Ben o' Bill's, the Luddite: A Yorkshire Tale

by D. F. E. Sykes; George Henry Walker

On our homeward way we had much scheming as to how I should account for my face, which began to puff and show divers colours.

’Siah was for telling the story as it was, but I had no mind that Mary’s name should be mixed up in it. So we kept abroad the whole day and to my mother’s great grief and my father’s anger we presented ourselves late at night; ’Siah really, and myself feigning to be drunk. And Mary was so disgusted that she would scarce look at me, saying the sight of my face set her against her food. But towards the week end, Martha musts have got the secret from ’Siah and passed it on, for one night when I sat brooding by the fire, with no light but the glow of the embers, a light form stole softly behind my chair, and a pair of warm arms went round my neck and a tearful voice sobbed.

“O! Ben, yo’ mun forgive me. But aw’ll never forgive missen.”

What is the magic of a woman’s kiss and how comes it that under some conditions the touch of her lips will stir you not at all, and under others will kindle in your heart a flame that lasts your life–time. Till that moment I vow I had had no love for my cousin Mary, save such as a brother may have for his sister, between which and a lover’s love is, I take it, the difference between the light of the moon, and the light of the sun. I had sometimes kissed her and she had submitted as not minding. But of late she had eluded me when I had sought to salute her, which skittishness I had put down to what was going on between her and George. And now, unsought, she had put her arms about my neck and drawn back my head to the warm cushion of her breast and pressed a kiss upon my brow. And lo! love, glorious love, full grown and lusty, leaped into the ocean of my being and ruled it thenceforth for even. And yet when I sprung to my feet and held out my arms and would have taken Mary to my heart, she sprung away and bade me keep my distance, and when I made to take what she would not grant, she grew angered, so that my heart fell and I was sick with doubts and sadness. And here, tho’ little given to preaching, I would deliver my homily anent all shams and make–believes. Here was Mary setting my thoughts once more on a wrong tack so that I had no choice but return to what I had taken for granted, that it was a made up thing between her and George Mellor. And but for that belief many things that happened might not have befallen. Then, too, after my fight with Long Tom, my father gave me a talking to on my loose and raffish ways, and yet the very next market day, I heard of his boasting to all and sundry of my deeds, and the rumour thereof grew so much beyond the simple truth that I should not have some day been surprised to hear that I had routed a whole regiment. My mother, too, scolded me not a little and wept over my bruised skin, but among the women folk of our parish she bragged so much of my strength and my courage that I had like to become a laughing stock among the men. Even little Mr. Webster, who spoke to me at nigh an hour’s length on the sinfulness of brawling and on the Christian duty of turning, the other cheek to the smiter, did ever after that honour me by asking the support of my arm when he returned late home, saying no one would molest him while I was by. Only Martha, among them all, was honest, for she made no secret of her delight in me, loading me with praises so that ’Siah began to look at me with an evil eye, and she insisted on giving me each day to breakfast a double portion of porridge and piling up blankets on my bed till I was like to be smothered.

But Mary spoke of my doings not at all, whilst Faith, when she heard of the fray, prattled prettily a whole afternoon, and said so many sweet things to me that Mary became waspish and told her I was set up enough by nature without folk going out of their way to spoil me by soft sawder. Then Faith must unsay half she had said and finished by opining that, after all, the proper course would have been to horse–whip Captain Northman before his own Company.

And this, she thought, was what George would have done.

CHAPTER VI.

It must not be supposed, because I have turned aside to tell of my own poor affairs, that the Luddites were idle all this while. Indeed it is very difficult for me to give any notion of the state of this part of the country at that time. Trade was as bad as bad could be. Nobody seemed to have any money to spend on clothes. It took most folk all their time to line the inside, and the outside had to make shift as best it could. It was cruel to see the homes of those who had no back set and depended on their daily toil for their daily bread. And yet some manufacturers persisted in putting in machines that could have but one effect, to turn adrift many of those who still had work. And with it all arose in the minds not only of the croppers but of all the working people for miles around a feeling of injustice, of oppression, a rankling sense of wrong. And the poor felt for the poor. They got it into their heads that the rich cared nought about them, that their only thought was to look after themselves, to fill their own pockets, and the working folk might rot in their rags for ought they cared. And added to this was a chafing sense of their own helplessness. They felt like prisoned birds dashing against the bars of a cage. You see they had no say in anything at all. They were Englishmen only in name their lives, even when times were fairly good, were none of the brightest. It was mostly work and bed and not too much bed. Hard work and scant fare and little pleasure. They had love and friendship, for these come by nature, but they had little else to bring a ray or two of sunshine into their lives. When people in those days met together to set forth their grievances they were persecuted for sedition; when they didn’t meet and were quiet and law–abiding our betters said we had no grievances. Nay, if there was no violence both of speech and action the wise–acres in London said and thought all things were for the best in the best of all possible worlds. You couldn’t talk sense into them, you just had to poise it into them. So what would you?

Anyway, before the Luddites had been banded together many weeks it was well understood that we existed for bigger things than to break shears and cropping frames. Booth was always dinning this into me when I hinted at the wastefulness of smashing costly frames and other such like mischief. “We must arouse the conscience of our rulers,” he said. “They cannot, or will not, see how desperate is our plight. Besides, nine tenths of them have a personal interest in war, in prolonging shutting our ports. Their sense of right will not move them: we must frighten them.” Then he would smile in his sweet, sad way and say something in the French which he explained to mean that folk cannot have pancakes without breaking eggs, and after that I never lifted a hammer to smash a frame but my mind went to Shrove Tuesday and I had a vision of Mary with sleeves rolled up and face flushed by the heat of the fire, her dress tucked between her knees, tossing pancakes up the big chimney, and catching them sissing as they fell with the browned side up into the spurting fat.

Not that I did much machine breaking myself. There is a canny thriftiness in my nature that made me dislike such wantonness. Besides George Mellor was really the soul of the whole affair: and where George was there was no peace. He seemed like one possessed. From the Shears Inn at Hightown to the Nag’s Head at Paddock, from the Nag’s Head to the Buck, night after night, swearing in men, arranging midnight visits, dropping into this shop, loitering by that, counselling one man, winning another, he seemed to be everywhere at once, to know every man’s wants and every man’s grievance. What master to leave alone, what to fley. How he did it all and when he slept is a mystery to me. And he never lost heart never wavered from his purpose and there never was a moment when we didn’t, all trust him and all love him —save only one.