OLIVER’S PROCLAMATION IN THE MILL AND THE BAKEHOUSE.
OLD Peter Constable had been a good master in more senses than one—a
better master, inasmuch as he and his servants understood each other,
than his son seemed likely to prove. Peter had kept his men long in
his service, but it so happened that at this date, from death and
other weeders-out of grey-headed workpeople, the men in the mill were
comparatively young. The head man, who had been promoted recently, was
not older than Oliver himself, and as yet supported such dignity as he
had to maintain in a sheepish fashion, while his trumpet still gave
forth an uncertain sound. Accordingly, the new master’s announcement,
though it excited a good deal of curiosity, drew forth no protest, not
even a private one, in this quarter.
Oliver’s little speech was made with a great effort in a pause of
the drowsy hum of the machinery and the equally lulling splash of
the water—churned into the likeness of foaming milk by the rapid
revolutions of the mill-wheel. In the middle of the self-consciousness
and confusion which beset him, and disturbed the clear sequence of his
best thoughts and ideas, Oliver made it be heard and understood that
he was to keep on the mill and take the chief management in the room
of his father. He succeeded in saying that he expected the men to do
him faithful service, while he would try his best to make their close
connection the mutual benefit it ought to be. He hoped that each man
of them, as well as himself, saw only one interest between master
and servant, and would be ready to back him in trying to do his duty.
Therefore, as he would not stint them in their wages, without a good
cause which he should put plainly before them, or ask them to make
bricks without straw—that is, to grind corn without sufficient water
power, mechanical power, reasonable time and competent guidance—so
he trusted they would be prepared to play their part in furnishing
the due amount of labour, and not demean themselves to any of the
tricks of palming off bad, slovenly, half-completed work, for good
and thorough work, which were bringing labour into general disrepute,
and threatening to become the curse and ruin of the integrity and
prosperity of England, where employers and employed were concerned.
Oliver told them frankly that for their sake—no less than for his own,
he would not consent to take scamped work, or any known lazy, knavish
substitute for honest work, from the best and most skilled workmen, in
other respects, among them.
In return, his workpeople had a right to require from him not only
punctual payment of their wages, but intelligent consideration of their
position, helpful sympathy with their efforts, forbearance for their
blunders, as he should claim tolerance from them for his mistakes.
Although he had thought it advisable to begin by warning them of
what he could not and ought not to permit in their relation, he also
told them what they were not called upon to bear from him—heartless
indifference to their welfare, and unprincipled gambling with flesh and
blood, as the means of keeping up the game of speculation rather than
fair trade. He was ready to trust them for the loyal discharge of their
obligations, till they were put to the proof. He asked them in return
to trust his father’s son till they learned to know him better as their
master.
If it was a strain upon Oliver Constable to make such a speech except
to his cronies, and he only made it by a kind of mental and physical
convulsion, it was also a strain upon the young men in the mill to
listen properly. They could not compose themselves to catch half the
words, far less their meaning. They grinned and gaped at each other,
and every man looked how his immediate neighbour was conducting
himself, rather than attended to Oliver. Yet they did not fail to
develop instantly keen criticism of what might be called Oliver’s style
of public speaking. ‘Goin’ to school and college hain’t made him speak
out, or thump with his fist in the right place, like old Sam Snuffles
the Methody, as roars hisself hoarse, and lashes all around him so
that a chap has to duck his head for safety. Old Sam beats the young
master, old Sam does, hout and hout,’ reflected one lad, in a vein
of class conceit and agreeable superciliousness. Another promising
youth, who had been reared at a seaport, made an apt comparison in his
mind between the speaker and a heavily-laden vessel, sailing against
the wind, labouring and tacking; ‘and if I was only near him, I would
lay you any odds but I’d hear his timbers groaning,’ the ingenious
youngster silently pursued the simile which he was reserving for future
use.
But Ted Green, the head man in the mill, never got beyond the news
that ‘the concern’ was not to stand still or be transferred to other
ownership, which might have endangered Ted’s late rise in the world.
He pondered throughout the whole of the remaining sentences, on the
substance of the introductory remark. He wished he could go home to his
wife and repeat to her the welcome assurance. Wishes were useless in
the present case, they could not even free Ted from the responsibility
of acting as the mouthpiece of the men under him in replying to the
address. Naturally, Ted only replied to what had gone into his ears and
taken hold of his mind. Still, as the intelligence grasped by him had
been of a pleasant sort, one might have expected that there would have
been warmth, at least, in the partial response. But Ted was stolid as
well as stupid—a large, heavy-looking, fair-complexioned young man,
with the fairness increased to positive pallor by such a plentiful
application of flour to the skin as would have put to shame the thick
powdering preceding the thicker painting of the fine ladies of the last
century. Ted leant against the door-post with that hopeless incapacity
to stand upright which is mostly shown by sailors on firm ground. ‘You
aire, sir,’ said Ted, abruptly and concisely, with idiotic vagueness
and apparently the utmost phlegm.
Oliver had to knit his brows and think for a moment before he
recognised that the two words replied concisely to the single
statement that he was to keep on the mill, while they were totally
irrelevant to what he considered the gist of the speech which he had
pumped up by a severe struggle out of the depth of the temporary chaos
of his mind. It sounded as if Ted and his fellows dismissed that with
cynical contempt and only troubled themselves to grapple with the bit
of information which was practical in their eyes.
‘Well, I take it, since there is no question of parting company, me
and my mates here don’t object to present terms—not at present,’ Ted
resumed and ended with stiff and wary, but unmistakable condescension,
the moment the decision had, in his judgment, passed over to the men.
‘Not at present, sir,’ the young millers confirmed their leader’s
opinion with one voice, as if it were worked by the mill machinery, and
rendered a little husky and obscure by the pervading dust.
Oliver’s gravity was nearly upset. At the same time, he was aware of
a slight sense of repulse, and consequent disappointment, which he
said to himself proved him to be the inveterately sanguine and hasty
beggar with whose foolish traits he ought at this date to have been
familiar enough to overcome them, and set their reactionary influence
at defiance.
But he could not help looking forward to receiving a little more
encouragement in the bakehouse, were it only in an indignant
apprehension of some of his inferences, and a dogged assertion of
a working baker’s rights, including that of testing the quality of
his work, and of dealing with his master, in the full bloom of class
prejudice, as his natural enemy. It was all very well to speak of
the superior comfort and general agreeability of a miller’s life
over that of a baker. The former had the advantage in the matter of
picturesqueness like the toil of the day labourer in the fields over
the artisan’s—above all the petty tradesman’s occupations. Yet there
could be no comparison—taking the two trades _en masse_—of which was
the more intelligent of the two.
There were honourable exceptions of ploughmen-poets and young
shepherds, among the lowly pastoral hills, who had lived to become—like
David, king of Israel—leaders of men. But the exceptions only proved
the rule.
In the same line of argument the sallow-faced journeymen bakers, with
their complexions bleached by so much of their lives spent in the
atmosphere of the oven, even the forward lads who, after the ancient
fashion of Pharaoh’s chief baker, poised on their heads baskets full
of ‘all manner of baked meats’ or more ponderous loaves, and traversed
the streets of Friarton, had their minds and their very faces sharpened
by contact, at once wider and closer, with their fellows. And the
bakers were as far in intellectual advance of the manly young louts of
millers whose employment consisted chiefly in heaving up and down sacks
of corn and flour, and mechanically feeding the mill, as the millers
were before ordinary farm servants.
Oliver counted, too, on Jim Hull, his father’s old factotum and
right-hand man, such a long-established ‘institution’ in the bakehouse
and shop, that Peter Constable had been wont to say, Jim was not only a
great deal better acquainted with the details of the business than he,
Peter, had been able to continue, so that he should not like to venture
on any step without Jim’s concurrence, but that, in fact, he would
hardly consent to such a liberty taken with him and his position. He
knew his own importance, and while he had the interest of the master as
much at heart as any Constable of them all could have it, Jim was just
a trifle inclined to take the rule into his own hands and reign on his
own account.
Oliver had compared Jim Hull to those mayors of the palace who had
founded the Carlovingian dynasty in the west of Europe; but while
Oliver himself felt by no means inclined to act the lackadaisically
sentimental part of the long-haired monarchs of France, he believed
he might reckon on his man for something shrewd and telling, whether
on his master’s side or against him. And Oliver secretly sighed for a
foeman worthy of his steel, for the stimulus of the sharpest opposition
to balance the enervating languor induced by his sister Fan’s
despairing acquiescence, and Ted Green and his companions’ mortifying
indifference where Oliver’s will was concerned.
The Constables’ extensive bakehouse and shop at Friarton bore no
resemblance in any respect to Friarton Mill. In place of being a
venerable structure—half superannuated, it was a comparatively new
building furnished with every modern improvement, in full activity.
Indeed it had been erected by Peter Constable’s enterprise when he
began to flourish greatly in his twin trades. The large and somewhat
staring shop had an intimation inscribed over the door, ‘Peter
Constable, Baker and Confectioner,’ and the pledge was fulfilled in the
display of every description of British bread within the windows. The
shop and its double sign stood out boldly and with perfect confidence
among the shops in the old-fashioned High Street where the weekly
corn market was still held, on the pavement before the door of the
Ayott Arms Inn. Old Peter Constable had attended the corn market
with the regularity of clock-work, and had enjoyed the opportunity
afforded him, in the intervals between inspecting samples of grain, of
looking over the way with entire complacency at the handsome shop and
bakehouse which were among the fruits of his industry and enterprise.
The immediate vicinity of the shop had also enabled Peter to entertain
hospitably select little parties of his customers among the farmers,
in the back-shop, and to conclude bargains with them there in greater
privacy than could be found in the street, or in the commercial room
of the inn. Fan Constable, in walking up Friarton High Street, had not
looked upon the great bake-shop with the same favourable eyes. But she
was a true and high-spirited woman. She had never gone out of her way
or got up an excuse to avoid passing her father’s shop-door. She had
walked straight by it, though she might not have been able to prevent
her foolish colour from rising, in company with Mrs. Fremantle, and
while Fan saw Clara Houghton advancing in the opposite direction. Fan
would have risked meeting Clara on the doorstep, and if the vicar’s
daughter had declined to own acquaintance with a valuable ally and an
old school-fellow to boot because of the fire of half-mischievous,
half-malicious eyes which Fan knew so well were watching the
encounter, then let the friendship come to a violent end on the spot,
the miller and baker’s daughter would have said without hesitation,
though its destruction must undoubtedly have proved a blow to Fan.
She had never failed her father or even betrayed any repugnance to
joining him at the shop when she was in town with him on market days,
and he was to drive her home in the pony phaeton, which to please Fan
had superseded a gig, just as the gig had in its time, to please Fan’s
mother, taken the place of a spring cart.
Fan had only not been equal to getting up an enthusiasm for the
contents of pans and trays, in well-raised loaves and crisp biscuits,
and she did not see that she was called upon—good housekeeper though
she was—to be one of the severely initiated in the inner mysteries
of bread made with or without yeast, steamed or not steamed. She was
guilty of greater wilful ignorance in the matter of bread than in any
other domestic question; though of course she was acquainted with such
an A B C piece of knowledge as how to distinguish a cottage from a pan
loaf when she saw them, while she was perfectly aware that the Polley
girls had a joke among them and their companions, of her affected
ignorance in this particular.
It had certainly vexed Fan when her father, in his satisfaction with
his bread, would illustrate its excellence by lightly patting the crust
or gently pinching the crumb. She confessed to herself she hated to
see him on an emergency, when he had sent the shopman out and no other
man or boy was in the way, quietly step behind the counter, and in the
innocence of his heart, sell a twopenny loaf to a working woman or a
halfpenny biscuit to a child. And Fan had the conviction that rather
than witness Oliver, with his college breeding, and the gentleman-like
character impressed on his very twists and grimaces, demean himself to
dispense the staff of life, as his father had done before him, to his
fellow-townspeople, she would herself go behind the counter and wait
on the mocking public. It is to be feared that Fan would have offered
cakes and buns with a tragedy air which would have repelled all save
the most persistent buyer.
Oliver had assured himself that he had long ago got over the boyish
weakness—barely excusable in a boy, and the paltriest of all follies
in a man—which, to do men justice, a large proportion of them cast
off with the growth of their beards, of wincing under the knowledge
that his father had been in trade—in the primitive trade—of a baker.
Oliver had fancied he had well-nigh forgotten the sneaking sense of
affront at the pit whence he had been dug. But it seemed the sillier
and more Jeames-like a social definition was, the more it stuck in
the consciousness of its victim. Oliver, to his disgust, experienced
a sensation of personal discomfort, an inclination to avoid public
attention, when he walked into the Friarton bake-shop in the light of
the heir come to take possession. He had to relieve his self-disgust
by defying his self-consciousness, standing up as large as life and
lounging purposely in the sight of the bystanders for a few minutes. He
had to sit down in the retirement of the back-shop and smoke a pipe to
recover his equanimity as he meditated on the manliness of Thackeray’s
Philip on his way through the world, bowing with perfect nonchalance
and satisfaction from the ‘knife-board’ of an omnibus, to his
fashionable friends in their carriages. Oliver ended by recalling the
occasion when as a small boy he was led by his father through the same
premises, then in the process of building. Little Oliver had enjoyed
the inspection at least as much as his father had enjoyed making it
with him, and had listened with pride while the owner of the place
told the child—when there was no thought of Oliver’s developing into
a scholar—a gentleman far above such low aims as baking and selling
bread—that the buildings would be his one day—he should get the chief
good out of them after they had paid their cost to the builder. ‘And
you’ll make something worth while out of them, Nolly? You’ll be up to
all the new improvements that ain’t mere catchpennies? You’ll bake and
sell the best and cheapest bread in the county—won’t you now, my little
chap?’
‘Yes, Far’er,’ little Oliver had answered, with unhesitating
cheerfulness, as children will undertake without doubt or fear to
conquer kingdoms.
After that recollection, Oliver had only to rise and perform a
pantomime of freeing his arms from an encumbrance, to get rid of what
shreds remained of that parti-coloured garment of the conventional
fool, which we have most of us considerable difficulty to escape from
wearing, each in his turn.
Oliver was fit to go to the bakehouse, and, in the sweat of his brow,
deliver his speech a second time—in this instance to his bakers. They
were a set of men both young and middle-aged, some portly, some lean,
all more or less yellow rather than white-skinned—like the millers, for
these were not the lads who spent a large part of their day in the open
air distributing the bread. These were journeymen who had not their
time at their own disposal, and even if they had, would not, unless
in perhaps one exceptional case, have devoted their leisure with the
enthusiasm of genius to the pursuit of any branch of natural history,
taking the student out into the fields and woods like the famous baker
whose book was the iron-bound coast and the bleak moors of Caithness.
The sallow complexions of the bakers were brought out in relief by
their white caps as they stood with their shirt sleeves rolled up to
their elbows. The men had left their baking boards for the day, but
still had to keep a vigilant eye on the ovens in the background. As
the party came forward to listen to the new owner of the business,
they fell naturally into the attitude of a deputation, with one
man representing their leader pushed well into the foreground, who
instinctively caught up his apron under his left arm as a sign in
character. But he was not Jim Hull.
Jim Hull was in a white suit like the rest. But his suit was
conspicuously shrunk at the wrists and ankles as if he had grown away
from the original fit in his growing days and yet had adhered to the
measurement in anticipation of the time when he should begin to grow
down, not up, to bend nearer the earth instead of raising his head high
above it. Jim stood a little apart from the group of bakers and their
future master, as Oliver addressed his views to his workmen. Contrary
to Oliver’s anticipations, Jim preserved at least the attitude of
neutrality in the encounter.
Jim Hull was an elderly man with a compact face, as if his rather neat
and regular features had been compressed so as to take up the least
room. He had a remarkably clear, keen eye under the grizzled hair which
hung low on his square forehead, for a man approaching threescore.
He had been a faithful servant in the Constables’ service from youth
to approaching age. He was not without a kind of feudal sentiment
both to the family and the business. It gave him a certain amount of
gratification that they should still remain united—that Master Oliver
had not cut the whole concern and turned his back on it as if it were a
disgrace. On the other hand, Jim had his own deeply rooted prejudices
and his own schemes, and he was capable, as his former master had
foreseen, of becoming factious and troublesome if he were thwarted in
his opinions, and mortified in his conceit.
Jim had not in the least anticipated the course Oliver Constable was
taking; so far from it, Jim had entertained a project of risking his
bachelor savings and enabling a favourite nephew who was already a
tolerably successful master baker in a neighbouring village, to buy the
Constables’ business, and carry it on in Friarton with the further help
of Jim’s experience.
But, to do the old man justice, he would have resigned this private
plan with less reluctance if he had been satisfied with Oliver
Constable’s rearing, or with the young man personally.
Jim listened and reflected, standing all alive and vigilant with his
hands clasped behind him. ‘Peter Constable kneaded his batch by my
side, many’s the day, when we were lads. He could set the sponge better
than I could, when we were fellow-apprentices to his father. Peter’s
mind was in the baking business from the first. Now young Oliver has
been bred different, and his mind has been in his books—that’s what
makes me mistrustful of his proposal, and not altogether agreeable to
it, though it comes from his father’s son and does him no discredit—I’m
bound to say,’ thought Jim. ‘’Arry Reddock can look out for himself,
and I’m not pledged to take him up, if I were sure of this turn of
affairs. But young Oliver’s an amature—that’s what he is—and no good
comes of amatures. He’ll make ducks and drakes of as fine and solid a
business as ever three generations got together; and he’s a crotchety
lad, too. Hear to him, what he’s telling the lads! about everything
being above-board—as if there ever was a trade without its secrets—and
of his not passing over a man’s shirking his work and disobeying
orders, as if any tradesman—be he ever so flourishing—can afford in
them times to quarrel with his best hand, maybe, because he has a mind
of his own, or will go on the spree nows and thens, or is not careful
to make his batches every bit as light and sweet as they may be. Master
Oliver has to find this is a world in which a man must live and let
live and act conformable to circumstances.
‘He ought to be rare and perfect as a master that demands a perfect
servant, and them is not the days for that uncommon commodity when the
servants are like to have the ruling of the masters—instead of the
masters the picking and choosing of the servants. This young fellow has
to learn life out of college, and he had as well learn his trade at the
same time before he takes upon him to be a master baker.’
But Jim Hull kept his counsel in the meanwhile. It was the foremost man
of the group of bakers who spoke out in reply to Oliver. ‘Do you mean
to say, sir,’ said the man, not disrespectfully, but with a flavour of
offence in his tone, ‘that there are to be a set of fresh arrangements
made here, and that we are to consent beforehand—without knowing what
we are doing—to a whole lot of new-fangled ways?’ And there was a
murmur of assent to the objection from the men behind him.
‘I don’t see the obligation, Webster,’ said Oliver, who simply knew the
man by name.
Webster was a young man of not more than five-and-twenty, though he was
put prominently forward by his fellows. He had bushy sandy-coloured
hair, and a large up-turned nose with deep lion-like lines drawn from
its base to the corners of his mouth.
Oliver spoke calmly, but he felt in some degree taken aback and ruffled
by the commentary on his words. ‘The business has been conducted on
the same principles all along. But if I see it advisable to make
alterations, I shall let you know, when you must be prepared to agree
to them, or quit my employment.’
‘All right, sir,’ said Webster, promptly. ‘Of course you are entitled
to say that much, while you will not refuse to allow that there are two
at a bargain-making.’
So the brief colloquy, which was only ‘feeling the way’ on the part of
both master and man, came to an abrupt conclusion.
Oliver returned to the back-shop, taking Jim Hull with him.
‘Sit down, Jim, and make yourself comfortable,’ said Oliver, bringing
out a bottle of ale and glasses from the familiar cupboard and taking
the second armchair. ‘Now, what about that lad Webster who spoke up for
the others?’
‘He’s a good baker when he likes, which is more than can be said of
most of your speechifiers and politicians,’ said Jim.
‘Then he’ll like to bake well for me, or he’ll turn out of the
bakehouse,’ said Oliver, holding up his glass to the light.
‘Stop a bit, not so fast,’ said Jim, putting down his glass for a
moment, after a testing sip. ‘Your father always kept good ale in
cask and in bottle because he gave it time to clear and ripen, so he
did. You had better think—if I’m at liberty to speak,’—he paused, and
Oliver nodded. ‘You see, I was afraid new men might mean new manners,’
went on Jim, clearing his throat. ‘What I was going to say comes
to this, where are you to get a better man to put in Sam Webster’s
place? You must consider that, sir, before you speak of dismissing Sam
hot and sharp. Good bakers, in a country town in especial, ain’t as
plentiful as blackberries, now-a-days, Master Oliver; and if Sam go and
stump the neighbourhood—that, and reading, and holding forth on them
newspapers is second nature to the fellow—if he tell everywhere what an
oonreasonable master young Constable is like to be, why you may have to
whistle long enough for a new baker fit to stand in the shoes of Sam,
though he do be off and on troublesome.’
‘You and Sam had better wait and find if I am an unreasonable master,’
said Oliver, with a smile. ‘Who is letting his imagination go ahead, I
should like to know? I made no unreasonable stipulation. I did not bid
the men do by me what I am not willing to do by them. If I am to be
a master baker I shall not feed my customers on husks and worse, Sam
Webster and his allies may rest assured of that—and in order that I may
be honest in all my dealings, I will have proper work out of my men.’
Jim looked dubious. ‘Excuse me, sir, but do you know what proper work
of this sort is, and what are the conditions of work in general at this
date? You don’t mean to be oonreasonable, but a man’s intentions and
his deeds don’t always square.’
‘Granted. But do you mean there are trades-unions and strikes among
the Friarton bakers, and that we may be reduced any day—not as a matter
of eccentric taste, or in obedience to a doctor’s prescription, but
as a case of necessity—to eat unleavened bread like the Jews in the
Passover week, or to bake at home, a lost art where housewives and
maid-servants are concerned?’
‘It ain’t a laughing matter,’ Jim rebuked the young man’s levity; ‘and
if the things themselves ain’t here—and I have not heard tell yet of
trades-unions and strikes among the bakers in Friarton—do you think
their spirit ain’t about in the air? Do you think the bakers alone
of working men,’ continued Jim, with an accent of injured _esprit de
corps_, ‘will be content to remain without a voice, ay, and a precious
influential voice, in all that concerns them nearly—their hours of
work, their mode of work, and mode of pay, and all the rest of it? Are
the bakers to be left behind when every other specie of working man
is having his say? I should not have consented to that myself, when I
was a young baker; now, I am nigh an old man,’ Jim cooled down at the
recollection, ‘and I’m free to admit that I don’t see much good comes
of speechifying and vapouring,’ ended Jim, drinking off his ale and
drawing a long sigh after the refreshment.
‘Well hit at me, old “specie,”’ thought Oliver, while he said, quietly,
‘Nobody is preventing any man from having his say in what particularly
concerns him. It is one of the privileges that living in the present
generation has given him. I should be the last person to object to it.
I intended the men to take what I said to them into consideration; only
I can’t, for the life of me, see what just and rational argument they
have to bring against it; I touched on no debatable point. If they are
worth their salt in morals as in ability, they are surely willing to
give a fair exchange of work for wages. And if the men have a grain
of common sense, they must grant that no organised system of work can
be maintained without one person in authority to enforce discipline on
those under him.’
‘The capital and labour question ain’t so easily settled as you
suppose, Master Oliver,’ said Jim, shaking his head doggedly if
somewhat evasively. ‘At the best it is a very ticklish matter, and I
only hope you won’t burn your fingers meddling with it.’
‘I can guess you are of opinion that I am not setting about the task
in the proper fashion; but wait till you see how I get on, Jim,’ said
Oliver, good-humouredly; ‘don’t damp my spirits by forecasting evil.’
‘I wouldn’t wish to do that,’ said Jim, more formally than heartily or
cheerfully. ‘That don’t belong to my place. But I’m nigh an old man,
about as old as your father, and grown grey with the Constables: if
putting my experience at your service could have been of any use, it
belonged to my dooty.’
‘Thanks,’ said Oliver, quickly. ‘You are quite right to ease your
conscience. But I am afraid I must earn my experience like the rest of
the world—I must have my fling—try to work out my theories, and when
they break down, then begin to mend them—do you take me, Jim?’
‘Oh, ay, sir,’ said Jim with polite dryness, ‘and I had as well say
good morning to you, and go about my own business in the bake-shop.’
Oliver let him go, and sat alone twisting his stalwart body in his
armchair. ‘The game would not be worth the candle,’ he reflected, ‘if
one paid heed only to these clods in the mill and cheeky swaggerers
in the bakehouse; and there is old Jim, conservative to the backbone,
even while he is full to the tongue of class prejudice and jealousy.
He feels the world turning upside down with him; yet he sets his face
against the only hope of control for the new spirit. But the principles
of right and wrong are eternal and as capable of being fought out in a
mill and a bakehouse as on any other battle-field.’