Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  The sudden closing of the mill made affairs indeed terribly serious for most of the men in Thornsett. It was in the middle of winter, when journeying was not pleasant, nor work easy to get; and though the ‘hands’ employed in the mill had been told that it would close, very, very few among them had made any effort to secure other work before the time for closing came. Perhaps it had seemed to them that the closing of the mill was one of those calamities too terrible to happen. But it had happened, and after ten days of idleness the men were beginning to see clearly what it would mean to them. For there was no other work to be got within anything like easy reach of the village; and even if work could be obtained somewhere else, the little community must be broken up, and each family must separate itself from friends and neighbours and relatives in order to journey thither. This alone is thought a terrible calamity for middle-class men and women, but it is the least of the troubles which are always hanging over the heads of the workers. The exodus that must shortly take place had not yet begun, but every one knew that it could not now be long delayed; and Potters and the few other tradespeople being, of course, involved in the general distress, could no longer give credit. This had never been withheld in slack times, when the shopkeepers knew that good ones were certain to come in which the scores would be wiped off or reduced very considerably; but now there was no chance of things growing brighter again, and even the small accounts then owing were not very likely ever to be paid.

  During the past ten days, as the men’s money was being spent, and as the want of work gave them more time to reason on the causes of their trouble, a strong feeling of resentment had been growing up among them against the two young masters, who had held, as it were, the happiness, the comfort, perhaps the lives, of all these men in their hands, and had thrown all to the dogs rather than humble their own insensate pride and abate their own insensate obstinacy. This feeling had found vent, not only in the scowls and black looks on which Litvinoff had commented, but in certain faint groans and hisses with which Roland had been greeted on more than one occasion when he passed down the village street.

  What right had these two, on whose forbearance and good fellowship hung the fate of all these families, to go quarrelling with each other?

  ‘It’s a’ their darn’d selfishness,’ Murdoch was saying, just as Hatfield kicked open the door of the tap-room at the Spotted Cow, and passed in. ‘What’s the odds to them if we clem or if we dunna’t?’

  ‘It’s my belief,’ said Potters bitterly, ‘as they done it to show their independence.

  ‘ — They might have hit on a cheaper way,’ growled Hatfield, as Murdoch and Sigley made room for him to sit between them.

  ‘Cheaper! why, what’s cheaper nor our flesh and blood?’ asked Murdoch, with a snarl. ‘They can afford to chuck a little o’ that away. They can get more of it when they want it easy enow.’

  ‘Ay, that’s it, lad,’ said Hatfield. ‘It’s the flesh and blood o’ some o’ us that’s here still, and more o’ us that’s dead and gone, that’s made the bit o’money they’ll live on for the rest o’theirdays.’

  ‘Well, I don’t quite see that,’ muttered Sigley, with his usual meekness. ‘They’ve always paid fair wages.’

  ‘Yes,’ answered Hatfield. ‘Ah never said they took it for nothing. They paid for it right enow, but they bought it cheap, lad — they bought it cheap, and they sold it at a good profit We’ve nowt but our flesh and blood to sell, and now we mun carry it to another market.’

  ‘If you mean your work,’ put in the landlord, ‘ I don’t see as you ought to talk i’ that way. They paid you your own price for your work, anyhow.’

  ‘No,’ said Hatfield. ‘They paid us what we was forced to take.’

  ‘Thou’dst always some sense i’ tha head, John,’ broke in old Murdoch approvingly. ‘Tha was na here when... D’ye mind, Bolt, the night after t’owd master’s burying, tha made the lads drink t’ young masters’ health? Ask them to drink it now!’ The murmur of ironical assent which went round the room showed that Murdoch had expressed the sense of the meeting. He had been rising in importance daily, ever since the announcement of the mill’s closing. He had always been the prophet of calamity, and now that his worst prophecies had been more than fulfilled he was looked upon as little less than inspired.

  ‘Well,’ said Bolt deprecatingly, ‘who could ha’foreseen things turning out i’ this way? And as for asking them to drink their healths, why they ain’t their masters now. So where’s the use?’

  ‘It do seem hard, it do,’ murmured Sigley, who went to chapel regularly, ‘when a man have saved up a bit to have it all swept away in a rushing, mighty wind, and us left, like Pharaoh’s lean kine, to make bricks without straw. The whole creation groaneth!....’

  ‘Well, don’t groan here,’ interrupted Murdoch grimly; ‘tha’d best do tha groanin’ wi’ the rest o’ creation at t’ chapel; and well mayst tha groan there if tha hears tell o’ cows makin’ bricks.’

  ‘ — Them as don’t believe in the Bible,’ said Sigley impressively, giving voice to a very popular belief, ‘can’t look for a blessing.

  ‘Nor yet them as does, it seems.’

  ‘ — What ah was going to say was this — as we should take comfort, thinking as we ain’t the only ones.’

  ‘Comfort, tha loon!’ — that’s the hell of it! Damn the man, says I, as can find comfort i’ t’ thought o’ other men’s misery!’

  It was Hatfield who spoke, and as he spoke he brought his fist down on the table with a bang that made the glasses ring.

  ‘How tha does take on, John,’ said Bolt. ‘What Sigley meant was only as it shows you ain’t to blame, seeing as so many others is in the same fix.’

  Sigley did not confirm this interpretation. He only shook his head, with the air of one who had meant something much more pious and profound.

  ‘You’re wrong again’ said Hatfield loudly. He had risen and faced the room, which was now pretty full. While this talk had been going on, men had dropped in by twos and threes, and all that had been said had been listened to with profound attention. ‘You’re wrong again! It is our faults, and the faults of all like us. Our fathers might have altered it. We might alter it now if we had but the spunk to take it in hand; and, if we don’t, them as comes after us will, and’ll curse us for leaving them the work to do. Didn’t none o’ ye ever hear tell o’ the elephant that lets himself be led and mastered by one he could smash with a shake o’ his poll? And why? Because, the books tell us, he doesn’t know his own strength. But he doesna fare so bad as we. He gets well fed and well looked after because it costs summat to replace him, and we lets oursels be led and drove and starved, when it suits ‘em, by a set as we could chase out o’ the world to-morrow if we but stood together and acted like men.’ A thrill of excited sympathy ran through the room as old Murdoch shouted, —

  ‘Right again! That’s it, John; tha’s got it! A score thousand o’ your pattern and there’d be an end to men being turned out o’ their homes to clem i’ midwinter because two young devils both wants the same lass!’

  ‘It’s all very well, Hatfield,’ said Potters sourly; ‘but tha’s one face for us and another face for t’ gentlefolk. That warn’t no working man as I’ve see coinin’ out o’ your house time and again this last three week.’

  ‘No, he ain’t. He’s more o’ the right stuff in his little finger nor you and all like you put together has got in your whole bodies. There, take that, Potters!’

  ‘Whatever he’s got in him, he seems pretty thick with young Roland Ferrier,’ said a man who had not spoken before.

  ‘He did his best to stop their quarrelling,’ Hatfield answered hotly; ‘because he knew what it would be for all o’ us; and he’s been chased out o’ his own country and lost nearly all his brass for standing up for the likes o’ we.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve had a bit o’ talk with him, too; that’s true enough.’

  ‘Ay! he’s no fool, nor no coward neither.’

&nb
sp; ‘He’s a true friend o’ working men, he is, if he is a Count,’ Litvinoff, it will be seen, had not lost his opportunities while he had been at Thornsett, for nearly every man present had something to say in his favour.

  ‘But seeing as he’s such a friend o’ Mr Roland’s, why don’t he do something to stop this set-out?’

  ‘What can he do?’

  ‘He might speak to him about it.’

  ‘Look’ee here, lads,’ said Clayton, an old man who had not spoken before, ‘ah’ve been a-turnin’ o’ this thing over i’ my head, and this is what ah come to. If so be as young Ferrier’s like to listen to any one, would he listen first to a new-fangled furrin’ chap, or to all o’ us honest lads as has known him since he was so high? Has any of you spoke to him? Has any one of you put it straight to him — this is the way of it, and this and this? M’appen this fooling o’ theirs was just through ignorance. They might ha’ thought it didna matter to any but them, and if once they knowed a’ as it means, m’appen they’d think better owt, and let things go the old way.’

  ‘Old heads is worth most, arter all,’ said John Bolt, who was of a hopeful nature and turned to the new idea as a relief from his former visions of empty benches and deserted bar, — of a time when there would be nothing to chalk up but his own losses, and when adulterated beer would seem what it was, a drug in the market. ‘ Why shouldn’t some of you do as he says, and go and see him and speak him reasonable?’

  A great difference of opinion arose at once on the new idea, but nearly all were in their hearts glad to try a new chance, and at last old Clayton, from whom the suggestion had come, said,—’Well, sithee, if any of you lads’ll come wi’ me, dang me if I’ll not go this very night — this very minute.’

  ‘You’d better all go,’ advised Potters; ‘it would be more telling like.’

  ‘All o’ us isn’t here,’ murmured Sigley.

  ‘Get ’em here,’ said Clayton shortly. ‘If two or three o’ ye was to go round and tell the other lads what’s towards, they’d come too, and we’d have one more try at getting things righted here, afore we all turns different ways and never sees each other’s faces again.’

  No sooner said than done. Men are ready at all times to follow any one who will act, or even to act themselves if prompted with sufficient energy. In less than half an hour over a hundred men were assembled outside the Spotted Cow, and were prepared to go up to Thornsett Edge to try to open again the doors of the workshop which a dead hand had closed against them. But their faith was strong in the power of a young and living hand, and they went with a new hope in their hearts.

  ‘We’ll all go up,’ said old Clayton, who had assumed the position of leader, ‘but only a few of us had best go in. Let’s see — you, and you, and you. You’ll be one, Hatfield, and Murdoch makes five.’

  ‘Not me,’ snarled Murdoch sourly; ‘no eatin’ dirt for me. I ain’t never humbled myself to no man, and I ain’t a-goin’ to begin now, to a young chap as ah worked along o’ his father manys a long day.’

  ‘Not me, neither,’ said Hatfield, ‘for ah know’ aforehand as it’s too late. But don’t you mind us. Go your own way, and here’s luck to you.’

  He and Murdoch stood at the door with Bolt and Potters, and a few more who, not having been employed in the mill, were considered not to have any place in the deputation. They watched the crowd out of sight up the steep street, and the women turned out to watch their men go by. It was a clear, frosty night, and bitterly cold, but most of the women rolled their bare arms in their aprons and stood talking in little knots after the procession had passed out of sight. They were more hopeful than their husbands, for women are naturally more trusting than men and believe more in the possibility of altering facts by emotional influences.

  To Murdoch and Hatfield, in spite of their assumption of indifference, the time seemed very long as it went by and brought them no news of their comrades. After half an hour Bill suggested that they should stroll up the hill to meet the others and learn how it fared with them.

  CHAPTER XXII. A FORLORN HOPE.

  IF the frequenters of the Spotted Cow had only known, this was about the most unpropitious moment for obtaining a hearing for their petition. A hearing was all they could possibly obtain for it, but that they did not know either.

  Litvinoff’s host had not found him as great a comfort as he had expected. For one thing, the Count’s almost universal sympathy seemed unaccountably to stop short at Roland Ferrier. The young man felt that he had been terribly ill-used and naturally expected every one else to see things in the same light, and it was ‘riling’ to find all the sympathy of his guest turned, not towards him, but towards his workmen, which did not seem reasonable; for as Roland said, they could get other work, but where was he to get another mill? Then he did not like a certain change which he noticed in the other’s tone when he spoke of Miss Stanley. He had sympathy enough for her, goodness knows — a trifle too much Roland sometimes thought.

  For Litvinoff to be a bore was impossible; but still it did happen rather often that he would bring forward political economy of the most startling pattern when the other wanted to talk literature, or art, or personal grievances.

  On this particular night Roland had been led, much against his will, into a discussion of the nature which Litvinoff so much affected, and he had to admit to himself that, as usual, he had much the worst of it.

  ‘ — It’s all very well,’ he said (people always say ‘It’s all very well,’ when they can find no other answer to an argument); ‘it’s all very well, and that sort of thing may do for Russia, but you will never get an economic or any other revolution here — Why what the deuce is all that row?’

  ‘That row’ was a tramping of many feet on the gravel, and a hum of voices just outside the window.

  Litvinoff, who was sitting nearer the window, rose and looked through the laths of the Venetian blinds.

  ‘ — Well, my dear Ferrier,’ he said, turning round with a smile, ‘it strikes me that there is a revolution in England, and that it has begun at Thornsett. The whole population of Derbyshire appears to have assembled in your front garden — yes, that’s it, evidently,’ he went on, as a ring was given to the door bell, ‘and they are going to try gentle measures to begin with, just as I have always advised,’ he concluded, for the ring was not a loud one.

  Roland had risen from his easy-chair and had made towards the window, when the door opened and the maid announced that Clayton and one or two of the hands wanted to speak to Mr Ferrier.

  ‘Show them in,’ said Roland curtly; and, as she withdrew, ‘One or two,’ echoed Litvinoff; ‘that young woman’s ideas on the subject of numbers are limited and primitive. Now, Ferrier, just repeat those arguments you have been using against me, and I doubt not, so lucid and convincing are they, that they will reconcile Clayton and the “hands” here to the starvation that awaits them.’

  Only three men followed old Clayton as he entered the room.

  ‘Well, my men, said Roland Ferrier, turning to them, and with a faint irritation in his tone, as Litvinoff, leaning one elbow on the mantelpiece, waved a recognition to the deputation, ‘ — What can I do for you at this time of night?’

  ‘ — Well, sir,’ began Clayton, ‘me and my mates here has come to speak to you for ourselves and them as is outside.’

  ‘Who are numerous and noisy,’ murmured the Count softly to himself.

  ‘Well, go on,’ said Roland, chafing.

  ‘We knows well enow,’ continued the old man, ‘as it ain’t all your doing as t’ mill’s to stop, but we thowt as you might work things so as to make it easier for us. It’s on’y nat’ral as you shouldn’t know till it’s put to you what stoppin’ work ‘ill mean to most of us. What ‘ill it mean? Why, hard want is what it ‘ill mean, and clemming to more nor one. So wot we’ve come to ask is, won’t you keep the works on till summer comes, and let the stoppin’ be a bit less sudden like, and give us time to get other work? This is bitter weat
her, and it’s bitter hard as we must all leave our homes just because—’He paused in some confusion.

  ‘Because what?’ asked Roland sharply.

  ‘Because our masters has fell out,’ struck in No. 2 of the deputation.

  ‘Look here, my men,’ Roland stamped his foot impatiently, ‘I thought I made it perfectly clear to you a month ago that the closing of this mill was no fault of mine. Do you take me for a born fool? Do you suppose I should throw away this money if I could help it? Don’t you know I lose as much as any of you? As much? I lose more than all of you put together.’

  ‘Oh, just division of profits!’ murmured Litvinoff confidentially to the clock on the mantelpiece.

  ‘You’ve had long enough notice of this,’ Roland went on, casting a goaded glance at Litvinoff; ‘why didn’t you get work elsewhere?’

  ‘We hoped it ‘ud blow over. We thought perhaps you’d make it up with Mr Richard; and we thought to-night as perhaps, if we told you straight out, you d go to him.’

  ‘Damn I’ hissed Roland, between his teeth. ‘I wish,’ he went on, raising his voice, ‘you wouldn’t talk about things you don’t understand. What’s the use of coming up like this in the middle of the night, interfering in my private affairs; for I’d have you know my brother and I have a perfect right to close the mill or keep it open as we choose. As for you, Clayton, you’re old enough to know better than to come up here at midnight with all the riff-raff of the village at your heels.’