The Iron Master (51 page)

Now Mr Pacey was up to speak for the defence, and had evidently found the Honourable Mr Runciman a great jester. What a storm in a teacup he had raised! What mountains he had made from honest mole-hills! And piece by piece he stuck the statue of Charlotte Longe together again, laughing a little at ‘these gross exaggerations’ of her library and her character, but careful not to rouse his client’s argumentative nature; depicting her somewhat as Ambrose had all those years ago, and for the same good reason — a learned, spinsterish lady with a strong sense of duty towards the less fortunate. He did very well indeed: not too much, not too little. And sat down again.

Jack’s lawyer, Mr Hazard, was of a different kidney, being much like his client but clever enough to stay upon the right side of society and its laws. He was gaining a tremendous reputation for defending Luddites locally, and he did Jack proud. He swept away all notions of ravening wolves and rearing snakes as irrelevant rubbish. He went to the heart of the matter. He described the Society of the Red Rose as Charlotte and Jack had known and intended it. Perhaps he erred this side of softness, but it was well done. And he thrust the first wedge in the prosecution’s argument, for they intended to mix and judge the whole boiling of prisoners together, whereas Mr Hazard wanted the activities of Charlotte and Jack and the Red Rose to be separate from the Wyndendale Rising. Again and again in the week of the trials, he brought the argument back to this point. Hal Middleton was saved by him, and so was Dr Wilkins: one to be transported for life, the other to a term of imprisonment: they would have been hanged else.

The day dragged on. The court recessed for necessary reasons. Charlotte and Jack could eat nothing, but they drank a little wine and water. The arguments went back and forth. And every time a counsel for the prosecution rose, Charlotte felt as though a hand had thrown mud into her face and on her clothes. She saw her mother wince and whiten, saw William’s lips compress into a line of distaste, and heard Ambrose cry, ‘Shame!’ from the side of the court. She knew that all Wynden-dale would read of this, and that any who had the least cause to envy the Howard’s could now lambast them. The mud spread and spattered. Mr Pacey was up again, protesting, and suddenly Charlotte thought to herself, ‘Why am I here?’ She saw the Honourable Mr Runciman drinking his wine, unconcerned, viewing his colleague’s performance with the appreciation one might bestow upon a particularly fine cock in a particularly vicious cock-fight. She saw the faces of the crowd, grinning, gaping. She saw the bitterness in Jack’s eyes.

Charlotte cried, ‘Stop!’ and struck the top rail of the dock. ‘Stop!’ she cried, and struck the rail with her chained hands.

The audience gave her their hushed attention, obedient to drama. The counsel for the prosecution sat aghast. The judges all peered and frowned. Mr Pacey covered his eyes. But Dorcas sat very upright and willed her daughter to look in her direction, and nodded twice, thrice when she did.

‘Order! Order in court!’

‘Sit down, Mrs Longe!’ said one of the judges.

‘No, I will not. I will not. Take our lives if you must, prove that we have unwittingly been used for wrongful purposes, say if it pleases you that you abhor our ideals, detest our convictions. That would be fair enough. But, in the name of that justice which you represent, do not obscenely revile us like fish-wives in the street … ’

The courtroom now divided into two factions: players and spectators, the players bent on silencing Charlotte, and the spectators bent on hearing her.

‘Order! Order! Order!’

‘Let her have her say! You’ve been jawing long enough!’

‘I shall clear the courtroom!’

‘Oh, shurrup!’ cried one big woman who was eating an apple, and she threw the rest of the fruit at the Honourable Mr Runciman and hit him on the chin, whereupon the whole audience fell about with laughter.

Still Charlotte spoke out, as loud and clear as she could, pushing away those who would try to silence her.

‘There are human lives at stake and you play games among yourselves. What do you care for any of us more than your fees are worth? You should be humbler, truer, more compassionate in your great station … ’

‘Lift her bodily, and remove her from the courtroom!’ one judge ordered.

‘You pray of morality!’ she cried, above the heads of the crowd. ‘Why, you have not the morality of swine at the trough … ’

‘That’s right, love, you give it to em!’ shouted the big woman, and a constable pushed his way through the throng to reach her.

‘You cannot try me or Jack Ackroyd! You are not fit to judge. You are not to fit to judge … ’

The crowd took up the chant and roared it at the bench.

‘Not — fit — to — judge!’

‘Clear the court!’

Mr Pacey removed his hand from his eyes. He turned round to William.

He said, ‘She has done more harm that I should have supposed possible.’

William replied, tight-lipped, ‘Yet she had a point there, Mr Pacey.’

‘Yes, sir, but we are not concerned with truth and justice. We are trying criminal cases. Mrs Longe never seemed able to see the difference!’

An hour later the Honourable Mr Runciman rose in a subdued courtroom. Charlotte was back in the dock, and they had fastened leg-irons on her. Someone had brought Jack a chair, since he was in considerable pain with his rheumatic hip and knee. Now, late in the afternoon, he shuffled the chair a little nearer to Charlotte and endeavoured to comfort her with closeness.

‘Well, well, well,’ said Mr Runciman in dulcet tones. ‘I feel we have had an excellent example of what Mrs Longe can do by way of raising a riot! Perhaps we should ask Mr Ackroyd to oblige us as well, and then we could take a verdict and go home to our suppers with a good conscience!’

The crowd laughed moderately. Not too much, because there was something about Mr Runciman that warned them to behave themselves, or perhaps they might find themselves in leg-irons with a bruised face, too. But Dorcas cried softly into her handkerchief, knowing that Charlotte could not be helped, and after a while William leaned forward and held a whispered conversation with Mr Pacey, who nodded. Then the ironmaster assisted his mother to rise, and they began as unobtrusively as possible to make their way out of the room. There was nothing more to stay for, except the verdicts, and those were almost certain. Someone was calling a witness back to the stand, there was a lull in the proceedings. As they passed the dock on Charlotte’s side she looked down pitifully and they walked as slowly as they could.

‘God bless you, love,’ Dorcas whispered as they passed.

William nodded, and touched Charlotte’s arm. Then he moved in front of his mother so that she should not see the leg-irons, and saw them very clearly himself, as though they were ten times life-size. On the thickest part of the ring was stamped the two-headed mark of Belbrook.

‘Transportation for seven years,’ said Mr Pacey, and did not know whether he would be praised or blamed for it. ‘I feared a sentence of hanging, followed by a pardon, and commuted to transportation for life, myself!’

Dorcas was lying in the Church Street drawing-room upon a day-couch, and she looked to her son for an answer.

‘Could we not plead against it, Mr Pacey?’

‘My dear sir, after such an exhibition as we had today? Rather thank God for it. Seven years is not too bad. People do return.’

‘But Charlotte was never robust,’ said Dorcas faintly. ‘We had to send her to Millbridge in the end. Because of her lungs.’

Neither man knew what to say.

‘Shall we see her before she goes, sir?’ Dorcas asked.

‘Oh yes, madam. That can certainly be arranged.’

‘And what of Mr Ackroyd?’ William enquired, as he saw the lawyer to the door himself.

‘Oh, to be hanged, of course. I never expected any other outcome.’

‘When, sir?’

‘It will take a month or so for the death-sentence to be confirmed. Shall you be coming up for it?’ Conversationally.

*

Mother and daughter sat side by side, each grieving for the other.

Then Dorcas said, almost in her normal voice, ‘Well, we have not all the time in the world, and there is much to be said. I have been thinking, Charlotte, about your voyage and so forth … ’

As though her daughter were about to take the boat for Calais.

‘ … of course, I know where Australia is on the globe, and you may find the climate trying at first. So I have fetched you my own medicine-chest. You and William may mock at me, but I have been proved right over and over again … ’

It was wonderful, William thought, how she donned this old self of hers to comfort Charlotte, when she had scarcely been able to rise from her couch the day before.

Charlotte laughed somewhat shakily. The leg-irons shamed her, made her move awkwardly. Her bruised cheek gave her a defenceless air. William’s money could not assuage these things, but what he could do for her he would, right up to the moment of sailing.

‘And, though you do not go to church as often as you did,’ said Dorcas gently, ‘I had thought that you would like to have my Bible and my prayer-book by you. For comfort.’

Then Charlotte began to cry silently and to hold out her chained hands as if to say, ‘I cannot help it!’ And Dorcas bent and cradled Charlotte’s head against her shoulder, and hushed her as she used to do when Charlotte was a little girl, and spoke words of hope. While William suffered for them both.

‘Now you will do very well. An end is always a new beginning. And you have great strength, Charlotte. Let us look upon the brighter side,’ said Dorcas, wondering what side that might be. ‘You will be needed there, my love. Do not tell me, after that
exhibition’
— she used Mr Pacey’s word, but ascribed it to the opposition — ‘of so-called justice, that there are not others like you. Yes, I see it all,’ she said very cheerfully. ‘There is a purpose to everything. Even to our trouble of the moment.’

She stroked Charlotte’s hair abstractedly. William saw that her strength was failing.

‘Mamma,’ he said softly, ‘go and sit outside where it is quiet. For a few minutes. Just while I tell Charlotte our arrangements for her.’

He offered her his arm, and she rose and went with him like a sleep-walker, while Charlotte dried her eyes on her sleeve.

‘She should not have come, Willie,’ she said.

‘No. But we could not dissuade her.’

Charlotte said, looking at her chains, ‘I have enough upon my conscience, without her death.’

He replied awkwardly, ‘It is not as bad as that.’

But Dorcas, sitting in the jailer’s chair by the door, said to him, ‘Her hair is grown quite grey. I believe I have had enough of trouble. We shall not see each other again. At least, not in this cruel world.’

Death of a Great Lady

Thirty

William had kept the carriage windows dosed as they came through Wyndendale, for Dorcas murmured that the smell of sulphur made her sick and faint. But as they drove through the gateway of Kingwood Hall the trees closed overhead, bringing a dark and spicy perfume to revive her, deadening the roar of Snape. The night was beautiful, warns from the garnered day, dense with dew. The ironmaster stepped out into a moonlit garden under a heaven of stars.

‘We are home, Mamma,’ said William gently, holding out his hand.

Then he saw by her face, small and white and scared, that she had not the strength to rise from her seat. So he half-carried her, and she felt no heavier than a child in his arms.

His household began to revolve around him. Servants fetched their baggage out, took the coach and horses to the stables, came unobtrusively to help their master. Zelah was by his side now: a noiseless step, a kiss upon his cheek. His daughters surrounded him, relieved to see the travellers returned, murmuring greetings, looking compassionately at his light burden.

‘Thy room is prepared for thee, Mrs Dorcas,’ said Zelah, and placed a warm white hand upon those two small cold ones. ‘Thee needs a bowl of hot soup and a toast’

‘Where have you brought me?’ Dorcas cried, agitated. ‘I must go home, at once. Ned will be waiting all this while.’

‘Bring her upstairs, love,’ said Zelah. ‘Tibby and Kitty, I shall need thee to help me with Grandmama. Nancy and Livvy, sit with thy father while he eats. Sophie and Molly, thee must go to bed now.’

‘What a lot of children,’ Dorcas whispered to herself. ‘Where have they all come from?’

She let her hand trail on the banister, wondering. She did not know now who carried her, nor the woman at his side.

‘But they are being very kind to me,’ said Dorcas. ‘I shall tell Ned that he need not have worried.’ Then she remembered.

‘No, no,’ she cried, quite strongly. ‘You must take me to Kit’s Hill. Ned will be riding along the road, looking for me in the dark.’

‘We shall send for him to come here,’ said Zelah soothing her.

Dorcas began to cry weakly: a stranger in a strange place.

‘Please to allow me to go home,’ she begged. ‘It is very late, and I have been away such a while.’

‘God help me,’ said William, from the bottom of his heart. ‘I do not think I can bear more.’

‘Nay, thee must,’ Zelah answered sadly. ‘Here, lay her down and go to thy supper, love. Then thee can come and see her later, when she is settled.’

‘I do not know you,’ Dorcas cried in terror. ‘Where have you brought me?’

‘Mrs Dorcas,’ said Zelah, sitting by her, giving her hands a friendly little shake, ‘it is thy daughter, Zelah. We have brought thee here to rest. Thou halt had a long, hard journey.’

‘My daughter?’ murmured Dorcas.

An image of Charlotte’s ash-grey head lay against her shoulder. She stroked the hair softly, grieving over it. Then in a second, past and present and future merged. She received the full force of Charlotte’s plight in one tremendous blow, and wailed like a child who is utterly lost.

‘Oh, I shall die,’ cried Dorcas.

*

‘I do not practise medicine these days,’ said Matthew Standish truculently to William, ‘but I have come with my nephew in a personal capacity. Miss Dorcas is an old friend of mine. Indeed she is the only friend. For we are both seven-and-seventy years of age, and all the rest are gone.’

So he took his rheumatism painfully up the wide staircase, making crooked progress with the aid of his stick. And his nephew followed him into the large light room where Dorcas lay upon a hill of pillows.

‘Well, do your duty, sir!’ he ordered Hamish, who was hanging courteously back. ‘I shall not be here for ever, you know. You must learn to conduct your practice by yourself!’

Which Hamish would have been very glad to do, but could not say so. He examined Dorcas gently and carefully, which she allowed as being a necessary nuisance. Then he shrugged slightly, turning to his uncle for advice. But Matthew Standish did not trouble with the body. He came forward and looked into her eyes, to discern the temper of the spirit, and asked her how she was.

‘I am pretty well this morning, sir,’ Dorcas answered, ‘but I do not wish to make an effort.’

‘Why should you, ma’am?’ said Matthew kindly. ‘Rest as much as you can.’

‘So you are not going to bleed me, nor set leeches on me, nor cauterise me, nor blister me, sir?’ she asked anxiously.

‘No, no. There is no need of that. No need of anything. A little wine. A light diet. A sleep when you feel tired.’

‘I am glad of that,’ said Dorcas to herself, smoothing the sheet beneath her fingers, ‘for I have not the strength to endure it, and I should not like to die unseemly.’

Matthew Standish regarded her sombrely. His hands, folded upon the carved head of his stick, were cruelly knobbed.

Dorcas’s attention wandered. She said, ‘I should like to consult you as to Charlotte’s health, sir. You was always concerned for her lungs. She is sailing to the other side of the world, you know.’

‘Oh, then she is in the best possible case,’ said the old doctor in a careless tone. ‘A voyage to a warmer climate. Sea air and sunshine. I would recommend that above all things.’

Dorcas brightened. Matthew Standish bent his head.

‘Your children will take care of themselves now, ma’am,’ he said. ‘You have done your duty!’ And he lifted the hand which lay so lightly on the coverlet, and kissed it in a courtly fashion. ‘Good-day to you, Miss Dorcas,’ he said.

*

Dick Howarth and his family drove up in the farm wagon, since there was nothing else at Kit’s Hill big enough to hold them all. And they trod softly along the corridor and stood outside her door with reverence.

The woeful face of the little maid who preceded them looked pleasantly familiar.

‘Now you’re a Bowker, if ever I saw one!’ said Dick, heartened by this homely fact in the midst of splendour and death. ‘Yes sir, please sir. Letty Bowker.’

So Dick gave her sixpence, and then wondered if he had done right.

There was a movement among the family as the Howard’s entered. They came forward to press Dick’s hand or kiss his cheek, to nod a welcome and whisper a condolence. They were all there: William and Zelah and the girls, Ambrose Longe, Cicely and Jarvis Pole and their brood. All there except Charlotte.

‘We come as soon as you sent word,’ Dick said hoarsely, ‘but it’s allus the same. Them as lives nearest gets there last.’

They were a handsome crowd of people, composed in manner, elegantly dressed. From the grave grandeur of the iron-master to the small oval face of Dorcas Pole, they bore the marks of close relationship. Standing before them, his hat still clutched in his hands, Dick Howarth seemed a person apart: an honest yeoman, some seven-and-thirty years of age, sturdily built, his skin reddened by all weathers. He looked so simple, and yet he subtly perceived in Zelah the fatigue of long nursing.

They cleared a place for him by the bed, and suddenly all the faces and soft sounds receded, leaving only one face, one quiet drawing of breath.

Propped high against the white pillows, hands folded, eyes closed, Dorcas was dying as she had lived, in an orderly fashion. Zelah had brushed her hair and dressed it neatly under her best starched cap. There was lace on the cap, lace on the neck and cuffs of her best nightgown. But Dick noticed none of these fineries. He saw that she held her mouth as though it had been hurt, that there was a pucker of concern on her forehead, an air of loss, that now and again she gave the softest of moans as though she remembered something best forgotten.

‘Come and sit by her, Dick,’ said Zelah kindly. ‘She will wake in a while. She talks quite freely and coherently. Then sleeps a little. Then talks again. It has been so for days. She will be glad to see thee.’

The children stood solemnly watching.

‘Has she asked for me? I haven’t been so lucky, the times I called,’ said Dick, ‘but you did tell her I come, didn’t you?’

‘Indeed we did, and she was glad of it, but she is something muddled as to people and time,’ said the ironmaster, and he spoke lovingly of her. ‘She has advised us all. And Mr Hurst has nearly slept here the last week! But her Will has become confused with that of Great-aunt Wilde, and the one my father wrote. So this morning she decided that you should inherit Kit’s Hill, and I should have a thousand pounds to buy Belbrook!’

They sat together at their mother’s side, and watched the coming and going of breath.

‘And she has tied up my mother’s annuity so that my father shall not draw the capital,’ said Ambrose wryly.

He was very pale and looked far older than his years. There was in him a sternness of purpose, a depth of grief, which had never been called from Toby.

‘Has she been very poorly-like?’ Dick asked, nodding towards the composed face. ‘She were weak when I saw her a-Wednesday, but not what I’d call poorly.’

‘She is in no pain, thank heaven,’ William answered, ‘but sometimes restless and ill at ease, and exceedingly difficult to nurse.’

‘Aye,’ said Dick, understanding. ‘She would be. She was allus fond of her own road! But do you mind how she nursed our Betty, all them years since? Day and night. Night and day. All through that summer and well into Martinmas.’

‘Why, you could have been no more than five at the time!’

‘Aye, but I remember all about it, our Will. You was away in Birmingham until the last. They sent our Charlotte to stay with Aunt Phoebe at the Rectory, and they parcelled me off to Windygate for a while. Then they fetched us back at the end. It were foggy and wet. I remember my father holding me up to say goodbye to Betty, and she said I’d been a good lad … ’

They sat together in harmony, as they had not sat since they were young, while Dorcas paused and trembled upon the final threshold. The pale forehead puckered, the lips moved, the breath came short and quick.

‘She is fretting again,’ said William, and stroked her hand. ‘What is she saying?’

A dry sob shook Dorcas. She moved her head from side to side as if to escape from something.

‘Eh, why must it be so hard for her?’ said Dick, and he cupped Dorcas’s fluttering fingers and stilled them in his warm clasp.

‘Now then, now then,’ he soothed, as he would comfort a child in a nightmare. ‘What’s to do, my
lass
?
’

Her eyes opened at the sound of his voice. She was with them again. They felt her presence as a physical shock of recognition in the room. It was miraculous. To have been so poor, so harassed and bonded. Then, in a moment, to have put aside dying as though it were a garment she chose not to wear. Her voice was weary but distinct.

‘Why have you been so long?’ she asked the familiar face.

He answered as his father would have done, directly and to the point.

‘It’s a fair way between here and Kit’s Hill, tha knows. I come as soon as I could.’

‘And you will take me back there before dark, will you not?’ she asked anxiously.

‘Aye, never fear,’ said Dick, smiling. ‘I’ll take thee home.’

Reassured, she looked upon the assembly. Children, grand-children, great-grandchildren and old servants. And they moved closer to make their farewells.

She strove to raise herself, saying, ‘Fetch my cloak, Nellie, if you please!’ Then smiled on Dick alone. ‘Wait for me,’ she said. ‘I shall be with you in a moment.’

And was gone.