Life in the Iron-Mills | Page 5

into the cellar, and, after considerable
stumbling, kindled a match, and lighted a tallow dip, that sent a yellow
glimmer over the room. It was low, damp,--the earthen floor covered
with a green, slimy moss,--a fetid air smothering the breath. Old Wolfe
lay asleep on a heap of straw, wrapped in a torn horse-blanket. He was
a pale, meek little man, with a white face and red rabbit-eyes. The
woman Deborah was like him; only her face was even more ghastly,
her lips bluer, her eyes more watery. She wore a faded cotton gown and
a slouching bonnet. When she walked, one could see that she was

deformed, almost a hunchback. She trod softly, so as not to waken him,
and went through into the room beyond. There she found by the
half-extinguished fire an iron saucepan filled with cold boiled potatoes,
which she put upon a broken chair with a pint-cup of ale. Placing the
old candlestick beside this dainty repast, she untied her bonnet, which
hung limp and wet over her face, and prepared to eat her supper. It was
the first food that had touched her lips since morning. There was
enough of it, however: there is not always. She was hungry,--one could
see that easily enough,--and not drunk, as most of her companions
would have been found at this hour. She did not drink, this
woman,--her face told that, too,--nothing stronger than ale. Perhaps the
weak, flaccid wretch had some stimulant in her pale life to keep her
up,--some love or hope, it might be, or urgent need. When that
stimulant was gone, she would take to whiskey. Man cannot live by
work alone. While she was skinning the potatoes, and munching them,
a noise behind her made her stop.
"Janey!" she called, lifting the candle and peering into the darkness.
"Janey, are you there?"
A heap of ragged coats was heaved up, and the face of a young,girl
emerged, staring sleepily at the woman.
"Deborah," she said, at last, "I'm here the night."
"Yes, child. Hur's welcome," she said, quietly eating on.
The girl's face was haggard and sickly; her eyes were heavy with sleep
and hunger: real Milesian eyes they were, dark, delicate blue, glooming
out from black shadows with a pitiful fright.
"I was alone," she said, timidly.
"Where's the father?" asked Deborah, holding out a potato, which the
girl greedily seized.
"He's beyant,--wid Haley,--in the stone house." (Did you ever hear the
word tail from an Irish mouth?) "I came here. Hugh told me never to
stay me-lone."
"Hugh?"
"Yes."
A vexed frown crossed her face. The girl saw it, and added quickly,--
"I have not seen Hugh the day, Deb. The old man says his watch lasts
till the mornin'."
The woman sprang up, and hastily began to arrange some bread and

flitch in a tin pail, and to pour her own measure of ale into a bottle.
Tying on her bonnet, she blew out the candle.
"Lay ye down, Janey dear," she said, gently, covering her with the old
rags. "Hur can eat the potatoes, if hur's hungry.
"Where are ye goin', Deb? The rain's sharp."
"To the mill, with Hugh's supper."
"Let him bide till th' morn. Sit ye down."
"No, no,"--sharply pushing her off. "The boy'll starve."
She hurried from the cellar, while the child wearily coiled herself up for
sleep. The rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand,
emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow
street, that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and
there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and
gutter; the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop,
were closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to or
from their work.
Not many even of the inhabitants of a manufacturing town know the
vast machinery of system by which the bodies of workmen are
governed, that goes on unceasingly from year to year. The hands of
each mill are divided into watches that relieve each other as regularly
as the sentinels of an army. By night and day the work goes on, the
unsleeping engines groan and shriek, the fiery pools of metal boil and
surge. Only for a day in the week, in half-courtesy to public censure,
the fires are partially veiled; but as soon as the clock strikes midnight,
the great furnaces break forth with renewed fury, the clamor begins
with fresh, breathless vigor, the engines sob and shriek like "gods in
pain."
As Deborah hurried down through the heavy rain, the noise of these
thousand engines sounded through the sleep and shadow of the city like
far-off thunder. The mill to which she was going lay on the river, a mile