Chapter VII.
DISCONTENTS.
The delusion that the improvement in machinery was the cause of a change in the times, and not the consequence of the future remedy for such a change, had become too general and too firmly established in this society to be removed by a few explanations or strong impressions here and there. Discontent grew hourly; and the complaints which had before been divided between the American and French iron-works, the rivals in the neighbourhood, the government of the country, and the whole body of customers who would not give so high a price as formerly for their iron, were now turned full upon the new machinery and those who had set it up. Growlings met the ears of the partners whereever they turned; the young men had to keep a constant restraint upon their tempers, and the ladies directed their walks where they might be out of hearing of threats which alarmed or murmurings which grieved them.
Two days after Mrs. Wallace’s adventure, her husband, on rising from the breakfast-table, saw Armstrong coming in at the gate.
“It is a sign of the times that you are here,” said he, as he shook hands with the old man. “How are we to read it?”
“As your discretion may direct when you have heard my story,” replied the old man gravely.
Mr. Wallace looked doubtfully at him, as if to ask whether they had not better save his wife from alarm by being private. Armstrong understood him.
“Sit down, madam, if you please,” said he. “Women are not often so cowardly as they are said to be, if they are but treated fairly, and given to understand what they are to expect. It is too much to look for courage from such as know that the worst they have to dread is often kept from them. So you shall hear, ma’am, and judge for yourself. Only do not turn pale before I begin, or you will make me look ashamed of having so little to tell.”
Comforted by the end of this speech as much as she had been alarmed by the beginning, Mrs. Wallace smiled in answer to her husband’s anxious looks, and drew her chair to listen.
Armstrong related that he had observed from his garden, after working hours the evening before, an unusual number of people sauntering about a field at a considerable distance from his dwelling. He had called his housekeeper out to look and guess what it might be. She had once seen Punch in a field with a crowd; and her only idea, therefore, was that it might be Punch; and when her master sent her for his telescope, she fixed it at the window before she brought it, and was almost sure she saw a stand with a red curtain such as she had seen when Punch appeared to her. Her master, however, who was not apt to see visions through his glass, could make out nothing but that all the people in the field seemed to be now collected in one place, and that one man was raised above the rest, and apparently haranguing them. He instantly resolved to go, partly from curiosity, and partly because he expected to hear complaints of the management of the neighbouring concern, complaints which, kind-hearted as he was, he loved to hear, because they confirmed his prejudices, which were dearer to him than even his friend Mr. Wallace or Mr. Wallace’s gentle wife. He did not give the account of his motives exactly as we have given it; but he conveyed it clearly enough by what he said to make Mr. and Mrs. Wallace glance at each other with a smile.