THE MANCHESTER MEN
Basset knew every path that crossed the Chase, and had traversed them
at all seasons, and in all weathers. But when, some hours later, he
halted on a scarred and blackened waste that stretched to the horizon
on every side, he would have been hard put to it to say how he came to
be there. He wore his hat, he carried his stick, but he could not
remember how he had become possessed of either.
For a time the shock of disappointment, the numbing sense of loss had
dulled his mind. He had walked as in a dream, repeating over and over
again that that was what she thought of him—and he had loved her. It
was possible that in the interval he had sworn at fate, or shrieked
against the curlews, or cursed the inhuman sky that mocked him with its
sameness. But he did not think that he had. He felt the life in him too
low for such outbursts. He told himself that he was a poor creature, a
broken thing, a failure. He loved her, and—and that was what she
thought of him.
He sat on the stump of an ancient thorn-tree that had been a landmark
on the burnt heath longer than the oldest man could remember, and he
began to put together what she had said. He was trifling away his life,
picking stray finds from the dust-heap of the past, making no man wiser
and no man better, doing nothing for any one! Was she right? The Bohun
pedigree, at which he had worked so long? He had been proud of his
knowledge of Norman descents, proud of the research which had won that
knowledge, proud of his taste for following up recondite facts. Were
the knowledge, the research, the taste, all things for which he ought
to blush? Certainly, tried by the test, _cui bono?_ they came off but
poorly. And perhaps, to sit down at his age, content with such
employments, might seem unworthy and beneath him, if there were other
calls upon him. But were there other calls?
Time had been when his family had played a great part, not in
Staffordshire only but in England; and then doubtless public service
had been a tradition with them. But the tradition had waned with their
fortunes. In these days he was only a small squire, a little more
regarded than the new men about him; but with no ability to push his
way in a crowd, no mastery among his fellow-men, one whom character and
position alike cast for a silent part.
Of course she knew none of these things, but with the enthusiasm of
youth she looked to find in every man the qualities of the leading
role. He who seldom raised his voice at Quarter Sessions or on the
Grand Jury—to which his birth rather than his possessions called
him—she would have had him figure among the great, lead causes,
champion the oppressed! It was pitiful, if it had not been absurd!
He walked on by and by, dwelling on the pity of it, a very unhappy man.
He thought of the evenings in the library when she had looked over his
shoulder, and one lamp had lighted them; of the mornings when the sun
had gilded her hair as she bent over the task she was even then
criticizing; of afternoons when the spirit of the chase had been
theirs, and the sunshine and the flowers had had no charm strong enough
to draw them from the pursuit of—alas! something that could make no man
better or wiser. He had lost her; and if aught mattered apart from
that, she had for ever poisoned the springs of content, muddied the
wells of his ordered life.
Beyond doubt she loved the other, for had she not, she would have
viewed things differently. Beyond doubt in her love for the other lay
the bias that weighted her strictures. And yet, making all allowance
for that, there was so much of truth in what she had said, so much that
hit the mark, that he could never be the same again, never give himself
with pleasure to his former pursuits, never find the old life a thing
to satisfy!
And still, like the tolling of a death bell above the city’s life, two
thoughts beat on his mind again and again, and gave him intolerable
pain. That was what she thought of him! And he had lost her! That was
what she thought of him! And he had lost her! Her slender gracious
figure, her smiling eyes, the glint in her hair, her goodness, her very
self—all were for another! All were lost to him!
Presently the day began to draw in, and fagged and hopeless he turned
and began to make his way back. His road lay through Brown Heath, the
mining village, where in all the taverns and low-browed shops they were
beginning to light their candles. He crossed the Triangle, and made his
way along the lane, deep in coal-dust and foul with drains, that ran
upwards to the Chase. A pit, near at hand, had just turned out its
shift, and in the dusk tired men, swinging tins in their hands, were
moving by twos and threes along the track. With his bent shoulders and
weary gait he was lost among them, he walked one with them; yet here
and there an older man espied the difference, recognized him, and
greeted him with rough respect. Presently the current slackened;
something, he could not see what, dammed the stream. A shrewish voice
rose in the darkness before him, and other voices, angry, clamant,
protesting, struck in. A few of the men pushed by the trouble, others
stood, here and there a man added a taunt to the brawl. In his turn
Basset came abreast of the quarrel. He halted.
A farm cart blocked the roadway. Over the tail hung three or four
wailing children; into it a couple of sturdy men were trying to lift an
old woman, seated in a chair. A dingy beadle and a constable, who
formed the escort and looked ill at ease, stood beside the cart, and
round it half a score of slatternly women pushed and shrieked and
gesticulated. On the group and the whole dreary scene nightfall cast a
pallid light.
“What is it?” Basset asked.
“They’re shifting Nan Oates to the poorhouse,” a man answered. “Her son
died of the fever, and there’s none to keep her or the little uns.
She’ve done till now, but they’ll not give her bite nor sup out of the
House—that’s the law now’t seems. So the House it be!”
“Her’d rather die than go!” cried a girl.
“D—n them and their Bastilles!” exclaimed a younger man. “Are we free
men, or are we not?”
“Free men?” shrieked a woman, who had seized the horse’s rein and was
loudest in her outcry. “No, nor Staffordshire men, nor Englishmen, nor
men at all, if you let an old woman that’s always lived decent go to
their stone jug this way. Give me Stafford Gaol—’tis miles afore it!”
“Ay, you’re at home there, Bet!” a voice in the crowd struck in, and
the laugh that followed lightened matters.
Basset looked with pity at the old woman. Her head sunk upon her
breast, her thin shawl tucked about her shoulders, her gray hair in
wisps on her cheeks, she gazed in tearless grief upon the hovel which
had been home to her. “Who’s to support her,” he asked, “if she stays?”
“For the bite and sup there’s neighbors,” a man answered. “Reverend
Colet he said he might do something. But he’s been lammed. And there’s
the rent. The boy’s ten, and he made four shilling a week in the pit,
but the new law’s stopped the young uns working.”
“Ay, d—n all new laws!” cried another. “Poor laws and pit laws we’re
none but the worse for them!”
The men were preparing to move the cart. The woman who held the rein
clung to it. “Now, Bet, have a care!” said the constable. “Or you’ll go
home by Weeping Cross again!”
“Cross? I’ll cross you!” the termagant retorted. “Selling up widows’
houses is your bread and meat! May the devil, hoof and horn, with his
scythe on his back, go through you! If there were three men here, ay,
men as you’d call men——”
“Easy, woman, easy!”
“Woman, dang you! You call me woman——”
“Now, let go, Bet! You’ll be in trouble else!” some one said.
But she held on, and the crowd were beginning to jostle the men in
charge when Basset stepped forward. “Steady, a moment,” he said. “Will
the guardians let the woman stop if the rent is provided?”
“Who be you, master?” the constable asked. “You’d best let us do our
duty.”
“Dang it, man,” an old fellow interposed, “it’s Squire Basset of Blore.
Dunno you know him? Keep a civil tongue in your head, will you!”
“Ay,” chimed in another, pushing forward with a menacing gesture. “You
be careful, Jack! You be Jack in office, but ’twon’t always be so!
’Twon’t always be so!”
“Mr. Colet knows the old woman?” Basset asked.
“Sure, sir, the curate knows her.”
“Well, I’ll find the rent,” Basset said, addressing the constable, “if
you’ll let her be. I’ll see the overseer about her in the morning.”
“So long as she don’t come on the rates, sir?”
“She’ll not come on the rates for six months,” Basset said. “I’ll be
answerable for so much.”
The men had little stomach for their task, and with a good excuse they
were willing enough to desist. A woman fetched a stub of a pen and a
drop of ink and Basset wrote a word for their satisfaction. While he
did so, “O’d Staffordshire! O’d Staffordshire!” a man explained in the
background. “Bassets of Blore—they be come from an Abbey and come to a
Grange, as the saying is. You never heard of the Bassets of Blore, you
be neither from Mixen nor Moor!” In old Stafford talk the rich lands of
Cheshire stood for the “mixen” as against the bare heaths of the home
county.
In five minutes the business was done, the woman freed, and Basset was
trudging away through the gathering darkness. But the incident had done
him good. It had lightened his heart. It had changed ever so little the
direction of his thoughts. Out of his own trouble he had stretched a
hand to another; and although he knew that it was not by stray acts
such as this that he could lift himself to Mary’s standard, though the
battle over the new Poor Law had taught him, and many others, that
charity may be the greatest of evils, what he had done seemed to bring
him nearer to her. A hardship of the poor, which he might have seen
with blind eyes, or viewed from afar as the inevitable result of the
stay of outdoor relief, had come home to him. As he plodded across the
moor he carried with him a picture of the old woman with her gray hair
falling about her wrinkled face, and her hands clasped in hopeless
resignation. And he felt that his was not the only trouble in the
world.
When he had passed the wall of Beaudelays Park, Basset struck—not far
from the Gatehouse—into the road leading down to the Vale, and a couple
of hours after dark he plodded into Riddsley. He made for the Audley
Arms, a long straggling house on the main street, in one part of two
stories, in another of three, with a big bay window at the end.
Entering the yard by the archway he ordered a gig to go to the
Gatehouse for his portmanteau. Then he turned into the inn, and
scribbled a note to John Audley, stating that he was called away, and
would explain matters when he wrote again. He sent it by the driver.
It was eight o’clock. “I am afraid, Squire,” the landlord said, “that
there’s no fire upstairs. If you’d not mind our parlor for once,
there’s no one there and it’s snug and warm.”
“I’ll do that, Musters,” he said. He was cold and famished and he was
not sorry to avoid the company of his own thoughts. In the parlor, next
door to the Snug, he might be alone or listen to the local gossip as he
pleased.
Ten minutes later he sat in front of a good plain meal, and for the
time the pangs of appetite overcame those of disappointment. About nine
the landlord entered on some errand. “I suppose, sir,” he said,
lingering to see that his guest had all that he wanted, “you’ve heard
this about Mr. Mottisfont?”
“No, Musters, what is it? Get a clean glass and tell me about it.”
“He’s to resign, sir, I hear. And his son is to stand.”
“Why?”
“Along o’ this about Sir Robert Peel, I understand. They have it that
Sir Robert’s going to repeal the corn taxes—some say that he’s been for
it all through, and some talk about a potato failure. Mr. Mottisfont
sees that that’ll never do for Riddsley, but he don’t want to part from
his leader, after following him all these years; so he’ll go out and
the young gentleman will take his place.”
“Do you think it is true about Peel?”
“They’re saying it, and Mr. Stubbs, he believes it. But it’ll never go
down in Riddsley, Squire. We’re horn and corn men here, two to one of
us. There’s just the two small factories on the other side, and most of
the hands haven’t votes. But here’s Mr. Stubbs himself.”
The lawyer had looked into the room in passing. Seeing Basset he
removed his hat. “Pardon, Squire,” he said. “I did not know that you
were here.”
“Not at all,” Basset answered. He knew the lawyer locally, and had seen
him often—at arm’s length—in the peerage suit. “Will you take a glass
of wine with me?”
Stubbs said that he would with pleasure, if he might take it
standing—his time was short. The landlord was for withdrawing, but
Stubbs detained him. “No, John, with Mr. Basset’s leave I’ve a bone to
pick with you,” he said. “Who are these men who are staying here?”
Musters’s face fell. “Lord, Mr. Stubbs,” he said, “have you heard of
them?”
“I hear most things,” the lawyer answered. “But repealers talking
treason at the Audley Arms is a thing I never thought to hear. They
must go.”
The landlord rubbed his head. “I can’t turn ’em out,” he said. “They’d
have the law of me. His lordship couldn’t turn ’em out.”
“I don’t know about that,” Stubbs replied. “He’s a good landlord, but
he likes his own way.”
“But what can I do?” the stout man protested. “When they came I knew no
more about them than a china babe. When they began to talk, so glib
that no one could answer them, I was more took aback than anybody.
Seems like the world’s coming to an end with Manchester men coming
here.”
“Perhaps it is,” Basset said.
Stubbs met his eye and took his meaning. Later the lawyer maintained
that he had his suspicions from that moment. At the time he only
answered, “Not in our day, Mr. Basset. Peel or Repeal, there’s no one
has attacked the land yet but the land has broken them. And so it will
be this time. John, the sooner those two are out of your house the
better.”
“But, dang me, sir, what am I to do?”
“Put ’em in the horse trough for what I care!” the lawyer replied.
“Good-evening, Squire. I hope the Riddsley parliament mayn’t disturb
you.”
The landlord followed him out, after handing something through the
hatch, which opened into the Snug. He left the hatch a little ajar when
he had done so, and the voices of those who gathered there nightly, as
to a club, reached Basset. At first he caught no more than a word here
or there, but as the debate grew warm the speakers raised their voices.
“All mighty fine,” some one said, laying down the law, “but you’re like
the rest, you Manchester chaps. You’ve your eyes on your own rack and
manger!”
“I’m not denying it,” came the answer in a Lancashire accent, “I’m not
saying that cheap bread won’t suit us. But it isn’t for that——”
“No, no, of course not,” the former speaker replied with heavy
irony—Basset thought that the voice belonged to Hayward of the Leasows,
a pompous old farmer, dubbed behind his back “The Duke.” “You don’t
want low wages i’ your mills, of course!”
“Cheap bread doesn’t make low wages,” the other rejoined. “That’s where
you mistake, sir. Let me put it to you. You’ve known wheat high?”
“It was seventy-seven shillings seven years back,” the farmer
pronounced. “And I ha’ known it a hundred shillings a quarter for three
years together.”
“And I suppose the wages at that time were the highest you’ve ever
known?”
“Well, no,” the farmer admitted, “I’m not saying that.”
“And seven years ago when wheat was seventy-seven—it is fifty-six
now—were wages higher then than now?”
“Well,” the Duke answered reluctantly, “I don’t know as they were,
mister, not to take notice of.”
“Think it out for yourself, sir,” the other replied. “I don’t think
you’ll find that wages are highest when wheat is highest, nor lowest
when wheat is lowest.”
The farmer, more weighty than ready, snorted. But another speaker took
up the cudgels. “Ay, but one minute,” he said. “It’s the price of wheat
fixes the lowest wages. If it’s two pound of bread will keep a man fit
to work—just keep him so and no more—it’s the price of bread fixes
whether the lowest wages is eightpence a day or a shilling a day.”
“Well, but——”
“Well, but by G—d, he’s got you there!” the Duke cried, and smacked his
fat thigh in triumph. “We’ve some sense i’ Riddsley yet. Here’s your
health and song, Dr. Pepper!” At which there was some laughter.
“Well, sir, I’ll not say yes, nor no, to that,” the Lancashire man
replied, as soon as he could get a hearing. “But, gentlemen, it’s not
low wages we want. I’ll tell you the two things we do want, and why we
want cheap bread; first, that your laborers after they have bought
bread may have something over to buy our woollens, and our cottons, and
your pots. And secondly, if we don’t take foreign wheat in payment how
are foreigners to pay for our goods?”
But at this half a dozen were up in arms. “How?” cried the Duke, “why
wi’ money like honest men at home! But there it is! There’s the devil’s
hoof! It’s foreign corn you’re after! And with foreign corn coming in
at forty shillings where’ll we be?”
“No wheat will ever be grown at that price,” declared the free trader
with solemnity, “here or abroad!”
“So you say!” cried Hayward. “But put it at forty-five. We’ll be on the
rates, and our laborers, where’ll they be?”
“I don’t like such talk in my house!” said Musters.
“I’d certainly like an answer to that,” Pepper the surgeon said. “If
the farmers are broke where’ll their laborers be but flocking to your
mills to put down wages there!”
“The laborers? Well, they’re protected now, that’s true.”
“Lucky for them!” cried two or three.
“They are protected now,” the stranger repeated slowly. “And I’ll tell
you what one of them said to me last year. ‘I be protected,’ he said,
‘and I be starving!’”
“Dang his impudence!” muttered old Hayward. “That’s the kind of thing
they two Boshams at the Bridge talk. Firebrands they be!”
But the shot had told; no one else spoke.
“That man’s wages,” the Manchester man continued, “were six shillings a
week—it was in Wiltshire. And you are protected too, sir,” he
continued, turning suddenly on the Duke. “Have you made a fortune, sir,
farming?”
“I don’t know as I have,” the farmer answered sulkily—and in a lower
voice, “Dang his impudence again!”
“Why not? Because you are paying a protected rent. Because you pay high
for feeding-stuff. Because you pay poor-rates so high you’d be better
off paying double wages. There’s only one man benefits by the corn-tax,
sir, there’s only one who is truly protected, and that is the
landlord!”
But to several in the room this was treason, and they cried out upon
it. “Ay, that’s the bottom of it, mister,” one roared, “down with the
landlords and up with the cotton lords!” “There’s your Reform Bill,”
shouted another, “we’ve put the beggars on horseback, and none’s to
ride but them now!” A third protested that cheap bread was a herring
drawn across the track. “They’re for cheap bread for the poor man, but
no votes! Votes would make him as good as them!”
“Anyway,” the stranger replied patiently, “it’s clear that neither the
farmer nor the laborer grows fat on Protection. Your wages are nine
shillings——”
“Ten and eleven!” cried two or three.
“And your farmers are smothered in rates. If that’s all you get by
Protection I’d try another system.”
“Anyways, I’ll ask you to try it out of my house,” Musters said. “I’ve
a good landlord and I’ll not hear him abused!”
“Hear! Hear! Musters! Quite right!”
“I’ve not said an uncivil word,” the Manchester man rejoined. “I shall
leave your house to-morrow, not an hour before. I’ll add only one word,
gentlemen. Bread is the staff of life. Isn’t it the last thing you
should tax?”
“True,” Mr. Pepper replied. “But isn’t agriculture the staple industry?
Isn’t it the base on which all other industries stand? Isn’t it the
mainstay of the best constitution in the world? And wasn’t it the land
that steadied England, and kept it clear of Bonaparte and Wooden
Shoes——”
“Ay, wooden ships against wooden shoes for ever!” broke in old Hayward,
in great excitement. “Where were the oaks grown as beat Bony! No,
master, protect the oak and protect the wheat, and England’ll never
lack ships nor meat! Your cotton-printers and ironfounders they’re
great folks now, great folks, with their brass and their votes, and so
they’ve a mind to upset the gentry. It’s the town against the country,
and new money against the old acres that have fed us and our fathers
before us world without end! But put one of my lads in your mills, and
amid your muck, and in twelve months he’d not pitch hay, no not three
hours of the day!”
Basset could hear the free trader’s chair grate on the sanded floor as
he pushed it back. “Well, gentlemen,” he said, “I’ll not quarrel with
you. I wish you all the protection you deserve—and I think Sir Robert
will give it you! For us, I’m not saying that we are not thinking of
our own interests.”
“Devil a doubt of that!” muttered the farmer.
“And some of us may have been cold-shouldered by my lord. But you may
take it from me that there’s some of us, too, are as anxious to better
the poor man’s lot—ay, as Lord Ashley himself! That’s all! Good-night,
gentlemen.”
When he was gone, “Gi’ me a coal for my pipe, John,” said the Duke. “I
never heard the like of that in Riddsley. He’s a gallus glib chap
that!”
“I won’t say,” said Mr. Pepper cautiously, “that there’s nothing in
it.”
“Plenty in it for the cotton people and the coal people, and the
potters. But not for us!”
“But if Sir Robert sees it that way?” queried the surgeon, delicately.
“Then if Sir Robert were member for Riddsley,” Hayward answered
stubbornly, “he’d get his notice to quit, Dr. Pepper! You may bet your
hat on that!”
“There’s one got a lesson last night,” a new-comer chimed in. “Parson
Colet got so beaten on the moor he’s in bed I am told. He’s been
speaking free these last two months, and I thought he’d get it. Three
lads from your part I am told, Hayward.”
“Well, well!” the farmer replied with philosophy. “There’s good in
Colet, and maybe it’ll be a lesson to him! Anyway, good or bad, he’s
going.”
“Going?” cried two or three, speaking at once.
“I met Rector not two hours back. He’d a letter from Colet saying he
was going to preach the same rubbish here as he’s fed ’em with at Brown
Heath—cheap bread and the rest of it. Rector’s been to him—he wouldn’t
budge, and he got his notice to quit right straight. Rector was fit to
burst when I saw him.”
“Colet be a born fool!” cried Musters. “Who’s like to employ him after
that? Wheat is tithe and the parsons are as fond of their tithe as any
man. You may look a long way before you’ll find a parson that’s a
repealer.”
“Serves Colet right!” said one. “But I’m sorry for him all the same.
There’s worse men than the Reverend Colet.”
Basset could never say afterwards what moved him at this point, but
whatever it was he got up and went out. The boots was lounging at the
door of the inn. He asked the man where Mr. Colet lodged, and learning
that it was in Stream Street, near the Maypole, he turned that way.