Mistress of Green Tree Mill

by Mistress of Green Tree Mill (retail) (epub)

  ‘My dear girl, I’ve thought about you so often. I’ve been praying for you. Come and sit here beside me.’

  She thought that she’d shed all her tears but they started flowing again as soon as she sat beside the old man. He allowed her to weep and said nothing as he held her hand. When she stopped and wiped her eyes, he leaned forward and tinkled the brass bell on the table at his side. ‘A glass of sherry’s what’s needed now.’

  As she sipped the glass of golden sherry, she poured out her worries and confusions. ‘I don’t want to go back to the Castle Bar. David and Robert will soon be old enough to take over on their own and where will we all go then? My father’s enough to worry about with Chrissy and the new baby.’

  Mr Adams nodded and said, ‘Yes, your father was here last week and he told me that his wife’s not at all well. The doctor’s very worried about her.’

  Lizzie was overcome with remorse for she had been so sunk in her own depression that she’d neglected Chrissy.

  Mr Adams was still talking quietly. ‘… It would be best for you to stay at Lochee Road until you decide about the future.’

  ‘I’d like to have something worthwhile to do. I don’t enjoy housework but I’ve no training in anything except working as a barmaid, and I hated that.’

  ‘You’ve an excellent business brain. That’s very obvious. Perhaps you’d like to start coming to read to me again. I really need you, Lizzie.’

  The idea that someone outside herself needed help made her gather her strength. It was agreed that she’d start her afternoons with Mr Adams once more and when she left Tay Lodge, instead of going straight home she took the tram to Castle Street to see Chrissy.

  The girl’s condition shocked her and it was difficult not to show her worry in her face when she sat at Chrissy’s bedside and pretended to admire the waif-like baby in its beribboned cradle.

  Always pale, Chrissy now seemed bloodless. Always thin, she was skeletal. What was even more upsetting was that she had the same hacking cough as poor Bertha Davidson. Yet though she was so weak, she was more concerned about Lizzie than herself, whispering her sympathy and reassurances. Lizzie felt humbled as she sat listening to the girl. Chrissy was one of the least selfish people she had ever met.

  Before she left she sought out her father who was gaunt and grey-faced too.

  ‘I’d no idea Chrissy was so ill,’ she whispered.

  He shrugged. ‘We didn’t want to worry you. You’ve enough troubles of your own.’

  ‘What does the doctor say?’

  ‘He says she’s dying. We should really keep the baby away from her but she loves it so much that would be cruel. She’s only a few days left, Lizzie. I never realized I’d be so upset. She’s such a grand lassie.’

  Chrissy died, peacefully and without fuss, a week later and Lizzie’s concentration on her own grief was broken by the need to comfort her father, who was devastated by his loss. Chrissy’s brothers managed to avoid paying her dowry at all, arguing that since she was not thirty when she died, she had not inherited and therefore had nothing to bequeath to her husband or two-month-old daughter.

  Lizzie however was outraged at the farmer brothers’ sharp practice and talked about it to Mr Adams.

  ‘It’s hard on the child,’ he said. ‘She should have a claim on her mother’s estate. Tell your father to fight it.’

  ‘He won’t. He’s too broken by Chrissy’s death to worry about anything. He says we’ve to let it go. I think he’s feeling guilty because he married Chrissy for her dowry. He seems to think it’s only right that he’s been cheated out of it.’

  ‘Conscience is a bad thing in matters of business,’ sighed the old man. He was easily tired now and usually fell asleep while Lizzie was reading to him. She felt sure that he only insisted she visit him as a way of giving her money, but when she tackled him on the subject, he denied it.

  ‘I’m eighty-five years old, my dear. I rely on you to remind me that life goes on outside my house. The managers from the mill come down once a week but some of them are almost as old as me – without you, I’d be stranded among old people. Even the servants are all due to be pensioned off any day now. They’re only waiting for me to die before they retire. I mustn’t hang on too long for their sakes, poor things.’

  When he said this, he laughed.

  Next morning Lizzie was wakened early by a sharp hammering at her door. She heard Maggy’s voice interrogating the caller and there was something in the tone of their voices that made her blood freeze. Not more bad news, surely. What could it be now? Pulling on a shawl, she was halfway down the stairs when she met Maggy coming up. It was not her way to beat about the bush.

  ‘That was Mr Adams’ coachman. The old man died in his sleep last night. The maids found him when they took in his morning tea. They thought you ought to know.’

  * * *

  Lizzie had loved and respected Mr Adams since childhood. Though his passing was sad, it was not tragic. She remembered their last conversation and realized that he was ready to go, and to die in his sleep was a blessing for he would have hated to linger in pain and immobility.

  She went into town to tell her father, who she found in company with his brother. They had already heard the news.

  ‘You’ll miss your visits to Tay Lodge, my dear,’ said David, knowing what a refuge the Adams’ home had always been to Lizzie.

  ‘It’s full of grand old furniture, I believe. Have you any idea who’ll inherit? Maybe they’ll sell up,’ said her sharp-eyed uncle, always on the look-out for bargains.

  She bristled. The idea of all the treasures in that lovely house going under the hammer seemed like desecration to her. ‘I’ve no idea who’ll inherit – I think there’s some relatives of Mrs Adams in Glasgow – but whoever it is I hope they have the sense to keep everything at Tay Lodge the way it is now,’ she snapped.

  With Mr Adams dead she had no one to advise her any longer. Her father’s record as a money-maker did not recommend him for the role; George was quite indifferent to money; so she had to do her worrying alone. Her savings, though carefully husbanded, were almost gone and on the day after Mr Adams’ funeral she was sitting at her desk, staring into space, when Maggy brought in a letter.

  Lizzie threw it on the pile of papers before her. ‘Probably a bill,’ she said. There’s nothing for it, Maggy, we’ll have to leave this house. I’ll have to help out at the bar after all.’

  Maggy, fists on hips, said, ‘You don’t need to go on paying me. I could get into the mill with Rosie. She’d speak for me.’

  ‘No, no, don’t go away. I need you to look after Charlie. It’s best if I work.’ Lizzie could not contemplate being shut up day after day with only domestic chores to occupy her.

  ‘Read that letter anyway,’ said Maggy, bustling away. ‘It looks like it’s from a lawyer. A clerk-sort of a fellow brought it.’

  Lizzie picked up the envelope and turned it over apprehensively. She’d had enough of lawyers to last her a lifetime. Sam had left no will, for when he was ill she did not urge him to make one in case he suspected that he would die soon.

  She ripped open the red wax seal and drew the letter from its envelope, reading it slowly and carefully so as to take in each word.

  Then she stood up with the letter in her hand and read it again before collapsing in her chair and, supporting her head on her bent arm, she sobbed like a child. The sounds of crying brought Maggy rushing back in, her face expressing all the concern she felt for Lizzie.

  ‘Oh, what’s wrong? If I’d known it was trouble I wouldn’t have brought it to you,’ she stammered, but Lizzie looked up with the tears running down her cheeks.

  ‘Oh no, it’s not bad news – it’s quite the opposite. Listen…’

  She read the letter aloud and though Maggy listened hard she could only understand parts of it, the whole thing sounded so official.

  ‘A beneficiary? Does that mean that Mr Adams has left you something in his will?’ she inquired.
<
br />   ‘It means exactly that. Oh, God bless him, God bless him. I never expected anything.’

  ‘He’d know that,’ said Maggy.

  * * *

  Going into the centre of the town to see Mr Adams’ lawyer as he had requested was an ordeal for Lizzie. To her surprise, for she used to love going out, the time of mourning spent away from everyone except her family had made her afraid of crowds and bustle, and her heart pounded in panic at the sight of the packed traffic in the main streets. She recoiled in terror from such a press of people but forced herself to walk to the lawyer’s chambers in Reform Street.

  A pleasant man, not a lot older than Lizzie herself, ushered her to a chair with great politeness.

  ‘I understand that you’ve been recently widowed, Mrs Kinge, and that your family have suffered another bereavement as well. I hope my request for this meeting didn’t come at an inconvenient time.’

  She folded her black-gloved hands in her lap. ‘It’s not possible to stay in seclusion for ever. There’s a lot to be done…’

  ‘Quite,’ said the lawyer, looking at the papers in front of him. ‘Now to business. Mr Adams was very fond of your family, but particularly of you. He’s left small legacies to your father and your brother George but to you he left Green Tree Mill and his house Tay Lodge.’

  The young woman did not register any emotion. She stared at him blankly as if she had not heard him so he said it again: ‘Mr Adams has left you Green Tree Mill and Tay Lodge.’

  She nodded like someone in a dream but still remained silent. He thought that she was disappointed with her legacy so he started to explain, ‘It’s not a big mill and it’s not been making much of a profit recently but that’s because Mr Adams lost heart after his daughter was killed and his wife died. It’s still a good proposition, however, and there are other mill owners who would be glad to snap it up. I’ve had approaches, actually.

  ‘As for Tay Lodge, it’s a very valuable property and well furnished – you get everything in it as well, by the way.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘but would you mind repeating that – what you said in the beginning, I mean. What did Mr Adams leave me?’

  Slightly exasperated, he leaned forward, talking slowly as if to someone of impaired intelligence. ‘He – left – you – Green – Tree – Mill – and Tay – Lodge…’

  Her eyes seemed to flash green fire at him. New resolution came into her face and she straightened, leaning back slightly in the chair as she did so. The lawyer received the impression that she gained a few inches in height.

  ‘I understand. Go on,’ she told him in a much firmer voice.

  ‘As I said, the mill’s turnover is low but I’ve had several offers to purchase it. I could advise you on which to accept, if you wanted.’

  Lizzie was not normally an impulsive woman. She liked to think out the moves in her life and hated to be taken by surprise, but at that moment she acted without premeditation.

  ‘I won’t be selling the mill,’ she said.

  He looked at her with surprise. ‘You mean you prefer to discuss it with your own legal adviser?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, I trust your judgement. I’m sure it’s excellent. It’s just that I don’t want to sell Mr Adams’ mill to one of his business rivals. I’m sure he wouldn’t want me to. He left me the mill for a reason. I think he meant me to run it.’

  The lawyer was aghast. ‘But women – ladies – don’t run mills. There are some women shareholders, but no managers… no real directors…’

  ‘The work force is nearly all women,’ offered Lizzie, thinking of the armies of females who flooded through the mill gates in Dundee every day.

  ‘The work force, yes,’ agreed the lawyer, ‘but as far as I know there’s not a woman on the board of any mill.’

  ‘Then it’s about time there was one,’ said Lizzie firmly. ‘I’ve been given a chance by Mr Adams and I’m going to take it. Good day and thank you. Oh, thank you very much.’

  Chapter 15

  Lizzie Kinge sat in a hansom cab with her hands folded over the top of her parasol handle and stared out of the window at the big jute mills belching smoke from tall chimneys like Italian campaniles as the horse toiled up the hill towards Green Tree.

  By Dundee standards her new possession was small, less than half an acre in area on top of a hill at the back of Dens Road. It was dwarfed by the huge concerns that sprawled over acre after acre nearby but as she gazed towards it, she felt a rush of affection for Green Tree Mill which looked cosy, almost homely. It was basically a huddle of double-storeyed grey stone sheds, one of them topped by a little stump-like chimney.

  Her cab stopped at the tiny gatehouse beside the entrance, which was firmly closed by a gate of wrought iron decorated in the middle with a design of a tree.

  The mill had been named after a huge oak tree that used to grow in the middle of the yard but it had been felled long ago and only a circle of earth surrounded by blocks of stone showed where it had once flourished.

  The gatekeeper came out of his house and asked the cabbie, ‘What’s your business?’

  A flourish of the whip indicated Lizzie in the back. ‘Lady wants to see the manager.’

  The cab door was opened and a red face peered in. ‘What’s your business, ma’am?’

  She turned her head and stared hard at him. ‘My name is Mrs Kinge and I’ve come to see my mill.’

  They had not expected her. Like the lawyer, the administrative staff were sure Mr Adams’ heiress would sell her inheritance as soon as possible. The flustered doorkeeper swung open the gate and ran as fast as he could go to the manager’s office to break the news.

  ‘That wimmen’s here. The yin old Mr Adams left the mill to. She’s coming in noo.’

  Lizzie had dressed with care for her first visit, taking a long time over her toilette. When she was finished she had turned slowly before Maggy and asked, ‘Do I look like a mill owner?’

  Maggy clasped her hands as she eyed the slim figure in the black costume of finest barathea and the immense, black-plumed hat. ‘You look like the owner of the hale of Dundee,’ she assured Lizzie.

  The memory of that commendation gave her confidence as she alighted from her cab, twitched her skirts into place and sailed into the office, pretending not to notice the astonished faces of the male clerks as they watched her progress through the ranks of their desks. From the corner of her eye she saw her brother. As she drew level with him, he dropped his head and pretended to be writing busily.

  When the family first heard the news about Lizzie’s magnificent legacy, George had surprised her by assuming that she would sell at once. When she told him that was not her intention, he had been angry.

  ‘But you can’t run Green Tree,’ he said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘No one’ll listen to you. You’re a woman.’

  ‘Let’s tell the truth. You don’t relish working for me,’ she spat back and they had quarrelled really bitterly for the first time in their lives. Now as she passed George, she did not pause.

  The manager, Mr Richards, who had seen her on the day she visited Green Tree about George’s original appointment, was waiting at his office door and he seemed surprised that she was alone.

  ‘Your father didn’t come with you?’

  She looked levelly at him. ‘My father has his own business affairs to deal with.’ Her tone said very clearly that Green Tree was her affair and no one else’s. David had offered to accompany her but she turned him down. She felt as superstitious about him as a business partner as a sailor would be about taking a clergyman on a fishing voyage.

  The news of her arrival spread quickly and the senior employees, all men, came crowding into the office to meet her: the chief accountant, the mill overseer Mr Bateson, the head foreman, and Mr Adams’ secretary whose name was Argyll. Somehow she knew he was the most hostile though he smiled at her ingratiatingly.

  As they shook her hand she noted the expressions in their eyes
. Some of them were sceptical; some amused. To her chagrin she realized that none of the men took her seriously. They all thought she was play-acting, that she’d run the mill for a little while but in the end would sell up and retire to embroidery and good works.

  She stiffened her back and silently promised them: Just you wait and see.

  When the first introductions were over she was taken into the counting house and presented to the clerks. George was in the front row of desks and she could see from his face that he was greatly embarrassed. She did not seek him out as she smiled at the curious faces but favoured him with the same bland expression that she bestowed on all the others.

  That ordeal over she was ushered back into what the managers called ‘Mr Adams’ office’. Though the old man had not been in the mill for years it was kept like a shrine with his leather-topped desk in the window and his pens lying on the blotter beside his seal and a pair of spare gold-rimmed spectacles. Lizzie fingered them thoughtfully as she gazed at two large oil portraits that dominated the walls. One was of Mr Adams himself when young and the other was obviously his father, for the sitter showed a strong resemblance to her old friend. In the middle of the floor was an enormous table with eight high-backed chairs round it.

  Argyll, the secretary, opened a cupboard and brought out a decanter of sherry but Lizzie held up her hand and said, ‘I don’t want to waste time on that. I’d rather see round my mill. Where will we start, gentlemen?’

  Men clustered round her like a bodyguard as she stepped into the big cobbled courtyard and stared up at her mill buildings where the real work was done. In the windows that looked over the yard she could see the clustered faces of the women workers.

  ‘How many people are employed here?’ she asked.