“Tha’lt do, lad; tha’lt do. Aw’m off, and tha’rt noan sich a fooil as aw thowt thee.”
And he lumbered heavily away, chuckling audibly.
I confess I did not attach to the warnings of Daft Billy the importance that subsequent events were to demonstrate in a terrible and tragic manner they deserved. For one thing, I did not know Ephraim Sykes as Daft Billy did. I knew him to be a reckless, lawless sort of fellow, but thought that poaching and an occasional brawl were the limits beyond which even his ungoverned temper would not lead him. Nor, for another thing, had my experience of life and human nature then taught me what devastating havoc can be wrought in the heart of man by thwarted passion, its fires fed by strong drink. “Hell,” says the proverb, “has no fury like a woman scorned,” and I suppose a man who sees the woman he has for years looked upon as his own and whom after his wild and fiery fashion he loves, give the treasures of her young love to another, is in like case to a woman scorned. And, for yet another thing, was there not the entrancing thought that Miriam was to be at the special service at Wrigley Mill, the honoured guest of Mr. and Mrs. Wrigley.
The service was held in the weaving shed, the warping room not being large enough to hold all those who flocked to the meeting. For besides the mill hands at Wrigley Mill, it was known that a number of good folk from Diggle and Woolroad and Uppermill meant to attend the service, friends and well-wishers these of good old Jim. From Stanedge Top and Dig Lea and Harrop Green and Weakey and Harrop Edge and Tamewater right over the hill to Delph, Jim had hosts of friends, and not one to begrudge him his rise in the world. So when it was bruited abroad that this service was to be his farewell to Wrigley Mill, men and women, youths and maidens, wished to do him honour. And, of course, the girls were all agog to see our Ruth and Miriam. Jim had been somewhat of a general lover in the sense at least that he had ever had a hearty word and maybe a sly kiss for all the pretty lasses of the countryside; though I’d stake my life that no girl was ever wronged by Jim. It had been, indeed, a common jest against Jim that he was wedded to his old mother. Perhaps that was why the girls had so set their caps at him, for the French have a saying, I am told—and who should know a woman’s ways better than the French, who seem to think of little else?—that if you run after the provoking creatures they run away, but if you run away they’ll e’en run after you. And Jim was popular with the mothers, too; for who so tender and gentle as he with the little mites that in those days used to come down the rough hill sides in rain and sleet and snow of the dark winter mornings to earn their few shillings to swell the slender income of the family. Was it not Jim who let them warm their frozen hands and numbed feet by the boiler fires, and Jim who cared their sodden skirts and hose, and dried them carefully in the drying-hoil, and Jim who carried many a weary little toddlekin home on his broad shoulders hushing its sobs and drying its tears with lumps of goodstuff, all dirty and sticky from being kept in his coat by the blazing, roaring fires, but still goodstuff. And Jim was popular with the men, too, for he had not scorned to take his pint and stand his corner like a man at all the hostelries of those parts; and though, to be sure, there had been a sad falling off in these respects since he had taken to tramping over Stanedge to Pole Moor, it was hoped that marriage would restore him to sanity and his accustomed ways.
And about Miriam there were a thousand rumours and wild conjectures. Mary Haigh’s cottage had been simply besieged by women itching to know the very truth of the whole business; but, though Mary’s tongue ran on wheels most times, she knew when to keep it still. And, of course, the more she didn’t tell, the more everybody seemed to know. Miriam was the daughter of a wicked baronet, and had been changed at birth; Miriam had been proved to be the rightful heiress to fabulous sums now safely, perhaps too safely, coffered in that mysterious repository of great fortunes known as Chancery; Miriam had been the cause of a bloody feud between the gipsy king and the parson’s son; Miriam was a godless heathen who had been brought to grace by the little parson of Pole Moor; Miriam could neither read nor write; Miriam was a prodigy of wit and learning, and could divine the future by the stars—in fine, Miriam was more than a nine days’ wonder for all the womenfolk and some of the men of the other side of Stanedge, as we of Pole Moor called the Diggle Valley.
When Mary and Jim and I got to Holly Grove on the eventful afternoon of that ever-memorable service, we found my father and Miriam and Ruth already arrived, and seated in great state in one of the big front rooms of that imposing mansion. As we walked up Ward Lane and along the tree-flanked carriage drive there had been great debate as to whether we should knock boldly at the great white front door with the flower garden facing towards Greenfield, or whether we should, as usual, seek admission to the presence by way of the kitchen. The debate ended, as great debates often end, by a compromise, it being finally settled, to Jim’s secret relief, that Mary and I should take our courage in both hands and valiantly assail the front door knocker, whilst Jim modestly tapped at the back. We need have been under no apprehensions, for no sooner was Mary within than she was pounced upon by Mrs. Wrigley and Miriam and Ruth and conveyed upstairs to be relieved of bonnet and her wondrous shawl, and Jim and myself were bid by Mr. Wrigley to help ourselves to the gin and water if we wanted to wet our clays, as he called it, and then, taking no more notice of us, he fell to, hammer and tongs, at my poor father.
Now I had always known my good master as a silent, reserved man, very gentle with the children at the Sunday school, seldom taking vocal part in the prayer meetings, except in the hymns, which he sang very heartily and very much out of tune. But now, whether it was the gin and water, or whether it was the theme, he came out in quite a new character. I would have you know that those were the days of the great Reform Bill that set all classes by the ears. And Mr. Wrigley, as beseemed a good Wesleyan, was as stout a Tory as ever drew on a pair of Wellington tops, and my father, as was but natural in a Baptist, was as stout a Whig.
“I’ll tell you what it is, Mr. Holmes, this country is just going headlong to the dogs.” It is a curious fact: I have been young and now am old, yet there has never been a time when, to hear some folk, Old England has not been going headlong to the dogs—but this by the way. “Yes, sir, to the dogs. And little Johnny Russell” thus familiarly did Wrigley speak of Lord John—”little Johnny Russell’s whooping it on. Reform Bill! indeed—giving every twopenny-ha’penny householder the vote, forsooth. And it won’t end there, mark my words, sir. It’s but the thin end of the wedge. Before long my own workpeople will have the vote, and who’ll be master in my mill then I should like to know? What’s the like of them to know about politics and affairs of State I ask you? A man’s got to have a head on his shoulders, I can tell you, to mell with matters like that. And he must have a stake in the country, yes, sir, a stake, and then he feels the responsibility of the thing. But lower the franchise, and where are you? Why, at the mercy of the mob, sir, the mob, a set of rick-burning, frame-smashing, ignorant no-breeches. Help yourself to the gin, Mr. Holmes, and pass the tobacco-jar to the youngsters. They’re better without the Geneva water. Look what it’s done for France, sir, this reforming rubbish: revolution and republicanism, and the guillotine, red ruin, and the breaking up of laws: no king, no church, no State, no aristocracy, no property, nothing sacred, atheism rampant, virtue dethroned, and vice triumphant. Now I put it to you, Mr. Holmes, isn’t it only natural, part of God’s law in a manner of speaking, that men of birth, and family, and fortune, and education, men with a stake in the country, aye, I stick to that, a stake, sir, a stake, should have the ruling of it. Answer me that, if you can.”
Now if I never admired my father before I admired him that afternoon. There he sat in a lofty armchair, his little thin legs scarce touching the floor, his old black coat almost white at the seams, and looking sadly threadbare and shabby by contrast with the shining broadcloth Mr. Wrigley had donned for the occasion—yet did he cower and quail before the owner of Wrigley Mill, and that great mansion, and many a broad acre that lay around? Not he my certes. He was just as calm and composed as when he sat in our little parlour at the head of a conference of ministers, and the hotter Mr. Wrigley blew the cooler my father seemed.
“It’s true enough,” he said, “the great mass of the people are sadly ignorant. But whose fault is that? The great ones of the earth have ruled the roost for centuries, and yet we find they have left those whose natural guardians you say they are in an abysmal darkness.”