Henry turned pale, but there was no help for it.
He got up in a very leisurely way; and, while he was putting on his coat, he told Bayne, doggedly, he should expect his month's salary.
As he was leaving, Redcar spoke to him in rather a sheepish way. “Shake hands, old lad,” said he; “thou knows one or t'other must win; and there's not a grain of spite against thee. It's just a trade matter.”
Henry stood with his arms akimbo, and looked at Redcar. “I was in hopes,” said he, grinding his teeth, “you were going to ask me to take a turn with you in the yard, man to man. But I can't refuse my hand to one of my own sort that asks it. There 'tis. After all, you deserve to win, for you are true to each other; but a master can't be true to a man, nor to anything on earth, but his pocket.”
He then strolled out into the yard, with his hands in his pockets, and whistled “The Harmonious Blacksmith” very sick at heart.
CHAPTER IX.
The strike was over, the grinders poured into the works, and the grindstones revolved. Henry Little leaned against an angle of the building, and listened with aching heart to their remorseless thunder. He stood there disconsolate—the one workman out of work—and sipped the bitter cup, defeat. Then he walked out at the gates, and wandered languidly into the streets. He was miserable, and had nobody to mourn to, for the main cause of his grief lay beneath the surface of this defeat; and how could he reveal it, now that his ambitious love looked utter madness? Young as he was, he had seen there is no sympathy in the world for any man who loves out of his sphere. Indeed, whatever cures or crushes such a passion, is hailed by the by-standers as a sharp but wholesome medicine.
He sauntered about, and examined all the shops with lack-luster eye. He looked in at everything, but observed nothing, scarcely saw anything. All his senses were turned inward. It was such a pitiable and galling result of a gallant fight. Even the insurance office had got the better of him. It had taken one-third of his savings, and the very next day his trade was gone, and his life in no danger. The “Gosshawk” had plucked him, and the trade had tied his hands. Rack his invention how he would, he could see no way of becoming a master in Hillsborough, except by leaving Hillsborough, and working hard and long in some other town. He felt in his own heart the love and constancy to do this; but his reason told him such constancy would be wasted; for while he was working at a distance, the impression, if any, he had made on her would wear away, and some man born with money, would step in and carry her gayly off. This thought returned to him again and again, and exasperated him so at last, that he resolved to go to “Woodbine Villa,” and tell her his heart before he left the place. Then he should be rejected, no doubt, but perhaps pitied, and not so easily forgotten as if he had melted silently away.
He walked up the hill, first rapidly, then slowly. He called at “Woodbine Villa.”