The Iron Master (13 page)

They were now mounting a hill from which William could see the valley below. The ironmaster pointed to a doll-sized roof with his whip.

‘Dost see, William? That house with the chimney at one end was where I took Catherine to wife. There our Caleb was born, our first son. Aye, and our second, John. I built cottages to house our chief workmen round the original site. And over there! Mark them, William. I bought ever more land, or leased it if they would not sell. I built more cottages, set up more blast-furnaces, more ironworks. I made not a penny-piece for twenty years that did not go back into the business, lad. And then, when it prospered exceedingly — and I thanked God, William, for all this while He had kept me safely in His Hand — why, then I saw Somer Court.’

They were riding higher and higher, and the horses went more slowly, picking their way over rough ground.

‘Somer Court. The family and the money had all gone, and it was a poor fallen thing, William, a crumbling home of mice and beetles. But Catherine loved it.’

And you loved Catherine, William thought, which sometimes is the only thing I like about you, ironmaster, for you are a hard man!

‘So I bought it,’ said Caleb simply. ‘I bought it, as folk say, for a shilling — but spent many a pound upon it. Zelah, our third daughter, was born there, the first summer. Seventeen years ago.’

Ah, that is so fitting, William thought. That Zelah should crown Somer Court.

He longed to say so, and knew intuitively that he must keep his compliments and emotions to himself. They had other plans for Zelah, and he was already wondering how to thwart them and yet hold their friendship.

‘What dost think of that, William?’ cried Caleb Scholes. ‘Is it a good tale to be told round the fireside of a winter evening?’

He laughed aloud with pleasure, throwing back his head. There was pride in his tone and bearing, and though it was an honest pride and became him, still it was not a Quakerly virtue, and William smiled to himself. Find out thine adversary’s weakness, he remembered, and keep thine own hidden.

‘So you have been at Somer Court only seventeen years, sir?’ William enquired. ‘It seems as though you had all lived there for ever.’

‘Nay, lad. We are but newcomers. Somer Court hath been there above two hundred years already, and shall be there two hundred years after we are gone. But now to business!’ For they had climbed the hillside and reached a summit which overlooked the county. ‘There is my blacksmith’s shop, William Howarth!’

As far as the eye could see, on this cool clear summer morning, the works stretched the length of the valley. Chimneys marched in ranks, each bearing a straight black banner. Blast-furnaces erupted messages of flame. Row by row the wart brick cottages stepped up and down the valley sides, or clustered round larger buildings. In this pit of Acheron iron ruled. It clanged and resonated, scraped and ground. Water tasted of iron, air smelled of it, surfaces were chill and strange to the touch. Anything which could be cast into a mould was made of it. Fire transformed it. Men hammered and wrought it, lived by it, thanked it for their bread. It permeated the substance of the landscape, leaving no green and living thing untouched. Coal-dust lay in a fine gritty film over all, so that a child could not pluck a blade of grass without he left a mark on flesh or fabric. A parched and withered vegetation clung to the iron earth, rattled in the iron trees, straggled to the edge of the iron river. Scarred by waterways, wagon-ways, track-ways, heaped with slag, the land gave up her wealth of millennia to furnish the need of a day. And over the vale, in memory of its rural past, spread a sulphurous pall of smoke.

‘There is Longbarrow, at the end,’ said the ironmaster, pointing his whip-handle to the kingdom below. ‘Then Bagbrooke, running into it, where the blast-furnace now flares. Pits End is beyond. Willowford, Mallowhall and Rossborne. Villages, did I call them? Nay, they were hamlets. Poverty-stricken places, with but a hundred souls apiece, scarce able to rack a living from the land. See now how they prosper! They are our children and we care for them!’

A memory stirred William’s heart, of a grand May morning, twenty years before, when he and Charlotte were children. Driving in their mother’s trap all the way to fine Millbridge, through hamlets strung like jewels on the silver chain of the river. Poor places all, with but a hundred souls apiece, racking a living from the land and thanking God for it. Garth, Coldcote, Medlar, Childwell, Whinfold, Thornley, Brigge House, Flawnes Green.

And yet, the sombre grandeur of this new world. The power and sullen beauty of its workings. Buildings as high as Babel. Eerie lights and hellish tints. Sounds as awesome and compelling as the voices of old gods. Great cranes with iron arms. Coal-pits yawning open, their giant wheels driven by steam. Huge bellows pumping out blasts of air which echoed round the valley. Gloomy caverns dwarfing the men who laboured in them. The vastness of the enterprise consumed him. He sat his horse, black head bent, eyes very bright, musing on the benevolent despotism before him. So that the ironmaster, observing his rapt face, had no need to ask what he thought or what he felt. Caleb Scholes’s investment, God willing, was assured.

Though William had been asked to stay as long as he pleased, he knew this was yet another of the Scholeses’ small courtesies, and having tested out his ground discovered that the ironmaster, at least, was done with him for the time being. Caleb, allowed a day’s absence to greet his friend, was called to heel on Tuesday, and Catherine’s second sister was expected on Thursday, with her youngest son who hoped for an apprenticeship. So it behoved William to depart, but he gave himself Wednesday to carry out the last and most unexpected part of his business.

Zelah and her elder sister Mary, being of marriageable age, took over a part of their mother’s duties in the household to befit them for their future homes, and by dint of observation he discovered where he might find Zelah at any particular hour of the day. Before breakfast she gave Rebecca music lessons. After breakfast she read aloud turn by turn with Mary, for two hours, while Catherine taught Rebecca needlework and did her own. In the afternoon the two sisters walked, if it was fine, and visited those wives of their father’s workmen who were sick or in childbed, taking various comforts and remedies with them. Then all drank tea, and rested in their own fashion until dinner-time. Between dinner and supper Zelah practised on the harpsichord and wrote her journal, while Mary sketched and painted. After supper the entire family mingled with friends and guests.

He seized an early opportunity of courting Rebecca, who was eight years old and inclined to find learning a wearisome affair, so that his unobtrusive attendance on her morning music lesson seemed but a part of his pleasant courtesy. And when he entered quietly, sitting well back in the shady part of the drawing-room, he took care to bring a newspaper with him and pretended to read it. But all the while was studying his lady’s voice or face as she strove to train eight mutinous fingers and two awkward thumbs.

She, well aware that Rebecca was not the object of his attention, affected not to notice his presence, and sat with her back half-turned; though as she changed places, to show her young sister how the harpsichord should be played, she could not forbear glancing in his direction. And as the lesson progressed she lost her concentration, made little sounds of exasperation and despair which touched and enchanted him, and finally sent Rebecca off with an admonishment, ten minutes earlier than usual.

The child skipped off, delighted, while William lowered his newspaper and Zelah her head. For a few moments he sat watching her, and she gazed abstractly at her hands folded in her lap. Then she looked up, and he walked over. He had to dispense with the usual preliminaries. Catherine might look in, breakfast be served, a hundred small interferences come between him and his intention.

‘Zelah,’ said William, and the unbearable sweetness of those two syllables robbed him of self-command. ‘Oh, Zelah,’ William whispered, and took her hands in his and raised them to his lips.

She whispered back, desperately, ‘I am spoken for, William,’ and added, ‘though not in words,’ and so betrayed herself.

‘George Horsefield?’ said William grimly, softly.

‘It is understood.’

He said, with a look she was to see intensified over the years, ‘It must not be. I would marry thee, Zelah’ — slipping into her Quaker way of speaking — ‘and I shall marry thee, I care not how long I wait, because thou art my wife. I knew thee when I saw thee, Zelah.’

She pulled her hands away, afraid of the trouble this would entail.

‘But we are not of the same faith, William, and I know thee not.’

‘I shall honour thy faith, Zelah. Thou shalt be Quaker as much as it pleaseth thee. Aye, and our children. I shall build thee a meeting-home when I am ironmaster. Wilt thou wait for me? Zelah. Zelah.’

Then, practised as he was in pleasing Hannah, and not honouring by so much as a remembrance that instigator of lovemaking, he risked all by taking Zelah in his arms and kissing her upon the mouth.

She had never come into contact with a man before. Her father’s gentle caresses, George Horsefield’s proffered arm, were the limit of her experience. Now she was held by a man who knew how to hold a woman against him, and was not afraid to press his hand into the small of her back and feel her trembling through the muslin gown, and crush her lips. The physical shock immobilised her will. Terrified, ashamed, she let him kiss her again and again. She even put her arms around his neck, and was repelled by his warmth and scent and strength, and revelled in it. She was lost.

William recovered his wits first, though the possession of so much innocence and beauty almost unhinged him. He released her, and begged her pardon, then pursued the advantage he had gained over George Horsefield.

‘If thou wilt wait for me,’ he whispered. ‘It may be four years, and small beginnings, Zelah, but I will marry thee. And I will build thee a house as beautiful as Somer Court and there thou shalt be queen. On Belbrook How, where the old priory stood, and we shall call it Belbrook Grange. This I promise thee. And with thee to wife I shall labour tenfold to achieve it. So I promise thee.’

She sank onto the stool in front of the harpsichord and buried her face in her hands.

‘If thou wilt wait for me,’ said William, ‘then give me a sign this evening. I go tomorrow, at cock-crow. If thou wilt not, then do nothing, and I shall go my own way and never trouble thee again. Zelah.’

He took his exit quickly and quietly. Catherine, coming in a while later, found her daughter weeping over the harpsichord and saying she would never teach Rebecca again for the child did not practise and she was wore out!

They were a peaceable household, yet a small cloud hovered over Somer Court. But it lifted before dinner-time. Zelah wrote long in her journal, and earnestly, and secretly, endeavouring to counsel herself. She appeared at the table with her usual serenity, though a little pale, and was charming with everyone. By request, she played a spectacular piece upon the harpsichord: Mr Handel’s third suite in D minor. Then embraced Rebecca warmly, kissed Catherine timidly and apologetically, and was remotely gracious with George Horsefield. She did not, however, give William the entire honours of the field. He received no sign that night, and lost his sleep and peace of mind in consequence. But as he was departing the next morning, so early that only one good-natured serving-maid was up to see him breakfasted, he felt an unknown softness in the pocket of his great-coat. He had the presence of mind to wait until he was aboard the coach for Manchester before he examined it, and then could have knelt in gratitude and relief.

She had crept down sometime while the household was asleep, and left the sign he wanted. Clinging to the folds of his cambric handkerchief lay a single pink moss rose.

An Understanding

Eight

August
1792

From her vantage point, high on the side of Garth Fells, Dorcas Howarth could see the valley lying beneath a morning haze, and however cruel the previous winter had been, this summer day promised to be glorious. She sat very trim and erect on the seat of the trap, holding her long whip, waiting for Ned to finish checking the wheels and harness — though this was needless, since Tom the carter sent out both horse and vehicle in immaculate condition. Nevertheless, her weekly drive into Millbridge, weather permitting, was subject to certain scrutinies and conditions on the part of her husband.

‘All’s well, Dorcas,’ said Ned at last, coming up somewhat breathless and scarlet from bending, for he was no longer young except in spirit. ‘Now take it easy down Garth Lane, and watch that sharp turn at the forge. Enjoy thyself, my
lass
, and dunnot fret about us. We’st have supper waiting. If owt keeps thee late I’ll be riding out to meet thee. Give us a kiss, lass, and get thee gone!’

Thirty-one years of marriage had not thickened Dorcas’s waist, nor robbed Ned of the satisfaction of squeezing it. He kissed her heartily and liked doing so. He would now forget about her until six o’clock, and then begin to tap the timepiece in the parlour to make sure it was working, lift the lids off Nellie’s cooking pots to smell the food, and walk his horse up and down the cobbled yard.

All this Dorcas understood and respected, while relishing the freedom of a day’s outing, full of shops and gossip. Occasionally, though in the eight-and-fiftieth year of her age and old enough to know better, she had been guilty of lingering on the homeward road for the pleasure of seeing Ned riding towards her: white head purposeful, blunderbuss at the ready. This he may or may not have guessed, but accepted her occasional capriciousness as part of their long alliance, and cherished these small demands for his attention.

On this fine blue day her straw bonnet was tied beneath her chin with lilac ribbons which matched the sprigs in her muslin gown; and over all she wore a loose grey cloak and hood to protect her from both dust and showers. Her recent affluence was evident in such little vanities as a pair of silk knitted gloves, black kid slippers, and a new purple velvet reticule with a silver clasp: all of which lay in her basket at the back of the trap, ready to dazzle Millbridge on arrival at Thornton House. She looked exactly what she was: a handsome gentlewoman of some means, with a tendency to drive too fast.

The sun rose higher, the haze diminished, the air became diamond-clear. Beneath the wheels of her trap the way changed from country lane to broad road. Garth and Coldcote had been left behind now, and she could smell the dyeing-house at Medlar and hear the steam winding-engine at Childwell. Once this had been Childwell Way, but now they called it the ‘Black Road’. She paused here, and shading her eyes she peered across the river at Belbrook but could see no one there, so drove on past the Swarth Moor mines and the big spinning mill at Thornley. She could scarcely tell the difference between one village and another these days, for as industries increased so did the workers and their ramshackle homes and sheds. Brigge House grew out of Thornley and spilled into Flawnes Green. And whereas William’s forge had been seen clearly from the road, across the green itself, now it was hidden by a row of labourers’ cottages and a new Methodist Chapel, and Farmer Boulton had lost a field or two in the interest of progress.

Here she turned in, to be greeted by Stephen with a mixture of reverence and pride, for he still looked upon her as a benefactor of his boyhood.

‘He’s not here, Mrs Howarth,’ said Stephen, coming out of his forge, arms akimbo. ‘He’s gone off with Mr Caleb to see Lord Kersall this morning.’

He delivered his information grandly, for these were great days full of great names, and Stephen was a part of them in however humble a capacity.

‘I will come inside for a little while,’ Dorcas decided. ‘I have a message for him from his father and can write him a note.’

‘Aye, come in and sit you down a bit, Mrs Howarth. I’ll see to the horse and trap. Hannah’s inside. She’ll make you welcome.’

So Dorcas came from bright to dark, and stood in the kitchen doorway seeing the room in explosions of fiery green, and Hannah’s figure flickering by the hearth. They greeted each other cordially, as usual. Dorcas accepted a glass of lemonade while she wrote her message, and Hannah finished black-leading the famous oven and put away her cleaning materials.

‘It is about the ice-house,’ Dorcas said, folding the paper in four and propping it where William could see it when he came in. ‘My husband has drawn up a plan from the specifications, but I doubt you will have it erected here, Hannah. For it seems to be a vast beehive of a building that will take up over a hundred square yards of space and stand some twenty feet high!’

Hannah’s face looked pinched and grey. She did not reply directly but stood before Dorcas, folding her hands into her apron.

‘Mrs Howarth,’ she said, ‘could I have a word with you?’ Her voice held a beseeching quality which made Dorcas observe her more closely, and motion her to a chair.

‘Thank you kindly, Mrs Howarth, but I’d sooner stand. I shan’t take long over it.’

But she was so slow to begin that Dorcas said quickly and kindly, ‘Come, Hannah, we have known each other seven years or more. If something is wrong then let us make haste to mend it.’

For she thought that perhaps William was expecting her to do too much or paying her too little; which would be just like a man, who could think of building an ice-house but neglect his proper concerns.

‘Mrs Howarth,’ said Hannah, colourless but composed, ‘this’ll never be mended in a manner of speaking, but you’re the only one as I can tell, and the only one as can help me. Only, I don’t like fetching trouble to you, and I’m feared you’ll think ill of me after.’

‘I trust my judgement,’ said Dorcas resolutely. ‘I know you to be incapable of a mean or thoughtless act. Speak out. You will not offend me. Is it about my son? He can be heedless, I know.’

‘It is about him,’ said Hannah, speaking with difficulty, ‘but I’m a poor hand at explaining, Mrs Howarth. So if I don’t put the words quite right I hope as you won’t hold it against me.’

‘You should really sit down,’ said Dorcas firmly, for the woman looked as though she might faint.

So Hannah sat with clenched hands, and fixed her eyes on the wall opposite so that she could not see the effect of her words.

‘Mrs Howarth, I’ve been unwedded wife to your son for the last five years, and we’ve kept it hid from everybody.’

All the colour fled Dorcas’s face.

‘Mrs Howarth, I want you to know as I’m not blaming him for it, because it takes two to do what’s wrong, but I swear to you as I never run after him. It weren’t like that. I run from him, in a manner of speaking. I held out for five long months — and I were lonely, and I thought the world of him. But he’d made his mind up, and you know what he’s like when he sets his mind on summat or somebody. I were weak. I don’t deny that. Weak and sinful. But I loved him and I thought it might be made right in time.’

She said desolately, managing to meet Dorcas’s troubled gaze, ‘I felt there was an understanding between us, Mrs Howarth.’

A tremor of the straw bonnet served as a nod.

‘Well, I were wrong,’ said Hannah quietly, ‘and if I’m to be truthful I’ve known that for long enough. But I dursen’t face it. There was a long while, when he were pulling his heart out with that blessed ironworks, and getting nowhere and nowt to show for it, when I were no more to him than a crust of bread or a sup of beer. But after Miss Wilde died, and he knew there was a chance for him, he seemed to wake up to me a bit. It were only a month or two, Mrs Howarth, but we was right back to the beginnings again, and I’d been starved for want of a word or a touch from him. I thought it had all come right again, you see.’

She wiped her eyes on her apron and smoothed it out thoughtfully.

‘Then he went down to Warwickshire to see that ironmaster. Mrs Howarth, if I’m speaking out of turn, or if I’m telling you summat as he doesn’t want you to know just yet, I’d be grateful if you wouldn’t let on that I told you. But he met a lady down in Warwickshire as he’d like to marry, better suited to him than I were or ever would be. I don’t deny that, and I don’t begrudge him, for he’s younger than me, and grander. But it goes to explain why I say what I do, and why I come to you sooner than any other.’

At this fresh blow, Dorcas clasped her own hands on the table in front of her, and watched Hannah in mute sympathy.

‘Mrs Howarth, he don’t want me and he don’t know how to tell me, so I shan’t stop with him, but I’ve no means of getting away from Flawnes Green. You might well say to me,’ Hannah continued bleakly, ‘“Go and work for somebody else round here then!” But it isn’t that easy. I must go a long way off, to where I’m not known. I’m four month gone with child, Mrs Howarth.’

Dorcas gave a short soft sigh. Her hands relaxed.

She said quietly, ‘Does William know this?’

‘No, Mrs Howarth, and I never want him to, if you please. Nor nobody else but yourself. I lay no claim on Will now, and never shall do. But I’ve got nobody to trust, and nowt but a few shillings as I’ve saved up against a rainy day I lost my family when I come here to wed Abel Garside fourteen year since. And I’ve thought on, night after night, how to put it to you so that it sounded proper. But I can only tell the truth and hope you understand me. If you could help me out with a few pounds, to keep me while the child’s born, and to get me far enough from here, I’ll never ask nowt from nobody again.’

Stephen’s hammer beat in their heads. The little room was stifling.

Dorcas said, ‘I understand you very well, Hannah. I will help you all I can. Let us make a pot of tea and talk matters over together.’

Oh William, she thought, this is not the first time you have deceived us, and still we contrive to set matters right for you!

She remembered how he had kept them in ignorance while he worked at Flawnes Green forge with Aaron Helm all those years since: Miss Wilde thinking he was at school, the headmaster thinking he was at home, Aaron believing the boy had permission. Then his ordering of
The
Gentleman’s
Magazine on her account, and the way he contrived to get books for himself on her list, from old Mr Longe in London, Toby’s father. And when Henry Tucker threatened to expel him, Miss Wilde pleaded for him, Ned came to some agreement with him, her own plans to reinstate him were turned upside down. So in the end William had books and magazine and his apprenticeship. Which was what he had wanted all along.

‘Hannah,’ she said, ‘who is this lady in Warwickshire?’

‘She’s one of young Mr Caleb’s sisters,’ Hannah replied, empty even of sorrow. ‘Will must have confided in Mr Caleb, because when he followed him up here in June he brought a letter with him. And they’ve been talking together, quiet-like, as they worked. I guessed some of it, and Stephen told me the rest — not meaning harm, just chatting-like, being interested. But the lady’s very young, and her family don’t know, and Will and Mr Caleb don’t want them to find out, neither, because old Mr Scholes wants her to wed somebody else.’

‘Dear God in heaven,’ said Dorcas, horrified, exasperated.

For William had not been satisfied to ruin one woman, but was risking the ironmaster’s patronage by courting his daughter. ‘Do you know her name?’ Dorcas asked cautiously.

‘Aye, I do, Mrs Howarth. It’s a strange name for a lass, though taken from the Holy Book. The name of the city where Saul and Jonathan was buried. Zelah.’

‘And she is engaged to someone else?’

‘They have an understanding,’ said Hannah, without irony.

The knowledge that Dorcas would help her, and was sharing some of the responsibility, had released Hannah from the most cruel of her anxieties. She sounded tired, almost uninterested.

‘Let us talk of you for a while,’ said Dorcas gently. ‘Where will you go, and how shall you live, when you leave here?’

The woman gathered strength, spoke with a rough eloquence which touched Dorcas closely.

‘I’ve thought it all out, so’s the child won’t be shamed. I shall go far off. I don’t know where I’ll settle. But I’ll put a few places between here and there, so’s I can say truthfully as I was travelling round a bit. I’m a widow, and I’ll pass for one again. Folk don’t know what goes on from one valley to the next, and a big place like Manchester or Liverpool could be the end of the world for most. There’s one thing more as you could do for me, Mrs Howarth. Would you give me a piece of paper as says I’m honest and hard-working?’ Dorcas nodded, and clasped her hands a little more firmly. ‘I could keep house for somebody, and have the child with me. And I don’t want them gossiping at the Methodist Chapel, or round Flawnes Green, so I’ve been putting about that I heard my sister was in trouble with her health. A word here and there soon spreads. Mrs Boulton said to me the other day, “Hannah, you’re not with us these days. If you feel you’ve got to go then your job’s here when you get back!” But I shall write her a line or two, later on, saying as I shall stop there for good. And Will — well, perhaps you’d look around for somebody for him. I’d rather not tell him myself. I can leave him a line. You could say we’d talked together, so he wouldn’t think I were leaving him in the lurch, like.’