"RebeccaHardingDavis-LifeInTheIronMills" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davis Rebecca Harding)

gnawing was the fiercer.
She lay quiet in the dark corner, listening, through the monotonous din and
uncertain glare of the works, to the dull plash of the rain in the far distance,
shrinking back whenever the man Wolfe happened to look towards her. She knew, in
spite of all his kindness, that there was that in her face and form which made
him loathe the sight of her. She felt by instinct, although she could not
comprehend it, the finer nature of the man, which made him among his
fellow-workmen something unique, set apart. She knew, that, down under all the
vileness and coarseness of his life, there was a groping passion for whatever
was beautiful and pure, that his soul sickened with disgust at her deformity,
even when his words were kindest. Through this dull consciousness, which never
left her, came, like a sting, the recollection of the dark blue eyes and lithe
figure of the little Irish girl she had left in the cellar. The recollection
struck through even her stupid intellect with a vivid glow of beauty and of
grace. Little Janey, timid, helpless, clinging to Hugh as her only friend: that
was the sharp thought, the bitter thought, that drove into the glazed eyes a
fierce light of pain. You laugh at it? Are pain and jealousy less savage
realities down here in this place I am taking you to than in your own house or
your own heart,--your heart, which they clutch at sometimes? The note is the
same, I fancy, be the octave high or low.
If you could go into this mill where Deborah lay, and drag out from the hearts
of these men the terrible tragedy of their lives, taking it as a symptom of the
disease of their class, no ghost Horror would terrify you more. A reality of
soul- starvation, of living death, that meets you every day under the besotted
faces on the street,--I can paint nothing of this, only give you the outside
outlines of a night, a crisis in the life of one man: whatever muddy depth of
soul-history lies beneath you can read according to the eyes God has given you.
Wolfe, while Deborah watched him as a spaniel its master, bent over the furnace
with his iron pole, unconscious of her scrutiny, only stopping to receive
orders. Physically, Nature had promised the man but little. He had already lost
the strength and instinct vigor of a man, his muscles were thin, his nerves
weak, his face ( a meek, woman's face) haggard, yellow with consumption. In the
mill he was known as one of the girl- men: "Molly Wolfe" was his sobriquet. He
was never seen in the cockpit, did not own a terrier, drank but seldom; when he
did, desperately. He fought sometimes, but was always thrashed, pommelled to a
jelly. The man was game enough, when his blood was up: but he was no favorite in
the mill; he had the taint of school-learning on him,--not to a dangerous
extent, only a quarter or so in the free-school in fact, but enough to ruin him
as a good hand in a fight.
For other reasons, too, he was not popular. Not one of themselves, they felt
that, though outwardly as filthy and ash- covered; silent, with foreign thoughts
and longings breaking out through his quietness in innumerable curious ways:
this one, for instance. In the neighboring furnace-buildings lay great heaps of
the refuse from the ore after the pig-metal is run. Korl we call it here: a
light, porous substance, of a delicate, waxen, flesh-colored tinge. Out of the
blocks of this korl, Wolfe, in his off-hours from the furnace, had a habit of
chipping and moulding figures,--hideous, fantastic enough, but sometimes
strangely beautiful: even the mill-men saw that, while they jeered at him. It
was a curious fancy in the man, almost a passion. The few hours for rest he
spent hewing and hacking with his blunt knife, never speaking, until his watch