and sent your things to the pawnshop. It has reduced you to a crust of bread, where you used to have good joints51 of beef; it has taken your warm shoes and coats, and sent you abroad half naked. Your children are starving, some of them are dead; your wives are worn out with trouble and discontent. And this not for a time, but for good: for, there's no prospect52 open to you. No prospect, that I can see, as I am a living woman. That's what your friends, as you call 'em, have done for you; and for thousands and thousands beside you. I don't care what they meant: let it be that they meant well by you, and that you meant well--as I'm sure you did--in listening to 'em: the result is as I've said. And you are standing here this day, ruined men."
Mr. Poole looked fierce.
"What is to become of you, and of others ruined like you, the Lord in heaven only knows. It's a solemn question. When the best trade of the country's driven from it, there's no longer any place for workmen. Emigration, suggest some of the newspapers. Others say emigration's overdone53 for the present. We don't know what to believe. Any way, it's a hard thing that a good workman should find no employment in his native land, but must be packed off, very much as if he was transported, to be an exile for ever."
Poole, not liking54 the picture, broke into an oath or two. The other men looked sad enough.
"You have been drinking, Poole," said Mrs. Gass with dignity, "Keep a civil tongue in your head before me if, you please."
"I've not had no more than half-a-pint," growled55 Poole.
"And that was half-a-pint too much," said Mrs. Gass. "When people's insides are reduced by famine, half-a-pint is enough to upset their brains in a morning."
"What business have Richard North to go and engage them frogs o' Frenchmen?" demanded Poole who had in truth taken too much for his good. "What business have them other fellows, as ought to have stuck by us, to go back to him? It's Richard North as wants to be transported."
"Richard North was a good master to you. The world never saw a better."
"He's a rank bad man now."
"No, no--hold th' tongue!" put in Ketler. "No good to abuse him."
"If you men had had a spark of gratitude56, you'd have listened to Mr. Richard North, when he prayed you to go back to him," said Mrs. Gass. "No, you wouldn't; and what has it done for him? Why, just ruined him, my men: almost as bare as you are ruined. It has took his hopes from him; wasted what little money he had; played the very dickens with his prospects57. The business he once had never will and never can come back. If once you break a mirror to pieces, you can't put it together again. Mr. Richard has a life of work to look forward to; he may earn a living, but he won't do much more. You men have at least the satisfaction of knowing that whilst you ruined your own prosperity, you also ruined his."
They had talked so long--for all that passed cannot be recorded--that it was close upon one o'clock, and the small band of workmen and the two policemen were seen coming back again towards the works. The malignant58 look rose again on Poole's face: and he gave forth59 a savage60 growl.
"There'll be mischief yet," thought Mrs. Gass, as she turned away.
Sounds of a woman's sobbing61 were proceeding62 from an open door as she went down North Inlet, and Mrs. Gass stepped in to see what might be the matter. They came from Dawson's wife. Dawson had been beating her. The unhappy state to which they were reduced tried the tempers of the men--of the women also, for that matter--rendering some of them little better than ferocious63 beasts. In the old days, when Dawson could keep himself and his family in comfort, never a cross word had been heard from him: but all that was changed; and under the new order of things, it often came to blows. The wife had now been struck in the eye. Smarting under ills of body and ills of mind, the woman enlarged on her wrongs to Mrs. Gass, and displayed the mark; all of which at another time she would certainly have concealed64. The home was miserably65 bare; the children, wan6 and thin, were in tatters like their mother; it was a comprehensive picture of wretchedness.
"And all through those idiots having thrown up their work at the dictates of the Trades' union!" was the wrathful comment of Mrs. Gass, as she departed. "They've done for themselves in this world: and, to judge by the unchristian lives they are living, seem to be in a fair way of doing for themselves in the next."
As she reached her own house, the smart housemaid was showing Miss Dallory out of it. That young lady, making a call on Mrs. Gass, had waited for her a short time, and was departing. They now went in together. Mrs. Gass, entering her handsome drawing-room, began recounting the events of the morning; what she had heard and seen.
"There'll be mischief, as sure as a gun," she concluded. "My belief is, that some of them would kill Mr. Richard if they had only got the chance."
Mary Dallory looked startled. "Kill him!" she cried. "Why, he has always been their friend. He would have been so still, had they only been willing."
"He's a better friend to them still than they are aware of," said Mrs. Gass, nodding her head wisely. "Miss Mary, if ever there was a Christian66 man on earth, it is Richard North. His whole life has been one long thought for others. Who else has kept up Dallory Hall? Who would have worked and slaved on, and on, not for himself, but to maintain his father's home, finding money for madam's wicked extravagance, to save his poor father pain, knowing that the old man had already more than he could bear. At Mr. Richard's age, he ought, before this, to have been making a home and marrying: he would have done so under happier circumstances: but he has had to sacrifice himself to others. He has done more for the men than they think for; ay, even at the time that they were bringing ruin upon him--as they have done--and ever since. Richard North is worth his weight in gold. Heaven, that sees all, knows that he is; and he will sometime surely be rewarded for it. It may not be in this world, my dear; for a great many of God's own best people go down to their very graves in nothing but disappointment and sorrow: but he'll find it in the next."
Miss Dallory made no reply. All she said was, that she must go. And Mrs. Gass escorted her to the front-door. They had almost reached it, when Miss Dallory stopped to ask a question, lowering her voice as she did so.
"Have you heard any rumour67 about Dr. Rane?"
Mrs. Gass knew what must be meant as certainly as though it had been spoken. She turned cold, and hot, and cold again. For once language failed her.
"It is something very dreadful," continued Miss Dallory. "I do not like to give utterance68 to it. It--it has frightened me."
"Law, my dear, don't pay no attention to such rubbish as rumours," returned Mrs. Gass, heartily69. "I don't. Folk say all sorts of things of me, I make little doubt; just as they are ready to do of other people. Let 'em! We shan't sleep none the worse for it. Goodbye. I wish you'd have stayed and taken some dinner with me--as lovely a turkey-poult as ever you saw, and a jam dumpling."
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specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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hovered
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| 鸟( hover的过去式和过去分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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deferred
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| adj.延期的，缓召的v.拖延，延缓，推迟( defer的过去式和过去分词 )；服从某人的意愿，遵从 | |
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plight
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| n.困境，境况，誓约，艰难；vt.宣誓，保证，约定 | |
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wan
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| (wide area network)广域网 | |
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resolute
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| adj.坚决的，果敢的 | |
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guardian
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| n.监护人；守卫者，保护者 | |
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applicants
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| 申请人，求职人( applicant的名词复数 ) | |
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destitute
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famished
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remorse
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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redeemed
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desperately
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| adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地 | |
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brook
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| n.小河，溪；v.忍受，容让 | |
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unreasonably
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| adv. 不合理地 | |
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sneaking
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| a.秘密的，不公开的 | |
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grievance
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unlimited
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| adj.无限的，不受控制的，无条件的 | |
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obnoxious
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| adj.极恼人的，讨人厌的，可憎的 | |
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doorways
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standing
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derisively
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dwelling
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defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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fustian
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| n.浮夸的；厚粗棉布 | |
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candid
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| adj.公正的，正直的；坦率的 | |
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avowal
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vow
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growl
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interfere
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| v.(in)干涉，干预；(with)妨碍，打扰 | |
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rascals
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| 流氓( rascal的名词复数 )； 无赖； （开玩笑说法）淘气的人（尤指小孩）； 恶作剧的人 | |
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contented
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defiance
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| n.挑战，挑衅，蔑视，违抗 | |
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desolate
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| adj.荒凉的，荒芜的；孤独的，凄凉的；v.使荒芜，使孤寂 | |
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agitating
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| 搅动( agitate的现在分词 )； 激怒； 使焦虑不安； （尤指为法律、社会状况的改变而）激烈争论 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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obstinate
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| adj.顽固的，倔强的，不易屈服的，较难治愈的 | |
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innocence
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| n.无罪；天真；无害 | |
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triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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dictates
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| n.命令，规定，要求( dictate的名词复数 )v.大声讲或读( dictate的第三人称单数 )；口授；支配；摆布 | |
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assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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judgment
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| n.审判；判断力，识别力，看法，意见 | |
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mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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condescend
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| v.俯就，屈尊；堕落，丢丑 | |
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dismantled
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| 拆开( dismantle的过去式和过去分词 )； 拆卸； 废除； 取消 | |
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joints
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| 接头( joint的名词复数 )； 关节； 公共场所（尤指价格低廉的饮食和娱乐场所） （非正式）； 一块烤肉 （英式英语） | |
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prospect
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| n.前景，前途；景色，视野 | |
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overdone
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| v.做得过分( overdo的过去分词 )；太夸张；把…煮得太久；（工作等）过度 | |
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54
liking
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| n.爱好；嗜好；喜欢 | |
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55
growled
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| v.（动物）发狺狺声， （雷）作隆隆声( growl的过去式和过去分词 )；低声咆哮着说 | |
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gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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prospects
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| n.希望，前途(恒为复数) | |
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malignant
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| adj.恶性的，致命的；恶意的，恶毒的 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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61
sobbing
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| <主方>Ⅰ adj.湿透的 | |
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62
proceeding
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| n.行动，进行，(pl.)会议录，学报 | |
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63
ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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64
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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65
miserably
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| adv.痛苦地；悲惨地；糟糕地；极度地 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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67
rumour
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| n.谣言，谣传，传闻 | |
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68
utterance
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| n.用言语表达，话语，言语 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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