“Orangemen or not,” she answered, “they’re flesh and blood like me. God made ’em. If I try to eat, I think I see them with nothing, and I long to give all I have to them.”
“I tell ye,” O’Rourke exclaimed, “times are bad enough now, but they’ll be worse soon, if master don’t take heed. There’ll be a strike in Errickdale before the winter’s out.”
“O father! no. I hope not. Nothing like that would ever move the master. He’s that set in his own way, he would only hold out stronger against ’em—he would.”
“I think so myself, girl—I think so myself. I’ve known him well these eighteen years; he’s firm as rock. But the men don’t credit it. They are murmuring low now, but it will be loud shouting before we know it. Bridget, I’ll to Malton and see the master myself, come morning.”
“Yes, father,” said Bridget; “and I’ll go with you and speak with Miss Eleanora.”
A few hours later, the city lady and the Irish girl stood face to face in Eleanora’s boudoir. There was a startled look in Eleanora’s eyes. What strange story is this which Bridget tells her? There must be some mistake about it.
“They are very poor in Errickdale,” Bridget said slowly, keeping down the quiver from her voice and the tears from her eye. “House after house they have nothing but potatoes or mush to eat, and nothing but rags to wear. I don’t think it’s the master’s fault maybe. Sometimes I fear the agent is not all he should be, miss.”
As if John Rossetti did not know the character of the man whom he had left in power among his miners! Alas for Bridget! and alas for Errickdale!
“But do you suffer, Bridget?” and Eleanora looked at her compassionately, and then with deep admiration. She had let her talk, had let her stay, where carelessly she would have sent off any other, because it was such a delight to her to see that face in its grave and regular beauty, and to hear the rich voice with its sorrowful cadence like the minor note of an organ chant. Even had she been of like station and wealth with herself, Eleanora would have felt no pangs of jealous fear; for her own beauty and that of Bridget were of too perfect and delicious a contrast for that, and her trained artistic taste was considering it with pleasure all the while that their talk went on.
“Not that way,” Bridget answered her. “I’ve food and clothes a plenty myself. But it’s as if the hunger and want were tugging at my heart instead of my body, by day and by night. The lean faces and the wailing come between me and all else. Miss Eleanora, I wish you could once see them—only once.”