Chapter 22

CHAPTER XXII - A BLOW AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

'But work grew scarce, while bread grew dear,

And wages lessened, too;

For Irish hordes were bidders here,

Our half-paid work to do.'

CORN LAW RHYMES.

Margaret was shown into the drawing-room. It had returned into
its normal state of bag and covering. The windows were half open
because of the heat, and the Venetian blinds covered the
glass,--so that a gray grim light, reflected from the pavement
below, threw all the shadows wrong, and combined with the
green-tinged upper light to make even Margaret's own face, as she
caught it in the mirrors, look ghastly and wan. She sat and
waited; no one came. Every now and then, the wind seemed to bear
the distant multitudinous sound nearer; and yet there was no
wind! It died away into profound stillness between whiles.

Fanny came in at last.

'Mamma will come directly, Miss Hale. She desired me to apologise
to you as it is. Perhaps you know my brother has imported hands
from Ireland, and it has irritated the Milton people
excessively--as if he hadn't a right to get labour where he
could; and the stupid wretches here wouldn't work for him; and
now they've frightened these poor Irish starvelings so with their
threats, that we daren't let them out. You may see them huddled
in that top room in the mill,--and they're to sleep there, to
keep them safe from those brutes, who will neither work nor let
them work. And mamma is seeing about their food, and John is
speaking to them, for some of the women are crying to go back.
Ah! here's mamma!'

Mrs. Thornton came in with a look of black sternness on her face,
which made Margaret feel she had arrived at a bad time to trouble
her with her request. However, it was only in compliance with
Mrs. Thornton's expressed desire, that she would ask for whatever
they might want in the progress of her mother's illness. Mrs.
Thornton's brow contracted, and her mouth grew set, while
Margaret spoke with gentle modesty of her mother's restlessness,
and Dr. Donaldson's wish that she should have the relief of a
water-bed. She ceased. Mrs. Thornton did not reply immediately.
Then she started up and exclaimed--

'They're at the gates! Call John, Fanny,--call him in from the
mill! They're at the gates! They'll batter them in! Call John, I
say!'

And simultaneously, the gathering tramp--to which she had been
listening, instead of heeding Margaret's words--was heard just
right outside the wall, and an increasing din of angry voices
raged behind the wooden barrier, which shook as if the unseen
maddened crowd made battering-rams of their bodies, and retreated
a short space only to come with more united steady impetus