THE Workhouse for the Saddleworth Union is a low stone building of no great dimensions, standing on about as bleak and cold a site as could well I have been selected. It stands on the hill-side on your left hand as you walk from Diggle to Saddleworth, part of that dorsal Pennine Range we call “the back bone of Old England.” Its exterior is grim and forbidding, nor is the external promise redeemed by any extravagance of luxury inside. It is in unenviable contrast to the palatial structures modern architects design for the option of the sick and destitute. But it is healthily situated, and that counts for much. All in front as you look down the valley, are the green fields; at its rear stretch the moors on which sheep graze and lambs bleat and gamble conies sport and burrow and where the warning "Go-back, go-back” of the grouse salutes the ear as summer softens into autumn, and the purple heather hides the luscious bilberry.
At the time of which I write no mill chimney belched their smoke into the air and the breezes that swept the Workhouse on every side though blowing at times with unwelcome force, were pure and sweet. The Workhouse kine yielded milk so abundantly that adulteration was never thought of; the kitchen-garden, tended by the pauper hands, was rich in its herbs and vegetables, and a small flower garden gave forth the fragrance of the hardier roses, of musk and mignonette, whilst sweet williams, forget-me-nots and stocks gave colour and variety, dear to the eye of the female paupers. It is true the wards were low, the benches hard, the light and ventilation far removed from modern notions; but in this respect they differed in no wise, or if they differed, differed for the better, from the houses of the well-to-do farmers and tradesmen of the district.
Anyway there the young foundling of my story was in babyhood and boyhood tended, petted, and made much of. Consigned to the charge of an elderly pauper he had a not unkindly foster-mother. Rare, thank God, the women whose hearts do not soften to the helpless child. Tom sucked his bottle like a hero, waxing chubby and rosy, “poiting” with his legs on which the flesh lay in creases, and crowing lustily as he grew. Mr. Redfearn, it has been said, was the Chairman of the Guardians and did not conceal the interest he felt in the lad; Mr. Black, a privileged visitor everywhere for miles around, had to be restrained by the nurse from gorging his protege with lollipops. The story of his birth had spread in all those parts and lost nothing in the telling. For anything the master and matron knew the Workhouse might be entertaining, if not an angel, unawares, at least a baronet. The lad, when able to run about, was transferred to the particular care of “Workhouse Jack,” a pauper of some thirty years of age, supposed to be “not altogether there,” or as it is sometimes put, to have at least a half slate off. Jack was the messenger or Mercury of the Workhouse. He fetched the masters newspaper from the village post-office, he was entrusted with commissions to the grocer and draper by the matron, and smuggled snuff and twist and forbidden luxuries to the inmates. He knew every farm-house and every shop for miles around, and never wanted for a meal or a copper when he went his rounds. But, best of all, he knew the habits and the haunts of every bird that nested in the tree or hedge, on the greensward or, like the stone-chat, in the crevices of the long, grey dry-walling of the pastures. He knew, too, to an inch, the curvature of the field drains, their exits and their entrances. He kept surreptitiously in the old, two-stalled stable of the House a sharp-toothed ferret, which he oft-times carried in his pocket and that allowed him to handle and fondle it with quite appalling familiarity. It took Tom a long time to overcome his shrinking awe of that lithe and stealthy ferret, but he did it, and once nearly sent Mrs. Schofield into convulsions by insinuating it from his own into the capacious pocket of this steadfast friend. For I regret to say that Jack was a daily visitor at theHanging Gate, and was doubly welcome when the little Tommy toddled,haud aquis passibus, by his side. But Jack had a seasoned head and though he called, on one pretext or another, at many an hostelry, was never overcome and had the rare good sense to inculcate sobriety on his admiring charge by many a precept if not by example. To Tom, Jack was the very incarnation of wisdom, and his very first battle was fought at the back of the Workhouse stable with another foundling who had called his guide, philosopher, and friend by no less derogatory a title than “Silly Billy.” From that encounter Tom emerged with streaming eyes and nose, but in the proud consciousness of victory. Nor was Jack’s lore confined to the creatures of the air and land. Down the mountain sides trills many a gushing stream to join the Diggle Brook, pellucid waters murmuring over the worn pebbles and larger fragments of volcanic rock that still, to this day, resist the action of the fretting air and pelting storm. Who so deft a hand as Jack at tickling the shy trout that darted among the sedges and rushes of the banks or lurked beneath leaf and boulder motionless as the stones themselves. And if the matron, when the dainty fish graced her table was not scrupulous to ask whence came this toothsome addition to the dietary approved by my lords in London town, whose business was it to interfere?
Ah! It is grand upon the billowing hills to wander idly in the sweet spring-time; to mark the lark rising above its nest high in the azure sky, trilling joyous melody, to hear the lambs calling to their dams, to see the kine cropping pensive, in the meadows the sweet new blades of the greening grass; sweet is it to bask at mid-day nodding on the heather and lulled to sleep by the hum that, like distant muffled music, just falls upon the ear, and sweet too, is it as the western sun drops to its rosy curtained couch, to call the cows with their swelling udders from pasture to their byre; sweet to stand by rustic maid of rosy cheek and buxom form as, piggin betwixt her knees and head pressed on the flanks of patient and grateful beast, she strains the warm and frothy fluid to the can. Glorious, too, to hearken to the whetstone drawn by practised hand across the scythe, to bear its swish as the swathe lengthens out before the steady strokes of the mower; glorious to strew the damp, green grass upon the ground to catch the morning sun, and grander still to mount upon the load of fragrant hay and be borne triumphant with the gathered harvest of the fields. Who that has passed his early youth on the hill sides of Marsden and Diggle can ever forget the changing raptures of those early days or weary in recalling them when the brain is distraught by the turmoil of the town, and the heart turns sickening from the searing sorrows of thwarted schemes and fallen hopes.
It may seem to the reader that Tom Pinder’s workhouse life was not the life depicted by the immortal genius who told the piteous tale of a pinched and bruised Oliver asking for more. But be it remembered that all masters were not and still less are not Bumbles. The Saddleworth Workhouse in the thirties of last century had few inmates. The people on the sparsely populated hill-sides were mostly hand-loom weavers; not a few of them had a patch of land, a cow, a pig, and poultry. They were as clannish as the Scotch and when age, infirmity, or affliction overtook the declining years it was counted shame even of distant kin to suffer one of their name and blood to go to the big House. The poor then were mindful of the poor, and though the pinch of want was felt in the long winter days it went hard with folk if a neighbour’s cupboard was left bare or his grate without the mountain peat. Add to this that the master and matron were good, easy-going folk; that the Guardians knew well every inmate of the House; had perchance played truant with them in their youth and been birched by the same cane, or employed them in their prime, and, to cap all, forget not that Saddleworth was an obscure Union, scarce worth the expenditure of red-tape or the visit of an inspector.
Mr. Black did not forget his promise to see to Tom’s education. Almost before the child could lisp he was at him with the alphabet, and with his own hands designed alluring capital letters and emblematic animals so that to his dying day Tom never saw the letter D without thinking of a weaver’s donkey going “a-bunting,” or in other words, taking in his master’s warp. At six Tom could read big print, and at seven was set to read chapters of the Bible to the old grannies of the women’s side of the House; at eight he could do sums in Practice and was not afraid of Tare and Tret. But beyond this he stubbornly refused to budge. In vain Mr. Black wooed him to declineRosa, a rose, or to conjugateAmo. Tom feigned indeed an interest he did not feel, but promptly forgot on one day all the Latin he had learned the day before. Mr. Black was fain to confess with a sigh that Tom was not bent by nature to a clerkly calling.
“Well, he’s none the worse for that,” said Mr. Redfearn, consolingly. “Look at me, schoolmaster. I can read a newspaper, make out a bill though it’s seldom called for i’ my trade, thank the Lord, write a letter, and what more do I want? How could I tell the points of horse or beast if mi head wer’ allus running on th’ olden times an’ chokefull o’ a lot o’ gibberish, saving your presence, an’ no offence, Mr. Black, as well yo’ know. We can’t all be schoolmasters, nor yet parsons an’ as for lawyers and doctors aw’ve very little opinion o’ awther on ’em, an’ th’ less yo’ have to do wi’ ’em th’ better. Not but what a cow doctor’s a handy man to ha’ wi’in call; but th’ lawyers! Aw’ve had three trials at th’ Assizes abaat one watter-course on another. An’ lost one case an’ won two, an’ th’ two aw won cost me no more nor th’ one aw lost. No! Th’ lad’s fit for better things nor a black gown. He’s getten th’ spirit o’ a man choose wheer it comes fro’. Aw put him on Bess’s back t’other day, wi’out a saddle an’ his little legs could hardly straddle fro’ flank to flank, an’ he catched her bi th’ mane an’ med her go round th’ field like a good ’un. He rolled off into th’ hedge at th’ Bottom Intack, an’ ’steead o’ sqwawkin’ and pipin’ he swore at Bess like a trooper an’ wanted puttin’ up again. Oh! He’s a rare ’un, that he is. Larnin’s thrown away on him. It ’ud nobbut over-weight an’ handicap him, so to speak.”
“I’m sorry to hear of the lad swearing,” interposed Mr. Black.
“That’s Work’us Jack’s teachin’,” commented Mrs. Schofield. “It’s surprisin’ how easy th’ young ’uns ’ll pick up owt they shouldn’t know, when ther’s no brayin’ what they should know into their little heads.”
“Well, well,” went on Mr. Redfearn, to get out of a sore subject, for he had recognised some of his favourite expletives in Tom’s scholeric words; “th’ point is, th’ lad’s handier wi’ his hands nor his head piece. Yo’ can tak’ a horse to th’ watter but yo’ cannot mak’ him drink. An’ talkin’ o’ watter, th’ young scoundrel gave me a turn t’ other day an’ no mistake. Yo’ know th’ dam aboon Hall’s papper-mill? Weel it’s th’ deepest dam bi a seet for miles round here. Aw’d gone up wi mi gun to see if aw could pick up a rabbit or two for th’ pot an’ theer wor Tom reight i’ th’ middle o th’ dam, throwin’ up his arms an’ goin’ dahn like a stun, and then he cam up blowin’ like a porpus. Aw’ sent th’ retriever in after ’im an’ th’ young devil, ’at aw should say so, cocked his leg over th’ dog’s back an’ med him, carry ’im to th’ bank, an’ ’im laughin’ all th’ time fit to crack his young ribs. He’d nobbud pretended to drown to fley me.”
“Jack’s doing again,” said Mr. Schofield.
“Well, but, what’s to be done with him?” persisted Mr Black. “Can’t you take him on to th’ farm, Fairbanks?”
“‘Tisn’t good enough,” said Fairbanks. “He’s fit for better things. At best he could never be much more nor a sort of bailiff an’they’renoan wanted about here. If we could send him out to Canada now, or Australey, theer’s no tellin’ what he med come to be. At least so they sen. But i’ th’ owd country farmin’s nowt wi’out brass, an then it’s nowt much but a carryin’ on. Nah, I’ve thowt o’ a plan. We could ’prentice th’ lad out to a manufacturer. Th’ lad’s sharp an’ ’ud sooin sam up owt there is to larn. Th’ Guardians ’ud pay th’ premium for him’ an’ nobbut a fi’ pun note or so an’ aw think aw know th’ varry man to tak’ him an’ sud do well by ’im if ther’s owt i’ religion?”
“Who is it?” asked Mr. Black.
“It’s Jabez Tinker, o’ th’ Wilberlee Mill, i’ Holmfirth. He’s the main man at Aenon Chapel,—a pillar they call ’im an’ preaches hissen o’ Sundays, so he suld be fit to be trusted wi’ a lad.”
“I’d rather he’d ha’ bin Church,” commented Mrs. Schofield. “Aw’ve often noticed ’at those ’at put it on so mich o’ Sundays tak’ it aat o’ th’ Mondays. Devil dodgers, aw call ’em.”
“There are good men among the Dissenters.” Mr Black’s spirit of fairness compelled him to testify, “though I wish they could find their way to heaven without making so much pother on earth.” The days of the Salvation Army were not as yet, and sound and salvation were not convertible terms.
“There’s one gooid thing abaat it,” was the landlady’s opinion. “Holmfirth’s nobbut over th’ hill, so to speak, an’ th’ lad could come to see his old friends at Whissunday and th’ Feast, when th’ mills are lakin’.”
“Aye, aye, a lot better nor them furrin’ parts,” agreed the farmer. “Owd England for me, say I.”
“And I have not lost hopes of clearing up the mystery of the boy’s birth,” concluded Mr. Black. “He must stay near us.”
To this time nothing had been said to Tom about his parents. He knew he had no father and no mother—that was all. He knew other lads had fathers and mothers, and how he came to be without did not concern him very much. Once, indeed, one of the village lads had jeered at him as a love-child. He did not understand what this might mean, but he had sense to perceive something offensive was meant.
“What is a love-child?” he asked Mrs. Schofield one day, suddenly.
“All childer’s love childer,” fenced Mrs. Schofield, but Tom was not satisfied.
“What’s a love child, Jack?” he asked his bosom friend.
Jack ruminated. Definition was not his forte.
“It means a lad’s mother’s nooan as good as she should be.”
Tom flushed hotly, and said nothing: but that night a village lad with lips much swollen slept with a raw beefsteak over his eye.
The germ of thought had been sown in the youthful mind.Whywas he different from other lads? Time had been when in some confused sort of fashion he had looked on Mrs. Schofield as his mother and Mr. Black as his father.
“Mr. Black,” he asked one day, “where is my mother?”
It was a question that the Schoolmaster had looked for at every recent visit that he courted and yet dreaded.
It was on a Sunday noon as the congregation left the porch of St. Chad’s some lingering by the gateway to exchange neighbourly greeting, others sauntering with an air of unconcern to the door of the Church Inn across the way, whilst yet others still made with leaden foot to a recent grave to pay the tribute of the mourner’s tears.
Tom had been with other pauper lads in the gallery, a spot of vantage screened from the verger’s eye, and where it mattered to nobody what heed you took of the service or sermon so long as you did not make too much noise. He had made haste to get outside the churchyard so that he might not miss his ever gentle friend, the schoolmaster, and now stood by the village stocks outside the graveyard wall and watched the stream of worshippers pass slowly by. Presently his hand was in the schoolmaster’s, who turned his face to the road which led past the workhouse boundaries down to his own home at Diggle.
“Mr. Black, where is my mother?”
The schoolmaster paused, hesitated. They had left the rough and narrow road and crossed a stile into the fields. They were on the higher ground and could plainly see the churchyard. The loiterers had gone their homeward way or drifted into the Inn to seek a solace that is supposed to be appropriate alike in the glad hours of rejoicing and the heavy time of affliction.
“Your mother lies yonder,” said Mr. Black, solemnly and sadly.
“Show me,” said the boy, simply.
They retraced their steps and sought the ancient burial ground with it’s sunken crosses and mouldering mossy stones, and those little mounds without a name that cover the humble dead. In a distant corner Mr. Black stood with uncovered head by a small marble cross and stone slab.
sacred to the memoryOFA. J.AN UNKNOWN WANDERER WHO DIED IN CHILDBEDAT THE HANGING GATE, DIGGLE.JAN. 11TH, 183—.
sacred to the memoryOFA. J.AN UNKNOWN WANDERER WHO DIED IN CHILDBEDAT THE HANGING GATE, DIGGLE.JAN. 11TH, 183—.
Tom gazed upon the simple monument till he could gaze no more, for blinding, scalding tears welled into his eyes and trickled down his cheeks.
“Let us go home,” he said, “let me stop with you to-day.”
In the evening of that peaceful Sunday the school-master told the foundling all he knew: he placed in his hand the precious locket taken from the mother’s neck and promised that it should be transferred to Tom’s, keeping when he should be old enough to keep it safely.
“You will treasure it as the immediate jewel of your soul,” he said; “for thereby you may clear your mother’s name.” Then, falling on his knees he read the evening prayer, and with his blessing dismissed the lad.
CHAPTER IV
THE ancient village of Holmfirth on the river Holme was, in former days, of considerably more pretension than it is to-day, when the neighbouring town of Huddersfield dwarfs the surrounding communities. Holmfirth stands near the head of the valley of the Holme, and at one time was looked up to as a petty capital by the straggling hamlets that intervened between the river’s head and the spot where, some nine miles below, its tortuous course joins the river Colne at King’s mill in Huddersfield, whence the united currents sweep in broader stream to blend with the Calder at Cooper Bridge, and so onwards to the capacious bosom of the Humber.
Best known and best accustomed of all the shops in Holmfirth was that of Ephraim Thorpe, sometimes; known as Eph o’ Natt’s o’ th’ Thong, but more as “Split,” from a tradition current in the village that he would split a pea rather than be guilty of giving over-weight or measure. The shop was low and dark, it’s floor of blackened stone seldom scrubbed. The two counters were not cleanly, their surface much worn by the friction of heavy vessels and the testing of doubtful coins. But what article of household provision you failed to get at “Split’s” you might despair of purchasing anywhere nearer than Huddersfield itself. A candle rack ran round three sides of the shop, just above the counters, and the sickly odour of tallow pervaded all the spot, dominating even the smell of treacle and “shilling-oil” as the oil used for lamps was called. Flitches of bacon hung from the rafters; bags of flour and of oatmeal with open necks were propped up in corners. Bars of soap, piles of soft-stone and white stone, tins of tea and coffee, pats of butter, skins of lard, papers of blacking and black-lead, pots and pans, and brushes hard and soft, eggs and herrings, peas and beans and Indian corn for poultry, gridirons and porringers, thimbles and shoelaces, clogs and pocket-handkerchiefs—all these and sundry others were the articles of commerce retailed at fifty per cent, profit to a grateful public by Mr. Ephraim Thorpe. That public consisted for the most part of those employed in the neighbouring mills, and few were the families of the humbler sort entirely out of Ephraim’s debt. He was always willing to trust a man that he knew to be fairly sober and in fair work, and to his regular customers at the crisis of a funeral or a wedding, lend a guinea or so at the easy interest of sixpence in the pound per week; so long as the interest was paid regularly he never pressed for the principal. But woe betide any housewife who took her ready money to a rival tradesman, or ventured to go shopping at the flaunting stores of Huddersfield. The Court of Requests and the “Bum” were words of terrible portent, and Ephraim knew every trick of the law. He knew, too, the wages of every working family in the district how much they ought to spend when they bought in for the week, and how far it was safe to trust when work was slack or sickness rife and ready-money not forthcoming. Truly no lord of the manor in the good old days of dungeon-keep, thumb-screw and rack, was held more in awe than the red-headed, freckled, yellow-fanged, parchment-skinned, ferret-eyed “Split,” general dealer and deacon of the Baptist Flock that gathered at Aenon Chapel, Holmfirth, “the altar by the rushing waters.”
For Ephraim was as zealous in his chapel-going as in his shop-keeping. Sunday morning and afternoon saw him in his pew, dressed in sable doeskin, but with a subtle flavour of soap and chandlery exhaling from his pores. He rented a high, uncompromising pew, in which he could coop himself up and barricade himself from the non-elect. It was a capital sentinel-box, whence he could espy the gaps in the ranks of the faithful. He could note when Ned o’ Ben’s, or Bill o’ Sue’s absented himself from service, and speculate at his leisure whether a bull-baiting or a cock-fight had lured to sinful delight, and recall to a nicety the amount that stood to the delinquent’s debit in the long narrow, greasy, skin-bound ledger of hieroglyphics that only Ephraim understood, and at whose sight the stoutest good dame’s heart would sink and the shrillest-tongued virago’s voice be hushed.
Mr. Thorpe was a widower, and though it is possible—such is the amiable of a women for the bereaved and afflicted—that more than one might have been willing and lend attentive ear had he wooed again, a widower, Ephraim announced, he meant to live and die. His daughter, and only child, Martha, was old enough to keep the house above the shop, in which the father and daughter dwelt. The spiteful gossips of the village said she was not only old enough, but ugly enough. But said gossips suffered their critical judgment of the daughter to be warped by their unfavourable opinion of the father. It cannot be denied that Martha’s hair was not only of somewhat harsh and coarse texture, but of hue from her sire. It is true also that her face was angular and pinched, and freckled to boot, and that her form displayed none of the graceful curves so suggestive of clinging warmth and seductive softness; nor was her voice the soft and dulcet fluting that disarms not less than melting eye or witching smile. Poor Martha had been crushed and stifled and starved all her life. She had never loved nor been loved but the timid, wistful, yearning look that stole unbidden from her grey eyes told of a heart that hungered for the love that makes a woman’s life. Though she lived, and had lived for years under the same roof with her father, she could not remember to have heard from his lips one caressing word, to have received from his hand one gentle touch, or; seen from his eye one glance of affection. He was not unkind to her, save in the negative way which is the withholding of kindness; nay, if in any way. Ephraim could be said to be extravagant it was in the lavish adornment of his daughter’s person. The vicar’s wife had not a richer silk or costlier shawl; no manufacturer’s daughter finer feathers or more elegant bracelet. But Martha would have preferred a much homelier garb and a necklace of beads or jet; she asked only to slink unnoticed through her chill life, and had an half-formulated idea that her father dressed her as he did his shop windows, in the way of trade and to abash his neighbours.
Martha had practically no friends. The daughters of the manufacturers could, of course, not be expected to have more than a go-to-meeting, bowing acquaintance with a shop-keeper’s daughter, though that shop-keeper was popularly supposed to be able to buy up any two mill-owners put together. To be sure the Rev. David Jones, the pastor at Aenon Chapel, and Mrs. David Jones and Miss Lydia Jones called at times and dutifully partook of tea and muffins in the sitting-room above the shop from which no ingenuity had been efficient to bar the insidious blend of many odours from the store beneath, and true also Martha was a constant attender at Dorcas meetings, class meetings, prayer meetings, and Chapel and Sunday School tea-parties, called by the scoffing and ungodly herd, “muffin-worrys.” But Martha was constrained, awkward,gauche, and though her heart, was ready to go half-way to meet an overture, she could not make an advance. Little children were not allured to her, girls of her own age ridiculed whilst they envied her dress jewellery, staider matrons thought it shame that grasping miser’s scarecrow daughter should “peark” herself out in dainty raiment whilst their own well favoured ones went in cheap cottons or plain home-spun.
Of all the worshippers at Aenon Chapel, none was more considered than Jabez Tinker. There were many reasons for this. One undoubtedly was that Jabez Tinker was one of the leading manufacturers in the valley. No one, not old Daft Tommy, who was reputed to be over a hundred years old, could remember a time when the Tinkers were not a great name in Holmfirth and when Wilberlee Mill was not run by them. The very name of Tinker is, curiously enough, significant the family connection with the staple industry of the valleys of the Colne and the Holme. It is said to be derived from the Latin,tinctor, a dyer, and to have come down from those far off times when the Roman conquerors introduced the arts of civilisation to the aboriginal Celts of these northern wilds. Certainly Jabez Tinker’s father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him made cloth and doubtless dyed it. And they had made good cloth, buckskin and doeskin of the best. They were not a pretentious nor an ambitious race. They worked hard made shrewd bargains, paid their way expected to be paid, and put by money slowly but steadily. They had mostly married money too, not, perhaps marrying for money, but taking care to marry where money was. They were just to their work people and were slow either to put a man on or to take a man off. Once get a job at Wilberlee Mill and you were there for good, if you behaved yourself—or, as the heads said, if Tinker didn’t know when he had a good man, the man knew when he had a good master. It was not that the Tinkers paid more than ruling prices for their labour. They made no pretence at being industrial philanthropists—that would not have been business; but they contrived to keep the mill running, shine or shower. Times must be parlous bad indeed if the great water-wheel did not turn at proper times in the race at Wilberlee; and constant employment is more to a man than high wages, with slack times in between, if men had only the sense to see it.
It is not necessary to go far back into the ancestry of the Tinkers, though, in a quiet way, they were not a little proud of it. Old William Tinker had left two sons, both of whom had been brought up to the business, and to both, as partners, the business had been left. Jabez, the elder, I shall have much to say. Richard, the younger, might not have been a Tinker at all. He did not “favour” the Tinkers, who were traditionally tall lean, wiry, big-boned men, somewhat sallow of complexion, with dark straight hair, scant of speech, inflexible of will, their word their law, neither grasping nor prodigal, and as strict at chapel as the counting-house. But Dick Tinker, Dick o’ Will’s o’th Wilberlee, had been a “non-such.” He had blue eyes that always sparkled with mirth; curling chestnut hair, that affronted Puritanic sense; and he was a sad spendthrift. He had a hearty word for everyone. He liked to go of a night to theRose and Crown, and led the revels there. He never missed a meet of the harriers, and he kept his own game-cock. He had a very appreciative eye for a pretty face, even though it was half-hid under a weaver’s shawl, and for a neat ankle, though cased in clogs. During his widowed father’s life he had gone dutifully to chapel, when he couldn’t make any plausible excuse for shirking attendance, for it was no small matter to stand up against the old man’s will. But when the father died, Dick stoutly declared, with not a few oaths, that he was sick to death of the Hard-bedders—such was his irreverent term for the Particular, very particular, Baptists—and contented himself by going to the Parish Church, on those rare occasions when he felt need of spiritual solace. Then he capped all his follies by marrying the pretty, penniless, governess at the Vicarage, a girl said to be from down Lincolnshire way, who spoke with refined accent, had gentle, graceful ways, and was so clearly a lady that every woman in the district, save the Vicar’s wife and the working folk, resented it. But the moors were too bleak for her and she had the grace to die after two years—which had been like Paradise to Dick—leaving him an infant daughter, Dorothy.
Jabez had not liked his brother’s marriage. He had nothing to say against his sister-in-law, except that it would have been better if she had been a “that country’s” woman. Why couldn’t Dick have done as the Tinker’s had done from time immemorial, and married in the valley. “There were lasses anew, and to spare,” he said, “well favoured, and only waiting to be asked.” Then Dick’s bride had brought him nothing but the clothes she stood up in, and that was another grievance. But Dick had laughed, in his careless way, and said it was time to mend the Tinker breed, by bringing some grace and beauty into the family, and “my Louie has that, you can’t deny.” And Jabez could not deny it.
“Why don’t you marry yourself, Jabez? You, all alone i’ th’ old homestead, with nobody but old Betty to look after you! Dreadful lonesome you must be. Th’ house is none too cheerful at th’ best o’ times. But a woman’s pretty face, an’ a soft voice, an’ th’ patter o’ little feet ’ll lighten it up if now’t else will. And tak’ advice, Jabez, look further afield, not among th’ Wrigleys, an’ Wimpennys, an’ th’ Brookes. Their lasses are weel enough, an’ there’s money with all on ’em. But they run too much to bone, an’ they’ve been chapelled, an’ missionarized, an’ dragooned till religion ’s soured on ’em, an’ when they love they love by rule o’ three.”
But Jabez had winced, and changed the subject.
After his wife’s death Dick had gradually fallen back into his old courses. He loved his little wench, as he called his daughter, passionately; but a full-blooded, hearty man, still in the very pink and flower of his manhood, one used all his life to the bustle of the market, the free and easy ways of an inn and the sports of the field is not very much at home in a nursery. So Dick, who had felt, when the cruel blow fell, that life had nothing left for him was once more to be seen o’ nights at theRose and Crown, roaring out a hunting song, or arranging the details of a coursing match, a pigeon shooting, or a cock fight—and the maidens of the valley of the Holme took heart once more, and began to feel a lively concern for the poor orphaned babe in the lonely house. They forgave Dick—handsome, rollicking Dick—his passing aberration, his one overt act of treason to their charms, and reflected, with satisfaction, that his married life had been so brief, it might be considered as not counting at all—an episode, not a history.
But the rising hopes of these speculative spinsters were rudely dashed. One bright winter’s morning, when a sudden thaw had softened the iron fields and promised the scent would lie, Dick rode forth cheerily on his hunter to the meet at Thongsbridge. There was a substantial breakfast at Mr. Hinchliffe’s a brother manufacturer and a county magistrate. Dick did ample justice to the cold beef and ham but declined coffee for old October. Then he must needs drain a stiff glass of brandy and water “to warm the old ale,” he said; and in very merry mood was Dick when the hounds broke covert. Now save the stone walls of Galway there are no worse fences than those of the Valley of the Holme. You must clear them at the peril of your neck. There is no crashing through a dry-walling,—a “topping”maygive once in a way; but it is odds that it wont. Dick—Dare-devil Dick they called him in the hunting-field,—rode straight. The ground in the higher reaches had not yielded to the thaw or the morning sun. His horse baulked at an awkward fence, slipped, and failed to recover itself, and before Dick could disengage boot from stirrup, fell upon its side, with Dick crushed beneath. The broken ribs were pressed into the lungs, and though he lingered a few days at Mr. Hinchliffe’s house, he was borne from it a corpse.
“You will be good to Dorothy?” he said to Jabez and Jabez had pressed the clammy hand in silent promise.
“You’ll take her to live with you. She’s a bright little lass, like a ray of sunshine in the house. You wont let her forget her mother or her worthless dad, will you, Jabez? You’ll be taking a wife someday yourself, lad, an’ have childer o’ your own. But you won’t be hard on th’ little lass, will yo’, Jabez?”
And Jabez said she should be as his own.
“She won’t be bout brass, yo know, Jabez,” gasped the dying man, the sweat standing in heads upon his pale brow. “There’s my share i’th’ business, and odds and ends. Yo’ know all about ’em. I’d never no secrets fro’ yo, Jabez, though yo’ wer’ always a bit close, weren’t tha, lad? I’ve left everything to Dorothy an’ made yo’ her guardian an’ th’ executor. I know yo’ll do right bi th’ little ’un. I’m none feared for that. Th’ Tinkers aren’t that sort; but don’t be hard wi’ her. She’s nooan as tough as some, her mother’s bairn, God bless her.”
And so poor Dick was gathered to his fathers and lay in the old churchyard at Holmfirth by the fair, fragile wife’s side in the grim vault of the Tinkers. Not a mill worked in the district as they carried him to his grave. Men and Women “jacked work” with one accord and lined the route from the dead man’s house to the very side of the grave. For Dick with all his faults, perhaps, because of them, was dear to the simple folk of the valley, and many, a tale was told in the village inns, of cheery word and ready jest, and helping hand in time of need; and many a buxom housewife, as she stirred porridge for good man and bairns, smiled sadly and gave a gentle sigh as she saw herself again a sprightly wench chased at Whitsuntide round the ring at “kiss in the ring” Or “choose the lad that you love best,” and found herself a willing captive, but panting and struggling still, whilst Dick saluted the rosy cheek. For at the Sunday School treats at “Whis-sunday,” all classes were on a level, and even the parson himself must run as fast as legs could carry him if tap of maiden greatly daring fell upon his shoulder, or her kerchief dropped at his feet.
Whether it was the necessity of having some other companionship than old Betty for the young niece so solemnly committed to his charge, or whether he was weary of his bachelor solitude and felt the need of a woman’s presence in the old homestead in which he had been born and which he had inherited on his father’s death, certain it is that Jabez Tinker began seriously to think about a wife. He was now nearing his fiftieth year, and the romance of youth—love’s young dream—he sadly told himself was not for him. Perhaps he had never been young; but be that as it may he was now a staid, prosaic man, who looked all his years and more, his whole soul in his business, in parish affairs and in other spheres in which the gentler emotions have no concern. Business was with him as the breath of his nostrils. Had he liked, he could have retired on a fair competence; had he been asked he could have given no solid reason why he should continue to toil and moil and put by money. Dorothy was his nearest relative, though of remoter ones—cousins and half-cousins, agnates and cognates as the Roman lawyers said, he had them by the score. But it certainly was neither for Dorothy nor other relative, near or distant, he spent more and more time in mill and counting-house, planning fresh outlets for the produce of his looms, building additions to the old mill, and watching eagerly every improvement in the machinery of his trade. He did it simply because he must, as a successful lawyer takes briefs upon briefs, or a popular doctor case upon case. And he resolved that in his choice of a bride he would look for money that would buy out Dick’s share in the business, and leave him sole master of Wilberlee mill.
And in this mood his thoughts turned to Martha Thorpe; he scarce knew why, except, perhaps, that he was used to the sight of her Sunday after Sunday, and at the weekly services and social functions of the chapel and Sunday school. All the world knew that Martha would have money, but none the less did all the world—of Holmfirth—gape and exclaim with its “Did yo’ evver? “and its “Aw nivver did,” when the reserved master of Wilberlee was seen, not once or twice, but, in time, Sunday after Sunday, pacing slowly by Martha and Old Split’s side from the chapel gates to the modest home above the shop in Victoria Street. But when it become known that Jabez Tinker actually took his roast beef, and Yorkshire pudding, and apple pie (with cheese) at Splits, the spinsterdom of the village was divided between wrath and scorn.
“Such a letting down to th’ Tinkers,” declared one.
“I’ll never believe it till I see it,” affirmed another.
“It’s money he’s after,” a third alleged.
“He’s enough o’ his own.”
“There’s no telling. Happen he’s speculated. Besides, much will have more, an’ Tinkers wer’ allus rare ’uns for th’ main chance,” was the general conclusion.
“All but poor Dick,” said his old cronies of theRose and Crown.
“By gosh! But Ginger o’ Split’s ’ud be a pill as ’ud bide some gilding for my taste,” vowed the jolly landlord. “Jabez mun ha’ a good stomach.”
And what thought Martha?
It was inconceivable to her at first that the visits of Mr. Tinker, of Wilberlee, could be anything but visits of business to her father; doubtless some matter connected with the Chapel or the Sunday School. But Ephraim dropped hints.
“How would ta like to be wed, lass?
“Father!”
“Aye, it’s father now. It ’ll be happen gran’father afore long,” and the old man chuckled a greasy chuckle.
It could not be true, murmured Martha to her heart. That anyone should come a wooing to her, unless, perchance it were some needy parson after her money, seemed preposterous. And yet everyone said Mr. Tinker was more than well-to-do. And, after all, was she so very plain? Is there in this wide, wide world a woman’s glass that does not tell a flattering tale to one, at least? And, as she looked, a warm glow tinged the pale cheeks, and a light shone in her eyes they had never known before. To be loved! To be loved for her own sake! To get away from that horrid shop; to be Jabez Tinkers lady; to queen it over those who had sneered at her behind her back! There was rapture in the thought. And oh! She would love him so; she would be his very slave; no house should be like theirs. Never did the heart of Andromeda leap to meet the coming Perseus, as Martha’s heart went out to this prince, come, if come indeed he were, to break the chains that bound her to the cruel rock of barren life. Her heart overflowed with gratitude, and humbly she thanked her God that His handmaiden had found favour in this great Lord’s sight. She did not ask for the fervent worship of an ardent wooer’s love. She only asked to be allowed to love, and to be loved a little—oh! just a little, in return—as the parched ground thirsts for the grateful shower, so thirsted the heart of the patient Martha for a good man’s love.
CHAPTER V.
HAPPY'S the wooing that’s not long a-doing, and Jabez Tinker, his mind resolved, was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. Martha was not the one to insist on all the formularies of a protracted siege; she surrendered the citadel of her heart at the first blast of trumpet. She only insisted that the wedding should be a quiet one. As this jumped entirely with her lover’s notions she had her own way, though Ephraim protested.
“We don’t kill a pig every day, and blow th’ expense. If aw pay th’ piper surely I ought to chuse th’ tune.”
But he was not suffered to choose the tune, though none questioned that he paid the piper, and paid him handsomely. Exactly how many thousands of pounds made over his humble counter went to swell Mr. Tinker’s balance at the Bank no one but he and his son-in-law and the bankers knew, and is no concern of ours.
Jabez took his bride to London for the honeymoon. The wool-sales were on at the time, so that the manufacturer was able to combine business with pleasure, and to avoid that exclusive devotion to his wife which even more ardent husbands are said to have found somewhat irksome. But he took care that Martha should see some of the sights of London—the Houses of Parliament, the Abbey, St. Paul’s, and the Tower. Theatres were, of course, not to be thought of, but on one never-to-be-forgotten Saturday, the two went up the river to Hampton Court. Then for the first time Martha realized that the world is very beautiful and often amid the bleak hills and stone walls and hideous mills of her mountain home, her thoughts would dwell upon the green fields and rich hedges and rustling, swaying, leafy branches and deep flowing waters of the fair valley of the Thames. The portraits at Hampton Court shocked her, and she hurried through the rooms with crimson face.
But her heart was very light and glad as she entered her own home at Wilberlee. The ancient homestead of the Tinkers was hard by the mill. It was a long two-storied building of rude ashlar, now dark with age. There was a sitting room or company room, low and gloomy even on a bright day, for the windows were overhung by the ivy that covered the house front. The furniture was massive, dark mahogany. There were but few pictures or ornaments in the room, the pictures mostly oil-paintings of dead and gone Tinkers in stiff stocks, precise coats, with thick watch-chains and seals hanging from the fob; the women with smooth plaited hair, long stomachers, and severe looks. By the looking-glass over the mantel-piece were deep-edged mourning cards, in ornate frames, recording the deaths of defunct ancestors, with pious texts and verses expressive of a touching confidence in the departed’s eternal welfare.
The bedrooms of the upper story were furnished in the same enduring fashion, were even gloomier than the dismal sitting room, the vast four-posted mahogany bedsteads with their voluminous drapery casting heavy shadows, and as the narrow windows were never opened, the chamber air, in summer time, was heavy laden with the blended smell of feathers, flocks, and lavender. It is marvellous what a dread our forefathers, who lived so much in the open, had of fresh air and thorough ventilation in the sleeping rooms of their homes.
But, after all, the kitchen or living room was the main thing. A roaring fire in winter time, walls yellow-washed, floor ochred and sanded, dark rafters overhead, flitches, hams, ropes of onions, dried bushes of sage and parsley, burnished tins that caught and reflected rays of fire and gleam of sun, a long table, its top white as soap and scrubbing brush can make the close-grained sycamore, long shelves laden with Delf and ancient crockery—ah! It was a paradise for a good housewife.
And a good housewife Martha proved to be. There was not a cleaner house in all that country side. She had kept on Betty for Dorothy’s sake, and there was besides, Peggy, scullery maid and general help. Betty and Peggy would very much have preferred that their mistress had been neither so keen of eye nor sharp of tongue—for the Mistress who, as callers said, could not say boh to a goose, could talk thirteen to the dozen, so Betty averred, anent a grease spot or an iron-mould.
Martha’s lot, it may be said, if not an ideal, was now a serene one. Had she but had child of her own, she thought no happier woman could have been found in the wide West Riding. But in this Fate was unkind, and the withholding of the crowning blessing of a woman’s life, to hold her own babe to her breast, was all the harsher measure, that Martha knew her husband in his secret heart brooded over their long disappointment and nursed it as a grievance. Poor Martha! How many prayers, how many vows, were thine for this boon so freely granted to your husband’s poorest workman!
It was in vain that Martha tried to stay her heart’s longings by filling a mother’s place to the little niece left by that graceless Richard. All that duty dictated Martha did; did ungrudgingly conscientiously. But there is one thing in this world that is absolutely beyond the human will: it is the human heart. Love knows no reason, and is uninfluenced by the sternest logic. It is like the wind that bloweth where it listeth. School herself as Martha would she came, in time, to have a smouldering jealousy of little Dorothy, and the child’s quick perception taught it to shun the eye, and soon the company, of her aunt, and turn for comfort to buxom, homely Betty.
It is a Sunday afternoon in the Summer of the year ’45—a glorious summer’s afternoon. The garden at Wilberlee, stretching below the parlour window right down to the river-side—no great stretch, indeed—is ablaze with colour. The sky overhead is of rich deep blue, flecked with trailing wisps of feathery cloudlets. The lark sings high in mid ether. From the meadows round about comes the scent of the hay, and the garden gives forth its fragrance of musk and rose. In a low basket-chair, placed beneath the shades of an umbrageous chestnut tree, Mrs. Tinker sits, stiff, erect, unyielding. She is dressed in rich dark silk, and the lace of collar and cuffs have come from the skilled fingers of the nuns of Belgian convents. A religious periodical, the “Baptist Magazine,” lies unheeded on her lap, for Martha is watching, with wistful eyes, the graceful movements of a young girl, who flits from flower to flower, and bends occasionally to snip a bloom or leaf.
“Why are you getting flowers of a Sunday: Dorothy? You know your uncle would not like it. I’m sure we don’t want any more in the house—the parlour smells almost sickly with them—besides, it’s Sunday.”
“I don’t want them for the parlour, aunt Martha. They are for poor Lucy Garside.”
“Who’s Lucy Garside?”
“Why, aunt, how can you forget? She worked in uncle’s mill till she had to leave. It is something the matter with her legs and spine. Don’t you mind that pretty, rosy Lucy Garside, that used to be in your class at the Sunday School? But she isn’t rosy now—oh! so pale and thin, and has to lie all day on the settle.”
“You mean the sofa, child.”
“No, aunt, the kitchen settle I mean, they have no sofa; but they try to make it comfortable for her with shawls and things; and her mother is making a list hearth-rug for her to lie on, and then, may-be, she’ll be easier—and she loves flowers. You will let me take them, aunt Martha, won’t you?”
“Well, they’re gathered now, and it’s no use wasting them. But, in future, you must ask my leave before you cut more. And I don’t quite know how your uncle would like you going trashing about among those low mill-girls.”
“But, aunt”—and here Dorothy lowered her voice and glanced timorously at the opened window of the parlour—“but, aunt Martha, they say—in the village, I mean, not Lucy’s mother—that Lucy’s hurt her spine and crooked her legs working too long in the mill—hours and hours, and hours, they say, all the day and nearly all the night, and sleeping under the machines because she was too tired to go home to bed; and that, and not enough to eat, the doctor says, has made poor Lucy a cripple for life.”
“Then Dr. Wimpenny ought to be whipped for saying such things, and I won’t have you listening to these tittle-tattling stories. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, to let folks tell you lies about your uncle’s mill. Folk ought to be glad they can send their children to work, to earn their own living. How would they live if they couldn’t? But there’s no gratitude left in the world—that’s a fact. But there’s your uncle finished his nap, and you’d best be off; and don’t let me hear any more of your silly tales about things you don’t understand.”
It was a very prim and demure maiden that walked sedately from the side-gate of the house at Wilberlee, a large bunch or posy of flowers grasped in one little hand, a basket in the other. Dorothy had coaxed sundry delicacies from the not reluctant Betty—a loaf of bread, some slices of meat, a pot of jam, a glass of calves’-foot jelly, and a small packet of tea.
“Bless her bonny face,” remarked Betty to Peggy, the underling, “it isn’t i’ my heart to refuse her owt. But it’s to be hoped th’ missus ’ll never find it out.”
“Saints preserve us,” devoutly ejaculated Peggy, who was shrewdly suspected to have Milesian blood in her veins.
“Isn’t she a pictur’?” said Betty, as her eyes followed her little mistress until the gate shut her from admiring gaze.
“’Deed, then, she is—an’ as good as she’s purty,” assented Peggy.
“It’s Mr. Richard’s own child, she is,” went on Betty, reminiscently—“th’ same dancin’ e’en, an’ gladsome look, an’ merry smile; and yet, sometimes, when she’s thoughtful-like, an’ dreamy, you’d think she wer’ her own mother, as I could fancy her as a lass,”—and Betty heaved a very deep sigh, from a very capacious bosom.
And, indeed, Dorothy was a picture to gladden the eyes of man. The small coal-scuttle bonnet of Leghorn straw, with its drab strings, could not hide the pure oval of the face, nor its shade conceal its rich, warm complexion. The auburn ringlets, not corkscrewed to mechanic stiffness, but loosely curling, fell in clusters about her shoulders; and the child moved with an instinctive grace. Once out of the view of the garden and the house windows her pace quickened, she began to skip along joyously, her bonnet thrown back from the head, and her little feet, peeping and twinkling from beneath her shortened skirts, beat measure to the snatches of songs, that were not hymnal in their wording or their melody. As she passed the cottage doors, the good folk—standing by their thresholds to breath the air, or bask in the grateful sun, or while away the sleepy hours of unwonted rest in friendly gossip with “my nabs”—would turn to look upon the sweet and glad young face, and not one but had a hearty word and a friendly greeting for Miss Dorothy.
“Eh! But oo’s a bonny wench. A seet ov her ’s fair gooid for sore e’en. Oo’ll be a bright spot i’ some lucky chap’s whom some fine day, please the pigs.” And Dorothy had a nod, and a smile, too, for everyone; for she knew them all by name, and most of them worked for her uncle, either in the mill, or at their own loom in the long upper chamber of their little cottages.
“Oo’s bahn to see poor Lucy Garsed, Ben’s lass, aw’ll be bun; an’ oo’s noan empty-handed noather. See th’ posy oo’s getten; an’ mi mouth fair watters when aw think o’ what there’ll be i’th basket—noan o’ th’ missus’ sendin’, aw’ll go bail.”
“Aye, there’ll be summat beside tracks, if Miss Dorothy’s had a finger i’ th’ pie,”—and so the old wives’ tongues ran on.
The cottage of Ben Garside was barely furnished, but all was spick and span. Ben was a hand-loom weaver, and, of a week-day, by earliest day, til sunset in the spring and summer-tide, you could have heard the clack of his loom overhead as the nimble shuttle with its trail of weft sped across the warp. But to-day Ben has gone to stretch his legs on the moors, and it is Lucy’s mother who bids Dorothy welcome and relieves her of her parcels.
A long oaken settle runs under the deep window of the “house” or living room. The window ledge is full of pots of geranium, fuchsia, musk and rose that turn their petals to bathe in the glorious sunshine that streams with tempered warmth through the thick glazing of the long low window. Poor Lucy lies upon the couch, her cheeks so hollow, her skin so transparent, her brown soft eyes so unnaturally large and her look of patient suffering, and of the resignation of abandoned hope so heart-rending when it is stamped on the face of youth. But the large eyes brighten as Dorothy comes to the couch, and her thin hand, so white and bloodless, rests in loving, lingering caress upon Dorothy’s glossy tresses as she stoops over the invalid and leaves a kiss upon the pallid lips.
“Better to-day, I hope, Lucy.”
And Lucy, with a suspicious catch in her voice, says:
“Oh! Yes, better to-day, Miss Dorothy, almost well.”
Alas! There will be no well for Lucy till that best of all days shall dawn for her, where sickness and suffering enter not, and tears forget to flow.
“See what Aunt Martha has sent you,” said Dorothy presently,—may heaven forgive the fib,—“no, not the flowers. I gathered them all myself because I know just what you like best, and now all the afternoon, when I’m gone, you know, you must just do nothing but arrange them in that big glass on the drawers there. And this jam is for you, too, and the calves’-foot jelly to make you strong, you know, and the tea is for you, Mrs. Garside, when you’ve been washing and feel just like sinking through the ground, as I’ve heard you say you do.”
“And thank the missus kindly, Miss Dorothy, my respects; but whativver’s this?” and Mrs. Garside extracted the bread and meat.
“Oh! I’d forgotten them. These are for Ben.”
“Eh! But aw’m feart they’ll nivver keep till next Sunday i’ this welterin’ weather. To be sure aw might rub ’em wi’ salt, but Ben do want such a power o’ ale a’ter salt meat. But we’ll see, we’ll see. Eh! Miss Dorothy, but it’s yo’ that thinks o’ ivverybody an’ thof yo’ say it’s yor aunt, it’s well aw know—but least said, sooinest mended. But sit yo dahn an’ aw’ll dust that cheer i’ hauf a tick-tack—it’s fair cappin wheer all th’ muck comes fro’ this warm weather, fit to fry yo’ like a’ rasher o’ bacon; sit yo’ dahn, do, an’ throw yo’r hat off an’ yo’ll read ith Book a bit; not ’at aw held so much religion but Lucy theer likes it an’ it’s cheap, that’s one gooid thing or th’ poor folk ’ud get little enew on it.”
Mrs. Garside, who, it will be observed, did not allow her power of speech to rust for want of use, paused to draw breath for another effort.
“What shall I read, Lucy?”
“Oh! Just that story about Jesus at the pool of Bethesda. How I wish I could have been there.”
Mrs. Garside composed herself to listen, putting on that look of impenetrable stolidity and unreceptiveness that a good many people seem to think most appropriate for a Scripture-reading.
“In these lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the waters.…‘Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pool; but while I am coming, another steppeth down before me.’”
“Nah! If that isn’t Holmfirth all ovver, my name’s not Hannah Garsed” broke in that lady. “Holmfirth all ovver. Aw can see just how it wer’. Th’ poor man wer’ ligged theer all bi hissen, an’ nobbudy to help ’im. Then fust one an’ then another comes up an’ thruts ’im o’ one side. An’ if them watters wer’ owt like th’ Booik says, yo may mak’ sure ’at there’d be th’ rich folk theer wi’ their sarvants, an’ lackeys, an’ nusses an’ lady’s maids, to put ’em i’th’ watter an’ they’d ha’ th’ pick o’ ivverything. An’ yar Ben sez ’at if th’ heealin’ o’ th’ man wi a infirmary wer’ a miracle, it’s a bigger miracle ’at someb’dy hadn’t bowt that pool up an’ med a fortin’ out o’ it. Not ’at aw hold wi’ all yar Ben says, for there’s gooid folk amang th’ quality, as we’d no need to look further nor Wilberlee,” she concluded, with a penitent glance at the table.
“But I’ve some news for you, Mrs. Garside,” interrupted Dorothy, “and I hope it will be good news.”
“It’ll be summat fresh if it is,” murmured the irrepressible dame, “weel, out wi’ it.”
“You know uncle has been very busy lately, putting in new machinery?”
Mrs. Garside nodded.Thatdid not concern her, except perhaps that it might mean either more or less country-work to the hand-loom weavers. But that would be to try for.
“And he is going to take another apprentice,” continued Dorothy. “I heard him tell Aunt Martha so and ask her where she should lodge him. Aunt Martha said she hadn’t an idea, anywhere would do for an apprentice. So I managed to catch uncle all by himself, and I said perhaps you would be glad to do for a boy.”
“And that’s what yo’ ca’ gooid news, is it, Dorothy? As if aw hadn’t enough to do wi’ th’ house-work and th’ cookin’, though that’s easy enough, God knows, an’ me bobbin-windin’ to keep Ben agate at th’ loom, an’ th’ little lass theer at might ha’ been a help an’ a comfort laid o’ her back fro’ morn to neet an’ neet to morn an’ all to do for, not but what it’s a pleasure to do for yo’, my pet, an’ it’s more aw wish your owd mother could do, an’ aw wodn’t swap her agen ony lass i’ all th’ valley; but a noisy lad a rampagin’ all abaat th’ haase an’ whistlin’ an’ happen stoppin’ out o’ neets till all hours, an nivver’ wipin’ his feet except upo’ th’ fender rails, an’ makkin’ enough noise to wakken th’ deead, an’ eitin’ enough for two! Not but what th’ bit o’ brass ’ud be welcome, an’ thank yo’ kindly. We’ll see when th’ time comes; its no use meetin’ trouble hauf way nor lawpin’ afore yo get to th’ stee, an’ doubtless yo’r aunt ’ll be speikin’ to me or yar Ben, an’ that ’ll be time enough, which awm obliged to yo’ all th’ same, miss, for givin’ a thowt o’ us an speikin’ a gooid word for us, though yo’r aunt knows weel as if awdidha’ a boy aw’d do for ’im as well as here an’ theer a one, though aw say it, mebbe, as suldn’t.”
Who can unravel the tangled skein of life and say, as the foolish say, “This is fate,” or as the wise, “This the foreordaining of God, the will and fashioning of the great Designer, from the foundation of the world?” But call it Fate or what you will, certain enough it is that the very day after Dorothy’s visit to Dame Garside’s cottage, Jabez Tinker mounted his stout cob and rode up the road that leads past the Bilberry Reservoir, past the Isle of Skye and far-famed Bill’s o’ Jack’s, past the grey pile of St. Chad’s, and so to the Workhouse On the hill. His horse was taken at the gate by Workhouse Jack and Tom Pinder, and led to the stabling in the rear to have a draught of meal-and-water and a feed of oats. Jack and Tom lingered in the stable admiring the gloss of the horse’s coat, running fingers through its mane, smacking its warm flanks with many a “Whooa hup” and “Stan’ ovver, lass,” examining its hocks and its teeth, and generally doing those knowing things affected by the veriest tyro who would be thought wise in the deep and subtle matter of horseflesh.
But presently came the Workhouse Porter:
“Tom Pinder, th’ Master wants you in th’ office. No, not you, Jack; you can go into th’ potato patch and don’t let me catch you here again or you’ll know about it.”
The porter was a much more dignified man and more important in his own esteem than the master himself, so it is just as well he had not eyes at the back of his head to see that sign made by a certain application of thumb and outspanned fingers which in all times and countries has been deemed significant of contempt unutterable.
Tom followed the Porter wondering to the office. The Master was closeted with a tall, broad-shouldered, sparer, man, with clean shaven face, keen grey eyes, and hair tinged with grey at tee tell-tale temples. He sat by the table, a tankard of ale at his side, and his hand swinging his riding whip idly to and fro.
“This is the lad, then, Mr. Redfearn wrote to me about? He seems a likely lad enough, but somewhat overgrown. How old are you boy?”
“Rising fifteen, sir.”
Mr. Tinker eyed the youth from head to foot and turned him round and round, feeling the muscles of his arm and the thews of his thigh and calf as though he was appraising a horse at the Cattle Fair.
“Sound in wind and limb, I should judge,” he concluded, “but his age is against him. A lad should go into a mill young, Master, before his bones are set and his fingers stiff, if he’s to be any good. I’m not in your Union or I would have seen to this. The Guardians have no business to keep a big lumbering lout of a lad lazying about the House and eating his head off. It’s demoralising to the lad and is enough to pauperize a whole neighbourhood. What’s his name?”
“Pinder sir, Tom Pinder,” answered the Master, and, whilst Tom stared with all his eyes on the stranger, wondering vastly who he might be and what this interview might portend and wondering too if Workhouse Jack would remember to feed his rabbit and find a fresh sod of grass for his lark, the Master made apology for Tom’s height and girth.
“You see, Mr. Tinker, Pinder’s been kept longer than usual. There’s a sort of mystery about him, and both the Chairman and Mr. Black have taken uncommon interest in him. Indeed the Schoolmaster’s so wrapt up in him he couldn’t have been more if th’ lad had been his own son, which I’d almost think he was myself if it wasn’t so ridiculous. But there’s never no telling, is there, Mr. Tinker? these quiet uns is often as deep an’ dark as a pit, bu’ we’re all human, eh?” And Master winked a wink meant to be a summary of profound knowledge of the universal fallibility of the human race.
But Mr. Tinker was not a man to be winked at or joked with, nor apparently was he disposed to discuss the tempting topic of man’s—and woman’s—depravity—with a Workhouse Master, the sole audience a Workhouse foundling.
“Pinder,”—he said musingly, strumming meditatively on the table, and somewhat brusquely declining the Master’s hospitable offer to have in another jug of October ale, or something shorter if a cordial for the stomach would be more acceptable.—“Pinder—Tom Pinder? it isn’t a this country name. There was a Pinder at Marsden, a clothier in a small way—took to drink, banked, and showed his creditors a clean pair of heels; but you wouldn’t have a Marsden brat in this Union.”
“But he wasn’t called after his father,” said the Master, somewhat curtly, for if Jabez Tinker could be curt, curt too could the Master be, and any way, he was sovereign there except on Guardian days. “Damme, I can crow on my own dunghill,” he thought, “or I’m th’ poorest cock ever crowed this side of Stanedge.”
“Oh! I forgot, Mr. Redfearn said something about his being a bastard, a chance child—a rambling tale. I didn’t mind it, I was thinking about something else. ’Twill be his mother’s name?”
“No, nor his mother’s,” said the Master. “I don’t rightly know who he was called after. It had something to do with Mr. Redfearn’s shepherd. But it’s a long time since, and I forget. But what’s the odds? There th’ lad is. You can either take him or leave him, it’s all a price to me, and I reckon to th’ Guardians too.”
“When can he come?”
“Next week. There’ll be th’ papers to make out. Th’ overseers will sign th’ indentire. Five pounds they’ve to pay, I think t’was settled.”
“Yes, five Pounds; but if I’d known his age and size I’d have stood out for more. But it’s too late for haggling you’d send him over this day week. I’ll arrange about him. Tell him to bring the cob round, Tom, and so good day to you, Master. Time’s money these days, and I’ve wasted a whole forenoon over this job. Pinder, Pinder, it’s a strange name and yet there seems a look i’ the lad’s eye I’ve seen before somewhere. My respects to Mr. Redfearn when you see him, and tell him he should be too old a farmer by this to keep his cattle till they’re almost too far gone for the market.”
The Master smiled the official smile at a Guardian’s jest; but it was no very friendly glance that followed the erect form of the Holmfirth manufacturer as he turned his good mare’s head over the hills. “Tom’s in for a bad time of it, I’m thinking,” said the master.
It was Mr. Black who conveyed the lad with a father’s love from the Workhouse to Holmfirth. And the lad went with a heart light enough, though on his cheek the tears were wet he had shed at parting from the faithful Jack. He had solemnly made over to the lamenting Workhouse drudge his boyish treasures,—the lark, that obstinately refused to sing, the lop-eared rabbit, and the hedgehog he had rescued from the clogs and sticks of a posse of village urchins—captive not of bow and spear, but of fist and toe. Moll o’ Stuarts, too, had been to bid him farewell, and, as a parting gift, had bestowed on him a child’s caul.
“Keep that all th’ days o’ your life; nivver part wi’ it, wet or fine. Yo’ll allus know th’ weather by it, as guid as a glass an’ better nor bi a mony on ’em. An’ as long as that caul’s thine, drowneded bi watter yo’ canna be. There’s mony a fine spark at sails the seas ’ud be main glad o’ that same. Hanged yo’ may be, tho’ God forbid, but drownded nivver.” And in after years, of which the reader shall read in good time, Moll o’ Stuarts was able to invoke her prophetic soul, and to attribute to her own prescience the wonderful deliverance this story shall narrate. Moll, too, brought a pair of stout stockings knit by the widow Schofield’s own plump hands, and a crown-piece, that the night before had jingled in Tom o’ Fairbank’s well-filled leathern purse.
Over the hills trudged the Schoolmaster and his ward; the dominie thoughtful, and not a little sorrowful.
“Pray God we’ve done for the best,” was his pious hope, as they reached the low wall of the Church of St. Chad’s, and one at least thought of the fair unknown, whose son was setting forth into the untried paths of life, with all the glad, unquestioning undoubting confidence of eager youth. Hard by the Church Inn they turned to the face of the steep ascent of almost unbroken moorland, threaded by a rude and rutty path, strewn with rubble and boulders, torn and wrenched from the crags above by the driving storms and angry raging winds of the rolling years. On the lower face of the hill they passed, here and there, the rude shelter of a moorland cottier, whose cow and pig and poultry gained precarious living in the lean enclosures won from the sweeping stretch of heather and coarse grass or the lowly cottage whence the familiar clack of the hand-loom told of swaying beam and scudding shuttle. Anon they reached the summit; Mr. Black, notwithstanding the help from Tom’s sturdy arm, fain to rest upon one of the vast rocks belched forth from the bowels of the earth in some angry vomiting of the prisoned airs, and now, rounded and smooth-worn and dark with the gloom of ages, resting massive on the commanding summit called Pots and Pans.
“Yes, that indeed, is Bill’s o’ Jack s,” panted Mr. Black, in answer to Tom’s eager questioning.
“That is where the murder was done, murder most foul. Poor hapless Bill and Tom, I knew them well, a hale and hearty farmer, and his son a strapping gamekeeper. Done to death, whether for gain or revenge, none knew for certain, though it was shrewdly guessed, but nothing was ever proved and for ought is known, the murderers may dwell in our very midst. See yon little window left of the door, ’twas the old man’s bedroom. There, in a pool of blood, his lifeless body was found; his son,—his head cleaved by a heavy bill-lay lifeless in the kitchen. It was a little wench, who went betimes for milk, gave the alarm.”
“Was it long gone sir?” asked Tom, gazing spellbound at the farmhouse in the valley’s dip.
“In ’32—the year of the great Reform Bill. You were a bouncing baby then, Tom. But see how thick the bilberries lie snugly in the heather, and how a film settles on the ripened fruit as though the mist of the hills had kissed them with a lingering kiss. Better fill your kerchief, for well I guess they’ll be right welcome at Mrs. Garside’s, where you must make your home.
“And now, lad, turn your eyes once more upon the old church and towards the fields you know so well. Remember in that valley you were born and bred, and in that valley are those that love you well and who have knit you to their hearts. Yonderwards, in the other valley, is your future home; what trials, what labours there await you, who shall say? but as David said to hisson, say I to you:
“’Be thou strong and shew thyself a man, and keep the charge of the Lord Thy God, to walk in His ways, to keep His statutes, and His commandments, and His judgments and His testimonies that thou mayest prosper in all that thou doest, and whithersoever thou turnest thyself.’ And now, come, lad, ’tis a brave step from here to Holmfirth and the way will be long for me when I come back without thee.”
CHAPTER VI.