by Tim Jeal
As soon as Magnus had mounted he started the horse at a brisk trot. Braithwaite ran beside him.
‘I must entreat you to stop. We must escort you.’
With a gesture in the direction of the burnt out omnibuses, Crawford shook his head and, giving his horse a light flick with his cane, cantered into the darkness.
*
After the chaos of the past hour, the profound silence of the road ahead seemed strange to Magnus, and he had trouble getting used to the darkness now that the blazing vehicles were out of sight. At the first crossroads he turned his horse to the right and struck out across country. Earlier there had been clouds, but now the stars shone brightly from a clear frosty sky. In the distance he could make out well-remembered landmarks: the spire of Trawden church sharp against the skyline, the massive barn at Blayshaw Farm, and behind it the dark line of woods skirting the rugged moorland beyond. The windows of isolated cottages glowed palely with the light of smoking mutton-dips and rush tapers within. From across the fields he heard a shepherd’s dog barking. The horse’s hoofs thudded satisfyingly on the grassy track. But, though Magnus had not been in this once familiar country for almost seven years, he felt no emotion: all that had been spent on the station road. On his hands he was aware of the slight tackiness of dry blood. The bizarre coincidence of the riot with his return and the shock of hearing that George Braithwaite had proposed to Catherine, had left Magnus distraught and dazed.
His sister was the only member of his family for whom he felt real love, and it hurt him deeply to suspect that she might be considering marrying solely for convenience, even if thereby escaping a restricted life of dependence on her family. He hated this suspicion but, because she had not refused George outright, could not rid himself of it. He had been away too long to be sure that the girl he had known had not changed. Another thought haunted him: his powerful premonition of devastating violence on polling day. The two preoccupations seemed at first quite separate, and yet he could not help their merging in his mind. He was struck by the strange fact that the father of the man whom his sister might marry, also held the key to the wider problems in the town.
Magnus reined in his horse and, while the animal pawed fretfully at the ground, sat motionless, deep in thought. Action in one sphere might influence events in the other. Hadn’t he known enough corruption in Ceylon to be able to sniff out the same infection in Rigton Bridge? His hatred of the Braithwaites was a longstanding one. A moment later he was trembling with excitement. If he could prove Joseph guilty of electoral corruption – and few elections were free of bribery – he could defeat not only George’s marriage plans but also his father’s political ambitions. Nor could he be accused of personal spite: if Braithwaite was forced to stand down and abandon his candidature there would be no bloodshed on polling day, and Catherine would be saved a wretched and loveless marriage, since she would never marry into a family dishonoured by fraudulence. The perfect solution: private and public disaster averted by the same means.
The simplicity of the idea astounded and yet dismayed Magnus. There would be much he would never be able to find out. He felt suddenly despondent. Joseph Braithwaite would know how to cover his tracks. Then Magnus smiled. The artist. Of course. And the man had clearly known far more than he had been prepared to say. He had been evasive, certainly, but there had been an openness about him too: something very appealing. Magnus could not quite put his finger on it, but he had an intuitive hunch that, if faced with a clear-cut moral decision, Strickland would side with the angels. He was amused by his memory of the young man’s righteous remarks about baronets’ sons not understanding the vulnerable position of those without means. If he only knew my real situation, thought Magnus, my God if he only knew. But he will soon enough, if I need him; he will then.
Soon Magnus came to a decision not to return to Leaholme Hall that evening but to spend the night in Rigton Bridge. It would be better not to see Catherine until he had first made some inquiries in town. After so many years a day would be forgiven, and he had only specified the week during which he could be expected. Several hours before Magnus had felt close to despair; he had been returning home not just to see his brother and sister but because he could think of nowhere else to go; now matters seemed quite different. Old Braithwaite would be a formidable adversary, but there was always great consolation in having nothing to lose. The cold air stung Magnus’s hands and face as he rode, but he did not care. A rabbit crossed the track in front of him; in the distance he could see the lights of Rigton Bridge.
*
As he rode beside George, Tom Strickland made no attempts at conversation. Braithwaite’s morose silence suited him. If it persisted he might never have to explain why he had been at the station; if George were to ask, he had decided to fob him off with flattery about having been interested in his yeomanry duties, but reluctant to mention this in case George had felt imposed upon. In fact Tom was confident that George’s only wish would be to forget the events of the past few hours as swiftly as he knew how, and in any case Tom was still too disconcerted by his conversation with Crawford to give much thought to George.
While remaining as certain as ever he had been that it was harder to paint, with even average competence, than to perform the most exacting military duty, Tom could not help feeling that by being unforthcoming with Magnus, he had missed an opportunity – worse still that, where an important principle had been involved, he had let himself down. He was not proud to be working for Joseph Braithwaite, whom he knew to be ruthless and unscrupulous, and this increased his discomfort. Only when Tom thought of the work he would be doing in a few months’ time, while living on Braithwaite’s money, did his conscience disturb him less. He had a duty – as onerous as any military one and more compelling, because self-imposed – to convey his feelings in paint. There was nothing intellectual about it; he felt it as an emotional and intuitive necessity.
In the past year, without an adequate income, he had been constantly diverted and debilitated by the struggle to survive. Endless interruptions caused by the need to earn a few pounds, had made him almost despair of ever having a long enough period to mount a concentrated attack on particular problems which he had so far failed to solve: not just technicalities involving light and mass, but a way to make others see things through his eyes. He remembered the individuality of the men on the platform and yet their anonymity. To convey the tragedy of that paradox … that was something to be dreamed about. His recent failures had left him afraid that he had been trying to attain standards beyond his abilities, and this had terrified him. When his work had been rejected not just by the Academy and the British Institution, but by the lesser private galleries too, he had found it hard to produce anything. His sustaining hope had been then, and was still, that with the fair chance which a modest level of security would bring, he would be able to confront his terror of failure and prove that his faith in himself was grounded upon solid rock.
If George Braithwaite should say disparaging things about Crawford, Tom knew that he would not contradict him; if need be, he would add criticisms of his own. Joseph Braithwaite’s patronage meant more to him than money – far more. If he succeeded in securing Lord Goodchild’s commission too, he would have his long-awaited chance within sight. Nobody could divert me then, he told himself, not Crawford nor an army of such men.
Soon they were crossing the iron bridge over the river, the horses’ hoofs ringing out on the macadam. Tom clenched his teeth. A man in the ‘fly’ had started to scream; the agony of the sound mocked by its echo returning from the black cliff-like walls of the mills on the far shore.
2
The elaborate wrought-iron gates with their tall flanking piers and heraldic griffins lay behind him and, ahead, the drive described a gentle curve across a mile of level parkland. Driving the Braithwaites’ new dog-cart with its high red wheels and wasp-like body, Tom Strickland smiled to himself as he gained his first sight of the honey-coloured stone of the east front of Ha
nley Park.
In the centre a fine portico – four slender Corinthian columns supporting a pediment – was crowned by a statue of Juno or Diana, and on each side, symmetrical wings, in the same neo-Palladian style, were topped with an elegant balustrade, its limits at each end marked by massive stone urns. The peaceful park and the formal grace of this classical building, glowing in the pale morning sunshine, contrasted so strangely with the industrial town five miles away that Tom, in spite of being nervous and very well aware of the purpose of his visit, could not escape a powerful sense of unreality – as though he were driving towards no real house, but through the frame of an eighteenth century painting into another world: an impression enhanced by the ornamental lake to his right and the green dome of a temple, glimpsed through the bare branches of a screen of beech trees.
If Tom had once been tempted to suppose that the elegant spaciousness of such surroundings must produce a corresponding self-development in their possessors, George Braithwaite had done his best to disabuse him of the idea. Lord Goodchild, George had assured Tom, would neither humiliate him with educated talk and scintillating wit, nor even shock him with refined scandal – his lordship’s pleasures, as befitted one of the leading sportsmen of the age, being entirely physical. A year ago, on a snow-covered road, he had beaten Lord Shrewsbury’s four-in-hand team, driving twenty miles in less than an hour. In his youth, it was said that he had been able to give any pugilist in the country a good fight, and had often amused himself by taking friends to pot-houses in London’s dockland and starting brawls. Marriage had mellowed him somewhat, but George had relished telling Tom that Goodchild still enjoyed heavy gambling, liaisons with married women and riding in steeplechases.
On the subject of Lady Goodchild, George had been less forthcoming. That her reputation as a beauty was not exaggerated, he had admitted but had then confessed his failure to discover any redeeming qualities to offset her natural coldness and arrogance – unless a mordantly scathing sense of humour could be said to be a redeeming quality. George had made it clear to Tom that, although his father’s recommendation to Lord Goodchild would be enough to persuade his lordship to commission a portrait, the final decision would still lie with her ladyship. If she took it into her head to find Tom commonplace or tiresome, there would be no commission, and a lady, who had been known to throw boot-jacks at her lady’s maid and to grind a miniature of her mother-in-law under her heel in front of numerous spectators, was not somebody who could be relied upon to be charitable.
Because his future hopes so much depended upon this commission, Tom was naturally depressed by this description, and his despondency was the greater for having allowed himself to imagine aristocratic generosity to rival Lady Holland’s championing of the young Watts; but he had by no means abandoned hope of success. His best frock coat might be shabby and his flowing necktie conceal a shirt with similar shortcomings, but he had had ample proof in the past of being attractive to women. While the thought of any close relationship with Lady Goodchild did not enter his mind, he was comforted to know that his mistress, one of the leading singers in London’s music halls, cared a great deal more for him than he did for her, and this in spite of propositions from numerous affluent and eminent men.
While many young men strained to appear mature men of the world – often in consequence merely seeming bored and vapid – Tom did not try to emulate anybody. Being shy by nature, any attempts to seem nonchalant and loftily self-confident would in any case have been hopeless. In fact his unaffected enthusiasm and unfeigned reticence usually achieved better results. Since he rarely liked people who pretended to great refinement, he tried to avoid similar excesses of gentility; but his desire to please did sometimes lead him to be too zealously polite, and a lot of his hesitance stemmed from the basic conflict between this eagerness to please and an equally strong inclination to be honest. This ambiguity, although he did not know it, gave his modest and deferential manner a disconcertingly ironic edge, especially when he occasionally slipped an entirely candid remark into an otherwise blandly tactful conversation. Nor could he from time to time help laughing when he had been listening with great seriousness to a lengthy monologue which he secretly viewed as anything but serious. After such behaviour he was usually far more embarrassed and confused than the affronted person.
But laughter was very far from his mind as he approached the broad steps under the portico, having left his vehicle in the stables. He had never met anybody of Lord Goodchild’s rank and was not unaware of the fact that he had been asked to call in the morning, a time usually reserved for tradesmen – friends and acquaintances generally calling in the afternoon. Under the tall Corinthian columns it was some consolation to him to imagine that many of the aristocrats, whose scrap books Turner and Landseer had deigned to draw in, would have thought it the artist’s privilege rather than their own.
As Tom reached the top step and saw a liveried footman with powdered hair and white stockings open the glass-panelled door, he vowed not to allow his pride to make him defensive, and prayed that neither the grandeur of the house nor his desperate eagerness to get the commission would overawe him into behaving with a servility which would later make him ashamed.
*
Lord Goodchild stormed out of his steward’s office and stalked across the wide domed rotunda, his top-boots echoing on the marble floor. In his right hand was a wad of letters and papers, and on his face a fixed angry frown. Dressed in hunting pink with a massive ivory handled whip in his left hand, Henry Audley Fitzwarine Grandison, 5th Baron Goodchild, Justice of the Peace, Lieutenant Colonel of Her Majesty’s 17th Lancers and Master of Foxhounds of the Pembury Hunt, cut an impressive figure. Although almost forty, hardly a squire in the county looking at his sweeping whiskers, slender waist and upright carriage did not envy him. But on this November morning his lordship felt far from self-satisfied. He had already missed the hunt breakfast and would now probably be late for the meet too, a sin which, as Master, he had a punctilious horror of committing. But this sporting discourtesy to the members of the hunt was not at present uppermost in his mind.
Half-an-hour earlier a letter from the Reverend Francis St Clare, the chief magistrate in Rigton Bridge, had arrived by special courier with a description of a riot which had taken place on the station road the evening before. With his letter, St Clare had enclosed a more deadly communication, originally sent by the Home Secretary to Lord Delamere, the General commanding the Northern District.
Whitehall 8th November 1852
My Lord,
In consequence of acts of outrage and violence which have suspended the employment of labour in the town of Rigton Bridge, I am commanded by Her Majesty to impress upon your lordship the necessity of taking effectual and immediate measures for the repression of tumult during the forthcoming parliamentary election, and for the protection of property. Your lordship is advised to hold in readiness such regiments of regular troops as you may deem necessary….
There were two cavalry regiments stationed in Manchester: Goodchild’s own 17th Lancers and a regiment of Light Dragoons, and these therefore would be the regiments to be ‘held in readiness’. Goodchild had no sympathy with strikers, but the thought of ordering cavalry to disperse an unarmed mob on polling day was utterly repugnant to him, and this was what he now fully expected to have to do. Various personal considerations would make such a duty particularly invidious. While it was public knowledge that his lordship had supported Joseph Braithwaite’s adoption as Tory candidate, it was less widely appreciated that the grateful manufacturer had subsequently lent the obliging peer twenty thousand pounds on the security of that nobleman’s Belgravia town house. Three years before, Goodchild had lost thirty thousand in the 1849 railway stock fiasco and, with his Irish estates already heavily mortgaged and his racing stud and stables alone costing him four thousand a year, so large a loss had brought him to the verge of bankruptcy. Some land sales had bought time but only Joseph Braithwaite’s interest-free loan ha
d saved him. Joseph’s price had been his lordship’s political support. Without the votes of Goodchild’s tenant farmers, Braithwaite had known that he could not be sure of winning the poll; with Lord Goodchild’s public support those votes would be safe.
Goodchild was not an imaginative man, but it was very clear to him that if he had to deploy his regiment to keep the peace on polling day, the mob would be unlikely to enjoy being constrained by men under the command of a lieutenant colonel who was also the unpopular candidate’s proposer. With this thought in mind, Goodchild had resigned himself to missing the hunt breakfast in order to write two letters. The first, addressed to Joseph Braithwaite, had been a plea to do whatever was necessary to end the cotton operatives’ strike, even acceding to some of their demands if need be; the alternative being further acts of violence which might jeopardise his election. Goodchild believed Braithwaite to be incapable of compromise, but for all that had felt bound to try to persuade him. The second letter was to St Clare and in it Lord Goodchild suggested that the magistrate laid charges against as few of the station road rioters as he could conscientiously contrive. Many men committed for trial would merely increase the tensions in the town, as would the premature despatch of troops from Manchester. Lord Delamere, Goodchild advised St Clare, should be warned to send no troops for two weeks and better still none until the eve of polling day itself.
