Life in the Iron-Mills; Or, The Korl Woman

LIFE IN THE IRON-MILLS

by Rebecca Harding Davis

“Is this the end?

O Life, as futile, then, as frail!

What hope of answer or redress?”

A cloudy day: do you know what that is in a town of iron-works? The sky

sank down before dawn, muddy, flat, immovable. The air is thick, clammy

with the breath of crowded human beings. It stifles me. I open the

window, and, looking out, can scarcely see through the rain the grocer's

shop opposite, where a crowd of drunken Irishmen are puffing Lynchburg

tobacco in their pipes. I can detect the scent through all the foul

smells ranging loose in the air.

The idiosyncrasy of this town is smoke. It rolls sullenly in slow folds

from the great chimneys of the iron-foundries, and settles down in

black, slimy pools on the muddy streets. Smoke on the wharves, smoke on

the dingy boats, on the yellow river,--clinging in a coating of greasy

soot to the house-front, the two faded poplars, the faces of the

passers-by. The long train of mules, dragging masses of pig-iron through

the narrow street, have a foul vapor hanging to their reeking sides.

Here, inside, is a little broken figure of an angel pointing upward from

the mantel-shelf; but even its wings are covered with smoke, clotted

and black. Smoke everywhere! A dirty canary chirps desolately in a

cage beside me. Its dream of green fields and sunshine is a very old

dream,--almost worn out, I think.

From the back-window I can see a narrow brick-yard sloping down to

the river-side, strewed with rain-butts and tubs. The river, dull and

tawny-colored, (la belle riviere!) drags itself sluggishly along, tired

of the heavy weight of boats and coal-barges. What wonder? When I was a

child, I used to fancy a look of weary, dumb appeal upon the face of the

negro-like river slavishly bearing its burden day after day. Something

of the same idle notion comes to me to-day, when from the street-window

I look on the slow stream of human life creeping past, night and

morning, to the great mills. Masses of men, with dull, besotted faces

bent to the ground, sharpened here and there by pain or cunning; skin

and muscle and flesh begrimed with smoke and ashes; stooping all night

over boiling caldrons of metal, laired by day in dens of drunkenness and

infamy; breathing from infancy to death an air saturated with fog and

grease and soot, vileness for soul and body. What do you make of a case

like that, amateur psychologist? You call it an altogether serious thing

to be alive: to these men it is a drunken jest, a joke,--horrible to

angels perhaps, to them commonplace enough. My fancy about the river was

an idle one: it is no type of such a life. What if it be stagnant and

slimy here? It knows that beyond there waits for it odorous sunlight,

quaint old gardens, dusky with soft, green foliage of apple-trees, and

flushing crimson with roses,--air, and fields, and mountains. The future

of the Welsh puddler passing just now is not so pleasant. To be stowed

away, after his grimy work is done, in a hole in the muddy graveyard,

and after that, not air, nor green fields, nor curious roses.

Can you see how foggy the day is? As I stand here, idly tapping the

windowpane, and looking out through the rain at the dirty back-yard and

the coalboats below, fragments of an old story float up before me,--a

story of this house into which I happened to come to-day. You may think

it a tiresome story enough, as foggy as the day, sharpened by no sudden

flashes of pain or pleasure.--I know: only the outline of a dull life,

that long since, with thousands of dull lives like its own, was vainly

lived and lost: thousands of them, massed, vile, slimy lives, like those

of the torpid lizards in yonder stagnant water-butt.--Lost? There is a

curious point for you to settle, my friend, who study psychology in a

lazy, dilettante way. Stop a moment. I am going to be honest. This is

what I want you to do. I want you to hide your disgust, take no heed

to your clean clothes, and come right down with me,--here, into the

thickest of the fog and mud and foul effluvia. I want you to hear this

story. There is a secret down here, in this nightmare fog, that has lain

dumb for centuries: I want to make it a real thing to you. You, Egoist,

or Pantheist, or Arminian, busy in making straight paths for your feet

on the hills, do not see it clearly,--this terrible question which men

here have gone mad and died trying to answer. I dare not put this secret

into words. I told you it was dumb. These men, going by with drunken

faces and brains full of unawakened power, do not ask it of Society or

of God. Their lives ask it; their deaths ask it. There is no reply. I

will tell you plainly that I have a great hope; and I bring it to you

to be tested. It is this: that this terrible dumb question is its own

reply; that it is not the sentence of death we think it, but, from the

very extremity of its darkness, the most solemn prophecy which the world

has known of the Hope to come. I dare make my meaning no clearer, but

will only tell my story. It will, perhaps, seem to you as foul and dark

as this thick vapor about us, and as pregnant with death; but if your

eyes are free as mine are to look deeper, no perfume-tinted dawn will be

so fair with promise of the day that shall surely come.

My story is very simple,--Only what I remember of the life of one

of these men,--a furnace-tender in one of Kirby & John's

rolling-mills,--Hugh Wolfe. You know the mills? They took the great

order for the lower Virginia railroads there last winter; run usually

with about a thousand men. I cannot tell why I choose the half-forgotten

story of this Wolfe more than that of myriads of these furnace-hands.

Perhaps because there is a secret, underlying sympathy between that

story and this day with its impure fog and thwarted sunshine,--or

perhaps simply for the reason that this house is the one where the

Wolfes lived. There were the father and son,--both hands, as I said,

in one of Kirby & John's mills for making railroad-iron,--and Deborah,

their cousin, a picker in some of the cotton-mills. The house was rented

then to half a dozen families. The Wolfes had two of the cellar-rooms.

The old man, like many of the puddlers and feeders of the mills, was

Welsh,--had spent half of his life in the Cornish tin-mines. You may

pick the Welsh emigrants, Cornish miners, out of the throng passing the

windows, any day. They are a trifle more filthy; their muscles are not

so brawny; they stoop more. When they are drunk, they neither yell, nor

shout, nor stagger, but skulk along like beaten hounds. A pure,

unmixed blood, I fancy: shows itself in the slight angular bodies and

sharply-cut facial lines. It is nearly thirty years since the Wolfes

lived here. Their lives were like those of their class: incessant

labor, sleeping in kennel-like rooms, eating rank pork and molasses,

drinking--God and the distillers only know what; with an occasional

night in jail, to atone for some drunken excess. Is that all of their

lives?--of the portion given to them and these their duplicates swarming

the streets to-day?--nothing beneath?--all? So many a political reformer

will tell you,--and many a private reformer, too, who has gone among

them with a heart tender with Christ's charity, and come out outraged,

hardened.

One rainy night, about eleven o'clock, a crowd of half-clothed women

stopped outside of the cellar-door. They were going home from the

cotton-mill.

“Good-night, Deb,” said one, a mulatto, steadying herself against the

gas-post. She needed the post to steady her. So did more than one of

them.

“Dah's a ball to Miss Potts' to-night. Ye'd best come.”

“Inteet, Deb, if hur'll come, hur'll hef fun,” said a shrill Welsh voice

in the crowd.

Two or three dirty hands were thrust out to catch the gown of the woman,

who was groping for the latch of the door.

“No.”

“No? Where's Kit Small, then?”

“Begorra! on the spools. Alleys behint, though we helped her, we dud.

An wid ye! Let Deb alone! It's ondacent frettin' a quite body. Be the

powers, an we'll have a night of it! there'll be lashin's o' drink,--the

Vargent be blessed and praised for't!”

They went on, the mulatto inclining for a moment to show fight, and drag

the woman Wolfe off with them; but, being pacified, she staggered away.

Deborah groped her way 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 below the city-limits. It was far, and she was weak, aching from

standing twelve hours at the spools. Yet it was her almost nightly walk

to take this man his supper, though at every square she sat down to

rest, and she knew she should receive small word of thanks.

Perhaps, if she had possessed an artist's eye, the picturesque oddity

of the scene might have made her step stagger less, and the path seem

shorter; but to her the mills were only “summat deilish to look at by

night.”

The road leading to the mills had been quarried from the solid rock,

which rose abrupt and bare on one side of the cinder-covered road, while

the river, sluggish and black, crept past on the other. The mills for

rolling iron are simply immense tent-like roofs, covering acres of

ground, open on every side. Beneath these roofs Deborah looked in on a

city of fires, that burned hot and fiercely in the night. Fire in every

horrible form: pits of flame waving in the wind; liquid metal-flames

writhing in tortuous streams through the sand; wide caldrons filled

with boiling fire, over which bent ghastly wretches stirring the

strange brewing; and through all, crowds of half-clad men, looking

like revengeful ghosts in the red light, hurried, throwing masses of

glittering fire. It was like a street in Hell. Even Deborah muttered, as

she crept through, “looks like t' Devil's place!” It did,--in more ways

than one.

She found the man she was looking for, at last, heaping coal on a

furnace. He had not time to eat his supper; so she went behind the

furnace, and waited. Only a few men were with him, and they noticed her

only by a “Hyur comes t'hunchback, Wolfe.”

Deborah was stupid with sleep; her back pained her sharply; and her

teeth chattered with cold, with the rain that soaked her clothes and

dripped from her at every step. She stood, however, patiently holding

the pail, and waiting.

“Hout, woman! ye look like a drowned cat. Come near to the fire,”--said

one of the men, approaching to scrape away the ashes.

She shook her head. Wolfe had forgotten her. He turned, hearing the man,

and came closer.

“I did no' think; gi' me my supper, woman.”

She watched him eat with a painful eagerness. With a woman's quick

instinct, she saw that he was not hungry,--was eating to please her. Her

pale, watery eyes began to gather a strange light.

“Is't good, Hugh? T' ale was a bit sour, I feared.”

“No, good enough.” He hesitated a moment. “Ye're tired, poor lass! Bide

here till I go. Lay down there on that heap of ash, and go to sleep.”

He threw her an old coat for a pillow, and turned to his work. The

heap was the refuse of the burnt iron, and was not a hard bed; the

half-smothered warmth, too, penetrated her limbs, dulling their pain and

cold shiver.

Miserable enough she looked, lying there on the ashes like a limp,

dirty rag,--yet not an unfitting figure to crown the scene of hopeless

discomfort and veiled crime: more fitting, if one looked deeper into the

heart of things, at her thwarted woman's form, her colorless life, her

waking stupor that smothered pain and hunger,--even more fit to be a

type of her class. Deeper yet if one could look, was there nothing worth

reading in this wet, faded thing, halfcovered with ashes? no story of a

soul filled with groping passionate love, heroic unselfishness, fierce

jealousy? of years of weary trying to please the one human being whom

she loved, to gain one look of real heart-kindness from him? If

anything like this were hidden beneath the pale, bleared eyes, and dull,

washed-out-looking face, no one had ever taken the trouble to read its

faint signs: not the half-clothed furnace-tender, Wolfe, certainly. Yet

he was kind to her: it was his nature to be kind, even to the very rats

that swarmed in the cellar: kind to her in just the same way. She knew

that. And it might be that very knowledge had given to her face its

apathy and vacancy more than her low, torpid life. One sees that

dead, vacant look steal sometimes over the rarest, finest of women's

faces,--in the very midst, it may be, of their warmest summer's day; and

then one can guess at the secret of intolerable solitude that lies hid

beneath the delicate laces and brilliant smile. There was no warmth, no

brilliancy, no summer for this woman; so the stupor and vacancy had time

to gnaw into her face perpetually. She was young, too, though no one

guessed it; so the gnawing was the fiercer.

She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening, through the monotonous din

and uncertain glare of the works, to the dull plash of the rain in the

far distance, shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look

towards her. She knew, in spite of all his kindness, that there was that

in her face and form which made him loathe the sight of her. She felt by

instinct, although she could not comprehend it, the finer nature of

the man, which made him among his fellow-workmen something unique, set

apart. She knew, that, down under all the vileness and coarseness of his

life, there was a groping passion for whatever was beautiful and pure,

that his soul sickened with disgust at her deformity, even when his

words were kindest. Through this dull consciousness, which never left

her, came, like a sting, the recollection of the dark blue eyes and

lithe figure of the little Irish girl she had left in the cellar. The

recollection struck through even her stupid intellect with a vivid glow

of beauty and of grace. Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to Hugh

as her only friend: that was the sharp thought, the bitter thought, that

drove into the glazed eyes a fierce light of pain. You laugh at it? Are

pain and jealousy less savage realities down here in this place I am

taking you to than in your own house or your own heart,--your heart,

which they clutch at sometimes? The note is the same, I fancy, be the

octave high or low.

If you could go into this mill where Deborah lay, and drag out from the

hearts of these men the terrible tragedy of their lives, taking it as a

symptom of the disease of their class, no ghost Horror would terrify

you more. A reality of soul-starvation, of living death, that meets you

every day under the besotted faces on the street,--I can paint nothing

of this, only give you the outside outlines of a night, a crisis in the

life of one man: whatever muddy depth of soul-history lies beneath you

can read according to the eyes God has given you.

Wolfe, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent over the

furnace with his iron pole, unconscious of her scrutiny, only stopping

to receive orders. Physically, Nature had promised the man but little.

He had already lost the strength and instinct vigor of a man, his

muscles were thin, his nerves weak, his face ( a meek, woman's face)

haggard, yellow with consumption. In the mill he was known as one of

the girl-men: “Molly Wolfe” was his sobriquet. He was never seen in

the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he did,

desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed, pommelled to

a jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood was up: but he was no

favorite in the mill; he had the taint of school-learning on him,--not

to a dangerous extent, only a quarter or so in the free-school in fact,

but enough to ruin him as a good hand in a fight.

For other reasons, too, he was not popular. Not one of themselves, they

felt that, though outwardly as filthy and ash-covered; silent, with

foreign thoughts and longings breaking out through his quietness in

innumerable curious ways: this one, for instance. In the neighboring

furnace-buildings lay great heaps of the refuse from the ore after the

pig-metal is run. Korl we call it here: a light, porous substance, of

a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the blocks of this korl,

Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of chipping and

moulding figures,--hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes strangely

beautiful: even the mill-men saw that, while they jeered at him. It was

a curious fancy in the man, almost a passion. The few hours for rest he

spent hewing and hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his

watch came again,--working at one figure for months, and, when it was

finished, breaking it to pieces perhaps, in a fit of disappointment. A

morbid, gloomy man, untaught, unled, left to feed his soul in grossness

and crime, and hard, grinding labor.

I want you to come down and look at this Wolfe, standing there among the

lowest of his kind, and see him just as he is, that you may judge him

justly when you hear the story of this night. I want you to look back,

as he does every day, at his birth in vice, his starved infancy; to

remember the heavy years he has groped through as boy and man,--the

slow, heavy years of constant, hot work. So long ago he began, that he

thinks sometimes he has worked there for ages. There is no hope that it

will ever end. Think that God put into this man's soul a fierce thirst

for beauty,--to know it, to create it; to be--something, he knows not

what,--other than he is. There are moments when a passing cloud, the sun

glinting on the purple thistles, a kindly smile, a child's face, will

rouse him to a passion of pain,--when his nature starts up with a mad

cry of rage against God, man, whoever it is that has forced this vile,

slimy life upon him. With all this groping, this mad desire, a great

blind intellect stumbling through wrong, a loving poet's heart, the man

was by habit only a coarse, vulgar laborer, familiar with sights and

words you would blush to name. Be just: when I tell you about this

night, see him as he is. Be just,--not like man's law, which seizes on

one isolated fact, but like God's judging angel, whose clear, sad

eye saw all the countless cankering days of this man's life, all the

countless nights, when, sick with starving, his soul fainted in him,

before it judged him for this night, the saddest of all.

I called this night the crisis of his life. If it was, it stole on him

unawares. These great turning-days of life cast no shadow before, slip

by unconsciously. Only a trifle, a little turn of the rudder, and the

ship goes to heaven or hell.

Wolfe, while Deborah watched him, dug into the furnace of melting iron

with his pole, dully thinking only how many rails the lump would yield.

It was late,--nearly Sunday morning; another hour, and the heavy work

would be done, only the furnaces to replenish and cover for the next

day. The workmen were growing more noisy, shouting, as they had to do,

to be heard over the deep clamor of the mills. Suddenly they grew less

boisterous,--at the far end, entirely silent. Something unusual had

happened. After a moment, the silence came nearer; the men stopped their

jeers and drunken choruses. Deborah, stupidly lifting up her head,

saw the cause of the quiet. A group of five or six men were slowly

approaching, stopping to examine each furnace as they came. Visitors

often came to see the mills after night: except by growing less noisy,

the men took no notice of them. The furnace where Wolfe worked was near

the bounds of the works; they halted there hot and tired: a walk over

one of these great foundries is no trifling task. The woman, drawing out

of sight, turned over to sleep. Wolfe, seeing them stop, suddenly roused

from his indifferent stupor, and watched them keenly. He knew some

of them: the overseer, Clarke,--a son of Kirby, one of the

mill-owners,--and a Doctor May, one of the town-physicians. The other

two were strangers. Wolfe came closer. He seized eagerly every chance

that brought him into contact with this mysterious class that shone down

on him perpetually with the glamour of another order of being. What made

the difference between them? That was the mystery of his life. He had

a vague notion that perhaps to-night he could find it out. One of the

strangers sat down on a pile of bricks, and beckoned young Kirby to his

side.

“This is hot, with a vengeance. A match, please?”--lighting his cigar.

“But the walk is worth the trouble. If it were not that you must have

heard it so often, Kirby, I would tell you that your works look like

Dante's Inferno.”

Kirby laughed.

“Yes. Yonder is Farinata himself in the burning tomb,”--pointing to some

figure in the shimmering shadows.

“Judging from some of the faces of your men,” said the other, “they bid

fair to try the reality of Dante's vision, some day.”

Young Kirby looked curiously around, as if seeing the faces of his hands

for the first time.

“They're bad enough, that's true. A desperate set, I fancy. Eh, Clarke?”

The overseer did not hear him. He was talking of net profits just

then,--giving, in fact, a schedule of the annual business of the firm to

a sharp peering little Yankee, who jotted down notes on a paper laid on

the crown of his hat: a reporter for one of the city-papers, getting up

a series of reviews of the leading manufactories. The other gentlemen

had accompanied them merely for amusement. They were silent until the

notes were finished, drying their feet at the furnaces, and sheltering

their faces from the intolerable heat. At last the overseer concluded

with--

“I believe that is a pretty fair estimate, Captain.”

“Here, some of you men!” said Kirby, “bring up those boards. We may as

well sit down, gentlemen, until the rain is over. It cannot last much

longer at this rate.”

“Pig-metal,”--mumbled the reporter,--“um! coal facilities,--um! hands

employed, twelve hundred,--bitumen,--um!--all right, I believe, Mr.

Clarke;--sinking-fund,--what did you say was your sinking-fund?”

“Twelve hundred hands?” said the stranger, the young man who had first

spoken. “Do you control their votes, Kirby?”

“Control? No.” The young man smiled complacently. “But my father brought

seven hundred votes to the polls for his candidate last November.

No force-work, you understand,--only a speech or two, a hint to form

themselves into a society, and a bit of red and blue bunting to make

them a flag. The Invincible Roughs,--I believe that is their name. I

forget the motto: 'Our country's hope,' I think.”

There was a laugh. The young man talking to Kirby sat with an amused

light in his cool gray eye, surveying critically the half-clothed

figures of the puddlers, and the slow swing of their brawny muscles. He

was a stranger in the city,--spending a couple of months in the

borders of a Slave State, to study the institutions of the South,--a

brother-in-law of Kirby's,--Mitchell. He was an amateur gymnast,--hence

his anatomical eye; a patron, in a blase' way, of the prize-ring; a man

who sucked the essence out of a science or philosophy in an indifferent,

gentlemanly way; who took Kant, Novalis, Humboldt, for what they were

worth in his own scales; accepting all, despising nothing, in heaven,

earth, or hell, but one-idead men; with a temper yielding and brilliant

as summer water, until his Self was touched, when it was ice, though

brilliant still. Such men are not rare in the States.

As he knocked the ashes from his cigar, Wolfe caught with a quick

pleasure the contour of the white hand, the blood-glow of a red ring he

wore. His voice, too, and that of Kirby's, touched him like music,--low,

even, with chording cadences. About this man Mitchell hung the

impalpable atmosphere belonging to the thoroughbred gentleman, Wolfe,

scraping away the ashes beside him, was conscious of it, did obeisance

to it with his artist sense, unconscious that he did so.

The rain did not cease. Clarke and the reporter left the mills; the

others, comfortably seated near the furnace, lingered, smoking

and talking in a desultory way. Greek would not have been more

unintelligible to the furnace-tenders, whose presence they soon forgot

entirely. Kirby drew out a newspaper from his pocket and read aloud some

article, which they discussed eagerly. At every sentence, Wolfe listened

more and more like a dumb, hopeless animal, with a duller, more stolid

look creeping over his face, glancing now and then at Mitchell, marking

acutely every smallest sign of refinement, then back to himself, seeing

as in a mirror his filthy body, his more stained soul.

Never! He had no words for such a thought, but he knew now, in all the

sharpness of the bitter certainty, that between them there was a great

gulf never to be passed. Never!

The bell of the mills rang for midnight. Sunday morning had dawned.

Whatever hidden message lay in the tolling bells floated past these men

unknown. Yet it was there. Veiled in the solemn music ushering the risen

Saviour was a key-note to solve the darkest secrets of a world gone

wrong,--even this social riddle which the brain of the grimy puddler

grappled with madly to-night.

The men began to withdraw the metal from the caldrons. The mills were

deserted on Sundays, except by the hands who fed the fires, and those

who had no lodgings and slept usually on the ash-heaps. The three

strangers sat still during the next hour, watching the men cover the

furnaces, laughing now and then at some jest of Kirby's.

“Do you know,” said Mitchell, “I like this view of the works better than

when the glare was fiercest? These heavy shadows and the amphitheatre

of smothered fires are ghostly, unreal. One could fancy these red

smouldering lights to be the half-shut eyes of wild beasts, and the

spectral figures their victims in the den.”

Kirby laughed. “You are fanciful. Come, let us get out of the den. The

spectral figures, as you call them, are a little too real for me to

fancy a close proximity in the darkness,--unarmed, too.”

The others rose, buttoning their overcoats, and lighting cigars.

“Raining, still,” said Doctor May, “and hard. Where did we leave the

coach, Mitchell?”

“At the other side of the works.--Kirby, what's that?”

Mitchell started back, half-frightened, as, suddenly turning a corner,

the white figure of a woman faced him in the darkness,--a woman, white,

of giant proportions, crouching on the ground, her arms flung out in

some wild gesture of warning.

“Stop! Make that fire burn there!” cried Kirby, stopping short.

The flame burst out, flashing the gaunt figure into bold relief.

Mitchell drew a long breath.

“I thought it was alive,” he said, going up curiously.

The others followed.

“Not marble, eh?” asked Kirby, touching it.

One of the lower overseers stopped.

“Korl, Sir.”

“Who did it?”

“Can't say. Some of the hands; chipped it out in off-hours.”

“Chipped to some purpose, I should say. What a flesh-tint the stuff has!

Do you see, Mitchell?”

“I see.”

He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure, looking

at it in silence. There was not one line of beauty or grace in it: a

nude woman's form, muscular, grown coarse with labor, the powerful limbs

instinct with some one poignant longing. One idea: there it was in the

tense, rigid muscles, the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like

that of a starving wolf's. Kirby and Doctor May walked around it,

critical, curious. Mitchell stood aloof, silent. The figure touched him

strangely.

“Not badly done,” said Doctor May, “Where did the fellow learn that

sweep of the muscles in the arm and hand? Look at them! They are

groping, do you see?--clutching: the peculiar action of a man dying of

thirst.”

“They have ample facilities for studying anatomy,” sneered Kirby,

glancing at the half-naked figures.

“Look,” continued the Doctor, “at this bony wrist, and the strained

sinews of the instep! A working-woman,--the very type of her class.”

“God forbid!” muttered Mitchell.

“Why?” demanded May, “What does the fellow intend by the figure? I

cannot catch the meaning.”

“Ask him,” said the other, dryly, “There he stands,”--pointing to Wolfe,

who stood with a group of men, leaning on his ash-rake.

The Doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind-hearted men

put on, when talking to these people.

“Mr. Mitchell has picked you out as the man who did this,--I'm sure I

don't know why. But what did you mean by it?”

“She be hungry.”

Wolfe's eyes answered Mitchell, not the Doctor.

“Oh-h! But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow! You have given

no sign of starvation to the body. It is strong,--terribly strong. It

has the mad, half-despairing gesture of drowning.”

Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitchell, who saw the soul of

the thing, he knew. But the cool, probing eyes were turned on himself

now,--mocking, cruel, relentless.

“Not hungry for meat,” the furnace-tender said at last.

“What then? Whiskey?” jeered Kirby, with a coarse laugh.

Wolfe was silent a moment, thinking.

“I dunno,” he said, with a bewildered look. “It mebbe. Summat to make

her live, I think,--like you. Whiskey ull do it, in a way.”

The young man laughed again. Mitchell flashed a look of disgust

somewhere,--not at Wolfe.

“May,” he broke out impatiently, “are you blind? Look at that woman's

face! It asks questions of God, and says, 'I have a right to know,' Good

God, how hungry it is!”

They looked a moment; then May turned to the mill-owner:--

“Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do with them?

Keep them at puddling iron?”

Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitchell's look had irritated him.

“Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant geniuses.

I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among these

wretches. The Lord will take care of his own; or else they can work out

their own salvation. I have heard you call our American system a ladder

which any man can scale. Do you doubt it? Or perhaps you want to banish

all social ladders, and put us all on a flat table-land,--eh, May?”

The Doctor looked vexed, puzzled. Some terrible problem lay hid in this

woman's face, and troubled these men. Kirby waited for an answer, and,

receiving none, went on, warming with his subject.

“I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of 'Liberte' or

'Egalite' will do away. If I had the making of men, these men who do

the lowest part of the world's work should be machines,--nothing

more,--hands. It would be kindness. God help them! What are taste,

reason, to creatures who must live such lives as that?” He pointed to

Deborah, sleeping on the ash-heap. “So many nerves to sting them to

pain. What if God had put your brain, with all its agony of touch, into

your fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?”

“You think you could govern the world better?” laughed the Doctor.

“I do not think at all.”

“That is true philosophy. Drift with the stream, because you cannot dive

deep enough to find bottom, eh?”

“Exactly,” rejoined Kirby. “I do not think. I wash my hands of all

social problems,--slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my

operatives has a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Saturday night. Outside

of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more

popular amusement of the two,) I am not responsible.”

The Doctor sighed,--a good honest sigh, from the depths of his stomach.

“God help us! Who is responsible?”

“Not I, I tell you,” said Kirby, testily. “What has the man who pays

them money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the grocer or

butcher who takes it?”

“And yet,” said Mitchell's cynical voice, “look at her! How hungry she

is!”

Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of

the rough image looking into their faces with the awful question, “What

shall we do to be saved?” Only Wolfe's face, with its heavy weight

of brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which

looked the soul of his class,--only Wolfe's face turned towards Kirby's.

Mitchell laughed,--a cool, musical laugh.

“Money has spoken!” he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the

air of an amused spectator at a play. “Are you answered?”--turning to

Wolfe his clear, magnetic face.

Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil

beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare

mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the

two.

“Are you answered? Why, May, look at him! 'De profundis clamavi.' Or, to

quote in English, 'Hungry and thirsty, his soul faints in him.' And so

Money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby! Very

clear the answer, too!--I think I remember reading the same words

somewhere: washing your hands in Eau de Cologne, and saying, 'I am

innocent of the blood of this man. See ye to it!'”

Kirby flushed angrily.

“You quote Scripture freely.”

“Do I not quote correctly? I think I remember another line, which may

amend my meaning? 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these,

ye did it unto me.' Deist? Bless you, man, I was raised on the milk of

the Word. Now, Doctor, the pocket of the world having uttered its

voice, what has the heart to say? You are a philanthropist, in a small

Way,--n'est ce pas? Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut

korl better,--or your destiny. Go on, May!”

“I think a mocking devil possesses you to-night,” rejoined the Doctor,

seriously.

He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm. Something of a

vague idea possessed the Doctor's brain that much good was to be done

here by a friendly word or two: a latent genius to be warmed into life

by a waited-for sunbeam. Here it was: he had brought it. So he went on

complacently:

“Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great

man? do you understand?” (talking down to the capacity of his hearer:

it is a way people have with children, and men like Wolfe,)--“to live a

better, stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby here? A man may make himself

anything he chooses. God has given you stronger powers than many

men,--me, for instance.”

May stopped, heated, glowing with his own magnanimity. And it was

magnanimous. The puddler had drunk in every word, looking through the

Doctor's flurry, and generous heat, and self-approval, into his will,

with those slow, absorbing eyes of his.

“Make yourself what you will. It is your right.

“I know,” quietly. “Will you help me?”

Mitchell laughed again. The Doctor turned now, in a passion,--

“You know, Mitchell, I have not the means. You know, if I had, it is in

my heart to take this boy and educate him for”--

“The glory of God, and the glory of John May.”

May did not speak for a moment; then, controlled, he said,--

“Why should one be raised, when myriads are left?--I have not the money,

boy,” to Wolfe, shortly.

“Money?” He said it over slowly, as one repeats the guessed answer to a

riddle, doubtfully. “That is it? Money?”

“Yes, money,--that is it,” said Mitchell, rising, and drawing his

furred coat about him. “You've found the cure for all the world's

diseases.--Come, May, find your good-humor, and come home. This

damp wind chills my very bones. Come and preach your Saint-Simonian

doctrines' to-morrow to Kirby's hands. Let them have a clear idea of the

rights of the soul, and I'll venture next week they'll strike for higher

wages. That will be the end of it.”

“Will you send the coach-driver to this side of the mills?” asked Kirby,

turning to Wolfe.

He spoke kindly: it was his habit to do so. Deborah, seeing the puddler

go, crept after him. The three men waited outside. Doctor May walked up

and down, chafed. Suddenly he stopped.

“Go back, Mitchell! You say the pocket and the heart of the world

speak without meaning to these people. What has its head to say? Taste,

culture, refinement? Go!”

Mitchell was leaning against a brick wall. He turned his head

indolently, and looked into the mills. There hung about the place a

thick, unclean odor. The slightest motion of his hand marked that he

perceived it, and his insufferable disgust. That was all. May said

nothing, only quickened his angry tramp.

“Besides,” added Mitchell, giving a corollary to his answer, “it would

be of no use. I am not one of them.”

“You do not mean”--said May, facing him.

“Yes, I mean just that. Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital

movement of the people's has worked down, for good or evil; fermented,

instead, carried up the heaving, cloggy mass. Think back through

history, and you will know it. What will this lowest deep--thieves,

Magdalens, negroes--do with the light filtered through ponderous Church

creeds, Baconian theories, Goethe schemes? Some day, out of their bitter

need will be thrown up their own light-bringer,--their Jean Paul, their

Cromwell, their Messiah.”

“Bah!” was the Doctor's inward criticism. However, in practice, he

adopted the theory; for, when, night and morning, afterwards, he prayed

that power might be given these degraded souls to rise, he glowed at

heart, recognizing an accomplished duty.

Wolfe and the woman had stood in the shadow of the works as the coach

drove off. The Doctor had held out his hand in a frank, generous way,

telling him to “take care of himself, and to remember it was his right

to rise.” Mitchell had simply touched his hat, as to an equal, with a

quiet look of thorough recognition. Kirby had thrown Deborah some money,

which she found, and clutched eagerly enough. They were gone now, all

of them. The man sat down on the cinder-road, looking up into the murky

sky.

“'T be late, Hugh. Wunnot hur come?”

He shook his head doggedly, and the woman crouched out of his sight

against the wall. Do you remember rare moments when a sudden

light flashed over yourself, your world, God? when you stood on a

mountain-peak, seeing your life as it might have been, as it is? one

quick instant, when custom lost its force and every-day usage? when your

friend, wife, brother, stood in a new light? your soul was bared, and

the grave,--a foretaste of the nakedness of the Judgment-Day? So it came

before him, his life, that night. The slow tides of pain he had borne

gathered themselves up and surged against his soul. His squalid daily

life, the brutal coarseness eating into his brain, as the ashes into

his skin: before, these things had been a dull aching into his

consciousness; to-night, they were reality. He griped the filthy red

shirt that clung, stiff with soot, about him, and tore it savagely from

his arm. The flesh beneath was muddy with grease and ashes,--and the

heart beneath that! And the soul? God knows.

Then flashed before his vivid poetic sense the man who had left

him,--the pure face, the delicate, sinewy limbs, in harmony with all he

knew of beauty or truth. In his cloudy fancy he had pictured a Something

like this. He had found it in this Mitchell, even when he idly

scoffed at his pain: a Man all-knowing, all-seeing, crowned by Nature,

reigning,--the keen glance of his eye falling like a sceptre on other

men. And yet his instinct taught him that he too--He! He looked at

himself with sudden loathing, sick, wrung his hands With a cry, and then

was silent. With all the phantoms of his heated, ignorant fancy, Wolfe

had not been vague in his ambitions. They were practical, slowly built

up before him out of his knowledge of what he could do. Through years

he had day by day made this hope a real thing to himself,--a clear,

projected figure of himself, as he might become.

Able to speak, to know what was best, to raise these men and women

working at his side up with him: sometimes he forgot this defined hope

in the frantic anguish to escape, only to escape,--out of the wet, the

pain, the ashes, somewhere, anywhere,--only for one moment of free air

on a hill-side, to lie down and let his sick soul throb itself out in

the sunshine. But to-night he panted for life. The savage strength of

his nature was roused; his cry was fierce to God for justice.

“Look at me!” he said to Deborah, with a low, bitter laugh, striking his

puny chest savagely. “What am I worth, Deb? Is it my fault that I am no

better? My fault? My fault?”

He stopped, stung with a sudden remorse, seeing her hunchback shape

writhing with sobs. For Deborah was crying thankless tears, according to

the fashion of women.

“God forgi' me, woman! Things go harder Wi' you nor me. It's a worse

share.”

He got up and helped her to rise; and they went doggedly down the muddy

street, side by side.

“It's all wrong,” he muttered, slowly,--“all wrong! I dunnot understan'.

But it'll end some day.”

“Come home, Hugh!” she said, coaxingly; for he had stopped, looking

around bewildered.

“Home,--and back to the mill!” He went on saying this over to himself,

as if he would mutter down every pain in this dull despair.

She followed him through the fog, her blue lips chattering with cold.

They reached the cellar at last. Old Wolfe had been drinking since she

went out, and had crept nearer the door. The girl Janey slept heavily in

the corner. He went up to her, touching softly the worn white arm with

his fingers. Some bitterer thought stung him, as he stood there. He

wiped the drops from his forehead, and went into the room beyond, livid,

trembling. A hope, trifling, perhaps, but very dear, had died just then

out of the poor puddler's life, as he looked at the sleeping, innocent

girl,--some plan for the future, in which she had borne a part. He gave

it up that moment, then and forever. Only a trifle, perhaps, to us: his

face grew a shade paler,--that was all. But, somehow, the man's soul, as

God and the angels looked down on it, never was the same afterwards.

Deborah followed him into the inner room. She carried a candle, which

she placed on the floor, closing the door after her. She had seen the

look on his face, as he turned away: her own grew deadly. Yet, as she

came up to him, her eyes glowed. He was seated on an old chest, quiet,

holding his face in his hands.

“Hugh!” she said, softly.

He did not speak.

“Hugh, did hur hear what the man said,--him with the clear voice? Did

hur hear? Money, money,--that it wud do all?”

He pushed her away,--gently, but he was worn out; her rasping tone

fretted him.

“Hugh!”

The candle flared a pale yellow light over the cobwebbed brick walls,

and the woman standing there. He looked at her. She was young, in

deadly earnest; her faded eyes, and wet, ragged figure caught from their

frantic eagerness a power akin to beauty.

“Hugh, it is true! Money ull do it! Oh, Hugh, boy, listen till me! He

said it true! It is money!”

“I know. Go back! I do not want you here.”

“Hugh, it is t' last time. I'll never worrit hur again.”

There were tears in her voice now, but she choked them back:

“Hear till me only to-night! If one of t' witch people wud come, them we

heard oft' home, and gif hur all hur wants, what then? Say, Hugh!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean money.”

Her whisper shrilled through his brain.

“If one oft' witch dwarfs wud come from t' lane moors to-night, and gif

hur money, to go out,--OUT, I say,--out, lad, where t' sun shines, and

t' heath grows, and t' ladies walk in silken gownds, and God stays

all t' time,--where t'man lives that talked to us to-night, Hugh

knows,--Hugh could walk there like a king!”

He thought the woman mad, tried to check her, but she went on, fierce in

her eager haste.

“If I were t' witch dwarf, if I had t' money, wud hur thank me? Wud hur

take me out o' this place wid hur and Janey? I wud not come into the

gran' house hur wud build, to vex hur wid t' hunch,--only at night, when

t' shadows were dark, stand far off to see hur.”

Mad? Yes! Are many of us mad in this way?

“Poor Deb! poor Deb!” he said, soothingly.

“It is here,” she said, suddenly, jerking into his hand a small roll. “I

took it! I did it! Me, me!--not hur! I shall be hanged, I shall be burnt

in hell, if anybody knows I took it! Out of his pocket, as he leaned

against t' bricks. Hur knows?”

She thrust it into his hand, and then, her errand done, began to gather

chips together to make a fire, choking down hysteric sobs.

“Has it come to this?”

That was all he said. The Welsh Wolfe blood was honest. The roll was a

small green pocket-book containing one or two gold pieces, and a check

for an incredible amount, as it seemed to the poor puddler. He laid it

down, hiding his face again in his hands.

“Hugh, don't be angry wud me! It's only poor Deb,--hur knows?”

He took the long skinny fingers kindly in his.

“Angry? God help me, no! Let me sleep. I am tired.”

He threw himself heavily down on the wooden bench, stunned with pain and

weariness. She brought some old rags to cover him.

It was late on Sunday evening before he awoke. I tell God's truth, when

I say he had then no thought of keeping this money. Deborah had hid it

in his pocket. He found it there. She watched him eagerly, as he took it

out.

“I must gif it to him,” he said, reading her face.

“Hur knows,” she said with a bitter sigh of disappointment. “But it is

hur right to keep it.”

His right! The word struck him. Doctor May had used the same. He washed

himself, and went out to find this man Mitchell. His right! Why did this

chance word cling to him so obstinately? Do you hear the fierce devils

whisper in his ear, as he went slowly down the darkening street?

The evening came on, slow and calm. He seated himself at the end of

an alley leading into one of the larger streets. His brain was clear

to-night, keen, intent, mastering. It would not start back, cowardly,

from any hellish temptation, but meet it face to face. Therefore the

great temptation of his life came to him veiled by no sophistry, but

bold, defiant, owning its own vile name, trusting to one bold blow for

victory.

He did not deceive himself. Theft! That was it. At first the word

sickened him; then he grappled with it. Sitting there on a broken

cart-wheel, the fading day, the noisy groups, the church-bells' tolling

passed before him like a panorama, while the sharp struggle went on

within. This money! He took it out, and looked at it. If he gave it

back, what then? He was going to be cool about it.

People going by to church saw only a sickly mill-boy watching them

quietly at the alley's mouth. They did not know that he was mad, or they

would not have gone by so quietly: mad with hunger; stretching out his

hands to the world, that had given so much to them, for leave to live

the life God meant him to live. His soul within him was smothering to

death; he wanted so much, thought so much, and knew--nothing. There was

nothing of which he was certain, except the mill and things there.

Of God and heaven he had heard so little, that they were to him what

fairy-land is to a child: something real, but not here; very far off.

His brain, greedy, dwarfed, full of thwarted energy and unused powers,

questioned these men and women going by, coldly, bitterly, that night.

Was it not his right to live as they,--a pure life, a good, true-hearted

life, full of beauty and kind words? He only wanted to know how to

use the strength within him. His heart warmed, as he thought of it. He

suffered himself to think of it longer. If he took the money?

Then he saw himself as he might be, strong, helpful, kindly. The night

crept on, as this one image slowly evolved itself from the crowd of

other thoughts and stood triumphant. He looked at it. As he might be!

What wonder, if it blinded him to delirium,--the madness that underlies

all revolution, all progress, and all fall?

You laugh at the shallow temptation? You see the error underlying

its argument so clearly,--that to him a true life was one of full

development rather than self-restraint? that he was deaf to the higher

tone in a cry of voluntary suffering for truth's sake than in the

fullest flow of spontaneous harmony? I do not plead his cause. I only

want to show you the mote in my brother's eye: then you can see clearly

to take it out.

The money,--there it lay on his knee, a little blotted slip of paper,

nothing in itself; used to raise him out of the pit, something straight

from God's hand. A thief! Well, what was it to be a thief? He met the

question at last, face to face, wiping the clammy drops of sweat

from his forehead. God made this money--the fresh air, too--for his

children's use. He never made the difference between poor and rich. The

Something who looked down on him that moment through the cool gray sky

had a kindly face, he knew,--loved his children alike. Oh, he knew that!

There were times when the soft floods of color in the crimson and purple

flames, or the clear depth of amber in the water below the bridge, had

somehow given him a glimpse of another world than this,--of an infinite

depth of beauty and of quiet somewhere,--somewhere, a depth of quiet

and rest and love. Looking up now, it became strangely real. The sun had

sunk quite below the hills, but his last rays struck upward, touching

the zenith. The fog had risen, and the town and river were steeped in

its thick, gray damp; but overhead, the sun-touched smoke-clouds opened

like a cleft ocean,--shifting, rolling seas of crimson mist, waves of

billowy silver veined with blood-scarlet, inner depths unfathomable of

glancing light. Wolfe's artist-eye grew drunk with color. The gates of

that other world! Fading, flashing before him now! What, in that world

of Beauty, Content, and Right, were the petty laws, the mine and thine,

of mill-owners and mill hands?

A consciousness of power stirred within him. He stood up. A man,--he

thought, stretching out his hands,--free to work, to live, to love!

Free! His right! He folded the scrap of paper in his hand. As his

nervous fingers took it in, limp and blotted, so his soul took in the

mean temptation, lapped it in fancied rights, in dreams of improved

existences, drifting and endless as the cloud-seas of color. Clutching

it, as if the tightness of his hold would strengthen his sense of

possession, he went aimlessly down the street. It was his watch at the

mill. He need not go, need never go again, thank God!--shaking off the

thought with unspeakable loathing.

Shall I go over the history of the hours of that night? how the

man wandered from one to another of his old haunts, with a

half-consciousness of bidding them farewell,--lanes and alleys and

back-yards where the mill-hands lodged,--noting, with a new eagerness,

the filth and drunkenness, the pig-pens, the ash-heaps covered with

potato-skins, the bloated, pimpled women at the doors, with a new

disgust, a new sense of sudden triumph, and, under all, a new, vague

dread, unknown before, smothered down, kept under, but still there? It

left him but once during the night, when, for the second time in his

life, he entered a church. It was a sombre Gothic pile, where the

stained light lost itself in far-retreating arches; built to meet the

requirements and sympathies of a far other class than Wolfe's. Yet

it touched, moved him uncontrollably. The distances, the shadows, the

still, marble figures, the mass of silent kneeling worshippers, the

mysterious music, thrilled, lifted his soul with a wonderful pain.

Wolfe forgot himself, forgot the new life he was going to live, the mean

terror gnawing underneath. The voice of the speaker strengthened the

charm; it was clear, feeling, full, strong. An old man, who had lived

much, suffered much; whose brain was keenly alive, dominant; whose heart

was summer-warm with charity. He taught it to-night. He held up Humanity

in its grand total; showed the great world-cancer to his people. Who

could show it better? He was a Christian reformer; he had studied the

age thoroughly; his outlook at man had been free, world-wide, over all

time. His faith stood sublime upon the Rock of Ages; his fiery zeal

guided vast schemes by which the Gospel was to be preached to all

nations. How did he preach it to-night? In burning, light-laden words he

painted Jesus, the incarnate Life, Love, the universal Man: words

that became reality in the lives of these people,--that lived again in

beautiful words and actions, trifling, but heroic. Sin, as he defined

it, was a real foe to them; their trials, temptations, were his. His

words passed far over the furnace-tender's grasp, toned to suit another

class of culture; they sounded in his ears a very pleasant song in an

unknown tongue. He meant to cure this world-cancer with a steady eye

that had never glared with hunger, and a hand that neither poverty nor

strychnine-whiskey had taught to shake. In this morbid, distorted heart

of the Welsh puddler he had failed.

Eighteen centuries ago, the Master of this man tried reform in the

streets of a city as crowded and vile as this, and did not fail.

His disciple, showing Him to-night to cultured hearers, showing the

clearness of the God-power acting through Him, shrank back from one

coarse fact; that in birth and habit the man Christ was thrown up from

the lowest of the people: his flesh, their flesh; their blood, his

blood; tempted like them, to brutalize day by day; to lie, to steal: the

actual slime and want of their hourly life, and the wine-press he trod

alone.

Yet, is there no meaning in this perpetually covered truth? If the son

of the carpenter had stood in the church that night, as he stood with

the fishermen and harlots by the sea of Galilee, before His Father and

their Father, despised and rejected of men, without a place to lay His

head, wounded for their iniquities, bruised for their transgressions,

would not that hungry mill-boy at least, in the back seat, have “known

the man”? That Jesus did not stand there.

Wolfe rose at last, and turned from the church down the street. He

looked up; the night had come on foggy, damp; the golden mists had

vanished, and the sky lay dull and ash-colored. He wandered again

aimlessly down the street, idly wondering what had become of the

cloud-sea of crimson and scarlet. The trial-day of this man's life

was over, and he had lost the victory. What followed was mere drifting

circumstance,--a quicker walking over the path,--that was all. Do you

want to hear the end of it? You wish me to make a tragic story out of

it? Why, in the police-reports of the morning paper you can find a dozen

such tragedies: hints of shipwrecks unlike any that ever befell on the

high seas; hints that here a power was lost to heaven,--that there a

soul went down where no tide can ebb or flow. Commonplace enough the

hints are,--jocose sometimes, done up in rhyme.

Doctor May a month after the night I have told you of, was reading to

his wife at breakfast from this fourth column of the morning-paper:

an unusual thing,--these police-reports not being, in general, choice

reading for ladies; but it was only one item he read.

“Oh, my dear! You remember that man I told you of, that we saw at

Kirby's mill?--that was arrested for robbing Mitchell? Here he is; just

listen:--'Circuit Court. Judge Day. Hugh Wolfe, operative in Kirby &

John's Loudon Mills. Charge, grand larceny. Sentence, nineteen years

hard labor in penitentiary. Scoundrel! Serves him right! After all our

kindness that night! Picking Mitchell's pocket at the very time!”

His wife said something about the ingratitude of that kind of people,

and then they began to talk of something else.

Nineteen years! How easy that was to read! What a simple word for Judge

Day to utter! Nineteen years! Half a lifetime!

Hugh Wolfe sat on the window-ledge of his cell, looking out. His ankles

Were ironed. Not usual in such cases; but he had made two desperate

efforts to escape. “Well,” as Haley, the jailer, said, “small blame

to him! Nineteen years' imprisonment was not a pleasant thing to look

forward to.” Haley was very good-natured about it, though Wolfe had

fought him savagely.

“When he was first caught,” the jailer said afterwards, in telling the

story, “before the trial, the fellow was cut down at once,--laid there

on that pallet like a dead man, with his hands over his eyes. Never saw

a man so cut down in my life. Time of the trial, too, came the queerest

dodge of any customer I ever had. Would choose no lawyer. Judge gave him

one, of course. Gibson it Was. He tried to prove the fellow crazy; but

it wouldn't go. Thing was plain as daylight: money found on him. 'T was

a hard sentence,--all the law allows; but it was for 'xample's sake.

These mill-hands are gettin' onbearable. When the sentence was read, he

just looked up, and said the money was his by rights, and that all the

world had gone wrong. That night, after the trial, a gentleman came to

see him here, name of Mitchell,--him as he stole from. Talked to him for

an hour. Thought he came for curiosity, like. After he was gone, thought

Wolfe was remarkable quiet, and went into his cell. Found him very low;

bed all bloody. Doctor said he had been bleeding at the lungs. He was

as weak as a cat; yet if ye'll b'lieve me, he tried to get a-past me and

get out. I just carried him like a baby, and threw him on the pallet.

Three days after, he tried it again: that time reached the wall. Lord

help you! he fought like a tiger,--giv' some terrible blows. Fightin'

for life, you see; for he can't live long, shut up in the stone crib

down yonder. Got a death-cough now. 'T took two of us to bring him down

that day; so I just put the irons on his feet. There he sits, in there.

Goin' to-morrow, with a batch more of 'em. That woman, hunchback, tried

with him,--you remember?--she's only got three years. 'Complice. But

she's a woman, you know. He's been quiet ever since I put on irons:

giv' up, I suppose. Looks white, sick-lookin'. It acts different on 'em,

bein' sentenced. Most of 'em gets reckless, devilish-like. Some prays

awful, and sings them vile songs of the mills, all in a breath. That

woman, now, she's desper't'. Been beggin' to see Hugh, as she calls him,

for three days. I'm a-goin' to let her in. She don't go with him. Here

she is in this next cell. I'm a-goin' now to let her in.”

He let her in. Wolfe did not see her. She crept into a corner of the

cell, and stood watching him. He was scratching the iron bars of

the window with a piece of tin which he had picked up, with an idle,

uncertain, vacant stare, just as a child or idiot would do.

“Tryin' to get out, old boy?” laughed Haley. “Them irons will need a

crow-bar beside your tin, before you can open 'em.”

Wolfe laughed, too, in a senseless way.

“I think I'll get out,” he said.

“I believe his brain's touched,” said Haley, when he came out.

The puddler scraped away with the tin for half an hour. Still Deborah

did not speak. At last she ventured nearer, and touched his arm.

“Blood?” she said, looking at some spots on his coat with a shudder.

He looked up at her, “Why, Deb!” he said, smiling,--such a bright,

boyish smile, that it Went to poor Deborah's heart directly, and she

sobbed and cried out loud.

“Oh, Hugh, lad! Hugh! dunnot look at me, when it wur my fault! To think

I brought hur to it! And I loved hur so! Oh lad, I dud!”

The confession, even In this wretch, came with the woman's blush through

the sharp cry.

He did not seem to hear her,--scraping away diligently at the bars with

the bit of tin.

Was he going mad? She peered closely into his face. Something she saw

there made her draw suddenly back,--something which Haley had not seen,

that lay beneath the pinched, vacant look it had caught since the trial,

or the curious gray shadow that rested on it. That gray shadow,--yes,

she knew what that meant. She had often seen it creeping over women's

faces for months, who died at last of slow hunger or consumption. That

meant death, distant, lingering: but this--Whatever it was the woman

saw, or thought she saw, used as she was to crime and misery, seemed to

make her sick with a new horror. Forgetting her fear of him, she caught

his shoulders, and looked keenly, steadily, into his eyes.

“Hugh!” she cried, in a desperate whisper,--“oh, boy, not that! for

God's sake, not that!”

The vacant laugh went off his face, and he answered her in a muttered

word or two that drove her away. Yet the words were kindly enough.

Sitting there on his pallet, she cried silently a hopeless sort of

tears, but did not speak again. The man looked up furtively at her now

and then. Whatever his own trouble was, her distress vexed him with a

momentary sting.

It was market-day. The narrow window of the jail looked down directly on

the carts and wagons drawn up in a long line, where they had unloaded.

He could see, too, and hear distinctly the clink of money as it changed

hands, the busy crowd of whites and blacks shoving, pushing one another,

and the chaffering and swearing at the stalls. Somehow, the sound, more

than anything else had done, wakened him up,--made the whole real to

him. He was done with the world and the business of it. He let the tin

fall, and looked out, pressing his face close to the rusty bars. How

they crowded and pushed! And he,--he should never walk that pavement

again! There came Neff Sanders, one of the feeders at the mill, with

a basket on his arm. Sure enough, Nyeff was married the other week. He

whistled, hoping he would look up; but he did not. He wondered if Neff

remembered he was there,--if any of the boys thought of him up there,

and thought that he never was to go down that old cinder-road again.

Never again! He had not quite understood it before; but now he did. Not

for days or years, but never!--that was it.

How clear the light fell on that stall in front of the market! and how

like a picture it was, the dark-green heaps of corn, and the crimson

beets, and golden melons! There was another with game: how the light

flickered on that pheasant's breast, with the purplish blood dripping

over the brown feathers! He could see the red shining of the drops, it

was so near. In one minute he could be down there. It was just a step.

So easy, as it seemed, so natural to go! Yet it could never be--not in

all the thousands of years to come--that he should put his foot on that

street again! He thought of himself with a sorrowful pity, as of some

one else. There was a dog down in the market, walking after his master

with such a stately, grave look!--only a dog, yet he could go backwards

and forwards just as he pleased: he had good luck! Why, the very vilest

cur, yelping there in the gutter, had not lived his life, had been free

to act out whatever thought God had put into his brain; while he--No, he

would not think of that! He tried to put the thought away, and to listen

to a dispute between a countryman and a woman about some meat; but it

would come back. He, what had he done to bear this?

Then came the sudden picture of what might have been, and now. He knew

what it was to be in the penitentiary, how it went with men there. He

knew how in these long years he should slowly die, but not until soul

and body had become corrupt and rotten,--how, when he came out, if he

lived to come, even the lowest of the mill-hands would jeer him,--how

his hands would be weak, and his brain senseless and stupid. He believed

he was almost that now. He put his hand to his head, with a puzzled,

weary look. It ached, his head, with thinking. He tried to quiet

himself. It was only right, perhaps; he had done wrong. But was there

right or wrong for such as he? What was right? And who had ever taught

him? He thrust the whole matter away. A dark, cold quiet crept through

his brain. It was all wrong; but let it be! It was nothing to him more

than the others. Let it be!

The door grated, as Haley opened it.

“Come, my woman! Must lock up for t' night. Come, stir yerself!”

She went up and took Hugh's hand.

“Good-night, Deb,” he said, carelessly.

She had not hoped he would say more; but the tired pain on her mouth

just then was bitterer than death. She took his passive hand and kissed

it.

“Hur'll never see Deb again!” she ventured, her lips growing colder and

more bloodless.

What did she say that for? Did he not know it? Yet he would not be

impatient with poor old Deb. She had trouble of her own, as well as he.

“No, never again,” he said, trying to be cheerful.

She stood just a moment, looking at him. Do you laugh at her, standing

there, with her hunchback, her rags, her bleared, withered face, and the

great despised love tugging at her heart?

“Come, you!” called Haley, impatiently.

She did not move.

“Hugh!” she whispered.

It was to be her last word. What was it?

“Hugh, boy, not THAT!”

He did not answer. She wrung her hands, trying to be silent, looking in

his face in an agony of entreaty. He smiled again, kindly.

“It is best, Deb. I cannot bear to be hurted any more.

“Hur knows,” she said, humbly.

“Tell my father good-bye; and--and kiss little Janey.”

She nodded, saying nothing, looked in his face again, and went out of

the door. As she went, she staggered.

“Drinkin' to-day?” broke out Haley, pushing her before him. “Where the

Devil did you get it? Here, in with ye!” and he shoved her into her

cell, next to Wolfe's, and shut the door.

Along the wall of her cell there was a crack low down by the floor,

through which she could see the light from Wolfe's. She had discovered

it days before. She hurried in now, and, kneeling down by it, listened,

hoping to hear some sound. Nothing but the rasping of the tin on the

bars. He was at his old amusement again. Something in the noise jarred

on her ear, for she shivered as she heard it. Hugh rasped away at the

bars. A dull old bit of tin, not fit to cut korl with.

He looked out of the window again. People were leaving the market now.

A tall mulatto girl, following her mistress, her basket on her head,

crossed the street just below, and looked up. She was laughing; but,

when she caught sight of the haggard face peering out through the bars,

suddenly grew grave, and hurried by. A free, firm step, a clear-cut

olive face, with a scarlet turban tied on one side, dark, shining eyes,

and on the head the basket poised, filled with fruit and flowers, under

which the scarlet turban and bright eyes looked out half-shadowed. The

picture caught his eye. It was good to see a face like that. He would

try to-morrow, and cut one like it. To-morrow! He threw down the tin,

trembling, and covered his face with his hands. When he looked up again,

the daylight was gone.

Deborah, crouching near by on the other side of the wall, heard no

noise. He sat on the side of the low pallet, thinking. Whatever was the

mystery which the woman had seen on his face, it came out now slowly,

in the dark there, and became fixed,--a something never seen on his face

before. The evening was darkening fast. The market had been over for an

hour; the rumbling of the carts over the pavement grew more infrequent:

he listened to each, as it passed, because he thought it was to be for

the last time. For the same reason, it was, I suppose, that he strained

his eyes to catch a glimpse of each passer-by, wondering who they were,

what kind of homes they were going to, if they had children,--listening

eagerly to every chance word in the street, as if--(God be merciful to

the man! what strange fancy was this?)--as if he never should hear human

voices again.

It was quite dark at last. The street was a lonely one. The last

passenger, he thought, was gone. No,--there was a quick step: Joe Hill,

lighting the lamps. Joe was a good old chap; never passed a fellow

without some joke or other. He remembered once seeing the place where

he lived with his wife. “Granny Hill” the boys called her. Bedridden she

Was; but so kind as Joe was to her! kept the room so clean!--and the old

woman, when he was there, was laughing at some of “t' lad's foolishness.”

The step was far down the street; but he could see him place the ladder,

run up, and light the gas. A longing seized him to be spoken to once

more.

“Joe!” he called, out of the grating. “Good-bye, Joe!”

The old man stopped a moment, listening uncertainly; then hurried

on. The prisoner thrust his hand out of the window, and called again,

louder; but Joe was too far down the street. It was a little thing; but

it hurt him,--this disappointment.

“Good-bye, Joe!” he called, sorrowfully enough.

“Be quiet!” said one of the jailers, passing the door, striking on it

with his club.

Oh, that was the last, was it?

There was an inexpressible bitterness on his face, as he lay down on the

bed, taking the bit of tin, which he had rasped to a tolerable degree

of sharpness, in his hand,--to play with, it may be. He bared his arms,

looking intently at their corded veins and sinews. Deborah, listening in

the next cell, heard a slight clicking sound, often repeated. She shut

her lips tightly, that she might not scream; the cold drops of sweat

broke over her, in her dumb agony.

“Hur knows best,” she muttered at last, fiercely clutching the boards

where she lay.

If she could have seen Wolfe, there was nothing about him to frighten

her. He lay quite still, his arms outstretched, looking at the pearly

stream of moonlight coming into the window. I think in that one hour

that came then he lived back over all the years that had gone before.

I think that all the low, vile life, all his wrongs, all his starved

hopes, came then, and stung him with a farewell poison that made him

sick unto death. He made neither moan nor cry, only turned his worn

face now and then to the pure light, that seemed so far off, as one that

said, “How long, O Lord? how long?”

The hour was over at last. The moon, passing over her nightly path,

slowly came nearer, and threw the light across his bed on his feet. He

watched it steadily, as it crept up, inch by inch, slowly. It seemed to

him to carry with it a great silence. He had been so hot and tired there

always in the mills! The years had been so fierce and cruel! There was

coming now quiet and coolness and sleep. His tense limbs relaxed, and

settled in a calm languor. The blood ran fainter and slow from his

heart. He did not think now with a savage anger of what might be and was

not; he was conscious only of deep stillness creeping over him. At first

he saw a sea of faces: the mill-men,--women he had known, drunken and

bloated,--Janey's timid and pitiful-poor old Debs: then they floated

together like a mist, and faded away, leaving only the clear, pearly

moonlight.

Whether, as the pure light crept up the stretched-out figure, it brought

with It calm and peace, who shall say? His dumb soul was alone with

God in judgment. A Voice may have spoken for it from far-off Calvary,

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” Who dare say?

Fainter and fainter the heart rose and fell, slower and slower the moon

floated from behind a cloud, until, when at last its full tide of white

splendor swept over the cell, it seemed to wrap and fold into a deeper

stillness the dead figure that never should move again. Silence deeper

than the Night! Nothing that moved, save the black, nauseous stream of

blood dripping slowly from the pallet to the floor!

There was outcry and crowd enough in the cell the next day. The coroner

and his jury, the local editors, Kirby himself, and boys with their

hands thrust knowingly into their pockets and heads on one side, jammed

into the corners. Coming and going all day. Only one woman. She

came late, and outstayed them all. A Quaker, or Friend, as they call

themselves. I think this woman Was known by that name in heaven. A

homely body, coarsely dressed in gray and white. Deborah (for Haley had

let her in) took notice of her. She watched them all--sitting on the

end of the pallet, holding his head in her arms with the ferocity of a

watch-dog, if any of them touched the body. There was no meekness, no

sorrow, in her face; the stuff out of which murderers are made, instead.

All the time Haley and the woman were laying straight the limbs and

cleaning the cell, Deborah sat still, keenly watching the Quaker's face.

Of all the crowd there that day, this woman alone had not spoken to

her,--only once or twice had put some cordial to her lips. After they

all were gone, the woman, in the same still, gentle way, brought a vase

of wood-leaves and berries, and placed it by the pallet, then opened the

narrow window. The fresh air blew in, and swept the woody fragrance over

the dead face, Deborah looked up with a quick wonder.

“Did hur know my boy wud like it? Did hur know Hugh?”

“I know Hugh now.”

The white fingers passed in a slow, pitiful way over the dead, worn

face. There was a heavy shadow in the quiet eyes.

“Did hur know where they'll bury Hugh?” said Deborah in a shrill tone,

catching her arm.

This had been the question hanging on her lips all day.

“In t' town-yard? Under t' mud and ash? T' lad'll smother, woman! He wur

born in t' lane moor, where t' air is frick and strong. Take hur out,

for God's sake, take hur out where t' air blows!”

The Quaker hesitated, but only for a moment. She put her strong arm

around Deborah and led her to the window.

“Thee sees the hills, friend, over the river? Thee sees how the

light lies warm there, and the winds of God blow all the day? I live

there,--where the blue smoke is, by the trees. Look at me,” She turned

Deborah's face to her own, clear and earnest, “Thee will believe me? I

will take Hugh and bury him there to-morrow.”

Deborah did not doubt her. As the evening wore on, she leaned against

the iron bars, looking at the hills that rose far off, through the thick

sodden clouds, like a bright, unattainable calm. As she looked, a shadow

of their solemn repose fell on her face; its fierce discontent faded

into a pitiful, humble quiet. Slow, solemn tears gathered in her eyes:

the poor weak eyes turned so hopelessly to the place where Hugh was to

rest, the grave heights looking higher and brighter and more solemn than

ever before. The Quaker watched her keenly. She came to her at last, and

touched her arm.

“When thee comes back,” she said, in a low, sorrowful tone, like one

who speaks from a strong heart deeply moved with remorse or pity, “thee

shall begin thy life again,--there on the hills. I came too late; but

not for thee,--by God's help, it may be.”

Not too late. Three years after, the Quaker began her work. I end my

story here. At evening-time it was light. There is no need to tire

you with the long years of sunshine, and fresh air, and slow, patient

Christ-love, needed to make healthy and hopeful this impure body and

soul. There is a homely pine house, on one of these hills, whose windows

overlook broad, wooded slopes and clover-crimsoned meadows,--niched into

the very place where the light is warmest, the air freest. It is the

Friends' meeting-house. Once a week they sit there, in their grave,

earnest way, waiting for the Spirit of Love to speak, opening their

simple hearts to receive His words. There is a woman, old, deformed, who

takes a humble place among them: waiting like them: in her gray dress,

her worn face, pure and meek, turned now and then to the sky. A woman

much loved by these silent, restful people; more silent than they, more

humble, more loving. Waiting: with her eyes turned to hills higher

and purer than these on which she lives, dim and far off now, but to be

reached some day. There may be in her heart some latent hope to meet

there the love denied her here,--that she shall find him whom she lost,

and that then she will not be all-unworthy. Who blames her? Something

is lost in the passage of every soul from one eternity to the

other,--something pure and beautiful, which might have been and was not:

a hope, a talent, a love, over which the soul mourns, like Esau deprived

of his birthright. What blame to the meek Quaker, if she took her lost

hope to make the hills of heaven more fair?

Nothing remains to tell that the poor Welsh puddler once lived, but this

figure of the mill-woman cut in korl. I have it here in a corner of my

library. I keep it hid behind a curtain,--it is such a rough, ungainly

thing. Yet there are about it touches, grand sweeps of outline, that

show a master's hand. Sometimes,--to-night, for instance,--the

curtain is accidentally drawn back, and I see a bare arm stretched out

imploringly in the darkness, and an eager, wolfish face watching mine: a

wan, woful face, through which the spirit of the dead korl-cutter looks

out, with its thwarted life, its mighty hunger, its unfinished work. Its

pale, vague lips seem to tremble with a terrible question. “Is this the

End?” they say,--“nothing beyond? no more?” Why, you tell me you have

seen that look in the eyes of dumb brutes,--horses dying under the lash.

I know.

The deep of the night is passing while I write. The gas-light wakens

from the shadows here and there the objects which lie scattered through

the room: only faintly, though; for they belong to the open sunlight. As

I glance at them, they each recall some task or pleasure of the coming

day. A half-moulded child's head; Aphrodite; a bough of forest-leaves;

music; work; homely fragments, in which lie the secrets of all eternal

truth and beauty. Prophetic all! Only this dumb, woful face seems to

belong to and end with the night. I turn to look at it. Has the power

of its desperate need commanded the darkness away? While the room is yet

steeped in heavy shadow, a cool, gray light suddenly touches its head

like a blessing hand, and its groping arm points through the broken

cloud to the far East, where, in the flickering, nebulous crimson, God

has set the promise of the Dawn.

End of 's Life in the Iron-Mills, by Rebecca Harding Davis