The Iron Master

by Jean Stubbs

  ‘That weren’t all I come to tell you, ma’am,’ said Nellie, urgently heading her mistress away from the subject. ‘Tom and me have both been at Kit’s Hill longer than anybody. It’s forty year come Michaelmas that Mr Ned rode down to Garth, and lifted me up to the saddle and fetched me back here as a kitchen-maid, to help my poor Mam as’d been left a widder wi’ ten childer to feed. And he took Tom on as stable-lad long afore then, and trained him as a carter … Mrs Howarth, we don’t want to stop here when you’ve gone.’

  Dorcas’s face lost its radiance. Her plans faded.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, quite downcast, ‘but I had thought you would take care of Dick and Kit’s Hill for me.’

  ‘Mrs Howarth, excuse me if I’m speaking out of turn, but Kit’s Hill as you and me have knowed it is gone a’ready. It went wi’ you and Mr Ned, ma’am. Now it belongs to Mr Dick and Miss Alice, and it’s their turn, not ours. I’ve nowt agin Miss Alice. She’s a grand lass in the dairy, and she’ll make a grand wife. But I canna start all over again wi’ a bit of a lass of eighteen as my mistress, and watch her change Kit’s Hill to suit herself. I know she’s planning to turn your parlour back into a storeroom, for one thing! And I couldn’t abide that! She’d be better off wi’ Susan. They’re much of an age, and they’ll sort it out between them. But Tom and me, we’re your servants, Mrs Howarth. Not theirs. Mrs Howarth, Tom and me want to come wi’ you to Bracelet.’

  So many expressions flitted across Dorcas’s face that Nellie did not know which to count upon. Joy, doubt, astonishment, hope, concern, trouble, bewilderment.

  ‘My dear Nellie,’ she said slowly, shyly. ‘I had not thought to take any of you with me. I would have trained up a girl from Garth, perhaps two girls. For then they would keep each other company.’

  ‘If it’s the wages, ma’am, we don’t mind taking a cut. We’d be doing a lot less work, and we’ve both got a bit put by in us stockings.’

  ‘No, no,’ said Dorcas hurriedly, almost ashamed that Nellie should think her capable of cutting corners in this way. ‘It is not the wages. I had not thought of setting up a proper establishment.’

  ‘But who’d look after your horse and trap, ma’am?’

  ‘Mr William said they would stable it, and bring it out to me whenever I sent word.’

  ‘But who’d do your garden, ma’am, and mend things about the house?’

  ‘Mr William said they would lend me a gardener and handyman whenever I needed one.’

  ‘Well, a married couple only needs one bedroom, same as two maidservants,’ said Nellie firmly. ‘And though Mr William and Mrs Zelah grudge nobody nowt — there might come a time when you sent, and there wasn’t somebody there. As my owd Mam once said, “There comes the day when folks stops feeling sorry, and starts to think about themselves first, last and foremost!” Think on, ma’am. The three of us’d manage well enough without Kingwood Hall!’

  For though she was proud to be connected to the great, she saw no reason why her mistress should go a-begging.

  ‘I have no stable, you see, Nellie.’

  ‘That Mr Field’d think up a stable in five minutes. I’ve heard him on about Bracelet, often enough,’ said Nellie, not to be outdone.

  She nodded her head up and down vigorously. She thought the architect a trifle too precious, but of his enthusiasm and ability she had no doubt.

  ‘Nellie dear, give me time to think,’ said Dorcas confused. ‘It is not what I should have planned. Oh, I am so pleased for you and Tom. But would you not be better off at Kit’s Hill?’

  ‘Well, ma’am,’ Nellie replied, rising, ‘Tom and me is leaving Kit’s Hill any road. We’ll give Mr Dick and Miss Alice fair warning, and look elsewhere, if so be as you don’t want us. But if you canna think what’s right for you, Mrs Howarth, then think what Mr Ned would’ve said in the same place!’

  With that Parthian shot, she bobbed a curtsey and left the room, head high, and mistress of the field for once.

  But the architect will have to design and build a new stable now, and that will be further trouble and expense. And what should the three of us do at Bracelet, particularly with winter coming on, and the village unbuilt as yet? So isolated from Kit’s Hill. It would be easier to manage on my own, with two girls who would talk together. Rather than have three lonely old people.

  Three lonely old people? Don’t talk so daft, Dorcas! Tom and Nellie’ll be that taken up wi’ each other you’ll be lucky to get a cup of tea out of them. And there’s a regular new household for you and Nellie to set up at Bracelet. And Tom’s got enough on, wi’ t’stables and t’garden and a new wife, at his age! Lonely? You won’t have five minutes to turn round, you’ll see. And our Will’ll build up that village in no time. Now, if you were in poor Mattie Gregson’s clogs, wi’ no husband, no brass, no sense and six small childer, you’d have summat to grouse about! As it is, you’d best shift yourself, my lass, if you want to be in Bracelet afore Christmas!

  Nellie and Tom had been installed at the new house a week previously, to make sure that the rooms were aired, the garden tidy, the stable ready, to receive their mistress and her horse and trap. This was in the nature of a honeymoon for them, and they exchanged many a smile across the scrubbed floors, and a hearty kiss or two as they folded the blankets.

  Nicodemus Hurst had drawn up the documents, firmly separating Bracelet and its land from any connection with the rest of William’s vast property. He regarded the young iron-master as a social hazard, and acted accordingly, while preserving the utmost courtesy towards him. At any rate, Nicodemus reflected, Mrs Dorcas would have her own home when the crash came. And Mr William must look to himself! The firm of Hurst and Hurst had always been sound, and given sound advice. He must call upon Mrs Dorcas as soon as she was settled, and see how she did.

  So on a raw November morning, almost a year from the time that Ned Howarth had taken his new shire-horses and his new plough up to that fatal field, Dorcas was helped into her little trap by her younger son. Dick’s wedding would be held in a fortnight, and he had an air of rapt expectancy which both delighted and hurt her deeply. For so-his father must have looked, almost four decades ago, awaiting the bride who had been Dorcas Wilde. And yet she was glad for Dick, and glad to go.

  ‘Now, I’ll be ahead wi’ the wagon full of furniture, Mother,’ said Dick, ‘and don’t you go trying to pass me on the road. I’m driving fast enough for anybody, and Father allus said as you licked the mare up when you was out of sight … ’

  She listened to his scolding with nostalgia. No one would ever scold her again as lovingly as Ned did. She heard him in her head and in her dreams. She would have given all her world actually to hear his voice, and touch his coat or his face, this moment.

  She held the whip resolutely. She must not cry. Fortunately, she thought she saw the long clock sway slightly in its corner of the wagon, and by the time they had wedged it afresh she had recovered her equilibrium. It was all there. The gilded looking-glass, which had seen her reflection turn from five-and-twenty to five-and-sixty, near enough. The Queen Anne clock in its walnut case, which had ticked her marriage-time away. The secretaire at which she had organised and run her household, kept in touch with her friends, and waged many a small domestic battle for improvement and progress. The sofa on which she had lain when great with child. The small oval table, beautifully inlaid, on which her breakfast was taken each morning of her life. The six dining chairs, whose legs Ned had suspected of being too slender for his weight. She really must have their seats re-furbished. The pattern was almost gone. The china: a few pieces missing. The glass: almost whole. The books: supplemented and in excellent condition.

  So I came here, on the seventh day of February 1761, Dorcas thought. So I leave here, on the eleventh day of November, 1800. And then she recalled that Ned had written his offer of marriage on the eve of Martinmass 1760. The circle was complete.

  ‘Are you right then?’ Dick called from his perch.

  ‘I am quite ready,’ cri
ed Dorcas.

  Composedly, she clicked her tongue between her teeth. The wagon rumbled over the cobbles with its elegant load. The trap followed nimbly.

  ‘When we reach that wide part of the-road, towards Coldcote,’ Dorcas thought, ‘I shall overtake him. There is no point in dawdling along!’

  Part Three

  Man of Straw

  1802-1811

  Straws in the Wind

  Twenty

  1802

  When Dorcas Howarth was young, some forty years since, Millbridge had been a country market town with a population of twenty thousand souls, and most faces were familiar. Lord Kersall took care of everything, electing his brother James as the local Member of Parliament, seeing that a retired Kersall from the army was a magistrate for the district, and making sure that the town council had an overall majority of right-thinking men to put through his suggestions. This state of affairs had been accepted for so long that few thought about it, and everyone knew their place.

  But gradually a change of mind and direction was becoming apparent. A rough and independent spirit was abroad. A new age brought forth new men to influence and lead it, and though some councillors would vote Tory because it suited their purposes, and others vote Whig and make a thorough nuisance of themselves, none of them were of Lord Kersall’s kidney. He ruled now partly from habit, but mostly by means of his ability. While they insinuated themselves into social and public affairs, jostled each other for an honourable place and, since the aristocracy would have none of them, began to form their own society.

  William Howarth was such a man, Ernest Harbottle such another, and yet there was a world of difference between them. Seen sitting together at a council meeting in the summer of 1802, in Millbridge’s new Town Hall, they might have represented opposite elements: one self-possessed, the other as raw as the brawling city from whence he had come. Not for nothing did folk say, ‘A Liverpool gentleman, and a Manchester man,’ when they looked on Mr Harbottle, who was loud-mouthed, square-built and red-faced.

  Self-made, self-taught, and with an undoubted talent for business arithmetic, he had driven a bargain with Humphrey Kersall which pleased both sides. For he proved conclusively that a herd of cows in a pasture was a wasteful proposition, whereas a steam-driven cotton-mill would increase the value of the land a hundredfold. So Lord Kersall, keeping his distance, and occasionally putting a white handkerchief to his nose as though the Manchester man’s presence were an affront, saw that as the lease ran out he could charge still more and thus benefit his heirs as well as himself.

  Old names were acquiring new meanings. Millbridge itself had been so christened because of its ancient corn-mill and packhorse bridge. The corn-mill wheel still dripped sunlit water, the pack-horse bridge sustained its weight of farmers’ wagons, but the mill fields and mill bank were given over to bricks and mortar. Field Mill had opened soon after Belbrook, followed by Bank Mill. The third enterprise was built upon a hillock known locally as Babylon Brow, no one knew why. But the poetic side of Ernest Harbottle awakened to the name, and he christened his third-born Babylon Mill.

  The time-honoured scheme of apprenticeships, as far as the cotton industry was concerned, was too unwieldy and old-fashioned to survive. The manufacturers put pressure upon the government to drop these legislations, piece by piece. When a man could make his fortune in a couple of years, who was going to wait seven while a lad was trained? Profit, as usual, won the day. But there were always those public philanthropists who would interfere with progress, and Ernest Harbottle had his problems — though his house was built high above the town, overlooking his three mills, and his wife could pay for her millinery upon the nail and wore finer hats than the Hon. Mrs Brigge of Brigge Hall, and his sons went to public schools and suffered for his success.

  The Mayor of Millbridge wondered afresh whether he had been elected simply as a figurehead, for he seemed unable to control anyone. And he did not know which political party he detested more: from the extreme Toryism of Alderman Brigge to the extreme Whiggism of the Grammar School headmaster, each of whom had parti-coloured cohorts on the council. But on second thoughts he decided that Dr Matthew Standish was more trouble than all of them put together, for he voted Tory and acted Whig, and was an Independent as far as action went for they never knew which side he would come down upon.

  Once retired from medical practice, though retaining his stewardship of the Millbridge Hospital, Dr Standish had turned his energy and honesty to public account, and was at present making them all feel extremely uncomfortable.

  Tories sat upon one side of the long table, Whigs upon the other, interspersed with those who would be reckoned as the middle men, for whose council vote both sides fought bitterly. And altogether, the Mayor thought, looking round the chamber full of angry faces, there were some two dozen permanent or temporary headaches sitting at his mahogany board, and he wished he had declined the honour of acting as their chairman.

  ‘Gentlemen! Gentlemen! If you please!’ he cried, and hammered them pettishly to silence. ‘We have a very detailed agenda. Pray, take your turns and do not argue upon every point. We shall never be done else.’

  ‘Sir,’ said Matthew Standish, ‘these other gentlemen have their concerns, I do not doubt’ — taking a lofty view of such frivolous matters as factories, ironworks, educational establishments, coal mines, printing presses and the like — ‘but my work deals in life and death — ’

  ‘Death, more like, judging from your outlandish notions!’ muttered one councillor.

  ‘ … and my concern is with public health, and I beg to be heard first!’

  Jack Ackroyd cried, ‘Hear, hear!’ but Ernest Harbottle drew out his watch and said, ‘Time means money to me, Mr Mayor, and money’ll fetch better health to this town than a mort of medical talk!’

  Standish turned upon him, crying, ‘Have you a close-stool in your fine new house, councillor?’

  Reluctantly, Harbottle said, ‘More than one, sir!’ For he never knew where the doctor was going to have him.

  ‘And where does your close-stool empty, councillor?’

  ‘How should I know? Into the sewer, I dare say. I know it’s the latest model, with a valve.’

  ‘Into the sewer. Into the open sewer, gentlemen. That is my point. I have told you a dozen times, since Millbridge began to expand at such a rate, that more affluence means more effluence. There are now eighty thousand people in this town. Do you know why my hospital was built high up on the hillside … ?’

  ‘Because your wife paid for it!’ Sotto voce.

  ‘ … because I wanted it as far as possible from a breeding ground of the most virulent diseases. You, Mr Turner, and you, Mr Cape, are responsible for a great deal of shoddy building in this town … ’

  ‘Mr Mayor, we protest!’

  ‘An open sewer and countless cess-pools contribute not only to a vile stench but to a sick population. As Millbridge spills out into the countryside, and our small villages become towns, we are cramming poor people into ginnels and snickets and foetid courts which an animal would decline to live in!’

  ‘Our poor,’ said Alderman Brigge, in his role as a local squire, ‘do not exist as you depict them, sir. I have a care for all my people. They want for nothing. My wife visits our sick. My daughters knit and sew garments for their offspring. We have an annual feast upon my small estate — ’

  ‘Balderdash!’ cried Standish. ‘I am not speaking of your estate, Squire Brigge, where you may do very well — but watch out, for these industrial foxes will be after your land and able to pay a great deal more for it than you can afford to refuse … !’

  ‘Mr Mayor!’ protested a dozen voices, who all had an interest in land.

  ‘Order, order! If you please, Dr Standish, would you modify your language somewhat? You are needlessly offending members of the council.’

  ‘Do they not pass water and squat upon their stools daily?’ said the doctor, relishing this public debate. ‘Do they not contribute to
the stink? I am speaking of diseases which will not pass them by because they have made a fortune. They can writhe with cholera, lose their complexions and lives with smallpox, waste away with typhus and typhoid fevers whether they are rich or poor. Those damned cellars, which house ten persons in filthy spaces not ten feet square, will be all our deaths … ’

  ‘I will make a note of it,’ said the Town Clerk peaceably, ‘if the council so wishes.’

  ‘Well, do not lose it, as you did the last!’ Matthew Standish warned. ‘And I want more than a note. Mr Howarth, did not one of your famous colleagues cast pipes for the Paris Waterworks Company, some twenty years since?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ William replied equably. ‘It was the great John Wilkinson.’

  ‘Well, whoever he was, he cast pipes. I dare say Mr Howarth and his partner would cast pipes for us, if we made a reasonable attempt to divide our water from our sewage. Would you not, Mr Howarth?’

  ‘With the greatest of pleasure, sir.’

  ‘And a damned great bill!’ someone murmured cynically.

  ‘Not so, sir,’ William cried, cool but stern. ‘We make fair profits, and only by charging fair prices!’

  ‘Gentlemen, please!’ called the Mayor. ‘Is that all, Dr Standish?’

  ‘No, it is damned well not, sir. I want a plan drawn up for a system of iron pipes to be laid underground throughout the town.’

  ‘And how much will that cost?’ cried several business members of the council at once.

  ‘I have no idea,’ said Matthew Standish. ‘But when you have totted up the price of a few thousand lives, then set it by the side of your bill and see which is preferable. I have my hospital to attend to, Mr Mayor. I crave your indulgence,’ he added, already on his way out.

  He paused by the windows and smiled enigmatically.