THAT was a grand moment for Ben and Tom when the shuttle of the goit at
Co-op Mill was drawn, and the water from the dam began to stream into
the wheel-race and catch the buckets of the great wheel, transmitting
its revolutions to the main shafting and machines. Little enough stock
of wool and dye wares had they, and few indeed the engines for
transforming by multiple processes the greasy, clotted fleeces into warp
and weft and good broad pieces. But both knew every branch of the
manufacturer's art, and each was more than willing to take his part, and
more than his part, at scouring, dyeing, scribbling, or weaving. They
employed very few hands, and each of these thoroughly understood that he
was to be paid not only a fair day's wage for a fair day's work, but
also a share of the profits; and it did not take long for Yorkshire
shrewdness to discover that the better, the more thoroughly, each one
worked, the better for one and all. There was no scamping the work, no
idling. And there was no breaking time for sprees, no "laiking" because
a chap felt Mondayish, and wanted an off-day or two to get over the
effects of Saturday's and Sunday's debauch. Every hand at Co-op Mill
began in a very brief time to shake off the enervating consciousness of
the subservience of a hired labourer. He would not only not idle
himself, he would tolerate no idling in a fellow labourer. There are
tricks in every trade, or every trade is solely maligned. There are ways
of shirking work, of making time pass in merely _seeming_ labour that
one would think one as irksome in the long run to the operative as they
are undoubtedly unjust to the employer. There was none of that at Co-op
Mill. Set a thief to catch a thief, and a man who shirks and dawdles at
his work steals the time that is indeed money. But let the man who works
by your side be personally interested in the work you do, and the way
you do it; there is no room there for shirking and dawdling. The lever
of labour is, after all, self-interest, and so ingrained is
self-interest that the only thing that can be asked of average human
nature is that self-interest should not impinge on the self-interests of
another.
Now matters were so arranged at Co-op Mill that self interest was
necessarily and unavoidably altruistic, and when this great truth was
once fairly grasped and assimilated by the hands a spirit prevailed from
scouring house to pressing-room that secured ready, willing abundant and
thorough work, and the quality and the quantity of the work soon made
themselves manifest in the final output. The finished pieces were a
delight to the eye and to the touch. There was no occasion to employ a
traveller to push their goods. The goods sold themselves. It had been
resolved that suit-lengths might be bought at the mill at a little below
ordinary retail prices. This was to contravene the commercial code; but
Tom did not see why a man should be compelled to go to a tailor and the
tailor to a merchant and pay the profits to two middlemen because of a
commercial code that chiefly benefited the middlemen and never the
consumer. No, the difficulty did not consist in finding purchasers; the
difficulty was in putting out goods enough to supply the demand. But as
Ben had predicted, so soon as the system began to be understood, and
especially after the first "divvy" had been declared and actually taken
home by the men and handed to their wives, there was no lack of proffers
of service from men who were able, ready, and willing to put their "bit"
into Co-op Mill. At present there was some demur to terms--bare
interest on invested capital, no participation in profits over that
limit. On this point Ben and Tom were inexorable, adamantine. "It shall
_not_ be a capitalists' concern, it _shall_ be a workers'."
And it was wonderful too, and heartening to note the harmony, the
goodwill, the general sense of brotherhood that prevailed from
counting-house downwards. There was no cringing, no toadying, no
tale-hearing. There was the very presence, spirit, and revelation of a
moral resolution. Nothing so ennobles a man as to feel that, so far as
man can ever be in this network of human organism in which no thread is
self-sufficient and self-dependent, he is his own man, with need to go
cap in hand to no other. It is a feeling that, in Yorkshire is perhaps
apt to run to truculence and the very savagery of self-assertion; but
even so it is better than the cringing, fawning self-abasement of the
rural districts of the midland villages where squire and priest are gods
of earth and heaven.
A man who threw in at the Co-op was a marked and envied man. The pick of
the operatives were willing to take the looms as fast as they could be
put up. It was Lucy who suggested that the new concern should go into
the making of shawls. Everyone who knows the manufacturing districts of
Yorkshire and Lancashire knows the shawl of the mill girl. It is to her
what the cloak is to the Irish butter-woman, the plaid to the Scotch
shepherd, or the mantilla to the Spanish donna. It was Dorothy who
designed the pattern for the first shawl and, as time went on, the warm,
bright-coloured covering might be seen over the head and shoulders of
the women and girls in every mill in the Valley of the Holme. There was
no need to be concerned about the texture or the fastness of the
colours. It was a Co-op shawl. That was guarantee enough.
Tom and Ben worked early and late. Tom indeed had had a bed fixed up in
a small room of the lower story of the mill. Many a night, indeed often
for weeks together every night except Saturday and Sunday, he slept in
the mill. He was the one to open the mill-gate in the morning and greet
the hands as they streamed into the yard and hand them their time
checks. His was the hand that, when the long day, yet all too short for
his endless round of duties, lagged to its weary close, fastened the
gate upon the last of the toilers; and oft and oft, far into the silent
hours, he would bend over stock-book and ledger or, when the moon shone
high above the mill, would walk round the mill dam and up the rugged
hank of the babbling stream that fed it. His constant companion was
Jack, no longer Workh'us Jack, but Jack, plain Jack, or Jack o' th'
Co-op, or Tom Pinder's Jack, anything but Workh'us Jack; a new,
transformed Jack, wearing his corduroys and smock as proudly as if they
had been a Field Marshal's uniform. Sometimes a wag, further learned
than others, would dub him "Man Friday;" but it was all one to Jack. He
was Tom's body servant, his dog, if need be, to fetch and carry. And who
so popular all through that beautiful valley and who so welcome at the
hill-side farms and cottages as cheery, smiling, cherry-faced Jack with
his kindly jest and merry quip and crank? Why, he was worth a dozen
commercial travellers rolled into one. When he led the cart from the
mill to the coal-shoots and back, or went his round with the great
red-coloured barrel on wheels in quest of the ammonia laden refuse of
the house-hold it was a sorry day for Jack when he did not bring back
two or three orders for the pretty, taking shawls, and what insight into
the delightful vanities of lovely maiden Jack did not acquire on his
rounds was really not worth noticing.
But it was on a shawl for Lucy that Jack spent his first week's earnings
at Co-op Mill, a dainty, modest shawl of softest fleece, a shawl, Jack
declared, you could draw through a finger ring, and perhaps one might if
the finger were one of Jack's. The rosy-cheeked, brown-eyed lasses of
the little farms and homesteads, and the more forward wenches of the
valley mills wasted their becks and nods and wreathed smiles on Jack. He
took them all as a matter of course; but a look from Lucy's soft warm
eyes, from which the pathetic wistfulness of long suffering had not yet
worn away, would set Jack "all of a dither." It was for Lucy, when the
season came, that he ransacked the hill sides for the peeping snowdrop,
and the hedge-bottoms for the shy primrose; for Lucy that he bore home
the nodding blue-bells and the blushing fox-glove, or the rare wild
rose; for Lucy that he searched the brambles for the luscious
blackberry, and bent his back o'er the purple heather for the nestling
bilberry; for Lucy that he brought the thrilling thrush; for Lucy that
he nearly broke his neck down the steps of the church belfry the day he
secured the wild young jackdaw; and for Lucy that he weaned the perverse
bird of its natural addition to choleric speech and general bad
language. In Jack's eyes Lucy was fair and beautiful as any angel--and
indeed her pale face was very sweet to look upon--and for him Lucy's
lightest word--nay, such is the divination of affection--Lucy's
unspoken thought was as law. And who so surely as Jack could rouse Lucy
from the sad reveries into which her thoughts would sometimes stray, and
bring back to her lips the pleasant smile and the gentle repartee that
had neither sting nor lash? Who was it but Jack that nearly killed the
barman at the _Rose and Crown_ because he soiled his lips with an
unseemly jest involving both Tom and Lucy; who but Jack that, however
urgent his business errands might be, never passed Ben's cottage without
solicitous enquiry as to Lucy's health, and what sort of a night she had
had, and how she had felt that day; and for whom but Lucy did Jack
forswear cakes and ale?
But now the last wild rose of the summer has blushed in the hedgerows,
and the bracken of the moors is greying to sickly death; the brooks and
rivulets fall from the heights in fuller stream and muttering a gloomier
song and the long nights are at hand when men-folk of a social mind seek
the creature comforts and the good-fellowship of taproom and bar.
And this was the season which Ben and Tom deemed fitting for the
launching of still another experiment. They had resolved of a Saturday
night--that most dangerous of nights, when the wages in the breeches'
pockets seem as if they would stand any inroad for the quenching pint
throughout the winter months to have night classes at the mills for
their own hands, and for as many of their friends as liked to come.
There were to be first of all lessons in English History, and with
history was to be taught in the only way it can be effectively taught,
the geography of the wide, wide world. And the lessons in history were
to be enlivened and made the more seductive by the reading of books of
fiction and romance, of fable and poem dealing with the period under
study, so that by the light of such heroes as _Hereward the Wake_, and
_The Last of the Saxon Kings_, and _The Last of the Barons_, by the
deathless pages of Avon's Swan, by the muse of Chaucer, of Spenser, and
of Milton, the ages of the past lived before the eyes of these eager
sons of toil, and they dwelt in the stately company of kings and
warriors, cloistered saints and beautiful sinners, and saw, as in a
waking dream, the stately drama of their country's making.
There were lessons, too, in chemistry: and in the explosions of gases,
the evolving of composite stenches and the pyrotechnics of
phosphorescent combustion the younger hands found a joy that knew no
satiety or abatement. But Tom confined his teaching to the veriest
elements of inorganic chemistry, those whose interest in the subject
clamoured for more must seek their further advancement in the
fascinating subject elsewhere. It was to teach, to drive home, the great
truth of fixed, unchanging, ruthless law that had been, from the first,
the dominating idea. And when his pupils had once grasped thoroughly the
idea of the all-pervading law in the material world, what was easier
than to lead them, without their realising his drift and purpose, to the
conception of the fixed, the immutable in the moral law, and what more
easy to expel from minds so prepared the baneful influence of the
extra-natural creeds that led so many to repose their confidence in the
adventitious, the possible interposition of a _Deus ex machina_ to
rescue them from the disasters they had courted for themselves. That
twice two make four, neither more nor less, is a great fact; that H and
Cl make hydrochloric acid and not Devonshire cream is also a fact; that
happiness ensues upon well-doing and suffering upon sin, this also is a
fact; but one the churches attenuate to men's minds by insisting upon a
rote punishment that may be averted by timely repentance. Tom taught
that punishment, mediate or immediate, direct or indirect, is here, and
in this present time.
Now Tom was not such a fool as to dub his discourses Lectures on
Religion. He knew well enough that to do so would be to talk to empty
benches. The orthodox are suspicious of religious instruction unless
they receive it wearing a Sunday dress, and a Sunday face, and in a
conventional conventicle established by the State, or by that force
which is more powerful than the State, the approval of Madam Grundy. The
unorthodox, for quite different reasons, would have shunned his
class-room, though it was the weaving shed at Co-op Mill they would have
suspected a snare to trap them into saintliness. So the astute Tom
called his theses "Lectures on the Science of Living," and succeeded
insidiously in making his hearers perceive that the Science of Living
and Religion are one and the same thing; by Religion, of course, not
being understood that _olla podrida_, or hotch-potch of legend, fable,
history, surmise poetry, rhapsody, and morals which so many confound
with religion. The expositions of this quite unheard of Science of
Living were delivered on the Sunday afternoons and in the weaving shed
at the mill. Another novelty was that there was no collection. And the
lectures began to be talked about and be popular.
"What are ta' fidgettin' abaat, Luke?" a constant caller at the
_Croppers' Arms_ would ask as the minute-hand of the clock plodded
towards the third hour of the Sunday afternoon.
"A'm nooan fidgettin'; but aw mun be stirring."
"Sit thee still, mon. There's time enough afore turnin'-aat time. Th'
churchwardens wi'not be raand afore three an' after. Sup up an' let's
fly for another quart. It'll be a long while till th' oppenin' time
to-neet."
"Nay aw'll ha' no more. I'm thinkin' aw'll just ha' a bit o' a stretch
to sattle mi dinner."
"Aye, weel, aw dunnot mind if aw've a bit o' a walk missen to stretch mi
legs. Which way did ta think o' takkin'?"
"Weel there's a nice stretch o' country up by Hinchliffe Mill way, an'
we'st get a mouthfu' o' fresh air."
"Tha's no bahn to th' Co-op Gospel-shop, are ta?"
"Weel, aw winnot say but what aw meet look in, just to wind missen. Its'
a bit o' a poo' fro' here to th' Top. An' there's no wheer aw can ca'
to-day, worse luck."
"Tha'll get nowt at th' Co-op, chuse ha. It's nobbut dry drinkin' they
han on tap theer, folk say. But aw dunnot set thi on th' road a bit, an'
if tha can stand Tom Pinder's preichin' aw reckon aw can. It's nooan
like a regular chapel tha sees."
And thus the lecture room filled.
Now there were two men of all others who received the doings at Co-op
Mill with disfavour. One was the Rev. David Jones. That very energetic
preacher did not like to hear anyone's praises sung but his own. His
Welsh fluency, his striking, daring flights of rhetoric, his excursions
into tempting but dangerous speculations on the fundamental truths of
the creed embodied, consecrated, and enshrined in the Trust Deed of
Aenon Chapel, had secured for him the admiring following of considerable
numbers of men who, whilst still clinging as for dear life to the
shattered remnants of the old dogmas, turned longing eyes to the
rationalism of a new criticism and a faith grounded upon human
experience. They were like the frail ones of the softer sex, who concede
all favours but the last, their heart or their passions consenting,
their timidity restraining. Aenon Chapel was now packed with a new set
of worshippers whose presence was not too welcome to the "old end," as
the Conservative adherents of Calvinistic theology and tradition were
styled. "Owd fire an' brimstone" the irreverent styled their leader and
spokesman. But the objections of those chiefly responsible for the
maintenance and carrying on of the chapel and school, whose father's
money had built and furnished the edifice in which Mr. Jones declaimed
his mild heresies, were stripped of their accustomed force by one
all-persuasive consideration--the collection box. Never before in all
the history of Aenon Chapel had the anniversaries of church and schools
yielded so profitable a harvest to the anxious treasurer. The debt,
without which it is commonly supposed no religious work can prosper, was
reduced. Mr. Jones's stipend was increased. The deacons of former days
were consumed with envy, and dolefully acknowledging that Mr. Jones had
gone up like a rocket, expressed their hope that he might not come down
like a stick, but expressed it in a tone that indicated their hope and
expectation were not as one. But the new officers of the chapel exulted
in their swelling money-bags, in the well-filled pews, and idolized the
preacher of the new inspiration.
And not only in his own chapel, but far and near spread the fame of the
Rev. David Jones, and to chapel openings and consecrations, to missions
and special efforts, invitations came in showers. He became the rage,
and though he protested at any term that savoured of Episcopacy and the
Scarlet Woman, he, in his heart of hearts, acknowledged the discernment
of an ardent admirer who had publicly referred to him as the Bishop of
the Holme Valley. At nights he dreamed of the Presidency of the Union.
And now, when all things seemed to go well, people began to talk of the
Sunday meetings at Co-op mill, and of Tom Pinder, who, folk said, spoke
out what Jones only hinted at.
"Aw'll tell yo' what it is," said one shrewd level-headed critic, "Aw've
heard that pea-i'-a-bladder preich at Aenon Chapel, and aw've heard
Co-op Tom fro' th' same text, but Pinder doesn't ca' it preichin', he
ca's it explainin'."
"An' what wer' text?"
"Why t' eleventh commandment, and mi own opinion is 'at Pinder sees as
far as th' purson, an' spits it aat like a man, upright and dahnwright,
and a babby could tell what he meeans: but th' other chap, he goes as
far as Pinder, but he beats abaat th' bush, an' he 'perhaps this' and
'may it not be that?' an' he watches th' deacons an' th' chief
pew-howders to see ha' it gooas dahn, an' he lets hissen aat an' he
poo's hissen in like th' cap'n of a sailin' booat wi' one eye on the
clouds an' t'other on th' shoals an' reefers."
"Nah, Pinder just says what's in him, an' if yo' dunnot like it yo can
lump it. An' what's more, at th' end o' ivvery lectur', yo' can get up
an' just ha' a few minnit's enjoyment o' yo'r own accaant an' pitch into
th' discourse like owd Billy, an' th' harder yo' hit th' more Pinder
seems to like it."
"An' why canno' Jones speik it aat plain same as Pinder?"
"Well, there's some folk so constitooted, yo' see, 'at they like to swim
wi' th' tide an' 'll tak' uncommon gooid care nevver to waste their puff
swimmin' up-stream. An' then yo' see, Jones has a large fam'ly, an' my
misses says 'at Mrs. Jones wi' her rings an' mantles, an' feathers, an'
faldelals can do wi' all 'at Jones can addle an' more at th' top on it."
Now, of course talk of this kind in a village like Holmfirth not only
circulates, it percolates and in time the gist and substance of it
reached Mr. Jones. He had had hopes of Tom at one time. He had observed
with satisfaction that this very intelligent-looking, well-behaved,
well-spoken, neatly dressed young man had been an attentive listener and
frequent worshipper at his own chapel, and that, on occasions, he had
brought with him that quite-past-praying-for Ben Garside, a notorious
mocker and a scoffer. Mr. Jones had accepted their presence as one of
many just tributes to his zeal and eloquence. One had been rescued from
the tepid waters of the Church, the other was a brand plucked from the
burning depths of infidelity, and Mr. Jones had duly rejoiced.
And lo! now the neophytes had backslided and people "of a Sunday" would
pass the inviting doors of Aenon Chapel and walk some two miles of a
sultry or wintry afternoon to listen to one who was not only not one of
the Covenant, but who was ordained neither by Bishop, Presbytery, nor
Congress. He resolved to speak seriously to this erring sheep; and
chancing to meet Tom one day descending the hill from Hinchliffe Mill to
the village, stopped him, smiling affably and holding out a
condescending hand:
"Good morning, Pinder, I'm glad to see you. How are we this morning?"
"Very well, thank you, Jones. How are you?"
"Ahem! Mr. Jones, if _you_ please."
"Certainly; Mr. Pinder, if you please."
"Oh! certainly; you see in my position--"
"Exactly--and in mine."
Now this was not a very promising beginning.
"Well?" said Tom.
"I'll turn with you, _Mr_. Pinder. You are doubtless more pressed for
time than I. Parson's Monday, you know, is Parson's Sunday."
"Parsons seem to have a fair share of Sundays to the week," said Tom,
but without any malice in the remark. "I remember good old Mr. Whitelock
of St. Chad's couldn't bear to see a visitor on Saturday--preparing for
Sunday, I suppose. Then of course there was Sunday itself, and on Monday
every parson I've ever met declares that he feels like a wet rag or a
squeezed orange."
"Well it takes it out of a man to have to preach two sermons a day. But
you should know something about it. I understand you have a sort of
service at your mill on Sunday afternoons?"
"You can scarcely call our meetings services," Tom replied. "We have no
hymns, no sermon, and no collection. We have no preacher and no
deacons."
"But I thought you were the preacher."
"Then you have been misinformed. It is true that I select some reading,
generally not always, from the Scriptures. Then I try to make its
meaning, or the meaning of some particular verse or verses, clear as I
understand them. That's all; it's really more of a chat than a set
discourse."
"I see."
"Then again the discoursing or preaching or chatting is not all done by
one man. My experience is that the combined experience and wisdom of an
audience are greater than those of any ordinary individual. We are so
fashioned that most of what we read in the Bible is read by the light of
the reader's own experience of life, his observations and his
reflection."
"Well?"
"And so when I get around me twenty or thirty men of divers habits of
thought and each with his own views of life, I have the chance of
getting at twenty or thirty different commentaries on a text. That is a
gain: another is that no single one of _my_ commentators is concerned to
square his construction of a passage with a hide-bound creed or with the
convictions of any one of his hearers. The only thing we are concerned
about is to get at the truth."
"And cannot you get at it in the recognised places of worship. Doesn't
it savour of conceit to set yourselves apart as people better and wiser
than their neighbours?"
"Oh! Well, come to that, Mr. Jones, you are a Dissenter yourself, you
know. You dissented from established orthodoxy. We aren't afraid of
dissenting from orthodox dissent."
"But there must be limits, young man; there must be limits."
"Yes," assented Tom. "There must be limits. There are the limitations of
the human mind. We don't seek to go beyond them."
Mr. Jones was now thoroughly roused. He was a man of no mean
intelligence and of a wide range of reading. If also he was a man of
insatiable vanity and inordinate ambition, perhaps the atmosphere of
adulation in which he lived, the incense of incompetent judges, were the
chief causes. He felt now that he was talking to a man of sense and
fearlessness. Now it is a treat to talk with a man who has the sense and
the patience and the disposition to think for himself, and the courage
to speak his thoughts. Mr. Jones walked in silence for a time, Tom
moderating his longer stride to keep time with the cleric's shorter
pace.
"I hope," said Mr. Jones, at length, "I hope your teaching is based on
the cardinal principles of Christianity?"
"And those?"
"The Immaculate Conception and the Resurrection of our Lord."
"Those are not principles Mr. Jones. They are either facts or
inventions."
"And you declare them as facts?"
"I don't myself touch on them at all. I confine myself to the cardinal
principles about which you have enquired."
"And those?" enquired Mr. Jones, in his turn.
"The fatherhood of God, the majesty, the wisdom, the sanctity of His
laws, and--the brotherhood of man."
Mr. Jones shook his hand sadly. "That is merely Natural Religion," he
commented. "Men will find it but a broken reed in the hour of temptation
and the time of sorrow."
"It suffices," said Tom "for some of the wisest, the best-living, the
most benevolent of men."
"Aye?" questioned Mr. Jones.
"The Jews," said Tom quietly. "Contrast the life of the average Jew with
that of the average Christian. Will you find the difference always in
favour of the Christian?"
"Surely, yes," said Mr. Jones. "An unbeliever can never have the
impregnable assurance that we find in the crucified Christ."
"Not in the loving-kindness of the Father," said Tom. "You exalt the Son
at the expense of the Father?"
"Dear me, dear me," said Mr. Jones. "This is worse than I thought. I am
afraid you are all astray, my young friend. I beseech you consider your
ways, reflect on the danger you are in, the perils that compass you
round about. Above all pray without ceasing, pray for light and
guidance."
"I do pray, Mr. Jones. I pray every day; I pray at my bed-side, I pray
at my work, in my daily walks."
"Ah! But prayer without faith is but a beating of the air. You must have
an intercessor with your offended God, a sacrifice for His outraged
laws."
"Mr. Jones, I respect your zeal and think you mean well. I do sacrifice.
I offer myself as a living sacrifice. It is all I have to offer. When
the great account is made up my life must plead for me. If that will not
avail, I have little confidence in any other plea. But I did not seek
this interview, Mr. Jones nor choose this topic, or is this, main street
of Holmfirth, the best place for such discussion as we have drafted
into. My main business to-day is to determine how much a bale I can
afford to give for the best Spanish wool that is the part of my Master's
business that I am intent on just now. If I remember that it _is_ my
Master's business, I shan't be so far wrong, shall I? And I'm going to
try to make a bargain with a Jew wool-stapler, and I'm no more afraid of
being overreached than if he were a Christian. But come up to Co-op
Mill, and have a fling at my class you'll be made heartily welcome. Fix
your own time, but come."
"God forbid," said Mr. Jones, as Tom darted into the railway station,
just in time to catch the Huddersfield train.
Jabez Tinker was as little pleased as his spiritual guide with the
rumours to which he could not well be deaf, concerning the success of
the novel enterprise of his former apprentice. From the first he had
predicted disaster for the venture. It was the crack-brained scheme of
an addle-pated enthusiast and a misguided, self-opinionated youth. That
was his opinion, and he did not keep his opinion to himself. But as time
went on and the bankruptcy he had foretold did not overwhelm the Co-op
Mill; as old and tried hands who had been with him for years, one after
the other, left Wilberlee for the small concern higher up the stream,
Jabez began to feel the irritation of the prophet whose vaticinations
have come to nought. It would not be fair to say that Jabez begrudged
Tom and Ben their success. That success could scarcely be considered to
have injured him in his business. The operations, the rise or fall of
Co-op Mill, were in his eyes beneath anything but contemptuous notice.
But he could not conceal from himself that he would have better pleased
to have seen Tom coming to him, cap in hand, to sue for reinstatement at
Wilberlee. He had a sort of rankling resentment against Tom for refusing
his own proffer of protection and advancement. When he had made that
offer he had plumbed himself on his magnanimity--and, indeed, it was a
generous offer. Jabez Tinker's pride was wounded, and Jabez Tinker was a
proud man.
One day he chanced to meet Nehemiah Wimpenny, the lawyer. It was near
the time for the elections to the Local Board, of which Mr. Tinker had
been so long the chairman and autocrat that the other members of the
Board might just as well have stopped at home as attended the monthly
meetings. Wimpenny was the clerk.
"Well, we shall soon have the elections upon us, Mr. Tinker, and I
suppose you have heard the news. Rum start, isn't it? What next, I
wonder."
"I've heard no particular news that I'm aware of, Wimpenny. I'm no
gad-about, as you know."
"Ah, well! It's an old saying that we've to go from home to hear news,
especially if it happens to concern ourselves. Not that this is likely
to give you much uneasiness."
"Well what is it?" asked Tinker, uneasily.
"Oh! It's hardly worth retailing. Sorry I mentioned it; but they are
saying in the village you are to be opposed at the next election."
"Me! Opposed! Well, I'm ready, and pray, who is to be my 'honourable
opponent,'--that's the expression, isn't it? 'Pon my word, I'll relish
a good stand-up fight. I've been returned unopposed so often that a
good, vigorous opposition will do me good."
"Well," said Wimpenny slowly, "I'm not sure you'll think your
honourable opponent a foeman worthy of your steel. You'll never guess
who they're talking about."
Mr. Tinker rapidly reviewed, mentally, all men of the neighbourhood
likely to enter the lists against him.
"I'm a bad hand at conundrums," he said, "I give it up."
"What would you say to that insolent young upstart at Co-op Mill?"
"What! Tom Pinder! confound the puppy. Why, there'd be little honour in
defeating him. D----n his impudence. But you're joking, Wimpenny, and
I tell you I like joking as little as conundrums. But there,--the
fellow isn't worth a thought. A nameless workhouse bastard oppose me!
Well, you've had your joke, Wimpenny; next time we meet try and think of
a better one." And Tinker strode angrily away, without much ceremony.
As a matter of fact there had been talk of nominating Tom for a seat on
the Board, and the matter had been even broached to Tom himself. But Tom
had from the first scouted the idea. He had enough on his hands looking
after his own concerns, and he had sense enough to know that if a man
won't stick to his business his business won't long stick to him. But
when it transpired that, had he consented, he would have had to fight
his old master, Tom was indignant. What did people take him for, he
wondered. He felt that for him to pit himself against Mr. Tinker would
have been a gratuitous insult to the man who had been his master for so
many years. He knew that it would be to wound that master in his most
sensitive spot, and he had a respect for family pride all the greater,
perhaps, because he himself had no family ties or traditions to be proud
of. And he shuddered to think what Dorothy might say to his presumption
and ingratitude should the mere suggestion of his possible candidature
reach her ears.
But of Tom's way of meeting the proposal Mr. Tinker was, of course, as
yet, quite unaware. He had taken it for granted that Wimpenny was well
informed, that he would not have repeated to him a vulgar _canard_.
And Mr. Tinker was therefore in high dudgeon when he spoke to Dorothy on
the subject.
"Does that Tom Pinder live at Garside's yet?" he asked.
Dorothy opened her eyes in wonderment. It was the first time she
remembered her uncle to have so much as mentioned Tom's name to her.
"I believe so, off and on. But I think Lucy Garside, Ben's daughter,
told me they see very little of him except on Sunday night. He seems to
spend both day and night at his mill. Lucy says he does the work of
three men."
"You seem to be very intimate with these Garsides. 'Lucy' comes very pat
to your lips. Do you see much of them? Do you ever meet this Pinder
there?"
"Oh, yes, sometimes."
"I think you might remember you are my niece. Such people as we are not
fit associates for the Garsides; still less for their lodger."
"Law! uncle, what have they done now? I've known Lucy ever since I could
toddle almost."
"That may be. It's your aunt's fault, I suppose. I can't attend to
everything. And now your aunt's illness keeps her at Harrogate you do
pretty much as you like, I suppose."
"When the cat's away the mice will play," thought Dorothy; but only
thought it.
"Well," continued Jabez, "you mustn't visit the house any more. I won't
have it. If you don't respect yourself, you must respect me. You must
drop these Garsides and Pinder too. By the bye, come to think of it,
Wimpenny told me something about you seeming to be very familiar with
Pinder at the Whitsuntide gathering. I didn't take much notice of it at
the time. But be good enough to ignore him next time you chance to meet
him."
"I'm sure I'm much obliged to Mr. Wimpenny for his interest in my
movements," said Dorothy. "Are you acting on his advice, uncle? Did he
charge you 'six--an'-eight' for it? He must be very smart, for I'm sure
it isn't worth half the money."
"This is no laughing matter miss, I'd have you know, I tell you, you
must drop these Garsides, and that young puppy too."
"Who? Mr. Wimpenny?"
"D----n Mr. Wimpenny," roared Jabez. "You know my meaning very well.
See to it that you heed it. People will be saying next that you are
running after the jackanapes."
Dorothy blushed scarlet. There was an angry gleam in her eye. She drew
herself up proudly.
"I am a Tinker, sir, no less than you. I was left to choose my friends
when I was young and needed, perhaps, a guide. I call Lucy Garside my
friend, and so long as Lucy Garside deems me hers, be sure I shall not
do as you command. As for Mr. Pinder----"
"Your precious Pinder," snarled Jabez.
"You had better go to him and learn from him how your brother's daughter
and your niece should be addressed." Dorothy swept out of the room.
Oh! Jabez! Jabez! How little you know the heart of woman. It is safe to
say that from that hour Dorothy never thought of the unconscious Tom
without resentment against her uncle, and a feeling that certainly was
not resentment for Tom.
Mr. Tinker felt in anything but a Christian spirit when his niece so
defiantly left the room, and he knit his brow in angry meditation.
"Am I never to be done with that Tom Pinder?" ran his thoughts. "I pick
him up out of the workhouse; he knocks my overseer head over heels; he
refuses the handsomest offer I ever made to anyone in my life; starts in
business on his own account, and now, forsooth, has the audacity to try
conclusions with me at the polling-booth. I've a good mind to let him
have a walk-over. There'll be no credit in beating him--that I'm sure
to do but if by any chance he should head the poll--but that's not to
be thought of. I'll give the cub something else to think of besides
canvassing, or my name's not Jabez Tinker. If a man will play at bowls
he must expect rubbers."
And as a result of his deliberations the manufacturer once more found
himself in the office of Mr. Nehemiah Wimpenny.
"Come to sign your will, Mr. Tinker? It's been ready for you this--I
don't know how long. I thought you'd forgotten all about it, and yet you
seemed in a precious hurry about it when you gave me the instructions."
"No, it's not about my will I've come. That can wait, I think. In fact I
may have to vary my instructions. I'm not quite satisfied with my
niece's conduct lately. But we won't go into that at present. It's
another, a more important one."
Nehemiah settled himself in his chair and gave all his mind to his
client; but Jabez seemed for the nonce to have lost his usual
promptitude and decision. He had to pick his words.
"It's a question of water-right," he said at last.
"H'm, ticklish things, very," said Nehemiah. "Nothing more so."
"So I've always understood," said Jabez--"and costly."
"Yes, costly. You might almost pave Holmfirth with the gold that's been
spent on law over disputes about water. But let me have the facts.
Perhaps it may not be a complicated case at all."
But his client seemed in no hurry to state the facts. He seemed to be
more interested in the question of cost.
"Suppose I have a complaint to make against a firm higher up the stream,
what are the proceedings to be taken?"
"What do you complain about, fouling or improperly tapping your supply?"
Mr. Tinker took time to reply. "I don't quite follow you," he said.
"Why," said Nehemiah, "water-right cases are usually complaints that a
man has fouled the stream with dye-water or chemicals or by diverting
ochre-water from above his own head-goit so that it may enter the river
below his own mill but above his neighbour's. That's one class of case,
and a comparatively easy one. The other is when a mill-owner fancies
that the water that has passed over his neighbour's water-wheel is not
returned to the stream for his own use lower down the stream. Now that's
always a very delicate question, and one for experts. And it's well
known that for one surveyor you get to swear on your side, another can
be got to swear on the other. They're as bad as vets, in a
horse-warranty case. Now which class of infringement do you complain
of?"
Again Mr. Tinker had to pause for a reply. "O both," he said. "Yes,
certainly, both."
"Why," exclaimed Wimpenny, "whose mill is it?"
"The Co-op Mill," said his client, somewhat shamefacedly, as the lawyer
thought.
"What! That fellow, Pinder! By Jove, I'm glad of this. Gad! I'm as
pleased as if you'd told me I was own brother to the Prince of Wales.
But"--and his face fell.
"But what?" asked Jabez, sharply.
"It'll be lean picking, even if we win. I don't suppose the whole
concern's worth powder and shot."
"And why are you anxious powder and shot should be spent on Pinder?"
asked Tinker, suspiciously.
"Oh, well I don't mind telling you, Mr. Tinker. The fact is, I was
rather hard hit by your beautiful niece, if you'll excuse my saying so."
"Well?" said Mr. Tinker, stiffly.
"But she seemed to prefer that low fellow Pinder's company to mine, and
if she's no better taste than that, well, I'm not the one to enter the
running against a screw."
Mr. Tinker winced. "You seem to lose heart very easily, Mr. Wimpenny.
Young men weren't so easily discouraged in my young days."
"Much you know about it," thought the lawyer. "A spirited young woman
like Dorothy Tinker's rather a different sort of an undertaking from old
Split's scarecrow of a daughter."
By mutual consent to the men reverted the less embarrassing question of
water rights.
"Just explain to me, Wimpenny, what must be done to vindicate my
rights."
"Well, you must file a Bill in the Court of Chancery, and you must file
affidavits by the oldest inhabitants as to the customary service of the
water, and by analysts as to pollution, and you must go for damages, and
you'll have to get other manufacturers to assess the damages, and,
oh!--yes, you might try for an _interim_ injunction."
"And Pinder'll have to set another lawyer on?"
"Of course he will."
"And that'll cost _him_ money, win or lose?"
"Rather."
"Then go at him hammer and tongs, and the sooner you begin and the
hotter you go at him, the better you'll please me."
"But the evidence?"
"You must find the evidence, sir. I don't care whether I win or lose.
But Co-op Mill must stop. For want of water if we win: for want of funds
if we lose."
"Do you understand me?"
"You bet I do, and I'll tell you this, I never went into a case with
better heart. You may rest easy, Mr. Tinker. Co-op Mill's as good as
broke."
It was but a week or so after this interview that Workhouse Jack,
loitering about the mill yard, espied a seedy looking fellow peering in
at the mill-gates. It was a Saturday afternoon. The engine was stopped,
the hands had trooped home, Tom and Ben had gone for a walk, and Jack
was in sole charge. He was dressed in his Sunday best, and meditating a
visit to the village, and, of course, Lucy. He knew the visitor at once
for Wimpenny's process server. The process server did not know Jack.
"Can I see Mr. Pinder?" the man asked.
"Aye, if yo're none blind," answered Jack. "What's your will?"
"Oh, beg your pardon, sir. Didn't know it was you. This is for you, sir,
and he slipped a paper into Jacks hand."
"It's a petition in Chancery filed by our client, Mr. Jabez Tinker,
against you, sir."
"A 'tition, is it," said Jack "an' what mun aw do wi' it nah aw've
getten it?"
"Better see your lawyer about it."
"Oh! an' what 'ud ha' happened, now, just for argyment's sake, if yo'd
dropped this ere precious dockyment i'stead o' 'liverin' it to me?"
The clerk was not prepared to say. "I don't know indeed. Perhaps the
action couldn't go on."
"Oh! It couldn't, eh?"
"I'm not sure. But any way, I _have_ served it: so it's no use going
into that."
"Aye, yo'n sarved it," assented Jack. "Just step this way, will yo',
while aw run mi e'en ovver it," and so saying, Jack led the way into the
boiler-house.
Then Jack deliberately locked the door.
"What does this mean?" asked the clerk.
"It just meeans this. Yo' look as if a square meeal 'ud do yo' all th'
gooid i'th' warld, an' aw reckon yo've got to eit this bit o' papper
afore yo' cum aat."
Jack flung it at him and sat quietly down.
"Yo' may ta' yo'r time, aw'm no ways pressed mi sen. If yo' feel it a
bit dry aw'll find yo' a can o' watter to wesh it dahn wi'; but eit it
yo' do afore yo' see dayleet agen."
"But, Mr. Pinder!"
"Mr. Pinder, indeed yo' gorm fooil. A'm nooan Mr. Pinder. Mr. Pinder's a
gentleman. Aw'm nobbut his man. Nah, ger agate: Sooiner yo'r' at it, an'
sooiner yo'll ha' done."
And in the boiler-house Tom found the custodian of Co-op Mill and his
prisoner. To Jack's indignation Tom quietly pocketed the petition and
released the clerk with an apology and a solatium.