THE ancient village of Holmfirth on the river Holme was, in former days,
of considerably more pretension than it is to-day, when the neighbouring
town of Huddersfield dwarfs the surrounding communities. Holmfirth
stands near the head of the valley of the Holme, and at one time was
looked up to as a petty capital by the straggling hamlets that
intervened between the river's head and the spot where, some nine miles
below, its tortuous course joins the river Colne at King's mill in
Huddersfield, whence the united currents sweep in broader stream to
blend with the Calder at Cooper Bridge, and so onwards to the capacious
bosom of the Humber.
Best known and best accustomed of all the shops in Holmfirth was that of
Ephraim Thorpe, sometimes; known as Eph o' Natt's o' th' Thong, but more
as "Split," from a tradition current in the village that he would split
a pea rather than be guilty of giving over-weight or measure. The shop
was low and dark, it's floor of blackened stone seldom scrubbed. The two
counters were not cleanly, their surface much worn by the friction of
heavy vessels and the testing of doubtful coins. But what article of
household provision you failed to get at "Split's" you might despair of
purchasing anywhere nearer than Huddersfield itself. A candle rack ran
round three sides of the shop, just above the counters, and the sickly
odour of tallow pervaded all the spot, dominating even the smell of
treacle and "shilling-oil" as the oil used for lamps was called.
Flitches of bacon hung from the rafters; bags of flour and of oatmeal
with open necks were propped up in corners. Bars of soap, piles of
soft-stone and white stone, tins of tea and coffee, pats of butter,
skins of lard, papers of blacking and black-lead, pots and pans, and
brushes hard and soft, eggs and herrings, peas and beans and Indian corn
for poultry, gridirons and porringers, thimbles and shoelaces, clogs and
pocket-handkerchiefs--all these and sundry others were the articles of
commerce retailed at fifty per cent, profit to a grateful public by Mr.
Ephraim Thorpe. That public consisted for the most part of those
employed in the neighbouring mills, and few were the families of the
humbler sort entirely out of Ephraim's debt. He was always willing to
trust a man that he knew to be fairly sober and in fair work, and to his
regular customers at the crisis of a funeral or a wedding, lend a guinea
or so at the easy interest of sixpence in the pound per week; so long as
the interest was paid regularly he never pressed for the principal. But
woe betide any housewife who took her ready money to a rival tradesman,
or ventured to go shopping at the flaunting stores of Huddersfield. The
Court of Requests and the "Bum" were words of terrible portent, and
Ephraim knew every trick of the law. He knew, too, the wages of every
working family in the district how much they ought to spend when they
bought in for the week, and how far it was safe to trust when work was
slack or sickness rife and ready-money not forthcoming. Truly no lord of
the manor in the good old days of dungeon-keep, thumb-screw and rack,
was held more in awe than the red-headed, freckled, yellow-fanged,
parchment-skinned, ferret-eyed "Split," general dealer and deacon of the
Baptist Flock that gathered at Aenon Chapel, Holmfirth, "the altar by
the rushing waters."
For Ephraim was as zealous in his chapel-going as in his shop-keeping.
Sunday morning and afternoon saw him in his pew, dressed in sable
doeskin, but with a subtle flavour of soap and chandlery exhaling from
his pores. He rented a high, uncompromising pew, in which he could coop
himself up and barricade himself from the non-elect. It was a capital
sentinel-box, whence he could espy the gaps in the ranks of the
faithful. He could note when Ned o' Ben's, or Bill o' Sue's absented
himself from service, and speculate at his leisure whether a
bull-baiting or a cock-fight had lured to sinful delight, and recall to
a nicety the amount that stood to the delinquent's debit in the long
narrow, greasy, skin-bound ledger of hieroglyphics that only Ephraim
understood, and at whose sight the stoutest good dame's heart would sink
and the shrillest-tongued virago's voice be hushed.
Mr. Thorpe was a widower, and though it is possible--such is the
amiable of a women for the bereaved and afflicted--that more than one
might have been willing and lend attentive ear had he wooed again, a
widower, Ephraim announced, he meant to live and die. His daughter, and
only child, Martha, was old enough to keep the house above the shop, in
which the father and daughter dwelt. The spiteful gossips of the village
said she was not only old enough, but ugly enough. But said gossips
suffered their critical judgment of the daughter to be warped by their
unfavourable opinion of the father. It cannot be denied that Martha's
hair was not only of somewhat harsh and coarse texture, but of hue from
her sire. It is true also that her face was angular and pinched, and
freckled to boot, and that her form displayed none of the graceful
curves so suggestive of clinging warmth and seductive softness; nor was
her voice the soft and dulcet fluting that disarms not less than melting
eye or witching smile. Poor Martha had been crushed and stifled and
starved all her life. She had never loved nor been loved but the timid,
wistful, yearning look that stole unbidden from her grey eyes told of a
heart that hungered for the love that makes a woman's life. Though she
lived, and had lived for years under the same roof with her father, she
could not remember to have heard from his lips one caressing word, to
have received from his hand one gentle touch, or; seen from his eye one
glance of affection. He was not unkind to her, save in the negative way
which is the withholding of kindness; nay, if in any way. Ephraim could
be said to be extravagant it was in the lavish adornment of his
daughter's person. The vicar's wife had not a richer silk or costlier
shawl; no manufacturer's daughter finer feathers or more elegant
bracelet. But Martha would have preferred a much homelier garb and a
necklace of beads or jet; she asked only to slink unnoticed through her
chill life, and had an half-formulated idea that her father dressed her
as he did his shop windows, in the way of trade and to abash his
neighbours.
Martha had practically no friends. The daughters of the manufacturers
could, of course, not be expected to have more than a go-to-meeting,
bowing acquaintance with a shop-keeper's daughter, though that
shop-keeper was popularly supposed to be able to buy up any two
mill-owners put together. To be sure the Rev. David Jones, the pastor at
Aenon Chapel, and Mrs. David Jones and Miss Lydia Jones called at times
and dutifully partook of tea and muffins in the sitting-room above the
shop from which no ingenuity had been efficient to bar the insidious
blend of many odours from the store beneath, and true also Martha was a
constant attender at Dorcas meetings, class meetings, prayer meetings,
and Chapel and Sunday School tea-parties, called by the scoffing and
ungodly herd, "muffin-worrys." But Martha was constrained, awkward,
_gauche_, and though her heart, was ready to go half-way to meet an
overture, she could not make an advance. Little children were not
allured to her, girls of her own age ridiculed whilst they envied her
dress jewellery, staider matrons thought it shame that grasping miser's
scarecrow daughter should "peark" herself out in dainty raiment whilst
their own well favoured ones went in cheap cottons or plain home-spun.
Of all the worshippers at Aenon Chapel, none was more considered than
Jabez Tinker. There were many reasons for this. One undoubtedly was that
Jabez Tinker was one of the leading manufacturers in the valley. No one,
not old Daft Tommy, who was reputed to be over a hundred years old,
could remember a time when the Tinkers were not a great name in
Holmfirth and when Wilberlee Mill was not run by them. The very name of
Tinker is, curiously enough, significant the family connection with the
staple industry of the valleys of the Colne and the Holme. It is said to
be derived from the Latin, _tinctor_, a dyer, and to have come down from
those far off times when the Roman conquerors introduced the arts of
civilisation to the aboriginal Celts of these northern wilds. Certainly
Jabez Tinker's father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him
made cloth and doubtless dyed it. And they had made good cloth, buckskin
and doeskin of the best. They were not a pretentious nor an ambitious
race. They worked hard made shrewd bargains, paid their way expected to
be paid, and put by money slowly but steadily. They had mostly married
money too, not, perhaps marrying for money, but taking care to marry
where money was. They were just to their work people and were slow
either to put a man on or to take a man off. Once get a job at Wilberlee
Mill and you were there for good, if you behaved yourself--or, as the
heads said, if Tinker didn't know when he had a good man, the man knew
when he had a good master. It was not that the Tinkers paid more than
ruling prices for their labour. They made no pretence at being
industrial philanthropists--that would not have been business; but they
contrived to keep the mill running, shine or shower. Times must be
parlous bad indeed if the great water-wheel did not turn at proper times
in the race at Wilberlee; and constant employment is more to a man than
high wages, with slack times in between, if men had only the sense to
see it.
It is not necessary to go far back into the ancestry of the Tinkers,
though, in a quiet way, they were not a little proud of it. Old William
Tinker had left two sons, both of whom had been brought up to the
business, and to both, as partners, the business had been left. Jabez,
the elder, I shall have much to say. Richard, the younger, might not
have been a Tinker at all. He did not "favour" the Tinkers, who were
traditionally tall lean, wiry, big-boned men, somewhat sallow of
complexion, with dark straight hair, scant of speech, inflexible of
will, their word their law, neither grasping nor prodigal, and as strict
at chapel as the counting-house. But Dick Tinker, Dick o' Will's o'th
Wilberlee, had been a "non-such." He had blue eyes that always sparkled
with mirth; curling chestnut hair, that affronted Puritanic sense; and
he was a sad spendthrift. He had a hearty word for everyone. He liked to
go of a night to the _Rose and Crown_, and led the revels there. He
never missed a meet of the harriers, and he kept his own game-cock. He
had a very appreciative eye for a pretty face, even though it was
half-hid under a weaver's shawl, and for a neat ankle, though cased in
clogs. During his widowed father's life he had gone dutifully to chapel,
when he couldn't make any plausible excuse for shirking attendance, for
it was no small matter to stand up against the old man's will. But when
the father died, Dick stoutly declared, with not a few oaths, that he
was sick to death of the Hard-bedders--such was his irreverent term for
the Particular, very particular, Baptists--and contented himself by
going to the Parish Church, on those rare occasions when he felt need of
spiritual solace. Then he capped all his follies by marrying the pretty,
penniless, governess at the Vicarage, a girl said to be from down
Lincolnshire way, who spoke with refined accent, had gentle, graceful
ways, and was so clearly a lady that every woman in the district, save
the Vicar's wife and the working folk, resented it. But the moors were
too bleak for her and she had the grace to die after two years--which
had been like Paradise to Dick--leaving him an infant daughter,
Dorothy.
Jabez had not liked his brother's marriage. He had nothing to say
against his sister-in-law, except that it would have been better if she
had been a "that country's" woman. Why couldn't Dick have done as the
Tinker's had done from time immemorial, and married in the valley.
"There were lasses anew, and to spare," he said, "well favoured, and
only waiting to be asked." Then Dick's bride had brought him nothing but
the clothes she stood up in, and that was another grievance. But Dick
had laughed, in his careless way, and said it was time to mend the
Tinker breed, by bringing some grace and beauty into the family, and "my
Louie has that, you can't deny." And Jabez could not deny it.
"Why don't you marry yourself, Jabez? You, all alone i' th' old
homestead, with nobody but old Betty to look after you! Dreadful
lonesome you must be. Th' house is none too cheerful at th' best o'
times. But a woman's pretty face, an' a soft voice, an' th' patter o'
little feet 'll lighten it up if now't else will. And tak' advice,
Jabez, look further afield, not among th' Wrigleys, an' Wimpennys, an'
th' Brookes. Their lasses are weel enough, an' there's money with all on
'em. But they run too much to bone, an' they've been chapelled, an'
missionarized, an' dragooned till religion 's soured on 'em, an' when
they love they love by rule o' three."
But Jabez had winced, and changed the subject.
After his wife's death Dick had gradually fallen back into his old
courses. He loved his little wench, as he called his daughter,
passionately; but a full-blooded, hearty man, still in the very pink and
flower of his manhood, one used all his life to the bustle of the
market, the free and easy ways of an inn and the sports of the field is
not very much at home in a nursery. So Dick, who had felt, when the
cruel blow fell, that life had nothing left for him was once more to be
seen o' nights at the _Rose and Crown_, roaring out a hunting song, or
arranging the details of a coursing match, a pigeon shooting, or a cock
fight--and the maidens of the valley of the Holme took heart once more,
and began to feel a lively concern for the poor orphaned babe in the
lonely house. They forgave Dick--handsome, rollicking Dick--his
passing aberration, his one overt act of treason to their charms, and
reflected, with satisfaction, that his married life had been so brief,
it might be considered as not counting at all--an episode, not a
history.
But the rising hopes of these speculative spinsters were rudely dashed.
One bright winter's morning, when a sudden thaw had softened the iron
fields and promised the scent would lie, Dick rode forth cheerily on his
hunter to the meet at Thongsbridge. There was a substantial breakfast at
Mr. Hinchliffe's a brother manufacturer and a county magistrate. Dick
did ample justice to the cold beef and ham but declined coffee for
old October. Then he must needs drain a stiff glass of brandy and
water "to warm the old ale," he said; and in very merry mood was Dick
when the hounds broke covert. Now save the stone walls of Galway
there are no worse fences than those of the Valley of the Holme. You
must clear them at the peril of your neck. There is no crashing
through a dry-walling,--a "topping" _may_ give once in a way; but it
is odds that it wont. Dick--Dare-devil Dick they called him in the
hunting-field,--rode straight. The ground in the higher reaches had not
yielded to the thaw or the morning sun. His horse baulked at an awkward
fence, slipped, and failed to recover itself, and before Dick could
disengage boot from stirrup, fell upon its side, with Dick crushed
beneath. The broken ribs were pressed into the lungs, and though he
lingered a few days at Mr. Hinchliffe's house, he was borne from it a
corpse.
"You will be good to Dorothy?" he said to Jabez and Jabez had pressed
the clammy hand in silent promise.
"You'll take her to live with you. She's a bright little lass, like a
ray of sunshine in the house. You wont let her forget her mother or her
worthless dad, will you, Jabez? You'll be taking a wife someday
yourself, lad, an' have childer o' your own. But you won't be hard on
th' little lass, will yo', Jabez?"
And Jabez said she should be as his own.
"She won't be bout brass, yo know, Jabez," gasped the dying man, the
sweat standing in heads upon his pale brow. "There's my share i'th'
business, and odds and ends. Yo' know all about 'em. I'd never no
secrets fro' yo, Jabez, though yo' wer' always a bit close, weren't tha,
lad? I've left everything to Dorothy an' made yo' her guardian an' th'
executor. I know yo'll do right bi th' little 'un. I'm none feared for
that. Th' Tinkers aren't that sort; but don't be hard wi' her. She's
nooan as tough as some, her mother's bairn, God bless her."
And so poor Dick was gathered to his fathers and lay in the old
churchyard at Holmfirth by the fair, fragile wife's side in the grim
vault of the Tinkers. Not a mill worked in the district as they carried
him to his grave. Men and Women "jacked work" with one accord and lined
the route from the dead man's house to the very side of the grave. For
Dick with all his faults, perhaps, because of them, was dear to the
simple folk of the valley, and many, a tale was told in the village
inns, of cheery word and ready jest, and helping hand in time of need;
and many a buxom housewife, as she stirred porridge for good man and
bairns, smiled sadly and gave a gentle sigh as she saw herself again a
sprightly wench chased at Whitsuntide round the ring at "kiss in the
ring" Or "choose the lad that you love best," and found herself a
willing captive, but panting and struggling still, whilst Dick saluted
the rosy cheek. For at the Sunday School treats at "Whis-sunday," all
classes were on a level, and even the parson himself must run as fast as
legs could carry him if tap of maiden greatly daring fell upon his
shoulder, or her kerchief dropped at his feet.
Whether it was the necessity of having some other companionship than old
Betty for the young niece so solemnly committed to his charge, or
whether he was weary of his bachelor solitude and felt the need of a
woman's presence in the old homestead in which he had been born and
which he had inherited on his father's death, certain it is that Jabez
Tinker began seriously to think about a wife. He was now nearing his
fiftieth year, and the romance of youth--love's young dream--he sadly
told himself was not for him. Perhaps he had never been young; but be
that as it may he was now a staid, prosaic man, who looked all his years
and more, his whole soul in his business, in parish affairs and in other
spheres in which the gentler emotions have no concern. Business was with
him as the breath of his nostrils. Had he liked, he could have retired
on a fair competence; had he been asked he could have given no solid
reason why he should continue to toil and moil and put by money. Dorothy
was his nearest relative, though of remoter ones--cousins and
half-cousins, agnates and cognates as the Roman lawyers said, he had
them by the score. But it certainly was neither for Dorothy nor other
relative, near or distant, he spent more and more time in mill and
counting-house, planning fresh outlets for the produce of his looms,
building additions to the old mill, and watching eagerly every
improvement in the machinery of his trade. He did it simply because he
must, as a successful lawyer takes briefs upon briefs, or a popular
doctor case upon case. And he resolved that in his choice of a bride he
would look for money that would buy out Dick's share in the business,
and leave him sole master of Wilberlee mill.
And in this mood his thoughts turned to Martha Thorpe; he scarce knew
why, except, perhaps, that he was used to the sight of her Sunday after
Sunday, and at the weekly services and social functions of the chapel
and Sunday school. All the world knew that Martha would have money, but
none the less did all the world--of Holmfirth--gape and exclaim with
its "Did yo' evver?" and its "Aw nivver did," when the reserved master
of Wilberlee was seen, not once or twice, but, in time, Sunday after
Sunday, pacing slowly by Martha and Old Split's side from the chapel
gates to the modest home above the shop in Victoria Street. But when it
become known that Jabez Tinker actually took his roast beef, and
Yorkshire pudding, and apple pie (with cheese) at Splits, the
spinsterdom of the village was divided between wrath and scorn.
"Such a letting down to th' Tinkers," declared one.
"I'll never believe it till I see it," affirmed another.
"It's money he's after," a third alleged.
"He's enough o' his own."
"There's no telling. Happen he's speculated. Besides, much will have
more, an' Tinkers wer' allus rare 'uns for th' main chance," was the
general conclusion.
"All but poor Dick," said his old cronies of the _Rose and Crown_.
"By gosh! But Ginger o' Split's 'ud be a pill as 'ud bide some gilding
for my taste," vowed the jolly landlord. "Jabez mun ha' a good stomach."
And what thought Martha?
It was inconceivable to her at first that the visits of Mr. Tinker, of
Wilberlee, could be anything but visits of business to her father;
doubtless some matter connected with the Chapel or the Sunday School.
But Ephraim dropped hints.
"How would ta like to be wed, lass?
"Father!"
"Aye, it's father now. It 'll be happen gran'father afore long," and the
old man chuckled a greasy chuckle.
It could not be true, murmured Martha to her heart. That anyone should
come a wooing to her, unless, perchance it were some needy parson after
her money, seemed preposterous. And yet everyone said Mr. Tinker was
more than well-to-do. And, after all, was she so very plain? Is there in
this wide, wide world a woman's glass that does not tell a flattering
tale to one, at least? And, as she looked, a warm glow tinged the pale
cheeks, and a light shone in her eyes they had never known before. To be
loved! To be loved for her own sake! To get away from that horrid shop;
to be Jabez Tinkers lady; to queen it over those who had sneered at her
behind her back! There was rapture in the thought. And oh! She would
love him so; she would be his very slave; no house should be like
theirs. Never did the heart of Andromeda leap to meet the coming
Perseus, as Martha's heart went out to this prince, come, if come indeed
he were, to break the chains that bound her to the cruel rock of barren
life. Her heart overflowed with gratitude, and humbly she thanked her
God that His handmaiden had found favour in this great Lord's sight. She
did not ask for the fervent worship of an ardent wooer's love. She only
asked to be allowed to love, and to be loved a little--oh! just a
little, in return--as the parched ground thirsts for the grateful
shower, so thirsted the heart of the patient Martha for a good man's
love.