The Iron Master (29 page)

‘Madam, I confess that I have been at the back of most revolts in this valley. Since I was a young man I have helped and encouraged any little group who was oppressed. I led the weavers to burn down the first spinning-mill ever erected at Thornley, seventeen years ago. But I have never been able to organise the mass of workers. I labour for the day when I can see this valley as one great union, and hold their services in abeyance until they are paid fair wages. I look to the time when every man has a vote, and will elect a Parliament of Radicals. Then, madam, we shall see Reform!’

Like most women, Charlotte had learned the trick of dividing her attention. So even as she turned over these ideas in her mind, she rang the bell for more hot water, sliced bread, and coals. While Jack Ackroyd strode the parlour impatiently, stopping to say
Pshaw
! at any ornament he especially despised. But she took her time, and supplied him with further refreshment before she spoke on the matter.

‘Sir, what you say reaches my heart and echoes my principles. In theory I am with you. It is the practice that falls down! Your organisation, sir, would be riddled with government spies in five minutes. And, upon all being discovered, no government would enquire into the purity of our motives, but despatch us both on the scaffold!’

‘Not both, madam. Me, certainly. Your name shall never be mentioned, nor your presence known. If you would be our pamphleteer even Ralph Fairbarrow shall know nothing of it!’

She smiled in spite of herself at his ingenuousness.

‘My dear Mr Ackroyd, Mr Fairbarrow and many others — unless they have forgot me quite! — would recognise my style. And if I agree to work with you then I agree to the penalty for working. That would be only honest in me.’

He struggled with a notion that was still new to him: the value of herself as an individual over the value of the cause itself.

‘Then,’ he said with infinite regret, ‘I withdraw my offer, Mrs Longe. I know a little more of you and of your children since we made up our quarrel of that other year, and I cannot allow you so to risk your safety. It does not matter about me. I belong to no one. None shall miss me.’

In her astonishment Charlotte let the toast burn.

‘There, sir!’ she cried. ‘Look what I have done!’

‘It is not my fault, surely, madam?’ he protested, brought down from his heights.

‘No, sir, but I must scold someone for it!’ Smiling at her wilfulness and his amazement. Then, threading fresh slices on to the fork, ‘Mr Ackroyd, you have spoke of talents lying unused. What of your talent for teaching? Certainly, Millbridge regards you as an odd fish, sir. But they do not think you dangerous, and they are prepared to overlook a few eccentricities because of your ability as their headmaster. In the field of young minds you will plant a greater and more fertile crop of radical attitudes than by rousing an illiterate mob. For I must risk your displeasure, sir, by warning you that what you begin in this valley you will not end! Whereas in your grammar school the whole object is encompassed peaceably. Your pupils need you, sir, and they would miss you.’

He was restored at once to his theme.

‘First, madam!’ Holding up his forefinger in reproof. ‘I know that he who sows the wind shall reap the whirlwind. I dislodge a clod of earth, and start a landslide. I know, I know. You speak of ideas. Ideas are very well, but they are not enough. It is by our actions we are judged, madam. I do not seek merely to educate some hundreds of benevolent young men. I wish to awaken the dormant spirit of thousands of oppressed human beings, to make them aware of their rights and their powers. Millbridge would find another headmaster but I doubt that such another weapon as myself has yet been forged in this valley. My predecessor and benefactor, Henry Tucker, used me as an educational experiment, madam. Oh, he was never unkind. He treated me fairly. I was not ill-used. But I was proof of the assumption that if you take an intelligent boy from a poor family, and instruct him well, he will prove as good or better than your educated gentleman.’

‘So you were not unhappy with your family, sir?’

A wound had been opened which he had long chosen to ignore. He left his fresh toast untouched. He became cold and awkward.

‘No, madam, they were kind to me, but kindness does not extend the intellect, and love can hamper it! I left them far behind me. With a wisdom which, as a child, I did not realise, Mr Ricker cut me off from my family. I was allowed no dealings with them. They, being equally wise, though so much humbler, agreed to the stipulation. A boy of six or seven, madam, finds such a situation harrowing. A man over forty sees its inevitability.’

The line of his mouth was stoical. He coughed, folded his arms, crossed his legs, and stared fiercely at the fire-irons.

‘Such a weapon as yourself?’ Charlotte prompted, picking out the expression he had used so bitterly.

He looked directly at her dark and hard and isolated.

‘Madam, Mr Tucker did not consider human nature in his pursuit of education. My feelings were for my family, my intellect was for him, and socially I belonged and now belong to nobody. When I entered this room today I believe I remarked on my inability to express emotion. It arises from the division in me. I am not a loving, trusting, believing person, madam. I am of no use to myself. Therefore, my affections are directed to the mass of people — since they do not demand of me an attention which I could not give. I belong to everyone, madam, and therefore to no one. So no one will
miss
me.’

‘Oh, Mr Ackroyd,’ said Charlotte compassionately, ‘I begin to understand you better. Pray eat your toast, sir’ — briskly endeavouring to put him at his ease again — ‘I should have thought we had gone to sufficient trouble not to leave it!’

She had been making up her mind for a longer time than he would have thought possible: for well over three years, since his first visit. She spoke simply, frankly.

‘Sir, I know myself to be an excellent pamphleteer. And I do not say this out of vanity, for my husband taught me, and what I am I owe to him and the need to earn my bread. And my principles are yours, sir. I shall be pleased to help you.’

Now he was beset by so many emotions, rational and otherwise, that he could not deal with her or himself. He jumped up at once, spilling his toast, knocking the table in his flight, stuffing the papers pell-mell into his pockets.

‘I am no weathercock, madam,’ he cried, ‘to change direction with the wind. I had not thought about such matters as your style betraying you. I had thought I would take all upon myself, and so protect you from possible consequences. I see it cannot be. I beg your pardon if I have in any way offended you. And good-day to you, madam!’

Whereupon he departed, forgetting his hat, cravat tails flying, banging the front door after him.

‘And how did Mr Awkright offend Mamma this time?’ Ambrose asked.

‘Now bless me if she ain’t forgot to tell me all her private business!’ Polly replied with tremendous sarcasm.

‘But has Mamma stopped crying, please, Polly?’ Cicely asked.

‘Oh, she ain’t grieving no more, love. Just a-setting by the parlour fire, a bit on the thoughtful side. Leave her be until bed-time. She’ll be right as rain tomorrow.’

*

Charlotte had picked up the toast and righted the table by the time Polly came in to see what all the noise was about.

‘Mr Ackroyd has forgotten his hat,’ she said. ‘If he comes back for it, Polly, do not trouble him to enter — unless he wishes to, of course — just give it to him. He has some problem on his mind.’

The handbill had been forgotten. She sat with her feet on the fender, shoulders hunched forward, reading it. From time to time she smiled impishly, involuntarily, at some scholarly turn of phrase, some solemn passage, some flight of rhetoric which would have adorned an essay better than a tract. Then she brought writing materials to the table by the fire, and began to draft a new broadsheet. The children came to say goodnight and she kissed them fondly, promising they should spend the whole of tomorrow with her. Polly fetched her supper on a tray. Jack Ackroyd did not return. Their separate windows shone long into the winter night mute witnesses to separate thoughts. But whereas Charlotte mused philosophically, Jack Ackroyd struggled in rage and misery.

Love is never a kind business, but by dint of meeting it early in life and possibly repeating the process a few times, a man learns how to parry its keenest thrusts and keep up a reasonable show of defence. The headmaster had no such experience. At the moment of bringing himself to confess that he was incapable of love he found himself impaled upon it. The irrelevance of the emotion damaged his self-esteem. Had he not ignored lovely faces, graceful figures and pretty speeches for twenty years or more on his solitary road? Only to be brought down by time and toast and firelight, perception and compassion, which he had interpreted under the very different name of friendship. The enormity of the enterprise appalled him. The more he considered the relationship between himself and Charlotte the less he felt able to cope with it.

‘I shall not see her again!’ he said aloud, resolutely.

Then the thought insinuated itself that she did not care for him anyway. Reviewing her many moods, he found aggression, apology, amusement, contemplation, dedication, comfortable companionship. None of these represented a woman in the throes of tender passion, according to popular lights. But did he want passion and tenderness from her?

‘Certainly not!’ cried the puritan within him, shrinking back.

But suppose one of those other boobies possessed her instead! That finicking solicitor, Hurst. That silent Quaker, Scholes. That stupid young Standish? What then?

‘How soon can I see her?’ he wondered, panicking. ‘But then, what can I say to her?’

*

Charlotte, feet on the fender, head in hands, pondered on the infinite mystery of the human heart. It had been fifteen years since she fell in love with Toby Longe, but she remembered the girl in her, suffering, as though she had been a younger sister. the sudden knowledge of love, the struggle to interest and hold him, the need to possess him and lose herself in him. What folly, what immeasurable ecstasy! The cost of that expensive escapade had rendered her all but immune to a second encounter.

This time love had besieged her subtly, undermined her slowly, disguised itself as anger, irritation, diversion, respect and liking. She accepted it, but in trepidation. What place was there for it in her present life? She shrank from involving her children, her family, in an affection they might dislike or despise. She had run that gauntlet once. And then there was this work between them, which must be done. Well, she supposed everything would take its course. She hoped they could survive the outcome.

In the meantime she could guess the extent of his bewilderment, his wretchedness, and was moved to compassion at the thought of that respectable scarecrow alone in his barren field, and yet could not help smiling at the picture.

‘Oh, my poor Jack!’ she cried, between tears and laughter. ‘Oh, my dear Jack!’

From the time that he fled her presence, to the time he returned by means of her excuse, was only a matter of days. But days can be deserts, and Jack Ackroyd’s deserts were stony places. Perceiving his dilemma, Charlotte wrote a friendly letter, saying she appreciated his concern for her family’s wellbeing but had quite made up her mind about the matter they had discussed, and did he find the enclosed handbill to his liking? She then sent Polly across the High Street to deliver this bombshell personally.

‘ … and your hat, sir, as you forgot,’ said Polly, clapping it down on his desk. ‘Should I wait or shall you be coming round, sir?’

He did not answer. She observed the tremor of his hands as he unsealed the letter. Watched him glance at the enclosure and put it aside, scan Charlotte’s message rapidly, and turn from white to red and back again. Then he read it through once more, paying great attention to each line.

‘Should I wait, Mr Awkright, or shall you call?’ Polly asked.

He lifted his head and she was sorry for him. Such puzzlement and painful indecision.

‘Pray tell Mrs Longe,’ he said with difficulty, ‘that I thank her. And shall reply presently.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Polly, reading him with far more ease than he had read Charlotte’s careful note. ‘Mr Hurst generally comes by for his glass of wine at six o’clock. But she’ll be on her own for supper tonight. Tomorrow being a Sat’day she gets caught up with one thing and another all day. And Sunday she spends with the children.’

‘I thank you, Polly. That will be all,’ he replied sternly, to show that he knew what he was about.

Which he did not.

She dropped her curtsey and departed, to report to Charlotte.

‘He hasn’t said nothink definite, ma’am, but I reckon as he’ll be here for his supper, meself. Shall I tell Sally to cook somethink special?’

‘No, I think not, Polly. That would seem contrived. Just tell Sally to cook a little extra, if you please.’

Jack Ackroyd wrote several letters that day, and tore them all up. He could not eat, but drank many glasses of wine. He remembered the handbill and read it over and over again, without comprehending it, so finally locked it safely away with his other papers. By eight o’clock that night he was light of head, heavy of heart, and totally disorientated. He crossed the High Street stiffly, arms rigid at his sides, mouth dry. He nerved himself to knock once, but softly so they might not hear it. Polly, waiting behind the door, wrenched his hat from his clenched hands and drove him into the parlour, where he stood for a moment a most pitiable spectacle, if anyone had noticed.