“Eh! but it’s gran’ to see yo’, Hannah,” one would say, “Why aw declare aw hannot seen yo’ donned up an’ aat sin’ we put owd Susan o’ ’Lijah’s under th’ graand. An’ yo’ do looik weel to be sure, an’ aw will say ’at if theer’s a woman i’ th’ village ’at does her clo’es credit it’s yo’, Hannah. And your Lucy, too, aw declare oo’s quite a colour. Yo’re lookin’ mony a pund better nor th’ last time aw seed thi, Lucy, an’ tha mun keep thi heart up, lass, theer’s no tellin’ yet. See yo’ Hannah, theer’s yar Jud (George) an’ yo’r Ben t’other side o’th’ field, an’ Jud’s shakkin’ his fist i’ Ben’s face, an’ Ben’s dancin’ like peeas on a bake-ston’. It’s them plaguing politics, but they’re enjoyin’ theirsen. An’ theer’s yar ’Tilda yonder i’th’ kiss-i’th-ring an Jim Sykes after her. Run, lass, run—eh! he’s caught her. Th’ clumsy felly, he’ll rive all th’ clo’es off her back. Gi’ ’im one an’ get it ovver. Eh! it fair ma’es one young agin to see th’ young folk enjoy theirsen.”
Lucy had insisted on Tom joining the revels of the field, the gay and innocent sports of the youths and maidens, and her eyes followed him as he joined in the games at “Tirzy,” hand ball, and what not. But Tom’s thoughts seemed elsewhere, and Lucy knew that his eyes wandered from the laughter-ringing throngs to the rustic gate that led from Wilberlee to the pasture land.
“He’s watching for Dorothy,” she thought, and there passed, maybe, a shadow over Lucy’s gentle face, “and there comes Dorothy herself. Ah! well, I knew it long ago. God send it may not spoil our Tom’s young life.”
There was a rush of twinkling little feet to meet the young mistress of Wilberlee as she passed slowly through the gateway, and moved into the field, clad in a loose gown of sprayed muslin of palest blue. She swung her hat in one hand that the soft cool air might play about her face, and the rays of the declining sun gleamed upon the auburn tresses, and gave them a golden sheen.
A dozen youngsters danced up to her, shouting their childish welcome, and more than one little toddlekin did Dorothy catch up in her arms and kiss. They danced round her as she walked up the field, or clasped her hand to claim her for some favourite game. And Dorothy smiled down upon the uplifted faces, and made feint to run away from them, but was captured and prisoned in their midst. And so, surrounded by bright and happy faces, Dorothy moved about the field, speaking to many, and giving a pleased recognition to all she knew,—and there was not a man or woman of Aenon chapel she did not know, not a worker at her uncle’s mill she could not address by name.
“As free as th’ air, Miss Dorothy is,” said one, “but she never demeans herself nor forgets she’s th’ young mistress.” And the hands respected her, the more for it. The working people of the mills knew their place, and were not ashamed of it, nor servile to those above them. They did not care that anyone should assume a familiarity they knew must be feigned and which they were bound to suspect.
The Rev. David Jones was in his glory. He had shaken hands with everyone there above the age of thirteen, had inquired about everyone’s health as though he loved them, and their pains were his, had narrowly escaped being decoyed into a game at romps, and had looked as though he liked it when a hand-ball knocked off his hat. This did not prevent him confiding to Mrs. Jones, a placid little woman who took life serenely, that he should be glad when it was all over.
As the afternoon wore to evening and the pastor, wearied of parading the field and repeating stale vacuities, he saw, with the pleasure we experience when we realize what we had hoped for rather than expected, that young Wimpenny had not forgotten his half-promise of a day or two ago. Wimpenny was speaking to the minister of his own chapel, a meek, timid man, but hard-working, sincere and self-sacrificing, beloved of little children and their mothers, and for whom even the hard-hearted operatives had a good word. The lawyer was not long in making his way towards Mr. Jones.
“You see I have been able to come, though I’m afraid I’m a late scholar. Won’t you introduce me to Mrs. Jones?” and the introduction was duly made. The three paced together through the changing throng, parted occasionally when some eager urchin, in full cry after the flying ball, darted under the parson’s arms or a breathless Daphne, with ringlets streaming in the breeze, fled in simulated fright from a pursuing swain.
“Miss Tinker seems to be enjoying herself,” said Nehemiah to Mrs. Jones, after he had duly admired her own numerous offspring whom she had indicated in various quarters of the field.
“Is she as nice as she is pretty?”
“Yes, she is very nice, and seems fond of the people. She spoils the children though,—my husband is sometimes a little put out. She does not take life seriously enough, she says, and he is vexed she won’t be baptised, though she is quite old enough to become a full church member. I asked her if she had religious scruples that Mr. Jones could assist her to banish; but she only laughed and said the immersion costume of the girls was hideous enough to account for a bushel of scruples without searching further. But then you know she is Mr. Tinker’s niece, and I daresay she is indulged too much at home.”
Nehemiah did not think this very likely, but, all the same, he replied that it was a great pity.
“Do you now,” he said, “I have never had the pleasure of meeting Miss Tinker in society. She doesn’t go out much. I fancy. Would you mind——?”
“Certainly, Mr. Wimpenny, if you wish it. See, she is resting now and fanning herself with that outlandish hat of hers. Shall we join her?” And presently the diplomatic Wimpenny was making a somewhat exaggerated bow before the heiress of Wilberlee.
And Tom’s eyes followed the graceful girl as she walked by the side of Nehemiah, chatting gaily and seeming well content with his companionship; and Tom plunged his hands deep into his pockets and stalked moodily with clouded brow about the field, deaf to every entreaty from tempting lips to “choose the girl that he loved best,” and feeling that for him life had lost its zest. The blue of the sky was dulled, the music of the lark soaring in the azure might have been the cawing of the rooks, and the gentle summer breeze that scarce stirred the leaves an icy blast from eastern shores.
“What a fool I am, crying for the moon. I, Tom Pinder, apprentice to Jabez Tinker, Esquire and Justice of the Peace. Go to yonder rosy faced weaver with sparkling eyes and towzled hair.Shewill lend a ready ear, you can send her home to-night, her heart in a tumult of delight; in her dreams heaven will open to her, and she will wake with your name upon her lips. Or go down yonder to theClothiers’ Arms. There are some jolly fellows there, and you will be all the more welcome because you have been set down as a strait-laced, sour-faced curmudgeon with lead in your veins for blood. Go drink with them and join in their drunken chorus; better that than eat your heart out after fruit that is not for you.”
And so with head down-bent he makes for where he had left Hannah and Lucy; and in his abstraction nearly walks into Wimpenny and Dorothy. Mrs. Jones had remembered the wise saying that two are company and three are none.
“Mind where you’re walking, will you?” exclaimed Wimpenny, cut short in a very flowery compliment which Dorothy was perhaps not sorry to have curtailed.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Tinker, I’m afraid I was very careless. I did not see. I was thinking.”
“Now that is not a very gallant speech, Tom—I mean Mr. Pinder. Mr. Wimpenny would have assured me that he never thought at all except of me, and that he would have divined my presence by instinct a mile off.”
But Wimpenny was not to be rallied into good humour. He had put on a very tight-fitting pair of patent-leather shoes, and he suffered from the usual infliction of those who wear tight boots,—and Tom had grazed his foot.
“Mr. Pinder! indeed,” he thought, “why, damme, it’s one of old Tinker’s mill hands.”
Now Tom, having made his apologies to Dorothy, was for pursuing the tenor of his way, being by no means disposed to offer any to Mr. Wimpenny.
“Oh, you mustn’t go, Mr. Pinder, you must take me to Lucy; but first you must help me to gather some flowers. You know Paris so well, Mr. Wimpenny, and must excuse my accent. Shall I sayAu revoirorA bientôt, and without waiting for a reply she turned in the direction of the garden at the house, Leaving Nehemiah dumbfounded.
“Curse the jade,” he muttered to himself, “chucked over for a dirty weaver, by Jove. But I’ll be even with her yet. It doesn’t do to play tricks with Miss Dorothy, and so you’ll find some day. But I can bide my time. I’ll go and have a drink at theCrown, Polly ’ll be glad to see me anyhow.”
And Tom walked as in a dream. The sky was blue again, and the lark trilled a clearer note, and all the earth was glad in its summer joyousness.
CHAPTER X
IT is one thing for a maiden to invite a young man to a garden, and quite another to know what to do with him when she gets him there. It would have puzzled Dorothy to say exactly why she had asked Tom Pinder to help her cull flowers. The ostensible pretext given had been the gathering of a bouquet for Lucy; but we all know that a woman’s ostensible pretexts are—well, ostensible pretexts. For one thing Dorothy had had enough of Nehemiah Wimpenny, and wanted to be decently free of him for the rest of the day. She had wearied of the mild pleasure of poking fun at his French. But in truth Dorothy had acted from impulse and regretted her words all the more when she saw the sudden light of glad surprise that sprung to Tom’s dark eyes. But there is safety in numbers, reflected Dorothy. The back door of the house was not locked. Dorothy looked into the kitchen, into the parlour,—neither Betty nor Peggy was there. She called their names at the bottom of the staircase, whilst Tom bided in the garden, but there was no answering cry from Betty or from Peggy, those handmaidens having very properly conceived that Whitsuntide comes alike for bond and free, and betaken themselves, in gay attire, to the delights of the field. Peggy, at this moment, indeed, was flying, with fleet foot, from the outstretched arms of an amorous young butcher, who ’livered the daily joint at Wilberlee, and the staider Betty was listening with all too ready ears to the somewhat halting wooing of the village constable, who, even in plain clothes, was still a proper man and had, perhaps, a prophetic vision of a village-inn with himself as keeper of order and the purse-strings, and Betty as buxom but bustling hostess.
“It is very tiresome,” said Dorothy, as she returned to the garden where Tom was pretending to be wrapt in the contemplation of the beauties of aGloire de Dijon, “I did so want a cup of tea, but Betty and Peggy have played me truant. Don’t you think, Mr. Pinder, you had better go find them, and say I want one of them, no matter which, very particularly.”
But Tom had taken possession of the handbasket and the scissors, and was oblivious to hints.
“Some of these blooms want cutting very badly,” was his only answer, “they will fall in another day.” Then there was silence save for the clicking of the scissors, the humming of the bees, the good-night song of the birds, and the laughter and cries from the field. Unconsciously, as the basket filled, the steps of Dorothy had turned the gable of the house. The merry crowd was hid from view. The garden here sloped to the river side, and by its brim was a rustic seat. Dorothy sank upon it weariedly.
“I confess I’m tired,” she exclaimed “I seem to have been on my feet for a week,” and she put out the tiniest point of a shoe-toe and contemplated it ruefully. “Now, what do you mean, Mr. Pinder, standing there swinging that basket like one of those boats in a fair that make you dizzy to look at them? Can’t you find a seat somewhere?”
Tom looked all around. He might have found a seat by climbing on the branch of an adjacent tree. Some such thought may have crossed his mind, for by that magic of association that passes the wit of man came to him the couplet that he had read long ago:
“Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,”
“Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,”
“Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,”
with its answering
“If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all.”
“If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all.”
“If thy heart fail thee, do not climb at all.”
Tom did not climb. He sat instead on the edge of the garden seat, as far from Dorothy as space permitted.
“I wish you wouldn’t call me ‘Mr. Pinder’,” he said. “I never feel quite sure you are not making mock of me.”
Dorothy had taken a rose from the basket and was looking for leaves to bind it with.
“Well you see, you are getting rather too big for me to call you Tom. And besides, you are a man now, and besides, oh!—lots of things.”
This did not seem very lucid. Tom went on:
“I was never called ‘Mr. Pinder’ in my life till you called me so. Then I was very glad and very proud. It put new thoughts into my mind. It was like a ‘new birth,’ as the chapel-folk might say. But it has done its work now, and I should like once more to be plain ‘Tom’ to you.”
“Well, plain Tom then be it, if that will please you; but we really must be going, or we shall miss Lucy. Hark! many of the people must have left the ground already. I can hear them talking as they go past the mill. Bring along the basket, Tom, and don’t spill more than you can help.”
“I don’t think I should take the flowers to Lucy in the field. People would say you favoured Lucy more than other folk’s children.”
“And what do I care what people say; I do like Lucy more than any other girl in the village.”
“I was not exactly thinking of what you might care about miss. I was thinking more of what Lucy would feel.”
“Oh! Of course,” said Dorothy, not without a suspicion of pettishness in her tone. Really, this young man was too frank. To say exactly what one thinks is no doubt commendable in the abstract. But then we should be careful to think only what will fall pleasingly on the ear, if we wish to please. “Oh! of course,” said Dorothy.
Tom felt he had blundered. “The air comes very sweet and fresh from the hills” he said, to change the subject. “How clear the stream looks to-night and how softly it warbles over the stones.”
“Yes,” assented Dorothy, “I love the river when its waters are crystal as now; but you know it is so seldom we see it so bright and sparkling. The dye-water from the mill makes it all the colours of the rainbow, but you take care the colours are dirty enough.”
“There’s something I wanted to tell you, Miss Dorothy,” said Tom, after a lull in the conversation which both felt to be embarrassing.
“Well?”
“You see, Miss Dorothy, I shall be of age soon.”
“Really! Well that seems to me a thing you need not look so solemn about. It happens to everyone, more or less, if they live long enough. I shall be of age myself someday, I dare say, but I will try to bear it submissively, if not cheerfully. You’ll get over it, Tom. You may even in time get used to it.”
“Yes, but it will make a great difference to me. For one thing my apprenticeship to your uncle will be at an end.”
“Oh!” said Dorothy, “Well, I should think you’ll be glad of that. Uncle is sure to want you to stop on at the mill—I know he thinks well of you.”
“It is very good of him” said Tom and smiled as he thought of the day when his master had lifted his riding whip in quick, passionate anger. But that was long gone bye. “But I don’t think I shall stop on, in fact I’m sure I shan’t.”
“You won’t leave Holmfirth, will you, Tom?” and she was surprised at the interest with which she awaited his reply.
“You see,” said Tom, slowly, and colouring as if he were confessing to a crime “I’ve had a bit of money left and Ben and me, that is Ben and I.”
“Oh! bother the grammar” cried Dorothy.
“Ben and me’s going into partnership, and there’s a little mill at Hinchliffe Mill where we can get room and power. Higher up the river, you know. We will try not to send you more dye-water down stream than we can help. I shall always think when I draw the plugs that the water will pass your window, Miss Dorothy.” Tom was distinctly improving.
“It’s a great venture,” said Dorothy gravely. “A very great venture. I don’t mean so much for you, you have all life before you, but for Ben, and what hurts Ben will hurt Lucy. You see other people besides you can think of Lucy.” Now there was a piece of malice here, but Dorothy thought she could now cry quits.
“Yes, it’s a venture, Miss Dorothy, a great venture. It is one that perhaps would never have been made if you had never called me ‘Mr. Pinder,’ so don’t throw cold water on our scheme. But it isn’t just that I wanted to talk about. There’s something more.”
“’Pon my word, Tom, you’re worse than the brook. The teachers have come and the teachers have gone, but you go on for ever. But in for a penny, in for a pound. What more is there?”
“Well, Ben and I have talked it over and over. Don’t think me a Pharisee, Miss Dorothy, but we’re going to try to run the mill on new lines.”
“H’m; that sounds like adding venture to venture, doesn’t it?”
“Perhaps: you see, Ben and I both belong to the working class.”
Dorothy bent her head in a somewhat hesitating assent. “I suppose so,” she said.
“And we know something of what working folk have to put up with, how hard they have to work, and how little they often get in return.”
“Come to that,” said Dorothy, “I dare say a masters’ lot isn’t quite a bed of roses. You’ll find that out soon enough for yourselves I’m afraid.”
“Granted,” said Tom, ”but fat sorrow’s better than lean; but I don’t mean to be a master.”
Dorothy rose. “It is later than I thought. Betty must have come in by this, or Peggy. And the field’s well-nigh deserted. Whit-Monday’s come and gone, Tom, and I must e’en go too. You must take the flowers home to Lucy, and give her my love. Say I will call for the basket some fine day.”
But Tom ventured to touch her arm as she made as though to go. “Nay, Miss Dorothy, I would I might say my say—but, perhaps, you don’t care to know our plans?”—this wistfully.
“Oh! but indeed I do. Just five minutes then. And indeed it is vastly pleasanter here than indoors. No more romping for me this day,” and Dorothy sat down again.
“I said just now I did not mean to be a master, Ben and I are indeed going to add venture to venture. You know something about co-operation?”
“Why, what a question! Of course I do. Doesn’t Mr. Thorpe tell us every time he comes to see my aunt that the Co-op’s ruining him—and serve him right, Betty says. Aunt says that things at the Co-op are nasty without being cheap, for what they give you in ‘divvy’—isn’t that the word?—they take out in quality. I hope you’re not going to start a Co-op, Tom. I really cannot fancy you in a white apron, simpering over a counter and asking me ‘what’s the next article, miss?’”
“Then you would give us your custom?” he asked with a smile.
“Oh! Perhaps I might sneak in occasionally for a trifle—for Lucy’s sake, you know.”
“But you forget, I told you we had taken part of a mill at Hinchliffe Mill. It’s there we’re going to haveourCo-op.”
“Isn’t it rather out of the way? Fancy, having to send all that way for a pound of candles. Oh! I beg Ben’s pardon; there’ll be no need of candles with such a luminary as he in the shops. You’ll be selling philosophy by the yard and theology by the stone. But seriously, Tom, I don’t see what a Co-op has to do with a mill.”
“And that’s just what I want to speak to you about. You see Ben’s a Socialist, and all his life he has been crying out against capitalists and capital. Now he declares I want to turn him into a capitalist for we are to be partners in this venture upon a venture.”
Dorothy shook her head. “I’m just as much in the fog now as ever,” she said, “I see if I want to know anything about this wonderful new departure I must ask Lucy. Do get on; you and your Co-op that isn’t a Co-op after all. But you will not be a very bloated capitalist, will you, Tom?” she concluded mischievously.
“We aren’t going to be capitalists at all. I’m just going to start the concern with my bit of a fortune—it doesn’t look so much of a fortune as it did, now I know what a little way it will go. But any way Ben and I are going to work in it, side by side with the hands. We are all going to be hands together. Of course, in a sense, there’ll be a master; but he will be a master in a different sense from what we’re all used to. Every one of us that can do a full man’s work is to have an equal share in the profit, always provided he does the work he is capable of. There will be shorter hours and less work for the youngsters. But the share of all will depend on the profits we make, and no one is to have a greater share than another.”
“But that seems ridiculous, Tom. If you are to turn manufacturer like my uncle, why, you must be a manufacturer. You will have to go to market as he does, and meet and bargain with your customers, to dress like them, to mix with them as an equal. How can you do that on the lines you are laying down? I am only a silly girl, may be, and certainly I don’t know much about business, but go on,—this grows interesting.”
“I know the difficulties, Miss Dorothy, but the difficulty will not be in Ben, and I hope not in me. The difficulty will be in getting a sufficient number of men, capable, reliable, sober, industrious men who can be brought to see that in our scheme there will not only be an escape from the thraldom of the capital they denounce so hotly, but a realization of that equality and fraternity for which men and women have gone to their graves like bed. The difficulty will be to persuade men not merely that they will be better off themselves, but that they must be content to take part of their wage in seeing a worse workman than themselves better off too. Labour is just as selfish as capital. But in our mill no matter what a man’s allotted task, so long as he does his work faithfully, he shall share and share alike.”
“But that seems just a little absurd, don’t you think?” asked Dorothy, now genuinely interested. “You must make all this clear to me. You don’t mean to say that if you, say, are the designer or the traveller, you are to draw no more profit out of the concern than a teamer?”
“That’s it, exactly—not a stiver. We’re all to be partners together. We’ll know neither master nor man at our mill. We’re going to try an experiment in grim earnest, and oh! Miss Dorothy, for heaven’s sake, don’t shake your head and look so glum about it. I feel sure we can succeed. Wewillsucceed. I am young and there is no hardship, no sacrifice, no work for which I am not prepared. Perhaps I might get a situation under another; perhaps in time I might start on the usual lines and perhaps in time I might make a fortune for myself. But will it not be a grander thing and in itself a better, a more heart-satisfying future should we be able to gather round ourselves a band of workers, all knit together not merely by the selfish bonds of personal interest, but each rejoicing that he is advancing, too, his brother’s welfare, and that in his well-being and in his well-doing each and everyone of us is concerned.”
Tom had risen in the earnestness of his soul’s unburthening, and now paced the narrow strip of gravelled garden path which skirted the river-bank. His eyes were lit with unwonted fire, a flush was on his cheek, his voice gained strength and cadence as the long-pondered thoughts forced themselves to utterance, and the natural unstudied motions of his hands kept harmony with the spoken word.
“Oh! Miss Dorothy, it may all be a dream, but if a dream it be, surely it is such a one as was dreamed by the Lake of Galilee or the slopes of Olive’s Mount. Is it not meet that old men in the time to come should dream dreams, and the young men see visions. Had Ben Garside, good, staunch, true man that I know him to be, had not he dreamed dreams and seen visions could he have had it in his heart to strive and suffer as I know he did, not for himself but for the oppressed ones of his class. And shall not we of a newer time haveourvisions, and mine is of a glad day when the band of man shall be against his neighbour, when this unresting, cruel strife of brother seeking to outvie his brother, building ever the fabric of his success upon the undoing of another shall cease from the land, and the Kingdom of which seers have dreamed and prophets foretold shall be indeed at hand.”
Dorothy gazed in wrapt regard at the young enthusiast. She drank in the music of his words with greedy ears, and they sank into her soul. Never had man so spoken to her before. Words like these, if spoken at all, were not, in her experience, words for every day life. They should be reserved to be voiced on Sunday from the pulpit and devoutly ignored and disregarded on the Monday. But as the unpent stream of cherished conviction flowed its impetuous course Dorothy felt that she too was being swept with it, and forgot that she was the daughter of a proud and exclusive race, and he who paced before her with rapid, agitated stride, the humblest of her guardian’s henchmen.
But withal Dorothy was a practical common-sense young woman, and as little likely as any of her very practical sex to forget the stern necessities of work-a-day life, in a momentary abandon to the transcendental schemes of an enthusiast.
“Don’t you think we had better know more about your Co-op?” she said. “These grand ideas may be all very well as abstract theories. I want to know how you propose to put them into practice and live. I seem to remember that St. John not only permits dreams and visions to you men; he also allows us daughters to prophesy.”
“Well?”
“Now I venture to prophesy that if you and Ben set about your new venture in the manner you seem to have contemplated, it is not only good-bye to your small fortune, which, perhaps wouldn’t matter very much—but it would be to handicap you at the very threshold of your life with the deadening sense of failure, and perhaps fill your whole future with the bitterness of blighted hopes and unrealized aspirations. Now I think I can suggest to you an attainable Utopia. It would not, perhaps, be such a neck-or-nothing affair as yours, but it should have enough of other-worldliness in it for a sane man.”
Tom sat down again by Dorothy’s side, but this time he did not take the edge of the seat. His nervous shyness had vanished in the abandonment of his speech.
“Ben says women can neither see nor feel an inch outside their own doorsteps,” he said with a smile.
“And a good thing for men, whose wives at all events are centred in their homes and families. But I am not Ben’s wife, nor—nor anyone else’s,” concluded Dorothy lamely, flushing slightly at some unspoken thought.
“And what is your attainable Utopia, Miss Dorothy?” asked Tom, very quietly.
“Well, you must let me think, and, as it were, feel my way to a conclusion; for to tell the truth I have not read or thought much on such difficult problems as the subject seems to bristle with. Tell me, at our village Co-op doesn’t a member’s dividend depend on the amount of his purchases?”
“I believe so.”
“And, roughly speaking, doesn’t a man’s spending power bear a sort of proportion to his earning power?”
“Practically, no doubt.”
“Then you see that practical co-operation benefits a man according to his ability and application.”
“Clearly.”
“Well, I think that is right. Now if I understandyourprinciple of Socialism it makes no distinction between the skilled and incapable. Granting only equality of industry you reward all alike. Now that is not common justice.”
“I think it is,” said Tom, stoutly, “a man can but do his best.”
“All the same, it isn’t. Take the case of a man, a designer, say, in a mill, or a lawyer, or a doctor. He devotes money, time, and the hard sweating of his brains to becoming master of his calling. Whilst he is studying he is earning just nothing at all, in fact less than nothing. When he is qualified for it he rightly expects to be better paid than a man who knows how to handle a spade or pickaxe when his life of toil begins, and knows just as much and no more when his life ends in the workhouse or the grave.”
“You say ‘rightly expects,’ why rightly?” asked Tom.
“Because when the skilled and educated labourer in whatever sphere you likedoesbegin to be paid it is common justice that he should be paid, not merely for the present years of harvest, but also for the years of seeding, cultivation, and growth. It is merely the analogy of the farmer. It simply means that the toil of preparation is paid for at a later day. It is payment deferred, but none the less payment of what is justly due. Now your navvy or artisan gets his payment from the first day he touches the mattock or throws a shuttle.”
“There seems some justice in what say, Miss Dorothy; but I thought you were going to show me the way to your attainable Utopia.”
“So I am. I should imagine that the current rate of wages is very much the measure of a man’s comparative worth in this life-absorbing soul-cramping pursuit of wealth you call business. When these are paid and other outlays deducted, there remains, or doesn’t remain sometimes, what the capitalist calls his profit?”
Tom nodded.
“And it is against this profit your sensitive soul rebels, your dainty fingers will not touch?”
“If it pleases you to put it so, Miss Dorothy.”
“Then quell your soul’s rebellion, let not your fingers touch. Distribute your profit among all the workers in the concern, yourself and Ben included, for I suppose your stomach will insist on its elemental right to be filled; but distribute to each a share of the profits proportioned to his wage. For taking it that a man’s wage is a rough and ready measure of a man’s share in building up the wealth, so, too, would it be a rough and ready method of determine your share in the profits. And now most potent, grave, and reverend seigneur, thy hand-maiden hath spoken, and lud-ha’-mercy, ’tis sick to death I am of long faces and your miserable economics. Did ever before a young man lure a maiden to flowery bower and discourse to her sweet—political economy! I warrant you have smoother sayings for Lucy’s ear. And, now, good-night. I heard Betty shouting for me down the paddock this quarter gone. Don’t forget my love to Lucy.”
And Dorothy tripped away, and Tom made homewards, carrying the basket very tenderly; but the rose that Dorothy had toyed with and cast aside he picked up, pressed to his lips and hid in his pocket-book. Someone found its yellow leaves years afterwards, and made-believe to be jealous because of them.
“Law! Betty,” said Dorothy that night, as she uncoiled the tresses of her gleaming locks. “I declare your Tom Pinder is as mad as a hatter; and faith, I think it’s catching.”
“Smittling, yo’ meean, miss. Well, some ailments be if yo’ bideverynear them as has ’em.”
And Ben and Tom sat long that night talking over their plans for the near future. Ben conceded there was something in what Miss Dorothy had said.
“By gow, who’d ha’ thowt yon’ wench had it in her, to pounce reet daan on th’ weak spot, what yo’ may ca’ th’ flaw o’th system, all in a jeffy like. But she’s a head piece in a hundred. It’ll be her uncle ’oo favvers, for her father had more heart nor yead.”
“An’ what for should’nt Dorothy see what yo’ two men blinked yo’r een at?” asked Hannah indignantly, “Haven’t aw towd yo’ scores o’ times ’at a woman ’ll lawp ovver a wall whilst a man’s gooin’ raand gropin’ for th’ gate. Aw’m fain someb’dy can ding sense into oather on yo’—it doesn’t matter which, for what one on yo’ says t’other ’ll swear to. If ’oo’s persuaded Tom theer ’at ther’s sich a thing as lookin’ after other folks consarns till yo’r own’s gone to rack an’ ruin, it’s more nor e’er aw could do bi thee, Ben. Happen aw’d ha’ had more chance if aw’d tried afore we were wed i’stead o’ after, but ther’s no tellin’. Some folk are born so; an’ ther ne’er wer’ a fooil brought into th’ world but there wer’ a bigger born to match him. But aw see hah it is, we’st burn more can’les talkin’ abaat th’ new venture, as yo ca’ it, nor th’ takkin’s ’ll run to i’ a gooid season. Get thee to bed, Tom, an’ dunnot yo’ forget yo’re Jabez Tinker’s ’prentice lad yet, whativver yo’ may be some day when me an’ Ben’s both under th’ sod.”
The end of Tom’s apprenticeship drew near. Stories of his project had already been whispered about the village, and some of the quidnuncs of the barber’s shop, which was the central Exchange of local news tapped their foreheads significantly. “Talk abaat a slate off,” the slubber at Wilberlee had been heard to say, “yon’ Ben Garside’s got a whole roof off, and that d—d young bastard fro’ Saddleworth’s worse nor Ben.” But in time the real nature of the new enterprise was bruited abroad and was much discussed. The novel theme was felt to be a perfect godsend in a community which, like others of its size, becomes more agitated over a runaway horse in its main street than over a European convulsion. The landlord of the Croppers’ Arms began to feel quite a glow of gratitude towards the sober, drink-shunning Pinder, so many pints of ale did his nightly customers feel necessary for the ample criticism of Tom’s scheme.
“Aw know for certain room an’ power’s ta’en at Hinchliff Mill,” said Jim Thewlis, the landlord. “Th’ agent for lettin’ Denham’s mill, as was, called in on his way fro’ Huddersfilt’ other day. We wer’ speerin’ abaat this young Pinder. Weel, aw wanted to do fair like so aw said at th’ country talk wor’ he’d had a fortin’ left; th’ worst there wer’ agen him, so far as ivver aw’d heer’d, wer’ ’at he wer’ a teetotaller. Aw thowt that wer’ enuff, but th’ agent seemed no ways taken a-back. Said it were common as measles nah a days,” concluded Jim, heaving a sigh over the degeneracy of the times.
“But what’s all this talk abaat a newfangled road o’ payin’ th’ hands?” asked the village bellman, whose pimply face and swollen nose seemed to indicate that “Oyez! Oyez!” were thirsty words.
“They’re all to have a ‘divvy,’ same as they han at th’ Co-op,” explained one.
“There’ll be a new job for thi, Bellman,” said another.
“Tha’ll ha to go round th’ village cryin’ th’ divvy at Co-op Mill”
“Aye, aye,” said another, “Oh! yes, Oh! yes, lost, lost and can’t be found, a han’some divvy thowt safe an’ sound.’” Thus Josh o’ Jonah’s, the village wit and poet.
But the light esteem in which their design was held by the topers of the Croppers’ Arms did not disturb the equanimity of either Ben or Tom. “Th’ more th’ job’s talked abaat, th’ better for it,” was Ben’s expressed opinion. “An’ if it’s nobbut fooil’s talk, talk’s talk, an’ that’s why we want to start a Co-op. When folk get to know th’ lines we’re bahn to work on, there’ll be plenty ready to throw in wi’ us,yo’ see if ther’ isna, Tom lad. We’ll ha’ th’ pick o’th mill hands i’ this village if th’ consarn goes—an’ itmungo, Tom; it mun go. Aw’st break mi heart if it doesn’t. We’ll mak it gee if we’n to sell ivvery stick we’n got to buy coil to fire up wi’. But we’st nooan need to do that. Aw’ve nooan bin idle, an’ what does ta think aw’ve getten to tell thee?”
Ben had not indeed been idle. It has been said that he was a popular character in the district. Men knew him for a shrewd, hard-working man, “wi’ his yead screwed on th’ reight road, if heisa bit loose i’ th’ tongue.” Of more moment still their wives knew him for a sober man, and the daughters of a good many of them evinced a very sympathetic interest in the scheme in which Tom’s name was so prominently associated. Moreover, Co-ops were appreciated by the housewives. Co-operative distribution they understood; Co-operative production they had not before heard of but were quite prepared to take it on trust, as a sort of twin-brother of the system of trading they were already familiar with.
“Aw know one thing,” many a good dame declared, “it wer’ a gooid thing for yar haase ’at aw put into th’ Co-op. Aw allus know th’ rent ’ll be theer at th’ quarter end, an’ there’ll be summat to buy cloes wi’ at Whissunday, an’ a bit o’ summat extra at Kersmas, an’ it’s all mi eye an’ Peggy Martin abaat th’ stuff bein’ dear an’ nasty. That’s Eph. Thorpe’s tale, that is. Ther’s nob’dy nah’ll go to Eph’s bud them as cannot pay ready brass for their stuff.”
More than one good workman, old friends and cronies of Ben’s, had already had long talks with him about the matter. They were men who had a bit laid by and were ready to join the enterprise.
“We will have no one with us,” said Tom emphatically, “but those who work in the mill. We will have no one’s money unless he gives his labour too. Every worker on the job must have his flesh and blood in it as well as his money. If we take money at all it must be as a loan at low interest. The thing is to have every hand a co-operator in production and a sharer in the profits.”
“Tak’ as few in as possible till yo’ see how th’ job frames,” was Hannah’s prudent counsel. “If it goes all reet yo’ll ha’ plenty o’ backers, an’ plenty as’ll want to ha’ a finger i’ th’ paw (pie). Aw nobbut hope it winnot be like the gradely ‘Holmfirth paw.’”
“What’s that?” asked Tom.
“Brokken eggs,” said Hannah, shortly, “cow-pie,—custard, for fine.”
Of course Jabez Tinker heard of the thing. A few days before the expiration of Tom’s apprenticeship he sent for him into the office. The indenture was spread on the desk before him.
“Sit down, Tom,” his master said in a not unkindly voice. “So I suppose you are going to shake the dust of Wilberlee Mill off your feet.”
“Something like it, sir, I suppose, if you’ve no objections.”
“Nay, it’s with my leave or without my leave now. Well, I’ve had no fault to find with you. Are your plans settled once for all?”
“I’ve put my hand to the plough, sir.”
“Well, of course it’s no concern of mine. But don’t you think you might have consulted me?”
“I should have been glad of your advice, sir,” said Tom. Then added firmly, “but you have never given me any reason to suppose you would have been willing to give it me.”
Mr. Tinker glanced sharply at the youth. He saw nothing of impertinent suggestion in Tom’s face. Tom had spoken, simply and plain, what was to him a plain and simple matter of fact.
“What do you mean, Pinder? Have you any complaint to make. Haven’t I always done my duty by you?”
“I don’t know, sir. If your duty was to let me severely alone, you have done your duty. You know better than I whether that is a master’s duty to an apprentice. I’m no lawyer. But Mr. Black always told me I was to be taught your trade.”
“Well, it seems you fancy you know enough about it to start for yourself.”
“Little thanks to you,” thought Tom, but what use to say?
“But I didn’t send for you to-day, Pinder, to discuss my duty or yours. I think you’re foolish to begin on your own account. I have had it in my mind for some time back to put you forward in the mill. I’m weary of Sam Buckley and his drunken ways. He gets beyond bearing. I had thought of putting you in his place—at a lower wage, of course. ’Twould have been a big lift for you, but I’ve had my eye on you, and I think you’d have done.”
Tom’s feelings at these unexpected words were of mingled pride, gratitude, and self-reproach. He had never suspected that his conduct in the mill was observed by the reserved, self-contained master. He had done his duty as he conceived it, simply because it was his duty.
He knew, of course, that many of the apprentices shirked their work and gave as much trouble as possible. In acting otherwise Tom had neither sought nor expected notice and approbation. He was conscious-stricken both in that he had attributed Mr. Tinker’s reserve to callous indifference, and in that the first use he contemplated making of his freedom was to start in what might seem to be a competition with one whom he knew now to have had his advancement in view.
“I am getting older,” continued Mr. Tinker, “As you know I have no son. I must look for a younger man to take some of the work from my shoulders. Of late I have felt the constant strain more than I used to. But, there, it’s no use talking, I suppose. I think you’re a young idiot all the same to start as they say you’re going to. Take an old man’s word for it, Tom Pinder, business and philanthropy don’t mix. Make your money in trade and give what you don’t want yourself in charity, if you like; but business must be run on business lines. It’s some of Ben Garside’s hatching, I expect; but then Ben was always crackbrained.”
“I am sure I don’ know how to thank you, sir,” began Tom.
“Oh! I don’t want your thanks. I was looking out for myself as much as you. Nothing for nothing—that’s business you’ll find. The question is, are you content to stop on at Wilberlee or ‘gang your ain gate,’ as the Scotch say. Yea or nay, or would you like to think it over?”
Now Tom knew if he consulted Ben, just the advice that Ben would give—stop on at Wilberlee. He knew also that though Ben would say this promptly, and to all seeming cheerfully, it would be the shattering of the brightest dream his friend had ever dreamed. Besides, to fill Sam Buckley’s place would bring him very little nearer—he knew what. No! he could wait and work, and Tom believed in the future foretold for him who knowshowto wait.
Mr. Tinker took up the indenture, and seemed to read it.
“H’m,” he said, more to himself than Tom, “I’ve signed so many of these things that I forget what they bind a man to. But it’s a mere form.”
“I’ll burn this now, anyway,” he said aloud. “Put it into the stove, Pinder.”
Tom did as he was bid, and as the stiff paper caught the flames, and the smell from the wax seals invaded the stuffy office he felt as though chains fell from his limbs and incense burned on the altar of freedom.
“Well?” said Mr. Tinker at length.
“I think I must go, sir. But I go thanking you from my heart,” was Tom’s reply.
“So be it,” said Mr. Tinker, curtly. “When you’re done up dish and spoon don’t come here for work, that’s all.”
“I won’t,” said Tom, and went.
And as he walked slowly homewards he resolved to keep his own counsel and say nothing to Ben or Hannah about the offer that had been made to him. It would disquiet Ben and lead to no good. Best say nothing about the matter; let it lie between him and Mr. Tinker. Besides if it got talked of in the village those who believed his statement would call him a fool, those who didn’t a liar.
It was all the easier to dismiss the subject from his mind when he found the following letter awaiting him: