“Truth can hit hard. Well, I’ll tell thee. Thy John shot at th’ maister’s wife last neight an’ hit her. They’ve gotten him.” He upturned a waste-bin. “Now, A’m real sorry for thee and it weren’t a pleasant job for me to break th’ news. That’s over, though, and tha’ knaws now. Next sit thee down on this. It’s in a corner, like, and folks canna watch thee. When tha’ feels like work, come and tell me.” He left her with rough kindliness, and relieved his feelings by cuffing a child who was peering round a loom at them. He was paid to be brutal, and the child, gathering himself up from the floor, might have thought that the overseer was earning his wages: but the shrewd blow was rather a warning to the rest and an expression of his sympathy with Phoebe than an episode in his day’s work.
That Aspinall, and not he alone but the general sense of the workers, should be sympathetic towards her was in its way remarkable enough. They expected naturally that John would hang, but they had definitely the idea that retribution for his deed would not stop at the capital punishment of the actual malefactor. Hepplestall would “tak’ it out of all on us,” and “We’ll go ravenous for this,” “Skin an’ sorrow—that’s our shape,” and (from a humorist) “Famished? He’ll spokeshave us” were some of the phrases by which they expressed their belief in the widespread severity of Hepplestall’s vengeance.
Yet they had no bitterness against John, nor against Phoebe who, as his mother, might be supposed to have a special responsibility. It was a dreadful deed and the more dreadful since his bullet had miscarried and had killed a woman; but it had fanned to quick fire their smoldering hatred of Hepplestall and there was more rejoicing than regret that he was, through Dorothy, cast down. They would have preferred to know that John had hit the true target but, as it was, it was well enough and they were not going to squeal at the price they expected to pay. Their commiseration was not for the bereaved master, but for the about-to-be-bereaved mother of the murderer.
Somebody moved a candle so that Phoebe in her corner should be the more effectually screened from observation. It was a kindly act, but one which she hardly needed. Her thoughts were with John, but not with a John who was going to be hanged; they were with a John who was going to be saved.
Murderers were hanged and so for the matter of that were people convicted of far less heinous crimes. That was the law, but she had never a doubt but that Hepplestall was above the law, that he was the law, and that John’s fate was not with an impersonal entity called justice but, simply, with Hepplestall. Probably two-thirds of her fellow-workers were firmly of the same belief in his omnipotence, though they hadn’t, as she supposed she had, grounds for thinking that he would intervene on John’s behalf.
When Annie died she had told herself vehemently that she would never go, a suppliant, to Hepplestall, she would never let him share in John’s children wrho were his grandchildren; but that resolution was rescinded now. Reuben had never hinted since the day when Peter and Phoebe went to him, aghast at the edict which broke Peter’s factory, that he remembered he had had a son by Phoebe. It was so long ago and perhaps he had indeed forgotten, but she must go to him and remind him now. She must tell him that John Bradshaw was his son. He could not hang his son.
Daylight was penetrating through the sedulously cleaned windows of the factory. It was the hour when expensive artificial light could be dispensed with and candles were being extinguished; it was the hour, too, when Reuben might ordinarily be expected in his office. He had the usual manufacturers’ habit of riding or walking to the factory for half an hour before breakfast, and to-day word was passed through the rooms that he had, surprisingly, arrived as usual.
The word had not reached Phoebe, but she expected nothing else. She had to speak with Reuben, and therefore he would be there. She came from her corner and told Aspinall what she intended.
“Nay, nay!” he said.
“Please open the door for me.”