There seemed nothing to do but pray for a change of wind and commission Mr. Millward to get about his business with despatch, but once she had given the order she realised there was more to sweeping a chimney than that, for Ellen said that every item of furniture would have to be covered with dust sheets, and Millward said he would have to go back to the town for his two apprentices, Jake and Luke, the liveliest lads in the trade, who could scale any chimney, including the episcopal ones at the Archbishop's Palace, where boys had been known to stay lost for days before being hauled out through the roof or broken out through a bedchamber wall.
Henrietta was vaguely familiar with the trade, having seen the flues cleaned by grimy urchins at Scab's Castle, but she had not realised until then that the architects of old houses had gone to such extraordinary lengths to dispose of smoke, designing exits that were as intricate as a maze. She packed Millward off and set the girls to work hanging dustsheets over the windows, untacking the carefully arranged mantelshelf drape, and covering furniture too heavy to be carried into the hall.
Millward appeared with his apprentices very early the next morning, and Henrietta, roused by the clatter, jumped from bed and dressed herself hurriedly, for she did not trust Millward to have a care for her furniture, taking him to be a man likely to put clean chimneys before disordered rooms and ruined furnishings.
She bolted her breakfast and was on the scene before eight, when the sweep and his team had been at work for more than two hours. The quantity of soot that came down appalled her. She would never have believed that so much could accumulate in one chimney, but she noticed that Millward himself, for all his knowledgeable airs, took no part in the actual work, but stood about drinking Ellen's home-brewed beer and paying lugubrious compliments to the maids, who seemed to regard him as a fruity character who might, if flattered, attend their weddings and ensure marital bliss with a traditional sweep's kiss.
Henrietta was less impressed by him. She said, anxiously, “How long do you think you will be? I’ve got a supper-dance here the day after tomorrow and this room will have to be scoured when you’ve carted all that mess away.”
Millward said that it didn’t do to hurry these things and that his gloomy prophecies had been proved correct. The horizontal section of the flue was packed with soot and young Luke was now halfway along it, passing his bags back to Jake, the senior apprentice, who was stationed at the top of the main shaft.
Presently Jake emerged, a bag slung round his neck, and Henrietta gave a yelp of horror. He was like nothing human and did not even resemble a monster. The only feature that reconciled him to the human species was his bloodshot eyes that rolled upward as he said, addressing the sweep, “Bin waitin’ ’arf-hour an’ Luke ain’t passed no more back. You reckon he's stuck?”
“How do I know, you idle little bastard,” the sweep said, aiming a blow at him that Jake expertly dodged, “get on up agin and find out. Holler for ’im, and make sure I ’ear you do it!” and then, as Jake re-entered the chimney, Millward remembered that he was in the presence of the lady of the house and wheezed, “Beg pardon M’m, but you’ve got to chivvy ’em all the time. They’ll work, but on’y if they’re kept to it. I’ve known boys sit in one o’ those chimbleys ’till you lit a fire under ’em!”
Perhaps because she had gobbled her breakfast, or because the sight of Jake was difficult to put out of mind, Henrietta felt sick and retired to her sewing-room to wait. She was still there, sipping a cup of tea Ellen had brought her, when she heard a frightful uproar from the direction of the double room, followed by a series of indeterminate thuds that seemed to come from above her head. She ran into the hall and across to the big room to find both Jake and his master hauling on a length of rope that went straight up the chimney. Man and boy, she noticed, seemed very excited, and Ellen was on the verge of hysterics, wringing her hands, moaning, and chewing her lips. She cried out, as Henrietta appeared, “Don’t stay, M’m, there's trouble, bad trouble! That boy's stuck fast…” but at that moment Jake shouted, “He's coming! Watch out, missus!” and dropped his hold on the rope to run under the canopy of the fireplace that was blotted out by a flurry of soot, reducing visibility in the room to inches.
Her first thought was that her wonderful supper-dance was ruined. They could never make the room spick and span again in the time left to them and she could have shrieked with vexation, but then, as the cloud of soot began to disperse, dismay was succeeded by horror, for the thing that shot out of the chimney and sent Jake staggering was a boy, a human being, with arms, legs and a great sooty blob for a head, and from where she stood, over by the window, he looked as though he might well be dead.
Ellen let out a shriek and the master sweep began to prance and curse as Jake fell on his knees beside his fellow apprentice, and began a rhythmic cradling movement that amounted to a sustained rocking on his part, but after a minute or so he looked up at Millward and said chokingly, “E's gorne, Mr. Millward! We was too late! I carn’t do nothing’, nothin’!” and at once began to blubber.
The master sweep dragged him aside and lifted the inert child by his ankles, shaking him as though he had been a sack, but then Henrietta, rooted to the spot and speechless with terror, saw that the boy's ankles had a rope knotted to them, and that this was the rope Millward and Jake had been hauling on when she came in.
The realisation that the apprentice had been pulled from the level flue like a cork from a bottle, and had then fallen something like twenty feet down the vertical flue, struck her as the most dreadful experience she had ever contemplated and instinctively, as she partially regained her faculties and ran forward to assist the sweep in his frantic attempt to resuscitate the boy, she realised how Adam would react to such an occurrence, for he had never forgotten that boy Tim Garvin who was ridden down and bludgeoned the night of the riot. She screamed, “Stop it! Stop that, you dreadful man! Ellen, fetch your husband, get a doctor…get water…do something, except shake him like that,” and then, as though he too had entered the room via the chimney, Adam was standing there in his riding clothes, crop in one hand, gauntlets in the other with his hat with the silver buckle still on his head. It was like a scene re-created out of a terrible nightmare and, unable to adjust to it, her knees buckled and she fainted.
3
He was much earlier than he had anticipated, remembering how insistent she had been about him returning in time. At the Croydon livery stables, where he kept his gig, he decided to ride the rest of the distance, hiring a chestnut mare that caught his eye. She exceeded expectations and he was turning into the drive in just over an hour of leaving the train.
He looked out for little Stella as he topped the rise but she was not to be seen. Instead, at the entrance of the yard, stood a dogcart with a dejected pony between the shafts, and as he passed it he noted the words, “J. Millward, Sweep,” painted on the backboard.
He paid no particular attention to it, but as he was unsaddling the horse he became aware of a stir at the rear of the house and scurrying to and from the kitchen where the pump was clanking. He thought it odd that no one ran out to greet him, and that Ellen's husband, now the groom, was not to be found. He went in through the stableyard door where one of the maids, wheyfaced, and seemingly half out of her wits, was jerking away at the pump handle, and letting the water swill over the edge of the trough. She went on pumping even when he shouted at her. Then he heard his wife's voice raised in violent protest, and ran through the hall and into the double-room, where he saw Henrietta disputing possession of what appeared to be a bag of soot with a squat, bowlegged man evidently J. Millward. Beside them were the Michelmores, both looking as if they had seen a spectre.
For a few seconds he stood gaping, unable to comprehend what could have happened, but then he saw that what he had mistaken for a bag of soot was a boy with a rope tied to his ankles, and blood clotting on raw areas of flesh on knees and elbows that were ringed with soot. He understood then, at least in part, what must have occurred, and
it had the power to enrage him in a way that nothing had since he helped to empty the well at Cawnpore, for he had read Lord Shaftesbury's recent appeal to the Lords concerning the usage of chimney sweeps, and the evidence cited had sickened him. Now, he realised, fresh evidence was being accumulated, and that on his own hearthrug, and shame galvanised him into action. He seized the sweep by the shoulder and swung him round, and at that moment Henrietta pitched forward on her knees and bowed her head, just as if she had been shot in the back.
Her fall made no immediate impression on him and he had forgotten she was there when Ellen intervened, wailing some gibberish about the boy being stuck in the chimney. That made him look more closely at the body on the floor, and he saw at once the boy must have been dead for some time, for his limbs were rigid and his mouth, half full with soot, was wide open, as though he had died in the act of screaming.
The man said, in a voice that quavered, “Best lad I ever ’ad. If on’y…” but he was unable to finish whatever he had been going to say for Adam dropped crop and gloves, swung his fist, and sent him spinning across the width of the room with a tremendous buffet on the point of the jaw.
Millward would have fallen had he not cannoned against the shrouded garden door and clutched at the dust sheets suspended there so that for a moment he seemed to hang, like a bloated spider framed in the aperture. Then, slowly, he half-subsided and his hand shot up to his face as he said, feebly, “You got no call to do that, you got no right to hit…” but before he could complete his protest Adam struck him again twice more, and this time he did go down, the first blow striking him in the belly, the second stretching him senseless on the floor.
The primitive violence of the assault did something to sober Adam, and the haze that floated in front of his eyes shredded away, so that he was belatedly aware there were others in the room besides himself, the sweep, and the dead boy in the hearth. Henrietta was still crouching near the door, with Ellen fussing about her trying to make her sip from an enamel mug, and beyond the bundle of rags in the hearth was another boy, with rolled-up trews revealing thin, spindly shins, who was obviously in a state of shock for he was scrabbling at the granite slabs of the fireplace as though, if he pushed hard enough, they would part and enable him to escape into the open. The sight of the terrified child restored some kind of sanity to Adam, so that he spun round on Ellen, shouting “Get her out of here! Give me that mug,” and Ellen said, reproachfully, “It's brandy for Mrs. Swann, sir, she's fainted…” but he roared, “I don’t give a damn, give it to me! Get her out of here, and come straight back, do you hear?” and she passed him the mug and took Henrietta by her shoulders, dragging her from the room.
He went over to the whimpering boy, thrusting the mug towards him.
“Drink it,” he said, “drink it and go through to the kitchen. Ask the girls to send all the men in here,” and the boy Jake, responding automatically to the voice of authority, took the mug and gulped down several mouthfuls of spirit, his hands shaking so violently that the mug rattled against his teeth.
Over by the window the master sweep stirred and the movement deflected Adam's attention from the boy who suddenly darted past him and out, fleet as a scared cat. Adam crossed the room and prodded the sweep, with his boot. “Get up,” he growled, “get up, man, before I kick you to death!”, and the man rose unsteadily to his feet, glaring at Adam with bleared, resentful eyes, and passing the back of his hand to and fro across his bleeding mouth.
“I didden kill ’im,” he mumbled. “It was that flue o’ yours. Missus says to scrape it, but how could I know he’d git stuck wivaht even ’ollerin’ back, like ’ee's trained to?”
Suddenly the mere sight of the man began to act on his self-control like a wrench so that he knew, if he looked at him a moment longer, he would strangle him. He flung open the garden door, grabbed Millward by his collar, and dragged him on to the terrace, and as the sweep writhed in his grasp he remembered the water butt in the yard. They arrived there together at a run and with a single heave he swung Millward clear of the ground and dropped him bodily into the vat.
“Wash the blood off your hands then get out of here before I break every bone in your body!” he said. “Don’t show yourself here again or, by God, I’ll see you get ten years for this!”
“There's my other boy an’ gear…” Millward spluttered, not daring to make any attempt to climb out of the vat, but Adam said, “The boy stays here and I’ll bury your gear with the one you’ve just killed. I’ll give you ten seconds to get in that trap of yours and out of my sight…” but the man made no further attempt to remonstrate, projecting himself out of the tub, crossing the yard and leaping into the trap, where he grabbed the reins and laid his whip across the pony's back. In something under the time limit he was out of sight behind the first of the copper beeches.
Michelmore came out, the one person in the house, it seemed, in command of himself. He said, bitterly, “I would have stopped it if I’d known, sir. Leastways, I would have warned Mrs. Swann. She couldn’t have realised…Ellen should ha’ told her,” and then, seeing Adam's expression, he fell silent.
Adam said, “See to that other boy. Get him washed, fed, and bedded down in one of the lofts. Then go for the doctor, he's a magistrate and will have to be told anyway, If he's out on his rounds find him, wherever he is, but before you leave find the gardener and send him to me,” and he went along the terrace thinking how quiet everything had gone, so quiet that he could hear rooks cawing in the elms, and the swish of the gardener's billhook in the spinney.
The big room was empty save for the corpse under the chimney canopy. Soot was everywhere, lying in a pyramid in the grate, smeared on the dust sheets, and even marking the imprint of Millward's hands where he had clutched the door coverings. Its acrid smell filled the room and made his eyes smart. He knelt by the boy and satisfied himself that he was dead before lifting him clear of the fireplace and laying him on the sheet covering the chaise longue. Then he went across the hall and into Henrietta's little sewing room behind the dining-room, finding her sitting with her hands in her lap, and on her face the crumpled, bewildered expression of one who has just witnessed something incomprehensible.
“You knew that man was sending his boys up that chimney? You were there when they went up?”
She said, tonelessly, “They were up there when I arrived. One of them came out while I was there, but the sweep made him climb back to help the other.”
“You let him do that? You knew there was a boy stuck up there and let them drag him out with a rope? ”
“I…I went away…I felt sick.”
“No doubt,” he said, grimly, and then, in an impersonal voice that was foreign to her, “I’m fetching soap, water, and a nightshirt. We’re going to wash him and lay him out before the doctor comes. Just the two of us, Henrietta. Find an apron or something,” and turned on his heel.
Her cry reached him as he was halfway across the threshold. “Adam, I couldn’t! ” and he turned back, staring at her as though she had been an insolent servant. “You will, though, or I’ll serve you as I served Millward.”
“But why, Adam? Why? It wasn’t me who…”
“You could have stopped it. You’re mistress here, or supposed to be, and you’ll do it if I have to drag you there by your hair. Find an apron and gloves,” and he went into the hall leaving the door open.
She had the impulse to run, to dart across the paddock to the woods, or up the rhododendron path behind the house and on to the moor, anywhere that offered a refuge from his cold rage, and the prospect of stripping and washing that obscene little corpse in the room across the hall. But she knew that wherever she ran he would pursue her and catch her, and that in the end it would be done in the way he wanted it done, and that he would accept no excuse and no substitute, not even if she died at the task. She dragged herself up, crossed to the chest of drawers and found an apron and a pair of gardening gloves. By the time she had them on he was back with a bucket in on
e hand and a steaming kettle in the other. Under his arm he had a bundle and she recognised one of her nightdresses by its embroidered collar and lace-edge wristbands.
In the big room the soot had settled but the atmosphere still reeked and she watched him fling open the garden doors. Then, averting her eyes, she joined him beside the couch where he set down his pail and filled it from the kettle. Methodically he began to strip away the filthy rags that covered the child's emaciated body, exposing wide areas of flesh that were only a shade paler than the face, feet, and hands. She noticed too that each elbow and kneecap was crowned with an inflamed sore, and that not only the mouth but the eyes and nostrils were choked with soot.
Mechanically, at a nod from him, she dipped one of the cloths in the bucket and tried to remove some of the filth from the loins, while he performed the same task on the chest and shoulders. Slowly the horror of what she was doing began to recede and in its place came pity, but mostly pity for herself at being involved in such a task. Once, when revulsion reached a certain point, she flung down the cloth and turned away, retching, but he said, in the same toneless voice, “Finish it, or you walk out of this house today and never come back.”
God is an Englishman Page 41
