“But it were a head,” said George with a quiet smile.
“A head!”
“Aye, a head. But I knew tha wanted tails, so I turned it i’ my palm when I stooped o’er th’ fire.”
And yet men talk about fate.
CHAPTER VII.
YOU may be sure such doings as those of which I have written were country’s talk. People talked about nothing else. Wherever you sent you heard of misery and want and of the men who were banded together to fight the masters. And the Luddites had the approval of the people. I mean the general run of the people. Not, of course, everybody. Mr. Chew, the church parson, was very bitter against them, and warned his congregation against them, and all those who loved darkness rather than light. But the working men, even those whose own handicraft was not threatened by the new frames, favoured the Luddites. I remember that in May of that year a poor woman at Berry Brow, that was thought to have given some information to Mr. Radcliffe, was nearly torn to pieces by her neighbours. Her skull was fractured by a stone. Perhaps because the Luddites felt secure in the general approval their secrets were ill kept.
I do not know how it came about, but at Holme I was soon made aware that I was well regarded. When I went to chapel at the Powle, people made way for me as though I were somebody, and the women folk, in particular, took care I should know I stood well with them. If my father and I stopped to swap the news of the day with our friends and neighbours, and the talk turned on the great questions of the time, men would look to me to know what I had to say, and my words would be quoted from house to house as they had never been quoted before.
Who blabbed? I don’t know. Not I, in very truth. ’Siah, I suspect, to Martha. For me, I hated most genuinely the secrecy and underhandedness of the thing. I hated to slink about in the dark, to drop behind a hedge when I heard the fall of a horse’s foot, the rattle of a scabbard, or the champing of a bit. I hated to put on a mask and a smock, and to steal about with my heart in my mouth, and I hated more than all to turn aside my face from the mute questioning of my mother’s eyes.
Once there was questioning that was not mute. It was a Sunday evening, about the time of the meeting at the Nag’s Head. We had been to chapel, and Mr. Webster was home with us to supper. John Booth and Faith were there. The nights were lengthening, and there was a warmer breath in the air, and the cuckoo had been heard on Wimberlee. After supper I had set myself to walk towards Huddersfield with John and Faith, and before we must start Faith had said she would like me to show her the roan calf, new come, whilst Martha made up a bottle of the beestings to carry home with her, so we went together into the shippon. The little straddling thing was in a corner by itself, warded off, and Faith bent over it and let the ruddy little thing suck and slobber over her hand, whilst the mother with patient wistful eyes looked over her shoulder and lowed lovingly. Then I must wipe Faith’s little hand with a wisp of hay, and I vow it was a monstrous pretty hand, white and thin, not like Mary’s, brown and firm and plump. And whilst I held her hand in my big palm, Faith looked up to my face in the obscure light of the mistal and said very softly:
“Ben, you know our John is soft and easy led, not big and strong as your are. And oh! if harm come to John it would kill my father and go nigh to break my heart. And now he has secrets from me. He is anxious and ill at ease. He is no longer frank and glad, and he tells me nothing. And Mrs. Wright, the saddler’s wife, where you know he is serving his time, tells me he is sore changed of late—stopping out to all hours, and strange men coming to their shop with letters and messages, and John whispering in corners with them as if he were plotting a murder. She says she cannot sleep o’ nights for thinking of it all. And oh! Ben, my heart tells me he is in danger, and what shall I do if harm befall him?”