World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  "Fine words butter no parsnips…" Stevenson began. But Metcalfe burst into the song Bold Robinson the Fighter—putting Stevenson's name wherever Robinson's stood and substituting brickies for Tiley. Laughing, all his pickets joined in and soon the valley rang with their song. Connected speech was hopeless.

  "Gentlemen! Witnesses, my three fine witnesses…" Stevenson shouted to them. "I ask you to note who prevented me from addressing my men."

  "You'd best let him speak," Fox advised Metcalfe, but the only reply was a triumphant shake of the head and an even louder burst of song.

  Stevenson walked a dozen paces away and turned. Raising his voice to the highest and loudest pitch he could muster, he pointed at Metcalfe and shouted: "Obstruction…arrest…disgrace…treadmill!" And then, pointing to the workings: "A guinea and more a week! The best-paid bricklaying in Lancashire!"

  The volume of the singing fell noticeably away. Stevenson leaped in, stabbing a finger at one of the group. "Thou—Ephraim Webster—what'll thy Ann do, 'ow'll she fend for them four bairns o' thine while tha'rt sweatin't flesh off o' thy bones at't treadmill?"

  The volume fell below the level at which the singing could easily sustain itself. Stevenson lowered his voice further and turned the screw yet tighter. "You, Reverend Findlater, there's twenty wives and nigh on eighty bairns stood behind these men. You may not see them, but I do. You may not think on 'em, but I do. You may join in Metcalfe's way o' thinkin' and consider them part of the necessary sacrifice, part of the unavoidable cost, but I don't. Will you fine gentlemen dig into your purses and support the hundred unprovided-for victims of Mr. Metcalfe's great working class struggle."

  "I feel sure a subscription would be raised," Findlater said.

  Stevenson pulled out his watch. "I'll speak no further," he said crisply as he snapped its cover shut and returned it to his pocket. "I'll allow two minutes for thought. Any man as wants to throw himself on Tom Metcalfe's treadmill, and his wife and bairns on the Reverend Findlater's subscriptions, may stop where he is. Any man as wants a share of the best-paid bricklayin' in the whole County Palatine may take that path and re-engage wi' Mr. Fernley. There's two minutes to choose."

  He turned and walked slowly up the road, removing himself as a nearby presence, a focus for the uniting of their opposition. Metcalfe's despairing and repeated cries of "No!" and his appeals of "Brother!" told all he needed to know. When he turned again to begin the short walk back, he counted ten remaining, including all three committee members. Ephraim Webster had chosen to stay, though he looked distinctly unhappy about it. Just before he returned to the fringe of the group, Stevenson said, "Time's up."

  At that moment Webster turned to go. "Tha'rt too late, Ephraim," Stevenson called after him. "This race goest to't swift." Miserably, the man returned to his brothers.

  A horse with a woman rider came around the corner beyond Deanroyd, going at a slow canter. Stevenson, seeing that Metcalfe was about to shout in anger at him, said: "Ten!" He put surprise and disappointment in his voice. "That's seven more than I thought tha'd muster, Tom." And of course, Metcalfe had to respond as if the loss of more than half his pickets were indeed the triumph that Stevenson appeared to concede.

  "Ten's enough," he said. "Three would suffice."

  Stevenson addressed them all. "I've asked ye to return to't workin'. I've asked ye to give assurance ye'll let others pass unhindered. Ye've done neither. Ye are all to be dismissed forthwith. Such tools and belongins as ye left on't site 'ave been gathered an' may be got at't site office. From this minute on, ye're trespassers all. Which"—he turned to Thornton—"is a railway-company matter."

  But Thornton was looking in astonishment at the fast approaching horsewoman. It was Arabella. And her face and manner showed every sign of extreme alarm.

  "Mrs. Thornton!" Walter called. "What are you doing here?"

  She reined in. All the men removed their hats. "Oh Mr. Thornton!" she said in breathless distress. "It's so dreadful…"

  Thornton looked around in embarrassment. "My dear—this is no place to come tattling to me…"

  "No tattle," she interrupted. "Believe me. No tattle. Those dreadful men! They'll murder us all!"

  "Be calm!" he said. "What are you trying to say? Who will murder us?"

  "The Irish is it?" Stevenson asked coolly. "Calley's navvies—all got drunk?"

  "Drunk!" Arabella shouted, as if the word did not describe one tenth of it. "They are like beasts! Worse! It is a riot. They have put the whole of Todmorden in a siege." She glanced around at her bareheaded hearers and added, lamely inconsequential: "Put up your hats, please, gentlemen."

  Stevenson looked suddenly worried. "Has Calley vanished wi'out payin'?" he asked.

  "I only wish he had! They've bought up every last drop of liquor in the town."

  "Oh, ye're all right then." Stevenson's concern turned to relief. "That's a plain honest randy. No great harm'll come of it."

  "No harm! They've broken every window in four public houses. No harm! Mr. Thornton can you not do something?"

  Thornton's patience was on the verge of breaking. "My dear! I am not engineer for that section. But even if I were, it's not company business. We have enough company business here to contend with. It is for the justices and their constables. Besides, Mr. Stevenson is right—there's no real harm in a randy. They'll brawl and make a shindy and break a few things—but no harm. Do go home now."

  "Oh no!" She cried in terror. "I dare not."

  Thornton's small stock of patience was now exhausted. "Madam. You may not stay."

  "But they are coming this way!" she said.

  Stevenson was suddenly very interested.

  "They are now between here and home. They mean to walk to Littleborough for fresh liquor."

  "Oh…very well," Thornton said with ill-grace. "I shall escort you."

  "You'll excuse me, Mr. Thornton," Stevenson said. He took the engineer aside and spoke for his ears alone. "I've no wish to determine your affairs but… this is company property and a company matter now."

  "What—your bricklayers?" Thornton asked.

  "They're none o' mine. They're trespassers. The Board might think it strange if ye left at such a moment."

  They had come close to Arabella. "You're right," Thornton said, reluctantly. "I may not leave."

  "I'll see Mrs. Thornton home. I have business to arrange in Todmorden."

  Thornton did not immediately reply.

  Arabella, who shook her head the moment Stevenson made his offer now burst out: "Oh, Walter—no!" just as she had on the day they had first met.

  "Mrs. Thornton!" her husband said in a voice empty of all warmth. "That is churlish. Mr. Stevenson is quite right. Besides—there is no man in England better fit than he is to get you through any mob of navvies, drunk, sober, whatever their mood."

  "Come on," Stevenson said—whether to her or to the horse she was not certain—and, taking the bridle, turned the creature and pulled it to start for home.

  "Mr. Stevenson!" Metcalfe called after him. "We mean to stay and mount picket."

  "It's out o' my 'ands now. Ye've all 'ad warnin' enough, an' more." He called a lad over from the top of the cutting. "Go an' tell Mr. Fernley I'm off to Todmorden to arrange the supper. I s'll be back while two o'clock."

  The lad, his thoughts already on that supper, ran off with delight.

  "Is that those wretched strikers?" Arabella asked.

  "Aye. Is this your gelding?" He patted its gleaming, well-groomed coat admiringly.

  "No!" she said. "We couldn't afford a horse yet. I hire him an hour each day from the livery stables behind the Golden Lion."

  "I mean to get a horse. I spend too long on foot each day. It'll be worse when we move over here to Rough Stones."

  She looked back up the hill to the house itself. "That's certain now, is it?"

  "As certain as anything in this life can be. I have it in mind to walk through the driftway on Boxing Day—as promised—with your husband an
d make our transition from Littleborough that way."

  She laughed, a pretty, ringing peal of laughter. "You have a romantic soul, Mr. Stevenson," she said.

  "Aye. Belike I have. But—remembering your interest in seeing the working, I thought you and Mrs. Stevenson might care to make up the party?"

  "You're certain it will be completed? What of all these strikers?"

  "They'll not hinder the drift."

  "Why don't you simply order them back to their work. If you are their master, they have to obey you surely?"

  "That's what a strike means." He patted the horse again, admiringly. "What's the rent?"

  "Of the horse? As I take one out every day and am not too particular on always having the same, they charge threepence for the hour."

  His laughter carried an edge of irony. "In a day this gelding could earn more than a farm labourer!"

  She was puzzled by that. "What is the connection?" she asked. They stopped. The horse pawed the ground and bent to breathe wreaths of steam toward its feet. "Still!" Stevenson called at it.

  In the silence they heard a distant murmur—so distant it might have been mistaken for a vast rookery settling prematurely for the night or a steady avalanche of rock; but, because they were expecting it, they could both identify it unmistakably as a great, raucous, rambling, randy mob.

  "See anything?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said. And though she spoke almost in a whisper he could hear the dread in her voice. But the sound of them and the knowledge that they were coming, filled him with delight. They started to walk again.

  "I can't see why you're so complacent," she said; her voice was stronger now but no less alarmed. "They've done some dreadful things. There is one man—I heard this from the servants—this one man they are carrying around in a sedan chair, dead drunk."

  "Swimmer Dandy!" Stevenson said.

  "What?"

  "Swimmer Dandy. That's his name. His fame has spread down here before him. They say he's been dead drunk all week and has now lost the power to stand erect."

  "How disgraceful!" She tossed her head in a fury that made the horse half-shy. "What wretched creatures!"

  "Do you remember?" Stevenson asked. "When we first met. That day in early September?"

  She looked briefly around at the workings, just before they passed from view. "I meant to ask," she said. "Those men you showed me. The two new ones, half dead with fatigue."

  "Darbishire and Walsh," he said without hesitation. "Aye—two useful lads. Another three months and they'll both make fine navvies. I told you."

  "I remember."

  "But I was not thinking of that," he said. "You remember that…misunderstanding between us."

  He had never seen a face turn redder, quicker. "I have no idea what you can mean," she said, in a would-be casual tone. "I have entirely forgotten that incident."

  "You must remember," he persisted wickedly. "I told you I thought you lacked a purpose."

  "Did you now?" Her eyes strayed pointedly over the hillsides, as if they—or anything—would offer more interest than this conversation. "I really don't remember. I can't think what you might have meant by it."

  "I believe there is work here for you, Mrs. Thornton," he said. And now he was no longer teasing. "I believe you may find a purpose here—and one severe enough to daunt Medusa herself. Keep your eyes skinned and your wits sharp now. You may come to agree."

  Responding to his solemnity, she looked long at him. "How strange you are!" she said at last. "What to make of you? I'm sure I don't know."

  She was glad she could look him in the eyes at last. He seemed to have lost that old power to confuse her and make her tremble. Or had she changed? She felt stronger with him now. And he never made her feel like a goose—he never had done that. Yet in a curious way, it was as if that new confidence came partly from him. He seemed to expect her to be…different. Walter was always saying that he could get people to do things they couldn't have done on their own. In a way, that was rather disquieting because to her Stevenson usually behaved as if he knew she was going to do something grand. And whenever she tried to show him how ridiculous that was, he just brushed it all aside. In her journal, she had called this insistence "enervating" and then "tedious"—but she had had to cross out both words because neither was true. As yet, she had found no word to put in their place.

  "Can you still see them?" he asked breezily, yet again changing the mood and pace. "One can certainly hear them."

  They were close enough now for individual voices to be distinguished— shouting, cheering, laughing, singing, brawling.

  "Yes!" she said. "They're just coming over that new bridge, Skew Bridge." She looked around in alarm and pointed to the side road leading up to Ramsden Woods. "Oh please! Let us withdraw a little way up there until they pass."

  He glanced up at her, his face offered some obscure kind of challenge. "We'll go on as we are. And we'll meet them somewhere here in Strines Bottom."

  "Meet them?" she cried. "Oh no! Please no! Please turn off at once. I cannot meet them."

  "There's nothing to fear," he said. And certainly the calm in his voice was reassuring.

  He pulled the horse to the right of the road, placing himself between her and the highway where they would have to pass.

  They were in sight now. A wild, ragged, bedraggled caterpillar of drunken men. Drunken giants of men. If anyone had told Arabella that the other recreations of these creatures included straightening out horseshoes barehanded, she would have found no difficulty in believing it. She looked at Stevenson. His broad back and unruffled stance was all that stopped her fluttering heart from thumping itself right out of her body.

  "Look at their eyes," he said. "Do not be afraid. Observe them closely— especially their eyes. Look keenly at their eyes." The horse grew restive. "Ho!" he said quietly and it, too, fell still.

  He spoke first. "Top o' the mornin to ye lads!"

  The clannish suspicion that had grown in their faces with each approaching step did not at once vanish. Then one, near the front, gave a whoop of pure joy. "Good Christ!" he called. "It's Lord John hisself!" The mood changed then as word and recognition spread. She heard the words "Lord John…Lord John…" pass like a watchword down the throng.

  Inertia carried the leaders past and brought the rear crushing forward so that soon, she and Stevenson were hemmed in on all sides by the jostling, cackling, rowdy mob. She did not believe that even he would bring them through it unscathed. Yet curiously enough, now that she was actually among them, she found herself surveying them with more curiosity than fear.

  She had never seen so much blood. Fully one man in three was bleeding from somewhere; and she did not see one who was not marked by a large blood scab or by a staining of fresh-dried blood or at least by bloodstains on his clothes. And the stench! If all the liquor in a large public house had been tipped with all the clothes from a workhouse mortuary into the foulest sewer and there churned to boiling point it would barely compete with this.

  Yet there was, too, a kind of joy about them that she found strangely compelling—a childlike, unmalicious liberation of their spirit that took her unawares. And she saw that Stevenson was quite right when he had said there was no harm in them. She could imagine that, had she been born a man, she would have enjoyed a day of their carefree company. The two or three nearest her horse's head, patted and fondled it and bared its teeth and opened its eyes with expert nods and shakes of the head. "That's a grand horse now!" one said, and she found herself returning his smile.