“Dear Tom,Seein it will be your berthday nex Sunday, an you will be twenty-one, me an Mister Redfearn have fixed it up to have a bit of a do here seein as it wer here you was borne. An Fairbanks has sent a goos an a turkey, an Moll has maid a puddin an you are to bring Mester an Missus Garsed wi my respecks to em an welcome, likewise their dowter too. Also to say as Fairbanks will send his trap bi Workus Jack for Missus an dowter an yo an Ben mun cum o Shanks mare. Dinner at nooin an no waitin. So no more at present hopeing this finds yo well as it leaves me.Yure affeckshinit,Betty Schofield”
“Dear Tom,Seein it will be your berthday nex Sunday, an you will be twenty-one, me an Mister Redfearn have fixed it up to have a bit of a do here seein as it wer here you was borne. An Fairbanks has sent a goos an a turkey, an Moll has maid a puddin an you are to bring Mester an Missus Garsed wi my respecks to em an welcome, likewise their dowter too. Also to say as Fairbanks will send his trap bi Workus Jack for Missus an dowter an yo an Ben mun cum o Shanks mare. Dinner at nooin an no waitin. So no more at present hopeing this finds yo well as it leaves me.Yure affeckshinit,Betty Schofield”
“Dear Tom,
Seein it will be your berthday nex Sunday, an you will be twenty-one, me an Mister Redfearn have fixed it up to have a bit of a do here seein as it wer here you was borne. An Fairbanks has sent a goos an a turkey, an Moll has maid a puddin an you are to bring Mester an Missus Garsed wi my respecks to em an welcome, likewise their dowter too. Also to say as Fairbanks will send his trap bi Workus Jack for Missus an dowter an yo an Ben mun cum o Shanks mare. Dinner at nooin an no waitin. So no more at present hopeing this finds yo well as it leaves me.
Yure affeckshinit,
Betty Schofield”
Go! Of course they would go; all of them. Where else could the auspicious day be better spent than in the very house he first saw the light, and among the friends of his infancy. Go! yes though the snow lay three feet deep on moor and fell, and the wintry wind howled round Pots and Pans and whirled the stinging atoms in a very blast hurricane and tornado of blinding blizzard.
“Goa!” exclaimed Hannah, “aw’st goa if aw’ve to crawl o’ mi han’s an’ knees. Yo’ mun write a letter back, Tom, an’ say we’st be theer at eleven i’ th’ forenooin if it’s convenient to Mrs. Schofield, an’ aw’ll gi’ a hand wi’ th’ bastin’ an’ sarvin’ up, so’s ’oo can cooil dahn afore ’oo sits dahn to th’ table. Aw reckon aw’st want no cooilin’ dahn long afore we’re ovver th’ top.”
And then Hannah and Lucy fell to at such a preparation, adjusting, re-adjusting, snipping, snipeing, cutting, hemming, tuckering of shawls and dresses, to such a trimming of hat and bonnet, and such a littering of the house with female finery, that if a wedding or a coronation had been afoot, matters could not have been worse.
“Aw’st nivver howd aat till Sunday, Tom,” Ben confided to him. “Aw haven’t set tooith into a turkey sin’ aw can’t remember when an’ ivvry time aw think on it mi maath watters soa aw can hardly speik. Do’st think there’ll be sossidge wi’ it? Tha mieet ha’ just nudged her abaat th’ sossidge when yo’ wrote if yo’d gi’en it a thowt, but aw’m feart it’s too lat’ nah. An’ gooise an’ apple sauce, an stuffin’, an’ plum puddin’ wi’ brandy sauce—eh, lad, it’s a pity tha cannot come o’ age onst a week. But aw munnot show greedy. Aw onst knew a felly at a club supper ’at e’t a whull leg o’ mutton to his own cheek, wi’ capers and onion sauce an’ breead, an’ supped two gallon o’ ale. They’d to gie him kester oil for aboon a week at after afore he fair gate shut on it. Nah! aw ca’ that a fair abuse o’th’ kindly fruits o’th’ earth. Nah! tha’ll ha’ studied ettiket nah tha’s ta’en to talkin’ townified. How mony helpin’s dun yo reely think aw mieet ha’ wi’ out bein thowt greedy? Aw’m nooan a glutton, like that chap at Gowcar ’at went to a club dinner—Bill o’ Natt’s, aw think they ca’ed him—an’ when he gate whom he rolled o’th’ floor, an’ all he could say wer’ ‘Howd, belly, howd, for if tha brusts awm done.’ And Ben looked anxiously at Tom for a reply. But Tom only smiled, for he knew that Ben was merely talking to let off steam. So the excited little man went on:
“Tha’ll nooan be teetotal that day, Tom. It ’ud be a sort o’ slur o’ Missus Schofield. Aw tak’ it at goin’ to a feeast at a public wi’ a publican an’ ca’in’ for cowd watter ’ud be just as bad manners as feedin’ wi’ a teetotaller an’ axin for a pint o’ drink. Nah! doesn’t it strike yo’ i’ that leet, Tom?”
But Tom explained that he had had that point over with his good friend Betty many a time before and that he wasn’t going to begin his manhood by breaking the pledge he had taken with himself. “You’ll have to drink my share too, Ben.”
“An’ Lucy’s, for ’oo’s tarred wi’ th’ same brush as thee, Tom. Aw do believe ’at if yo’ took to runnin’ abaat th’ village wi’ a caa’s tail atween yo’r teeth like them niggers yo’n read on o’th’ banks o’th river Ganges, yar Lucy ’ud do th’ same as well as her legs ’ud let her. An’ thank God!—an’ yo’, Tom, ’oo can walk wi’out sticks nah.” And Ben pressed Tom’s arm as caressingly as ever maiden conveyed message to favoured swain.
“You’ll have to be careful, Ben, if you’re going to drink for three.”
“Aye, aye, if all’s weel aw’st be poorly th’ day after, sha’not aw? But wi’ one thing an’ another aw just feel as if aw cud turn cart wheels slap daan th’ sides o’ Pots an’ Pans till aw poo’d up at th’Hanging Gate. It is na th’ eitin’, lad, nor th’ drinkin’, though them’s nooan things to be sneezed at, let me tell yo’. It’s thowts at’ mi Tom’s so well thowt on bi all at’s knowd him sin’ he wer’ a suckin’ babe. Aw tell thee, lad, mi heart’s so full aw could blubber like a cawf, if aw didn’t howd missen in.” And then Tom knew it was time for him to look intently in any direction but that of honest Ben’s face.
Sunday came, and with Sunday came Workh’us Jack, such a beaming radiant Jack as never village saw before: Jack, with a great white rosette on his breast and a white ribbon on the end of the whip with which he flicked the mare with many a soothing “so-ho, so-ho,” and hortatory “come up;” an older Jack by many a biting Winter’s lapse since first we met him; a stouter, plumper, rosier Jack, but with the same smiling face and unfailing cheerfulness.
How, with infinite tenderness, Lucy was lifted into the trap, how Tom smothered her with wraps and shawls, how Hannah declared she would rather walk through the village because everybody was, she knew, stopping from chapel on purpose to gaup at her, and how she was hoisted bodily in under protest; how, as a matter of fact the neighbours and the neighbour’s children turned out into the street braving the whipping of the gusty snow or peered from chamber window; how it was all over Holmfirth in no time that Gentleman Tom and Lucy Garside were “off over th’ Isle of Skye to be wed at St. Chad’s,” how every gossip in the village insisted that she had expected nothing else these months back, and called upon her neighbour to testify that she had often been heard to say so; how the demure young maidens declared that Lucy for all her quiet ways was a deep one and a sly one, and that it was a shame a fine strapping young fellow should be trapped into wedding a pale faced useless thing, little better than a cripple; how Ben and Tom walked far ahead of the trap all the way up the ascent of road to the Isle of Skye, but were overtaken just as they reached the inn there: how Ben insisted on Jack taking “summat short” to keep the cold out, and Tom would have Hannah drink some hot port-wine negus to keep Jack company, and how Jack had another drink for the good of the house; how the exhilarating influence of the liquor passed by some mysterious process from the driver to the driven so that the old mare rattled down from Bill’s o’ Jack’s to Greenfield, and from Greenfield to theChurch Inn, at Saddleworth; how it stopped there of its own accord and positively refused to budge till Jack descended from his seat and had another drink; how Hannah made sure that Ben and Tom would be foolish enough to try a short cut over the moors and untimely perish like Tom’s mother before them; and how finally the chaise drew up in fine style before theHanging Gate, and Lucy almost fell into Betty Schofield’s welcoming arms—all this the reader must imagine.
And there, sure enough in the big room upstairs, with its mysterious cupboard labelled R.A.O.B., the sacred room in which the Royal Antedeluvian Order of Buffaloes declared every lodge night that they would “hunt the buff, would hunt the buff, would hunt the buffalo,” though where to find it thereabouts would have puzzled them to tell. In this great room a glorious fire roared and cast its welcome warmth and the walls were hung with the Christmas decorations of the lodge, and the Christmas holly and mistletoe looked yet fresh and green, and the long narrow table down the centre was white with Betty’s best napery, and Moll, feigning mighty indignation because Tom had caught her round the waist and kissed her smackingly under the mistletoe, busied about making a great clattering of plates and spoons and knives and forks, whilst a distracting odour of roast goose came up the narrow staircase. Mr. Redfearn was there betimes, and Aleck, all in his Sunday best. Then came the down-sitting, Mr. Redfearn at the table-head, Tom at the foot. Aleck facing Ben, and Hannah, and Lucy supporting the chair and vice-chair. Moll o’ Stute’s and Jack had their dinner later on. How many helps of turkeywithsausage and of goosewithstuffing and apple sauce, and of plum-puddingwithbrandy-sauce Ben had I entirely refuse to tell, but only say with all his talk he came in a very lame second to Aleck.
“It only wanted Mr. Black to make it just perfect,” said Mr. Redfearn, “but we’ll drink in silence to the memory of as good a man as ever walked i’ shoe-leather.”
I refuse to tell, too, in what glowing terms Mr. Redfearn proposed the health of Tom Pinder, and many a happy return of the day, and of how Tom completely broke down in acknowledging the toast, and of how Ben proposed Mr. Redfearn’s health, and Mr. Redfearn Ben’s, and Tom the ladies, and then how they drank Mrs. Schofield’s and the ladies with a three times three and God bless ’em, and then started the toast list all over again, till Lucy was more than glad when Moll brought in the tea-pot and cups, and they all drew round the fire, and the men lighted their pipes and sobered down to rational talk.
Be sure Tom had to tell of what he was going to do now he was his own master, and of how Ben had “weighed in” to help him, and he had to explain till he was nearly hoarse before Betty could understand what a co-op mill was to be like. And then nothing would satisfy Betty but she must offer to put £50 “into th’ consarn, sink or swim, it were all one to her if it ’ud do ’em any good;” and then Tom had to begin all over again and make it clear that only the actual workers were to have any interest in the mill.
“An’ wheer are yo’ buyin’ yo’r wool?” asked Tom o’ Fairbanks.
And Tom and Ben looked grave, for they would have precious little left for wool-buying when the machinery was bought and set up.
“At Hirst’s, the wool stapler, in Huddersfield, I suppose,” said Tom.
“Now I don’t take it friendly of you, or either of you,” commented Mr. Redfearn. “I’ve bales and bales left over from th’ last shearing, haven’t we, Aleck?”
And Aleck said “To be sure we have, an’ fair gettin’ maggoty for want o’ usin’.”
“You must take it off my hands, Tom and Co.,” said Redfearn. “I’ll let you have it cheap, and you can pay me for it when you’ve had time to turn yourselves round.”
It is very sad that such things should be in a Christian land; but it is none the less true that the wool which later on Aleck carted to Co-op Mill had never coated the back of any sheep that grazed on Fairbank’s field or moors, and why, about the same time, Farmer Redfearn should be buying wool in Huddersfield, Charles Hirst, the Huddersfield wool stapler, spent many an hour in vain attempt to divine.
It was a glorious feast and a happy gathering, and happy folk those whose faces shone in the dancing rays of the glowing fire; but happiest of all the happy there was Workh’us Jack when Ben and Tom offered him the post of teamer and handy man at Co-op Mill, for Co-op Mill, the low grey mill at Hinchliffe Mill, had been christened without informal ceremony.
“Aw’d ha’ come mysen an’ helped i’th mill,” confided Aleck to Tom, as he walked a part of the homeward way with him and Ben. “But yo’ see aw’m th’ only one ’at stan’s atween th’ mester an’ ower mich liquor. It’s his only failin’. Nivver thee tak’ to sperrits Tom. Be teetotal offthem. Stick to ale an’ nivver sup more nor five quarts at a sittin’. Tha’ll nooan get fur wrang on that if th’ ale’s saand. Gooid neet, lad.”
CHAPTER XI
THAT was a grand moment for Ben and Tom when the shuttle of the goit at Co-op Mill was drawn, and the water from the dam began to stream into the wheel-race and catch the buckets of the great wheel, transmitting its revolutions to the main shafting and machines. Little enough stock of wool and dye wares had they, and few indeed the engines for transforming by multiple processes the greasy, clotted fleeces into warp and weft and good broad pieces. But both knew every branch of the manufacturer’s art, and each was more than willing to take his part, and more than his part, at scouring, dyeing, scribbling, or weaving. They employed very few hands, and each of these thoroughly understood that he was to be paid not only a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work, but also a share of the profits; and it did not take long for Yorkshire shrewdness to discover that the better, the more thoroughly, each one worked, the better for one and all. There was no scamping the work, no idling. And there was no breaking time for sprees, no “laiking” because a chap felt Mondayish, and wanted an off-day or two to get over the effects of Saturday’s and Sunday’s debauch. Every hand at Co-op Mill began in a very brief time to shake off the enervating consciousness of the subservience of a hired labourer. He would not only not idle himself, he would tolerate no idling in a fellow labourer. There are tricks in every trade, or every trade is solely maligned. There are ways of shirking work, of making time pass in merelyseeminglabour that one would think one as irksome in the long run to the operative as they are undoubtedly unjust to the employer. There was none of that at Co-op Mill. Set a thief to catch a thief, and a man who shirks and dawdles at his work steals the time that is indeed money. But let the man who works by your side be personally interested in the work you do, and the way you do it; there is no room there for shirking and dawdling. The lever of labour is, after all, self-interest, and so ingrained is self-interest that the only thing that can be asked of average human nature is that self-interest should not impinge on the self-interests of another.
Now matters were so arranged at Co-op Mill that self interest was necessarily and unavoidably altruistic, and when this great truth was once fairly grasped and assimilated by the hands a spirit prevailed from scouring house to pressing-room that secured ready, willing abundant and thorough work, and the quality and the quantity of the work soon made themselves manifest in the final output. The finished pieces were a delight to the eye and to the touch. There was no occasion to employ a traveller to push their goods. The goods sold themselves. It had been resolved that suit-lengths might be bought at the mill at a little below ordinary retail prices. This was to contravene the commercial code; but Tom did not see why a man should be compelled to go to a tailor and the tailor to a merchant and pay the profits to two middlemen because of a commercial code that chiefly benefited the middlemen and never the consumer. No, the difficulty did not consist in finding purchasers; the difficulty was in putting out goods enough to supply the demand. But as Ben had predicted, so soon as the system began to be understood, and especially after the first “divvy” had been declared and actually taken home by the men and handed to their wives, there was no lack of proffers of service from men who were able, ready, and willing to put their “bit” into Co-op Mill. At present there was some demur to terms—bare interest on invested capital, no participation in profits over that limit. On this point Ben and Tom were inexorable, adamantine. “It shallnotbe a capitalists’ concern, itshallbe a workers’.”
And it was wonderful too, and heartening to note the harmony, the goodwill, the general sense of brotherhood that prevailed from counting-house downwards. There was no cringing, no toadying, no tale-hearing. There was the very presence, spirit, and revelation of a moral resolution. Nothing so ennobles a man as to feel that, so far as man can ever be in this network of human organism in which no thread is self-sufficient and self-dependent, he is his own man, with need to go cap in hand to no other. It is a feeling that, in Yorkshire is perhaps apt to run to truculence and the very savagery of self-assertion; but even so it is better than the cringing, fawning self-abasement of the rural districts of the midland villages where squire and priest are gods of earth and heaven.
A man who threw in at the Co-op was a marked and envied man. The pick of the operatives were willing to take the looms as fast as they could be put up. It was Lucy who suggested that the new concern should go into the making of shawls. Everyone who knows the manufacturing districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire knows the shawl of the mill girl. It is to her what the cloak is to the Irish butter-woman, the plaid to the Scotch shepherd, or the mantilla to the Spanish donna. It was Dorothy who designed the pattern for the first shawl and, as time went on, the warm, bright-coloured covering might be seen over the head and shoulders of the women and girls in every mill in the Valley of the Holme. There was no need to be concerned about the texture or the fastness of the colours. It was a Co-op shawl. That was guarantee enough.
Tom and Ben worked early and late. Tom indeed had had a bed fixed up in a small room of the lower story of the mill. Many a night, indeed often for weeks together every night except Saturday and Sunday, he slept in the mill. He was the one to open the mill-gate in the morning and greet the hands as they streamed into the yard and hand them their time checks. His was the hand that, when the long day, yet all too short for his endless round of duties, lagged to its weary close, fastened the gate upon the last of the toilers; and oft and oft, far into the silent hours, he would bend over stock-book and ledger or, when the moon shone high above the mill, would walk round the mill dam and up the rugged hank of the babbling stream that fed it. His constant companion was Jack, no longer Workh’us Jack, but Jack, plain Jack, or Jack o’ th’ Co-op, or Tom Pinder’s Jack, anything but Workh’us Jack; a new, transformed Jack, wearing his corduroys and smock as proudly as if they had been a Field Marshal’s uniform. Sometimes a wag, further learned than others, would dub him “Man Friday;” but it was all one to Jack. He was Tom’s body servant, his dog, if need be, to fetch and carry. And who so popular all through that beautiful valley and who so welcome at the hill-side farms and cottages as cheery, smiling, cherry-faced Jack with his kindly jest and merry quip and crank? Why, he was worth a dozen commercial travellers rolled into one. When he led the cart from the mill to the coal-shoots and back, or went his round with the great red-coloured barrel on wheels in quest of the ammonia laden refuse of the house-hold it was a sorry day for Jack when he did not bring back two or three orders for the pretty, taking shawls, and what insight into the delightful vanities of lovely maiden Jack did not acquire on his rounds was really not worth noticing.
But it was on a shawl for Lucy that Jack spent his first week’s earnings at Co-op Mill, a dainty, modest shawl of softest fleece, a shawl, Jack declared, you could draw through a finger ring, and perhaps one might if the finger were one of Jack’s. The rosy-cheeked, brown-eyed lasses of the little farms and homesteads, and the more forward wenches of the valley mills wasted their becks and nods and wreathed smiles on Jack. He took them all as a matter of course; but a look from Lucy’s soft warm eyes, from which the pathetic wistfulness of long suffering had not yet worn away, would set Jack “all of a dither.” It was for Lucy, when the season came, that he ransacked the hill sides for the peeping snowdrop, and the hedge-bottoms for the shy primrose; for Lucy that he bore home the nodding blue-bells and the blushing fox-glove, or the rare wild rose; for Lucy that he searched the brambles for the luscious blackberry, and bent his back o’er the purple heather for the nestling bilberry; for Lucy that he brought the thrilling thrush; for Lucy that he nearly broke his neck down the steps of the church belfry the day he secured the wild young jackdaw; and for Lucy that he weaned the perverse bird of its natural addition to choleric speech and general bad language. In Jack’s eyes Lucy was fair and beautiful as any angel—and indeed her pale face was very sweet to look upon—and for him Lucy’s lightest word—nay, such is the divination of affection—Lucy’s unspoken thought was as law. And who so surely as Jack could rouse Lucy from the sad reveries into which her thoughts would sometimes stray, and bring back to her lips the pleasant smile and the gentle repartee that had neither sting nor lash? Who was it but Jack that nearly killed the barman at theRose and Crownbecause he soiled his lips with an unseemly jest involving both Tom and Lucy; who but Jack that, however urgent his business errands might be, never passed Ben’s cottage without solicitous enquiry as to Lucy’s health, and what sort of a night she had had, and how she had felt that day; and for whom but Lucy did Jack forswear cakes and ale?
But now the last wild rose of the summer has blushed in the hedgerows, and the bracken of the moors is greying to sickly death; the brooks and rivulets fall from the heights in fuller stream and muttering a gloomier song and the long nights are at hand when men-folk of a social mind seek the creature comforts and the good-fellowship of taproom and bar. And this was the season which Ben and Tom deemed fitting for the launching of still another experiment. They had resolved of a Saturday night— that most dangerous of nights, when the wages in the breeches’ pockets seem as if they would stand any inroad for the quenching pint throughout the winter months to have night classes at the mills for their own hands, and for as many of their friends as liked to come. There were to be first of all lessons in English History, and with history was to be taught in the only way it can be effectively taught, the geography of the wide, wide world. And the lessons in history were to be enlivened and made the more seductive by the reading of books of fiction and romance, of fable and poem dealing with the period under study, so that by the light of such heroes asHereward the Wake, andThe Last of the Saxon Kings, andThe Last of the Barons, by the deathless pages of Avon’s Swan, by the muse of Chaucer, of Spenser, and of Milton, the ages of the past lived before the eyes of these eager sons of toil, and they dwelt in the stately company of kings and warriors, cloistered saints and beautiful sinners, and saw, as in a waking dream, the stately drama of their country’s making.
There were lessons, too, in chemistry: and in the explosions of gases, the evolving of composite stenches and the pyrotechnics of phosphorescent combustion the younger hands found a joy that knew no satiety or abatement. But Tom confined his teaching to the veriest elements of inorganic chemistry, those whose interest in the subject clamoured for more must seek their further advancement in the fascinating subject elsewhere. It was to teach, to drive home, the great truth of fixed, unchanging, ruthless law that had been, from the first, the dominating idea. And when his pupils had once grasped thoroughly the idea of the all-pervading law in the material world, what was easier than to lead them, without their realising his drift and purpose, to the conception of the fixed, the immutable in the moral law, and what more easy to expel from minds so prepared the baneful influence of the extra-natural creeds that led so many to repose their confidence in the adventitious, the possible interposition of aDeus ex machinâto rescue them from the disasters they had courted for themselves. That twice two make four, neither more nor less, is a great fact; that H and Cl make hydrochloric acid and not Devonshire cream is also a fact; that happiness ensues upon well-doing and suffering upon sin, this also is a fact; but one the churches attenuate to men’s minds by insisting upon a rote punishment that may be averted by timely repentance. Tom taught that punishment, mediate or immediate, direct or indirect, is here, and in this present time.
Now Tom was not such a fool as to dub his discourses Lectures on Religion. He knew well enough that to do so would be to talk to empty benches. The orthodox are suspicious of religious instruction unless they receive it wearing a Sunday dress, and a Sunday face, and in a conventional conventicle established by the State, or by that force which is more powerful than the State, the approval of Madam Grundy. The unorthodox, for quite different reasons, would have shunned his class-room, though it was the weaving shed at Co-op Mill they would have suspected a snare to trap them into saintliness. So the astute Tom called his theses “Lectures on the Science of Living,” and succeeded insidiously in making his hearers perceive that the Science of Living and Religion are one and the same thing; by Religion, of course, not being understood thatolla podrida, or hotch-potch of legend, fable, history, surmise poetry, rhapsody, and morals which so many confound with religion. The expositions of this quite unheard of Science of Living were delivered on the Sunday afternoons and in the weaving shed at the mill. Another novelty was that there was no collection. And the lectures began to be talked about and be popular.
“What are ta’ fidgettin’ abaat, Luke?” a constant caller at theCroppers’ Armswould ask as the minute-hand of the clock plodded towards the third hour of the Sunday afternoon.
“A’m nooan fidgettin’; but aw mun be stirring.”
“Sit thee still, mon. There’s time enough afore turnin’-aat time. Th’ churchwardens wi’not be raand afore three an’ after. Sup up an’ let’s fly for another quart. It’ll be a long while till th’ oppenin’ time to-neet.”
“Nay aw’ll ha’ no more. I’m thinkin’ aw’ll just ha’ a bit o’ a stretch to sattle mi dinner.”
“Aye, weel, aw dunnot mind if aw’ve a bit o’ a walk missen to stretch mi legs. Which way did ta think o’ takkin’?”
“Weel there’s a nice stretch o’ country up by Hinchliffe Mill way, an’ we’st get a mouthfu’ o’ fresh air.”
“Tha’s no bahn to th’ Co-op Gospel-shop, are ta?”
“Weel, aw winnot say but what aw meet look in, just to wind missen. Its’ a bit o’ a poo’ fro’ here to th’ Top. An’ there’s no wheer aw can ca’ to-day, worse luck.”
“Tha’ll get nowt at th’ Co-op, chuse ha. It’s nobbut dry drinkin’ they han on tap theer, folk say. But aw dunnot set thi on th’ road a bit, an’ if tha can stand Tom Pinder’s preichin’ aw reckon aw can. It’s nooan like a regular chapel tha sees.”
And thus the lecture room filled.
Now there were two men of all others who received the doings at Co-op Mill with disfavour. One was the Rev. David Jones. That very energetic preacher did not like to hear anyone’s praises sung but his own. His Welsh fluency, his striking, daring flights of rhetoric, his excursions into tempting but dangerous speculations on the fundamental truths of the creed embodied, consecrated, and enshrined in the Trust Deed of Aenon Chapel, had secured for him the admiring following of considerable numbers of men who, whilst still clinging as for dear life to the shattered remnants of the old dogmas, turned longing eyes to the rationalism of a new criticism and a faith grounded upon human experience. They were like the frail ones of the softer sex, who concede all favours but the last, their heart or their passions consenting, their timidity restraining. Aenon Chapel was now packed with a new set of worshippers whose presence was not too welcome to the “old end,” as the Conservative adherents of Calvinistic theology and tradition were styled. “Owd fire an’ brimstone” the irreverent styled their leader and spokesman. But the objections of those chiefly responsible for the maintenance and carrying on of the chapel and school, whose father’s money had built and furnished the edifice in which Mr. Jones declaimed his mild heresies, were stripped of their accustomed force by one all-persuasive consideration—the collection box. Never before in all the history of Aenon Chapel had the anniversaries of church and schools yielded so profitable a harvest to the anxious treasurer. The debt, without which it is commonly supposed no religious work can prosper, was reduced. Mr. Jones’s stipend was increased. The deacons of former days were consumed with envy, and dolefully acknowledging that Mr. Jones had gone up like a rocket, expressed their hope that he might not come down like a stick, but expressed it in a tone that indicated their hope and expectation were not as one. But the new officers of the chapel exulted in their swelling money-bags, in the well-filled pews, and idolized the preacher of the new inspiration.
And not only in his own chapel, but far and near spread the fame of the Rev. David Jones, and to chapel openings and consecrations, to missions and special efforts, invitations came in showers. He became the rage, and though he protested at any term that savoured of Episcopacy and the Scarlet Woman, he, in his heart of hearts, acknowledged the discernment of an ardent admirer who had publicly referred to him as the Bishop of the Holme Valley. At nights he dreamed of the Presidency of the Union.
And now, when all things seemed to go well, people began to talk of the Sunday meetings at Co-op mill, and of Tom Pinder, who, folk said, spoke out what Jones only hinted at.
“Aw’ll tell yo’ what it is,” said one shrewd level-headed critic, “Aw’ve heard that pea-i’-a-bladder preich at Aenon Chapel, and aw’ve heard Co-op Tom fro’ th’ same text, but Pinder doesn’t ca’ it preichin’, he ca’s it explainin’.”
“An’ what wer’ text?”
“Why t’ eleventh commandment, and mi own opinion is ’at Pinder sees as far as th’ purson, an’ spits it aat like a man, upright and dahnwright, and a babby could tell what he meeans: but th’ other chap, he goes as far as Pinder, but he beats abaat th’ bush, an’ he ‘perhaps this’ and ‘may it not be that?’ an’ he watches th’ deacons an’ th’ chief pew-howders to see ha’ it gooas dahn, an’ he lets hissen aat an’ he poo’s hissen in like th’ cap’n of a sailin’ booat wi’ one eye on the clouds an’ t’other on th’ shoals an’ reefers.”
“Nah, Pinder just says what’s in him, an’ if yo’ dunnot like it yo can lump it. An’ what’s more, at th’ end o’ ivvery lectur’, yo’ can get up an’ just ha’ a few minnit’s enjoyment o’ yo’r own accaant an’ pitch into th’ discourse like owd Billy, an’ th’ harder yo’ hit th’ more Pinder seems to like it.”
“An’ why canno’ Jones speik it aat plain same as Pinder?”
“Well, there’s some folk so constitooted, yo’ see, ’at they like to swim wi’ th’ tide an’ ’ll tak’ uncommon gooid care nevver to waste their puff swimmin’ up-stream. An’ then yo’ see, Jones has a large fam’ly, an’ my misses says ’at Mrs. Jones wi’ her rings an’ mantles, an’ feathers, an’ faldelals can do wi’ all ’at Jones can addle an’ more at th’ top on it.”
Now, of course talk of this kind in a village like Holmfirth not only circulates, it percolates and in time the gist and substance of it reached Mr. Jones. He had had hopes of Tom at one time. He had observed with satisfaction that this very intelligent-looking, well-behaved, well-spoken, neatly dressed young man had been an attentive listener and frequent worshipper at his own chapel, and that, on occasions, he had brought with him that quite-past-praying-for Ben Garside, a notorious mocker and a scoffer. Mr. Jones had accepted their presence as one of many just tributes to his zeal and eloquence. One had been rescued from the tepid waters of the Church, the other was a brand plucked from the burning depths of infidelity, and Mr. Jones had duly rejoiced.
And lo! now the neophytes had backslided and people “of a Sunday” would pass the inviting doors of Aenon Chapel and walk some two miles of a sultry or wintry afternoon to listen to one who was not only not one of the Covenant, but who was ordained neither by Bishop, Presbytery, nor Congress. He resolved to speak seriously to this erring sheep; and chancing to meet Tom one day descending the hill from Hinchliffe Mill to the village, stopped him, smiling affably and holding out a condescending hand:
“Good morning, Pinder, I’m glad to see you. How are we this morning?”
“Very well, thank you, Jones. How are you?”
“Ahem! Mr. Jones, ifyouplease.”
“Certainly; Mr. Pinder, if you please.”
“Oh! certainly; you see in my position—”
“Exactly—and in mine.”
Now this was not a very promising beginning.
“Well?” said Tom.
“I’ll turn with you,Mr. Pinder. You are doubtless more pressed for time than I. Parson’s Monday, you know, is Parson’s Sunday.”
“Parsons seem to have a fair share of Sundays to the week,” said Tom, but without any malice in the remark. “I remember good old Mr. Whitelock of St. Chad’s couldn’t bear to see a visitor on Saturday—preparing for Sunday, I suppose. Then of course there was Sunday itself, and on Monday every parson I’ve ever met declares that he feels like a wet rag or a squeezed orange.”
“Well it takes it out of a man to have to preach two sermons a day. But you should know something about it. I understand you have a sort of service at your mill on Sunday afternoons?”
“You can scarcely call our meetings services,” Tom replied. “We have no hymns, no sermon, and no collection. We have no preacher and no deacons.”
“But I thought you were the preacher.”
“Then you have been misinformed. It is true that I select some reading, generally not always, from the Scriptures. Then I try to make its meaning, or the meaning of some particular verse or verses, clear as I understand them. That’s all; it’s really more of a chat than a set discourse.”
“I see.”
“Then again the discoursing or preaching or chatting is not all done by one man. My experience is that the combined experience and wisdom of an audience are greater than those of any ordinary individual. We are so fashioned that most of what we read in the Bible is read by the light of the reader’s own experience of life, his observations and his reflection.”
“Well?”
“And so when I get around me twenty or thirty men of divers habits of thought and each with his own views of life, I have the chance of getting at twenty or thirty different commentaries on a text. That is a gain: another is that no single one ofmycommentators is concerned to square his construction of a passage with a hide-bound creed or with the convictions of any one of his hearers. The only thing we are concerned about is to get at the truth.”
“And cannot you get at it in the recognised places of worship. Doesn’t it savour of conceit to set yourselves apart as people better and wiser than their neighbours?”
“Oh! Well, come to that, Mr. Jones, you are a Dissenter yourself, you know. You dissented from established orthodoxy. We aren’t afraid of dissenting from orthodox dissent.”
“But there must be limits, young man; there must be limits.”
“Yes,” assented Tom. “There must be limits. There are the limitations of the human mind. We don’t seek to go beyond them.”
Mr. Jones was now thoroughly roused. He was a man of no mean intelligence and of a wide range of reading. If also he was a man of insatiable vanity and inordinate ambition, perhaps the atmosphere of adulation in which he lived, the incense of incompetent judges, were the chief causes. He felt now that he was talking to a man of sense and fearlessness. Now it is a treat to talk with a man who has the sense and the patience and the disposition to think for himself, and the courage to speak his thoughts. Mr. Jones walked in silence for a time, Tom moderating his longer stride to keep time with the cleric’s shorter pace.
“I hope,” said Mr. Jones, at length, “I hope your teaching is based on the cardinal principles of Christianity?”
“And those?”
“The Immaculate Conception and the Resurrection of our Lord.”
“Those are not principles Mr. Jones. They are either facts or inventions.”
“And you declare them as facts?”
“I don’t myself touch on them at all. I confine myself to the cardinal principles about which you have enquired.”
“And those?” enquired Mr. Jones, in his turn.
“The fatherhood of God, the majesty, the wisdom, the sanctity of His laws, and—the brotherhood of man.”
Mr. Jones shook his hand sadly. “That is merely Natural Religion,” he commented. “Men will find it but a broken reed in the hour of temptation and the time of sorrow.”
“It suffices,” said Tom “for some of the wisest, the best-living, the most benevolent of men.”
“Aye?” questioned Mr. Jones.
“The Jews,” said Tom quietly. “Contrast the life of the average Jew with that of the average Christian. Will you find the difference always in favour of the Christian?”
“Surely, yes,” said Mr. Jones. “An unbeliever can never have the impregnable assurance that we find in the crucified Christ.”
“Not in the loving-kindness of the Father,” said Tom. “You exalt the Son at the expense of the Father?”
“Dear me, dear me,” said Mr. Jones. “This is worse than I thought. I am afraid you are all astray, my young friend. I beseech you consider your ways, reflect on the danger you are in, the perils that compass you round about. Above all pray without ceasing, pray for light and guidance.”
“I do pray, Mr. Jones. I pray every day; I pray at my bed-side, I pray at my work, in my daily walks.”
“Ah! But prayer without faith is but a beating of the air. You must have an intercessor with your offended God, a sacrifice for His outraged laws.”
“Mr. Jones, I respect your zeal and think you mean well. I do sacrifice. I offer myself as a living sacrifice. It is all I have to offer. When the great account is made up my life must plead for me. If that will not avail, I have little confidence in any other plea. But I did not seek this interview, Mr. Jones nor choose this topic, or is this, main street of Holmfirth, the best place for such discussion as we have drafted into. My main business to-day is to determine how much a bale I can afford to give for the best Spanish wool that is the part of my Master’s business that I am intent on just now. If I remember that itismy Master’s business, I shan’t be so far wrong, shall I? And I’m going to try to make a bargain with a Jew wool-stapler, and I’m no more afraid of being overreached than if he were a Christian. But come up to Co-op Mill, and have a fling at my class you’ll be made heartily welcome. Fix your own time, but come.”
“God forbid,” said Mr. Jones, as Tom darted into the railway station, just in time to catch the Huddersfield train.
Jabez Tinker was as little pleased as his spiritual guide with the rumours to which he could not well be deaf, concerning the success of the novel enterprise of his former apprentice. From the first he had predicted disaster for the venture. It was the crack-brained scheme of an addle-pated enthusiast and a misguided, self-opinionated youth. That was his opinion, and he did not keep his opinion to himself. But as time went on and the bankruptcy he had foretold did not overwhelm the Co-op Mill; as old and tried hands who had been with him for years, one after the other, left Wilberlee for the small concern higher up the stream, Jabez began to feel the irritation of the prophet whose vaticinations have come to nought. It would not be fair to say that Jabez begrudged Tom and Ben their success. That success could scarcely be considered to have injured him in his business. The operations, the rise or fall of Co-op Mill, were in his eyes beneath anything but contemptuous notice. But he could not conceal from himself that he would have better pleased to have seen Tom coming to him, cap in hand, to sue for reinstatement at Wilberlee. He had a sort of rankling resentment against Tom for refusing his own proffer of protection and advancement. When he had made that offer he had plumbed himself on his magnanimity—and, indeed, it was a generous offer. Jabez Tinker’s pride was wounded, and Jabez Tinker was a proud man.
One day he chanced to meet Nehemiah Wimpenny, the lawyer. It was near the time for the elections to the Local Board, of which Mr. Tinker had been so long the chairman and autocrat that the other members of the Board might just as well have stopped at home as attended the monthly meetings. Wimpenny was the clerk.
“Well, we shall soon have the elections upon us, Mr. Tinker, and I suppose you have heard the news. Rum start, isn’t it? What next, I wonder.”
“I’ve heard no particular news that I’m aware of, Wimpenny. I’m no gad-about, as you know.”
“Ah, well! It’s an old saying that we’ve to go from home to hear news, especially if it happens to concern ourselves. Not that this is likely to give you much uneasiness.”
“Well what is it?” asked Tinker, uneasily.
“Oh! It’s hardly worth retailing. Sorry I mentioned it; but they are saying in the village you are to be opposed at the next election.”
“Me! Opposed! Well, I’m ready, and pray, who is to be my ‘honourable opponent,’—that’s the expression, isn’t it? ’Pon my word, I’ll relish a good stand-up fight. I’ve been returned unopposed so often that a good, vigorous opposition will do me good.”
“Well,” said Wimpenny slowly, “I’m not sure you’ll think your honourable opponent a foeman worthy of your steel. You’ll never guess who they’re talking about.”
Mr. Tinker rapidly reviewed, mentally, all men of the neighbourhood likely to enter the lists against him.
“I’m a bad hand at conundrums,” he said, “I give it up.”
“What would you say to that insolent young upstart at Co-op Mill?”
“What! Tom Pinder! confound the puppy. Why, there’d be little honour in defeating him. D——n his impudence. But you’re joking, Wimpenny, and I tell you I like joking as little as conundrums. But there,—the fellow isn’t worth a thought. A nameless workhouse bastard oppose me! Well, you’ve had your joke, Wimpenny; next time we meet try and think of a better one.” And Tinker strode angrily away, without much ceremony.
As a matter of fact there had been talk of nominating Tom for a seat on the Board, and the matter had been even broached to Tom himself. But Tom had from the first scouted the idea. He had enough on his hands looking after his own concerns, and he had sense enough to know that if a man won’t stick to his business his business won’t long stick to him. But when it transpired that, had he consented, he would have had to fight his old master, Tom was indignant. What did people take him for, he wondered. He felt that for him to pit himself against Mr. Tinker would have been a gratuitous insult to the man who had been his master for so many years. He knew that it would be to wound that master in his most sensitive spot, and he had a respect for family pride all the greater, perhaps, because he himself had no family ties or traditions to be proud of. And he shuddered to think what Dorothy might say to his presumption and ingratitude should the mere suggestion of his possible candidature reach her ears.
But of Tom’s way of meeting the proposal Mr. Tinker was, of course, as yet, quite unaware. He had taken it for granted that Wimpenny was well informed, that he would not have repeated to him a vulgarcanard.
And Mr. Tinker was therefore in high dudgeon when he spoke to Dorothy on the subject.
“Does that Tom Pinder live at Garside’s yet?” he asked.
Dorothy opened her eyes in wonderment. It was the first time she remembered her uncle to have so much as mentioned Tom’s name to her.
“I believe so, off and on. But I think Lucy Garside, Ben’s daughter, told me they see very little of him except on Sunday night. He seems to spend both day and night at his mill. Lucy says he does the work of three men.”
“You seem to be very intimate with these Garsides. ‘Lucy’ comes very pat to your lips. Do you see much of them? Do you ever meet this Pinder there?”
“Oh, yes, sometimes.”
“I think you might remember you are my niece. Such people as we are not fit associates for the Garsides; still less for their lodger.”
“Law! uncle, what have they done now? I’ve known Lucy ever since I could toddle almost.”
“That may be. It’s your aunt’s fault, I suppose. I can’t attend to everything. And now your aunt’s illness keeps her at Harrogate you do pretty much as you like, I suppose.”
“When the cat’s away the mice will play,” thought Dorothy; but only thought it.
“Well,” continued Jabez, “you mustn’t visit the house any more. I won’t have it. If you don’t respect yourself, you must respect me. You must drop these Garsides and Pinder too. By the bye, come to think of it, Wimpenny told me something about you seeming to be very familiar with Pinder at the Whitsuntide gathering. I didn’t take much notice of it at the time. But be good enough to ignore him next time you chance to meet him.”
“I’m sure I’m much obliged to Mr. Wimpenny for his interest in my movements,” said Dorothy. “Are you acting on his advice, uncle? Did he charge you ‘six—an’-eight’ for it? He must be very smart, for I’m sure it isn’t worth half the money.”
“This is no laughing matter miss, I’d have you know, I tell you, you must drop these Garsides, and that young puppy too.”
“Who? Mr. Wimpenny?”
“D——n Mr. Wimpenny,” roared Jabez. “You know my meaning very well. See to it that you heed it. People will be saying next that you are running after the jackanapes.”
Dorothy blushed scarlet. There was an angry gleam in her eye. She drew herself up proudly.
“I am a Tinker, sir, no less than you. I was left to choose my friends when I was young and needed, perhaps, a guide. I call Lucy Garside my friend, and so long as Lucy Garside deems me hers, be sure I shall not do as you command. As for Mr. Pinder——”
“Your precious Pinder,” snarled Jabez.
“You had better go to him and learn from him how your brother’s daughter and your niece should be addressed.” Dorothy swept out of the room.
Oh! Jabez! Jabez! How little you know the heart of woman. It is safe to say that from that hour Dorothy never thought of the unconscious Tom without resentment against her uncle, and a feeling that certainly was not resentment for Tom.
Mr. Tinker felt in anything but a Christian spirit when his niece so defiantly left the room, and he knit his brow in angry meditation.
“Am I never to be done with that Tom Pinder?” ran his thoughts. “I pick him up out of the workhouse; he knocks my overseer head over heels; he refuses the handsomest offer I ever made to anyone in my life; starts in business on his own account, and now, forsooth, has the audacity to try conclusions with me at the polling-booth. I’ve a good mind to let him have a walk-over. There’ll be no credit in beating him—that I’m sure to do but if by any chance he should head the poll—but that’s not to be thought of. I’ll give the cub something else to think of besides canvassing, or my name’s not Jabez Tinker. If a man will play at bowls he must expect rubbers.”
And as a result of his deliberations the manufacturer once more found himself in the office of Mr. Nehemiah Wimpenny.
“Come to sign your will, Mr. Tinker? It’s been ready for you this—I don’t know how long. I thought you’d forgotten all about it, and yet you seemed in a precious hurry about it when you gave me the instructions.”
“No, it’s not about my will I’ve come. That can wait, I think. In fact I may have to vary my instructions. I’m not quite satisfied with my niece’s conduct lately. But we won’t go into that at present. It’s another, a more important one.”
Nehemiah settled himself in his chair and gave all his mind to his client; but Jabez seemed for the nonce to have lost his usual promptitude and decision. He had to pick his words.
“It’s a question of water-right,” he said at last.
“H’m, ticklish things, very,” said Nehemiah. “Nothing more so.”
“So I’ve always understood,” said Jabez—“and costly.”
“Yes, costly. You might almost pave Holmfirth with the gold that’s been spent on law over disputes about water. But let me have the facts. Perhaps it may not be a complicated case at all.”
But his client seemed in no hurry to state the facts. He seemed to be more interested in the question of cost.
“Suppose I have a complaint to make against a firm higher up the stream, what are the proceedings to be taken?”
“What do you complain about, fouling or improperly tapping your supply?”
Mr. Tinker took time to reply. “I don’t quite follow you,” he said.
“Why,” said Nehemiah, “water-right cases are usually complaints that a man has fouled the stream with dye-water or chemicals or by diverting ochre-water from above his own head-goit so that it may enter the river below his own mill but above his neighbour’s. That’s one class of case, and a comparatively easy one. The other is when a mill-owner fancies that the water that has passed over his neighbour’s water-wheel is not returned to the stream for his own use lower down the stream. Now that’s always a very delicate question, and one for experts. And it’s well known that for one surveyor you get to swear on your side, another can be got to swear on the other. They’re as bad as vets, in a horse-warranty case. Now which class of infringement do you complain of?”
Again Mr. Tinker had to pause for a reply. “O both,” he said. “Yes, certainly, both.”
“Why,” exclaimed Wimpenny, “whose mill is it?”
“The Co-op Mill,” said his client, somewhat shamefacedly, as the lawyer thought.
“What! That fellow, Pinder! By Jove, I’m glad of this. Gad! I’m as pleased as if you’d told me I was own brother to the Prince of Wales. But”—and his face fell.
“But what?” asked Jabez, sharply.
“It’ll be lean picking, even if we win. I don’t suppose the whole concern’s worth powder and shot.”
“And why are you anxious powder and shot should be spent on Pinder?” asked Tinker, suspiciously.
“Oh, well I don’t mind telling you, Mr. Tinker. The fact is, I was rather hard hit by your beautiful niece, if you’ll excuse my saying so.”
“Well?” said Mr. Tinker, stiffly.
“But she seemed to prefer that low fellow Pinder’s company to mine, and if she’s no better taste than that, well, I’m not the one to enter the running against a screw.”
Mr. Tinker winced. “You seem to lose heart very easily, Mr. Wimpenny. Young men weren’t so easily discouraged in my young days.”
“Much you know about it,” thought the lawyer. “A spirited young woman like Dorothy Tinker’s rather a different sort of an undertaking from old Split’s scarecrow of a daughter.”
By mutual consent to the men reverted the less embarrassing question of water rights.
“Just explain to me, Wimpenny, what must be done to vindicate my rights.”
“Well, you must file a Bill in the Court of Chancery, and you must file affidavits by the oldest inhabitants as to the customary service of the water, and by analysts as to pollution, and you must go for damages, and you’ll have to get other manufacturers to assess the damages, and, oh!—yes, you might try for aninteriminjunction.”
“And Pinder’ll have to set another lawyer on?”
“Of course he will.”
“And that’ll costhimmoney, win or lose?”
“Rather.”
“Then go at him hammer and tongs, and the sooner you begin and the hotter you go at him, the better you’ll please me.”
“But the evidence?”
“You must find the evidence, sir. I don’t care whether I win or lose. But Co-op Mill must stop. For want of water if we win: for want of funds if we lose.”
“Do you understand me?”
“You bet I do, and I’ll tell you this, I never went into a case with better heart. You may rest easy, Mr. Tinker. Co-op Mill’s as good as broke.”
It was but a week or so after this interview that Workhouse Jack, loitering about the mill yard, espied a seedy looking fellow peering in at the mill-gates. It was a Saturday afternoon. The engine was stopped, the hands had trooped home, Tom and Ben had gone for a walk, and Jack was in sole charge. He was dressed in his Sunday best, and meditating a visit to the village, and, of course, Lucy. He knew the visitor at once for Wimpenny’s process server. The process server did not know Jack.
“Can I see Mr. Pinder?” the man asked.
“Aye, if yo’re none blind,” answered Jack. “What’s your will?”
“Oh, beg your pardon, sir. Didn’t know it was you. This is for you, sir, and he slipped a paper into Jacks hand.”
“It’s a petition in Chancery filed by our client, Mr. Jabez Tinker, against you, sir.”
“A ’tition, is it,” said Jack “an’ what mun aw do wi’ it nah aw’ve getten it?”
“Better see your lawyer about it.”
“Oh! an’ what ’ud ha’ happened, now, just for argyment’s sake, if yo’d dropped this ere precious dockyment i’stead o’ ’liverin’ it to me?”
The clerk was not prepared to say. “I don’t know indeed. Perhaps the action couldn’t go on.”
“Oh! It couldn’t, eh?”
“I’m not sure. But any way, Ihaveserved it: so it’s no use going into that.”
“Aye, yo’n sarved it,” assented Jack. “Just step this way, will yo’, while aw run mi e’en ovver it,” and so saying, Jack led the way into the boiler-house.
Then Jack deliberately locked the door.
“What does this mean?” asked the clerk.
“It just meeans this. Yo’ look as if a square meeal ’ud do yo’ all th’ gooid i’th’ warld, an’ aw reckon yo’ve got to eit this bit o’ papper afore yo’ cum aat.”
Jack flung it at him and sat quietly down.
“Yo’ may ta’ yo’r time, aw’m no ways pressed mi sen. If yo’ feel it a bit dry aw’ll find yo’ a can o’ watter to wesh it dahn wi’; but eit it yo’ do afore yo’ see dayleet agen.”
“But, Mr. Pinder!”
“Mr. Pinder, indeed yo’ gorm fooil. A’m nooan Mr. Pinder. Mr. Pinder’s a gentleman. Aw’m nobbut his man. Nah, ger agate: Sooiner yo’r’ at it, an’ sooiner yo’ll ha’ done.”
And in the boiler-house Tom found the custodian of Co-op Mill and his prisoner. To Jack’s indignation Tom quietly pocketed the petition and released the clerk with an apology and a solatium.
CHAPTER XII