“Eh, lad,” she said, “we’ve got to take what comes.”
She did not, at least, as Annie did, answer his inarticulate revolt with religion, but she had fundamentally the same resignation to the things of this world, and for the same reason. She, too, looked forward to a radiant life above: she saw in her present troubles the hand of God justly heavy upon one who had been a light woman. John, knowing nothing of that secret source of her humility, attributed all to the one cause, to the Factory which crushed and maimed and killed in spirit as in body. He refused his acceptance, his resignation. There was, there must be, something to be done. But what? What?
First, at any rate, Annie had to be buried with the circumstance which seemed to make for decency and for that they had provided through the Benefit Society. This—-decent burial—was the first thought behind the weekly contributions paid, heaven knows at what sacrifice, to the Society and they were rewarded now in the fact that Annie was not buried at the expense of the parish. That was all, bare decency, not the flaunting parody with plumes and gin of the slightly less poor: nor were there many mourners. Leave was given to a select few to be absent for an hour from the factory, and the severe fines for unauthorized absence kept the numbers strictly, with one exception, to the few the overseer chose to privilege. Phoebe and John were granted the full day, without fine, and, of course, without wage, and so, it appeared, was Mr. Barraclough. But Mr. Barraclough was on business, and the fine that he would have to pay would figure in the expenses he would charge Mr. Needham.
One or two old women—old in fact if not in years, incapacitated by the factory, for the factory—had been at the graveside and were going home with Phoebe, and it was natural that John should hold out his hand to Barraclough, this unexpected, this so self-sacrificing sympathizer and that they should fall into step as they moved away together.
“Man, I had to come. I’m that sorry for thee. Coming doan’t mean much for sure, but—”
“It means a day’s wages, choose how,” said John, who knew that Barraclough was not of the few who had been granted an hour’s leave to come.
Barraclough nodded. “And a fine, an’ all,” he said, “but that all counts somehow. Seems to me if it weren’t costing me summat, it u’d not be the same relief it is to my feelings. I didna come for thy sake, I came to please masel’, selfish like. I had to get away from yond damned place that murdered her. I couldna’ stand the sight o’ it to-day.”
“Murdered her!” said John. He had, no doubt, used that word in thought, but it had seemed to him audacious, a thought to be forbidden utterance. And here, shaming him for his mildness was one, an outsider, a stranger, who, untouched intimately by Annie’s death, yet spoke of it outright as murder. John felt that he was failing Annie, that he had not risen to his occasion, that it was this other, this fine spirit, who could not “stand the sight” of the factory on the day of her funeral, who had risen to the occasion more worthily than John, who was Annie’s husband. “Aye,” he said somberly, “it was murder.”
“You never doubted that, surely,” said Barraclough.
“Oh,” said John, “when a woman dies in childbirth—”