“It’s what I think you lawyers would call a conditional promise. You keep your part of the bargain, Sam, and I’ll keep mine. There, that’ll do. I’m not fond of those demonstrations, and I don’t like the smell of beer. You’ll have to take to claret—some day.”
“And that day isn’t far off, you bet, Amelia. I’m not too fond of Mr. Edward Beaumont, as you call him, myself; and I’ll be no more sorry than yourself to see my lord taught a lesson he badly needs. Well what is it, Ainley?”—this to one of the clerks of his firm who was heard inquiring if Mr. Storth was about.
“Mr. Schofield would like to see you, sir.”
“Pat as the heft to the blade,” exclaimed Storth. “I’ll tell you some day what I mean,” he added, as he hastily drained his pewter, wiped his lips and nodded his adieus to Miss Wrigley.
Mr. William Schofield, the client whom Mr. Storth found nervously awaiting him, was a man of some sixty years of age, of middle stature, with hard, one might say, harsh features, his face clean shaven save for a ragged, grizzled fringe of hair that ran down the sides of the cheeks and under the chin, leaving unadorned the close lips, and exposed the few yellow front teeth advancing years had left; eyes bright, keen and greedy. Mr. Schofield had been, as he would have told you with pride, a hard worker all his life. He had known the hardships in his youth of the unreformed, uncoerced Factory System. As a boy, not yet in his teens, he had been a “billy piecener,” walking miles to the mill in all sorts of weather, in winter time long before sunrise, he had worked his fourteen and fifteen hours a day for a beggarly wage of a few shillings weekly, subsisting for the most part on water porridge, which he often had to eat cold. What education he had he had picked up in the Sunday School attached to the Golcar Baptist Chapel. There he had learned to read, to write, and to “sum,” so that by the aid of a ready-reckoner he could make out an invoice.
Despite, or perhaps because of, his early disadvantages he had prospered. He had by the time he was forty years old become a small lindsey manufacturer. He worked hard six days a week, and he could scarce be said to rest on the seventh, for he was a deacon of the chapel in whose Sunday school he had learned the rudiments. He had worked hard and he had lived hard, denying himself almost necessary food and fuel and clothing, “clamming,” so it was said by the envious, himself and his wife, that he might put more and more of his earnings into his business. He had no pleasures, unless the hearing of the non-elect vigorously damned every Sunday by a Predestinarian preacher be a pleasure, and excepting always that: great and all-sufficing joy of adding shilling by shilling to his store. He had no children, and when he reflected that unless he left his money to the chapel it should in the natural course go to a spendthrift nephew he often consoled himself by the thought that the nephew could not have more pleasure in dissipating his patrimony than the uncle had in hoarding it. He cared neither for literature nor arts. He never read anything but the Bible, the Baptist Magazine, and the Leeds Mercury. He called himself a Liberal, but his Liberalism was not based so much on a desire for the betterment of the condition of the many as upon resentment of the privileges of the few. And Edward Beaumont was his solicitor, as Edward Beaumont’s father before him had been.
“Howd’ye do, Mr. Schofield? Fine day, isn’t it? Glad to see you looking so fit, ’pon my word you look younger every time you give us a call.” It was one of Mr. Sam Storth’s most cherished maxims that politeness—to the people to whom it is worth while to be polite—costs nothing.
“Well, I’m nobbut so-so, Mr. Storth, nobbut so-so, a plaguy lot o’ rheumatiz these days, but aw reckon aw mun expect to feel th’ years creepin ower me, tho aw’m nobbut a lad yet in a manner o’ speakin’, that is, wheer some come; but it wer’ Mr. Beaumont aw wer’ wantin’ to see. Aw reckon yo’n know nowt abaat that bit o’ brass o’ mine, if yo can call a matter o’ three thousand paand a bit o’ brass at Edward’s father ligged aat at interest for me. I’d better wait and see hissen.”
“But Mr. Beaumont’s away, down in Lincolnshire, and I can’t quite say when he’ll be back. Perhaps you can tell me what it is you want to know and I may be able to give you the information you require. Let me see, you’re the mortgagee of Midgley’s mill, aren’t you?”
“Aye, that’s me. Yo’ see, it’s abaat ten yer sin’ aw, put th’ brass aat. It were i’ Edward’s father’s time an’ he made th’ writins for me. It wer’ a seet o’ eggs to put i’ one basket—three thaasand paand, awmost th’ savin’s o’ my lifetime—but Midgley were doin’ well then an’ th’ rate o’ interest, five per cent., were temptin’. But aw’d never ony bother abaat th’ interest till just abaat th’ time th’ owd man, tho’ he woren’t so owd to be sure, Edward’s father aw mean, took an’, died, and Edward stepped into his shoin. That were afore yo’ came to th’ office, so happen yo’ won’t know th’ ins an’ th’ outs on it. Then owd Midgley went dahn th’ slot, banked tha’ knows. Awst nivver forget that market-day, when th’ news came to th’ market. Aw’ were eitin’ a fourpenny plate o’ meat pie at Morton’s, when somebody axed me if aw’d heerd owd Tommy Midgley had done a bank. It welly choked me, an’ aw’d to struggle hard to finish th’ pie, but aw couldn’t fashion to put it i’ mi pocket-hanker. Aw come up straight to see Mr. Edward, an’ he made nowt but fun o’ me. He axed me if aw’d forgotten th’ mortgage. As aw’m a miserable sinner it had clean slipped my mind. He tried to sell th’ mill under th’ mortgage, but th’ highest bid wouldn’t have paid me off. Trade were very bad just then, an’ folk failin’ reet an’ left. Midgley’s mill were just a white elephant. But Mr. Edward came out like a gentleman an’ he said as how his father had advised th’ loan he’d take th’ responsibility on his showders till things mended. An’ aw’ve had my cheque reg’lar ivery half-year ever sin for th’ interest less th’ income-tax.”