The Iron Master (41 page)

‘Well, it is very small and pokey and would not do for me. And you have only to say what you want, Mamma, and I will see that it is done.’

‘I have what I want, my dear,’ she replied. Now what do you want of me?’

‘I? I want nothing! I called because I thought you were somewhat lonely and would be glad of company.’

Dorcas’s lips twitched with amusement.

‘That was exceedingly, one might say unusually, thoughtful of you, William. But I am not in the least lonely, though always glad to see you, of course.’

‘You are much alone, though,’ he pointed out, feeling the situation slip away from him as it had done at Thornton House.

‘Ah, that is a different matter. I am solitary, William, but not lonely. And I have always found a certain amount of solitude to be necessary to me. It was you who could never stay long in your own company. I remember that from your childhood.’

‘Why, I spent hours, days alone. Making things, planning things … ’

‘Ah, yes. But if you were not involved in some new project then time hung upon your hands. You had always to be doing something new. You did not sit inside yourself; as Charlotte did, for instance.’

He drummed upon the window to startle the birds away.

‘Oh, Charlotte is a blue-stocking!’ he said, disgruntled. And then, ‘I could build you a bigger house in a better position, if you wanted, Mamma.’

‘My dear, you will find as you grow old that your wants are few. And I do not wish to move house again. I am content with Bracelet. Now go and buy yourself another copper-mine, or go into Parliament, if you are bored. But do not fret me, my dear. I am well enough!’

He strode the room, and she watched him prowl restlessly. He stopped by her, looking for something to grieve him. ‘Is Dick’s wife breeding again?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Not so soon after George’s birth I should hope,’ said Dorcas, still amiable. ‘Do sit down, my dear.’

‘How many have they now?’ he asked, looming at her side.

‘I must think for a moment! Why, there is Ned and Dickie and Willie and Mary — and little George.’

‘Four sons!’ said William bitterly, walking away again. ‘Four sons!’

‘And one daughter,’ a little tartly. Is that what is troubling you?’

‘Of course it troubles me!’ he cried, and thrust his fists into his breeches pockets. ‘It is as though life were determined to give me anything but that which I most desire!’

‘That is a pity,’ said Dorcas, in what Ned once called her Judgement Day voice.

‘A pity? It is a damned tragedy. Here I am, having sweated myself into my forties to build up a business, and a great house, and more wealth and possessions than any man in this valley — save Humphrey Kersall — and all I can boast is six daughters, who will marry and leave me without caring tuppence for any of it! To whom shall I pass on Snape and Kingswood Hall? Tell me that!’

‘I am sure you will think of some scheme. You always have,’ Dorcas replied coldly. ‘And do not shout and stamp about so, William. You will give me a headache.’

‘Well, I am sorry,’ he mumbled, feeling badly used.

There was a pause. She longed for him to go and leave her in peace. But he would brood by the window.

‘You are exceedingly well dressed for this time on a weekday,’ Dorcas observed of the cream pantaloons, the chocolate-coloured coat with its velvet collar. ‘That shade of brown suits you, William. I recollect you wore it on your wedding-day.’

‘I had forgot,’ said William sullenly.

The mention of his wedding-day, coupled with the thought of his chocolate coat lying where it had been dropped on Lord Kersall’s carpet, made him uneasy.

‘Zelah is young still, at four-and-thirty,’ said Dorcas, attempting to console him. ‘I was turned forty when Dick was born. There is time yet. Not that I advocate a woman bearing too many children, nor child-bearing too late in life.’

‘Oh, Zelah is healthy enough.’

‘You speak of your wife,’ said Dorcas crisply, ‘as though she were one of your brood mares.’

‘It is the damnedest thing,’ William burst out, ‘that when I visit you and Lottie I get nothing but hard words for kind intentions!’

‘So you have been teasing Charlotte, too, have you? At your time of life, William, a man is often plagued with his liver and spleen. You should try half a drachm of salt of camomile first thing in the morning, mixed with white wine!’ Then, disconcertingly, she changed direction and said, ‘Have you been doing business with Lord Kersall then, in your best clothes?’

‘Why do you ask? Well then, yes, I have. Not exactly, for he is in London as it happens. I left a message. And came away directly.’

‘I cannot think why men of that age make such gabies of themselves as to marry hearty young women,’ she continued. ‘It is obvious to all that Lady Kersall is only there for ornament. He can hardly be thought capable of getting her with child. And he has a number of grown children already.’

‘Oh, I do not know,’ said William uncomfortably. ‘He is hale enough.’

‘Let us hope so,’ said Dorcas doubtfully, ‘or she will make a fool of him in earnest. They have had trouble with her before’ — glancing at his dark face — ‘and that is why she was so late marrying. An unsuitable elopement, I have heard. But caught in time. So they say.’

‘Lady Kersall’s behaviour has always been highly correct to my knowledge,’ William lied, looking round for his beaver hat. ‘Her air is somewhat haughty rather than frivolous.’

‘Only with servants, I hear.’

‘It is extraordinary to me how women will gossip!’ he cried pettishly. ‘I suppose it is because they sit moping by themselves with nothing to do. A man has more important matters on his mind.’

Dorcas put on her spectacles and looked directly at him.

‘William,’ she said very quietly and dearly, ‘what you have done to offend Charlotte I do not know. But since you came here in a like mood I conjecture you made yourself thoroughly disagreeable!’

‘No, no … ’ Stricken on the instant.

‘Neither Charlotte nor I ask anything of you but your loving goodwill,’ Dorcas went on inexorably. ‘We make our lives as useful and pleasant as we can, and are no nuisance to you that I know of — certainly, we do not call on purpose to tease you. You have endeavoured in this half-hour to make me feel poor in myself and in my home, and that is despicable.’

‘You do me wrong, Mamma … ’

‘I have not yet finished, sir,’ said Dorcas sternly, holding up her hand for his silence, as she used to when he was a small and disobedient boy. ‘You do not hurt me in the least by comparing Bracelet with Kingswood Hall, and offering to move me to a place more suitable for you, because I am content here and should be wretched in a larger house. But to hold up the scarecrow of loneliness to me in my old age, knowing how I loved my husband, is the work of a coward, sir!’

‘Madam, I swear I had no such intention,’ he pleaded on a lower note.

‘And what is more,’ Dorcas continued, cutting in voice and argument, ‘if your father had been alive and sitting there’ — pointing at the empty chair opposite — ‘you would not so much as dare to throw your hat down as you did! Let alone to probe and needle me, and whine of your troubles — that are no troubles at all! And that, sir, brands you as a bully, too!’

No longer splendid, the ironmaster stood before her, holding the offending hat to his breast. An old spring of affection gushed forth and wet his eyes and flooded his heart, and he begged her pardon. But the little figure was unyielding, sitting very upright in her chair, and turned resolutely away from him.

‘Forgive me, Mamma,’ William begged.

She sighed, quick and short and sharp.

‘Oh, I shall forgive you, I do not doubt,’ she replied, weary of him, ‘but not just now, William. Please to go away, my dear. And be good to Zelah.’

He gathered up all the courage that was in him, to embrace her, to kiss her cheek unbidden; For he could not leave her so. Her face was cold beneath his lips. She felt as small and frail as a bird. He saw that she was old and should not be troubled.

‘It is your great spirit that misleads us,’ he said gently, reproachfully, and drew her to him and kissed her again. ‘You have cared for us all so long that we run to you like babes whenever we are bruised. We should protect you instead.’

Her mouth quivered, and held.

‘Go now, Willie,’ she said, and he rose forgiven. ‘And Willie, remember this, never seek out another person’s weakness to prove that you are strong.’

He swallowed that rebuke, even thought on it for a minute, and resolved to be good. He nodded.

Dorcas stood by her front window and watched him ride grandly off. Then she rang the bell.

‘I think I shall rest in bed until supper-time, Nellie,’ she said, as lightly as she was able. ‘I find the weather somewhat tiring today.’

Nellie said nothing, but looked grim as she helped her mistress to undress. A homely guardian, she drew down the windows against the roar of Snape, she drew the curtains against the harsh light, she closed the door noiselessly behind her. But downstairs in the kitchen she spoke her mind to her husband.

‘I tell you what, Tom. We did better than we knew, keeping Mrs Howarth free of Kingswood Hall. They’d have bled her like leeches, given half the chancel’

While Dorcas lay dumbly on her side of the bed, and wept the scarce and silent tears of the old to think that Ned would never again comfort her from the other.

*

‘I am home!’ cried William, restored, sweeping through the great hall like a storm. ‘I am home, Zelah. I am home, children.’

They were drawn from schoolroom and nursery, from parlour and garden. They gathered like flowers about him. From shy and slender Tibby, close on womanhood, to plump and staggering Molly. And behind them was Zelah, in the dark gold of her maturity, relieved to see him in a loving mood.

‘What a black bear I have been of late!’ he challenged them, hungry for approval, thirsty for their denial of this statement.

And many times a bear before that, and very black indeed, and every time forgiven and excused.

They cried down this ridiculous notion at once, and swept him off to the family sitting-room to be soothed away from such a dark fancy. For was he not the best and kindest and handsomest and most generous of fathers and husbands? And was not every one of his virtues to be celebrated with a kiss? Did he not toil from morning to night, for nothing but their benefit and delight? And was there the smallest wish in the world that he would not grant?

He was undoubtedly a paragon at granting small wishes. It was the deep and necessary ones which eluded him, costing as they did so much time and thought and patience.

But at length they convinced him of his goodness, and he was able to think again about his work and his pleasure with a clear conscience.

Justice

Twenty-four

1810

William Howarth had moved ahead in the commoners’ race. He had recently been appointed as Justice of the Peace, since the county gentry and professional men of the district considered him to be almost one of themselves. Rumour had it that Ernest Harbottle threw his dinner at his dining-room wall when he heard the news, and struck Mrs Harbottle. But rumour always exaggerates. Ernest simply knocked his plate to the carpet and called his wife a daft old bitch.

So now the ironmaster was in session with his peers, in the old Court House at the back of the Town Hall. He was a little pale after a heavy night, but looked all the better for it in his capacity as a magistrate. It made him seem stern and above reproach.

‘Deuce take it!’ he muttered, aghast at the length of the list. ‘We shall be here ‘til dinner-time!’

‘Did I not say it would be so?’ cried Squire Brigge. ‘Crime is on the increase. Aye, and in leaps and bounds. It is all this industry that brings the rascals to town. They should transport and hang the lot of ‘em.’

‘Come, sir,’ said William good-naturedly, ‘you cannot blame industry for offences against the game laws.’

‘No, Mr Howarth,’ drawled Lord Kersall, ‘you are in the right of it there. But though poaching and sabotage and sheep stealing used to form the bulk of our offences in this valley, they are being outnumbered these days by the more sophisticated crimes. Pickpocketing, house-breaking, swindling, and every form of begging. Indeed, if violence increases at the same rate we shall soon be forced to ask for company on the way home, after nightfall, as Londoners do. And though I do not blame industry for this new state of affairs, the prosperity brought by industry certainly attracts villains.’

‘Aye, well put, my lord,’ said Brigge, ‘and we must not be soft with ‘em.’

‘But we should be just,’ said Humphrey Kersall.

He was a cool and arrogant man but a responsible one. As feudal overlord he still felt that the offenders were his people, and should be corrected rather than annihilated. Also he was well aware that occasional pardons, generally for first offences of small importance or cases which would not stick in court, did him no harm in the eyes of the community. He was not loved but they did respect him.

‘Give ‘em a touch of the branding-iron,’ growled Brigge. ‘Flog ‘em.’

‘Fetch up the first offender, Mr Hodgkiss,’ said Lord Kersall grandly.

‘Name of Smethurst, my lord. Occupation, collier at Swarthmoor. Caught deer-stealing in your lordship’s park.’

‘That’s a hanging offence,’ said the squire with great satisfaction.

‘Weren’t you the fellow brought before me for stealing coal last winter?’ asked Lord Kersall sharply. ‘And did I not give you a pardon on condition you behaved yourself in the future?’

‘Yes, m’lord,’ the man said, and bent his head before those glacial eyes, and twisted his battered hat. ‘But we was froze to the marrow, m’lord.’

‘And now you shoot at one of my deer. What were you going to do with it? Sell it?’

‘No, m’lord. Sick wife and eight childer, m’lord. Eat it, m’ lord.’

‘Eat it?’ cried Sir Francis Clayton. ‘Good God, man. You don’t eat venison because you’re hungry. That’s a gentleman’s dish!’

‘I been out of work, your honour. Accident in the mine. We was starving.’

‘Who were your accomplices, eh?’ Kersall demanded. ‘My keeper said he saw two fellows running away. Who were they?’

The collier was doggedly silent, twisting his hat in his hands.

‘We might be inclined to clemency if you told us,’ purred the Reverend Robert Graham, leaning forward and coldly smiling.

‘You simply cannot roam the countryside, stealing coal and shooting deer just because you are out of work, you know,’ said Lord Kersall, being reasonable with him. ‘If everyone did that where would we all be? And where did you get your gun from?’

The collier was indistinct upon this point.

‘The rascals steal a gun and lend it to each other, that’s my belief,’ said Squire Brigge. ‘Take it in turns to shoot our game they do.’

‘Did we get the deer back safely, Mr Hodgkiss?’ Kersall asked. ‘Ah, good!’

They consulted together, Brigge leading the hanging faction, William tempering the wind with Humphrey Kersall.

‘Now, as we got the deer back, and you have a large family and are out of work, we are inclined to be lenient with you,’ said Kersall. ‘But if this sort of thing happens again you’ll be up before the Assizes. And you know how they would deal with you, don’t you? You’d be lucky to get away with your life. And if you think that a little hunger and cold are bad things then you know nothing about transportation. You would soon change your mind, I can tell you!’

The collier clenched his hands and nodded, dumbly.

‘A year’s imprisonment and two hours in the pillory,’ said Lord Kersall.

‘What’ll my wife do, and the childer?’ the man cried. ‘They canna eat as it is, m’lord.’

‘Well, you should have thought of that before you started poaching on my preserves,’ said Humphrey Kersall. ‘Take him away, Mr Hodgkin. Who is next?’

‘Some thieving labourer helping himself to hares,’ said Squire Brigge. ‘The keeper found one stewing in his cooking pot.’

‘Do you know,’ said Francis Clayton conversationally, ‘there was a fellow used to trap eighty hares a year on my land, and sell ‘em for three shillings apiece in Millbridge market. He was making more money by poaching than by earning an honest living!’

The offenders were many, were diverse, and as Lord Kersall had remarked their crimes were becoming more sophisticated. A vision of Millbridge at the mercy of burglars, watch-stealers and gangs of trained thieves rose before them. The more temperate magistrates stiffened their penalties, the rabid ones became more insistent. They sent up offenders to the Assizes, handed out whippings as though they had been sweetmeats, inflicted the stocks and the pillory as afterthoughts. And then Mr Hodgkiss brought in the strange being who had written threatening letters to a property owner in Medlar, and set fire to his barn and stables.

He was under-nourished and under-sized. There was a terrible sense of inadequacy about him, a hunger for recognition. His eyes lit as he approached the majesty of Wyndendale’s law, and he drew himself up as though his moment had come.

‘Name of Low,’ said Mr Hodgkiss. ‘No fixed address. No occupation. Calls hisself a freeholder though he hasn’t got no property. The letters is on your lordship’s table.’

‘Aye, and an uncommonly nasty pen he wields!’ Francis Clayton remarked, reading them. ‘Pah! What a rotten worm you are, you wretch.’

‘We have all had such letters in our time,’ said Humphrey Kersall carelessly. ‘They are no better and no worse than most. Now, you, fellow. Low. You burned down a barnful of grain and — worse still! — a stableful of horses. What sort of murdering villain are you, to destroy innocent and valuable beasts?’

‘Damned disgraceful,’ said William sincerely, and had already condemned the man in his mind.

‘Hang him,’ said Squire Brigge, and the expression on the faces of all his colleagues echoed this sentiment.

‘But it is extraordinary to me how they will
destroy
property,’ said Francis Clayton. ‘I can better understand
stealing
it.’

‘Ah, envy!’ the Reverend Robert declaimed, casting up his eyes to the ceiling. ‘What a wicked and insidious vice thou art!’

‘Come, you, fellow! What have you to say for yourself? Do you deny this charge?’ cried Kersall, in cold disgust.

‘I don’t deny it,’ said Obadiah Low, grinning. ‘I’m glad of it. It’s justice, that is. Justice, your honours.’

He had a peculiarly sibilant and unpleasant voice, and that total lack of fear that seems almost demonic. Clearly he was unbalanced, if not downright mad. Even in the security of the Court House the magistrates felt exposed. Even William, who could have crushed him like a nut, had a sensation akin to fear. Low chuckled, became confidential, garrulous.

‘Wrigley stole my land,’ said Obadiah Low, ‘and thieves should be burned. It’s a healing force is fire, your honours. I’d recommend it for almost anybody. But you got to watch and wait afore you burn down. Watch with your eyes, in the night … ’

‘Is there any evidence of Squire Wrigley stealing land?’ asked Lord Kershaw at large. ‘No, I thought not.’

‘Wrigley’s turned many a poor family out,’ said Low, ‘ruined many a poor man in his time. And now he’s come to justice by fire, your honours. It’s a justice as’ll be applied to all of you afore very long. I know more than you think, your honours. Far more than you think!’

And he put a dirty finger to one side of his nose and smiled at them.

‘Shut your mouth,’ said Mr Hodgkiss, outraged.

And he picked the little fellow up and shook him as if he had been a marionette.

‘Put him down, if you please,’ Lord Bersall ordered. ‘Do you confess to your abominable crime, Low?’

‘I confess to that, and to more,’ cried Low, safely on his feet again. ‘I been the Saviour of the People, I have. I’ve given bread to the hungry and done justice by fire … ’ He was hurrying to say all that he could, to make the most of his time before he was swept off to the hulks or the gallows. ‘Fire! You’ll see this valley a-fire from end to end when my people rise. There’s more than you know, thousands more. All about you, working for you, watching you. All day and all night. They never sleep for watching and waiting. And when the Day comes they’ll burn you in effigy, and burn your houses and mills, and last of all they’ll burn you. And when you’re swallowed up in fire, on earth, you’ll roar in hell after … ’

He laughed with glee as he saw their faces, and hid his own in his hands. Then he peeped through his fingers, as a child peeps, and that was most horrible of all. Mr Hodgkiss did not touch him. The magistrates sat silent, listening.

‘What do you know about the meetings in the fields at night?’ Low whispered, and giggled to himself as he saw them strain to hear him. ‘What do you know about the secret oaths, eh? Terrible oaths. Oaths that would make a man’s flesh shrivel from his bones if he broke them. What do you know about the night-watchers and the silent thieves? I know them. Nobody sees or speaks of me. They keep their eyes closed, the little ones, hearing me ride by. Have you guessed who I am, your honours? Guess the riddle, do! I’ll give a free pardon, when the Day comes, to any gentleman here who knows the answer.’

They sat, and Mr Hodgkiss stood, mesmerised. The little man’s face expressed half a dozen emotions. He hoped, coaxed, teased, sought out, encouraged and was finally disappointed in them.

‘Look!’ he demanded. ‘Who am I?’

And suddenly he flung out his arms and stiffened his legs, lolled his head to one side, like an effigy, like a scarecrow in a field, crucified.

‘Jack Straw!’ he shrieked, triumphant.

*

‘Of course, I never thought he was Jack Straw at all,’ said Lord Kersall, as they drank mulled claret to restore themselves, for the questioning had been hard and long and brutal. ‘That was the wretch’s way of claiming some beastly distinction for himself.’

‘It was a plaguey rotten experience,’ muttered Francis Clayton.

‘They might only consign him to Bedlam,’ said Brigge aghast.

‘But he had seen something, at some time,’ said the Reverend Robert.

‘Yes, that was quite evident. But, like all the evidence of Jack Straw, it will not stand up in broad daylight.’

‘I tell you one thing, gentlemen,’ said William thoughtfully. “This Jack Straw business is a running sore in our community. And though I am one of the novices here I cannot help wondering why we have not rooted him out in some — what? Ten years?’

Humphrey Kersall gave a short laugh, and helped himself to a biscuit.

‘It is not for want of trying, Mr Howarth. We have employed informers and got nowhere. These poor people stick together, you know. He feeds them, clothes them, helps them. They will not give him away. And then you heard about the secret oaths? It is an organised conspiracy, but conducted in so many different places and at such different times, and so unexpectedly, that we find no pattern to it.’

‘He will be quiet for months,’ said Squire Brigge, ‘and then, just as you think you will hear no more of him — pooft. He’s out again. And he never does the same thing twice together.’

‘Then why do we not ask the Home Secretary for help?’ William asked.

The other magistrates were deeply displeased.

‘Mr Howarth,’ said Humphrey Kersall, as spokesman, ‘only Whigs, or men with some axe to grind who wish to be noticed, tell their troubles to the Home Secretary. We prefer to deal with our own problems, and so prevent interference from London. We do not want state assistance.’

‘Then why not form a paid constabulary?’ William suggested. ‘Young, strong men who have nothing to do but hunt down, and deal with, criminals of every sort. When I see timid, middle-aged citizens creeping to do their turn at patrolling — or, which happens more often, paying someone to do it for them! — I am dismayed, gentlemen. We must fight crime, not hope that it will go away!’