Margret Howth: A Story of To-Day | Page 7

a week,--good wages these tight times." For nothing more?
Some other meaning may have fallen from their faces into this girl's
subtile intuition in the instant's glance,--cheerfuller, remoter aims,
hidden in the most sensual face,--homeliest home-scenes, low climbing
ambitions, some delirium of pleasure to come,--whiskey, if nothing
better: aims in life like yours differing in degree. Needing only to make
them the same----did you say what?
She had reached the street now,--a back-street, a crooked sort of lane
rather, running between endless piles of warehouses. She hurried down
it to gain the suburbs, for she lived out in the country. It was a long,
tiresome walk through the outskirts of the town, where the
dwelling-houses were,--long rows of two-story bricks drabbled with
soot-stains. It was two years since she had been in the town.
Remembering this, and the reason why she had shunned it, she
quickened her pace, her face growing stiller than before. One might
have fancied her a slave putting on a mask, fearing to meet her master.
The town, being unfamiliar to her, struck her newly. She saw the
expression on its face better. It was a large trading city, compactly built,
shut in by hills. It had an anxious, harassed look, like a speculator
concluding a keen bargain; the very dwelling-houses smelt of trade,

having shops in the lower stories; in the outskirts, where there are
cottages in other cities, there were mills here; the trees, which some
deluded dreamer had planted on the flat pavements, had all grown up
into abrupt Lombardy poplars, knowing their best policy was to keep
out of the way; the boys, playing marbles under them, played sharply
"for keeps;" the bony old dray-horses, plodding through the dusty
crowds, had speculative eyes, that measured their oats at night with a
"you-don't-cheat-me" look. Even the churches had not the grave repose
of the old brown house yonder in the hills, where the few
field-people--Arians, Calvinists, Churchmen-- gathered every Sunday,
and air and sunshine and God's charity made the day holy. These
churches lifted their hard stone faces insolently, registering their yearly
alms in the morning journals. To be sure the back-seats were free for
the poor; but the emblazoned crimson of the windows, the carving of
the arches, the very purity of the preacher's style, said plainly that it
was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a man
in a red wamus to enter the kingdom of heaven through that gate.
Nature itself had turned her back on the town: the river turned aside,
and but half a river crept reluctantly by; the hills were but bare banks of
yellow clay. There was a cinder-road leading through these. Margret
climbed it slowly. The low town-hills, as I said, were bare, covered at
their bases with dingy stubble- fields. In the sides bordering the road
gaped the black mouths of the coal-pits that burrowed under the hills,
under the town. Trade everywhere,--on the earth and under it. No
wonder the girl called it a hard, scraping world. But when the road had
crept through these hills, it suddenly shook off the cinders, and turned
into the brown mould of the meadows,--turned its back on trade and the
smoky town, and speedily left it out of sight contemptuously, never
looking back once. This was the country now in earnest.
Margret slackened her step, drawing long breaths of the fresh cold air.
Far behind her, panting and puffing along, came a black, burly figure,
Dr. Knowles. She had seen him behind her all the way, but they did not
speak. Between the two there lay that repellent resemblance which
made them like close relations,--closer when they were silent. You
know such people? When you speak to them, the little sharp points

clash. Yet they are the few whom you surely know you will meet in the
life beyond death, "saved" or not. The Doctor came slowly along the
quiet country-road, watching the woman's figure going as slowly before
him. He had a curious interest in the girl,--a secret reason for the
interest, which as yet he kept darkly to himself. For this reason he tried
to fancy how her new life would seem to her. It should be hard enough,
her work,--he was determined on that; her strength and endurance must
be tested to the uttermost. He must know what stuff was in the weapon
before he used it. He had been reading the slow, cold thing for
years,--had not got into its secret yet. But there was power there, and it
was the power he wanted. Her history was simple enough: she was
going into the mill to support a helpless father and mother; it was a
common story; she had given up much for them;--other women did