Mr. Thorpe was a widower, and though it is possible—such is the amiable of a women for the bereaved and afflicted—that more than one might have been willing and lend attentive ear had he wooed again, a widower, Ephraim announced, he meant to live and die. His daughter, and only child, Martha, was old enough to keep the house above the shop, in which the father and daughter dwelt. The spiteful gossips of the village said she was not only old enough, but ugly enough. But said gossips suffered their critical judgment of the daughter to be warped by their unfavourable opinion of the father. It cannot be denied that Martha’s hair was not only of somewhat harsh and coarse texture, but of hue from her sire. It is true also that her face was angular and pinched, and freckled to boot, and that her form displayed none of the graceful curves so suggestive of clinging warmth and seductive softness; nor was her voice the soft and dulcet fluting that disarms not less than melting eye or witching smile. Poor Martha had been crushed and stifled and starved all her life. She had never loved nor been loved but the timid, wistful, yearning look that stole unbidden from her grey eyes told of a heart that hungered for the love that makes a woman’s life. Though she lived, and had lived for years under the same roof with her father, she could not remember to have heard from his lips one caressing word, to have received from his hand one gentle touch, or; seen from his eye one glance of affection. He was not unkind to her, save in the negative way which is the withholding of kindness; nay, if in any way. Ephraim could be said to be extravagant it was in the lavish adornment of his daughter’s person. The vicar’s wife had not a richer silk or costlier shawl; no manufacturer’s daughter finer feathers or more elegant bracelet. But Martha would have preferred a much homelier garb and a necklace of beads or jet; she asked only to slink unnoticed through her chill life, and had an half-formulated idea that her father dressed her as he did his shop windows, in the way of trade and to abash his neighbours.
Martha had practically no friends. The daughters of the manufacturers could, of course, not be expected to have more than a go-to-meeting, bowing acquaintance with a shop-keeper’s daughter, though that shop-keeper was popularly supposed to be able to buy up any two mill-owners put together. To be sure the Rev. David Jones, the pastor at Aenon Chapel, and Mrs. David Jones and Miss Lydia Jones called at times and dutifully partook of tea and muffins in the sitting-room above the shop from which no ingenuity had been efficient to bar the insidious blend of many odours from the store beneath, and true also Martha was a constant attender at Dorcas meetings, class meetings, prayer meetings, and Chapel and Sunday School tea-parties, called by the scoffing and ungodly herd, “muffin-worrys.” But Martha was constrained, awkward, gauche, and though her heart, was ready to go half-way to meet an overture, she could not make an advance. Little children were not allured to her, girls of her own age ridiculed whilst they envied her dress jewellery, staider matrons thought it shame that grasping miser’s scarecrow daughter should “peark” herself out in dainty raiment whilst their own well favoured ones went in cheap cottons or plain home-spun.
Of all the worshippers at Aenon Chapel, none was more considered than Jabez Tinker. There were many reasons for this. One undoubtedly was that Jabez Tinker was one of the leading manufacturers in the valley. No one, not old Daft Tommy, who was reputed to be over a hundred years old, could remember a time when the Tinkers were not a great name in Holmfirth and when Wilberlee Mill was not run by them. The very name of Tinker is, curiously enough, significant the family connection with the staple industry of the valleys of the Colne and the Holme. It is said to be derived from the Latin, tinctor, a dyer, and to have come down from those far off times when the Roman conquerors introduced the arts of civilisation to the aboriginal Celts of these northern wilds. Certainly Jabez Tinker’s father and grandfather and great-grandfather before him made cloth and doubtless dyed it. And they had made good cloth, buckskin and doeskin of the best. They were not a pretentious nor an ambitious race. They worked hard made shrewd bargains, paid their way expected to be paid, and put by money slowly but steadily. They had mostly married money too, not, perhaps marrying for money, but taking care to marry where money was. They were just to their work people and were slow either to put a man on or to take a man off. Once get a job at Wilberlee Mill and you were there for good, if you behaved yourself—or, as the heads said, if Tinker didn’t know when he had a good man, the man knew when he had a good master. It was not that the Tinkers paid more than ruling prices for their labour. They made no pretence at being industrial philanthropists—that would not have been business; but they contrived to keep the mill running, shine or shower. Times must be parlous bad indeed if the great water-wheel did not turn at proper times in the race at Wilberlee; and constant employment is more to a man than high wages, with slack times in between, if men had only the sense to see it.
It is not necessary to go far back into the ancestry of the Tinkers, though, in a quiet way, they were not a little proud of it. Old William Tinker had left two sons, both of whom had been brought up to the business, and to both, as partners, the business had been left. Jabez, the elder, I shall have much to say. Richard, the younger, might not have been a Tinker at all. He did not “favour” the Tinkers, who were traditionally tall lean, wiry, big-boned men, somewhat sallow of complexion, with dark straight hair, scant of speech, inflexible of will, their word their law, neither grasping nor prodigal, and as strict at chapel as the counting-house. But Dick Tinker, Dick o’ Will’s o’th Wilberlee, had been a “non-such.” He had blue eyes that always sparkled with mirth; curling chestnut hair, that affronted Puritanic sense; and he was a sad spendthrift. He had a hearty word for everyone. He liked to go of a night to the Rose and Crown, and led the revels there. He never missed a meet of the harriers, and he kept his own game-cock. He had a very appreciative eye for a pretty face, even though it was half-hid under a weaver’s shawl, and for a neat ankle, though cased in clogs. During his widowed father’s life he had gone dutifully to chapel, when he couldn’t make any plausible excuse for shirking attendance, for it was no small matter to stand up against the old man’s will. But when the father died, Dick stoutly declared, with not a few oaths, that he was sick to death of the Hard-bedders—such was his irreverent term for the Particular, very particular, Baptists—and contented himself by going to the Parish Church, on those rare occasions when he felt need of spiritual solace. Then he capped all his follies by marrying the pretty, penniless, governess at the Vicarage, a girl said to be from down Lincolnshire way, who spoke with refined accent, had gentle, graceful ways, and was so clearly a lady that every woman in the district, save the Vicar’s wife and the working folk, resented it. But the moors were too bleak for her and she had the grace to die after two years—which had been like Paradise to Dick—leaving him an infant daughter, Dorothy.
Jabez had not liked his brother’s marriage. He had nothing to say against his sister-in-law, except that it would have been better if she had been a “that country’s” woman. Why couldn’t Dick have done as the Tinker’s had done from time immemorial, and married in the valley. “There were lasses anew, and to spare,” he said, “well favoured, and only waiting to be asked.” Then Dick’s bride had brought him nothing but the clothes she stood up in, and that was another grievance. But Dick had laughed, in his careless way, and said it was time to mend the Tinker breed, by bringing some grace and beauty into the family, and “my Louie has that, you can’t deny.” And Jabez could not deny it.
“Why don’t you marry yourself, Jabez? You, all alone i’ th’ old homestead, with nobody but old Betty to look after you! Dreadful lonesome you must be. Th’ house is none too cheerful at th’ best o’ times. But a woman’s pretty face, an’ a soft voice, an’ th’ patter o’ little feet ’ll lighten it up if now’t else will. And tak’ advice, Jabez, look further afield, not among th’ Wrigleys, an’ Wimpennys, an’ th’ Brookes. Their lasses are weel enough, an’ there’s money with all on ’em. But they run too much to bone, an’ they’ve been chapelled, an’ missionarized, an’ dragooned till religion ’s soured on ’em, an’ when they love they love by rule o’ three.”
But Jabez had winced, and changed the subject.
After his wife’s death Dick had gradually fallen back into his old courses. He loved his little wench, as he called his daughter, passionately; but a full-blooded, hearty man, still in the very pink and flower of his manhood, one used all his life to the bustle of the market, the free and easy ways of an inn and the sports of the field is not very much at home in a nursery. So Dick, who had felt, when the cruel blow fell, that life had nothing left for him was once more to be seen o’ nights at the Rose and Crown, roaring out a hunting song, or arranging the details of a coursing match, a pigeon shooting, or a cock fight—and the maidens of the valley of the Holme took heart once more, and began to feel a lively concern for the poor orphaned babe in the lonely house. They forgave Dick—handsome, rollicking Dick—his passing aberration, his one overt act of treason to their charms, and reflected, with satisfaction, that his married life had been so brief, it might be considered as not counting at all—an episode, not a history.
But the rising hopes of these speculative spinsters were rudely dashed. One bright winter’s morning, when a sudden thaw had softened the iron fields and promised the scent would lie, Dick rode forth cheerily on his hunter to the meet at Thongsbridge. There was a substantial breakfast at Mr. Hinchliffe’s a brother manufacturer and a county magistrate. Dick did ample justice to the cold beef and ham but declined coffee for old October. Then he must needs drain a stiff glass of brandy and water “to warm the old ale,” he said; and in very merry mood was Dick when the hounds broke covert. Now save the stone walls of Galway there are no worse fences than those of the Valley of the Holme. You must clear them at the peril of your neck. There is no crashing through a dry-walling,—a “topping” may give once in a way; but it is odds that it wont. Dick—Dare-devil Dick they called him in the hunting-field,—rode straight. The ground in the higher reaches had not yielded to the thaw or the morning sun. His horse baulked at an awkward fence, slipped, and failed to recover itself, and before Dick could disengage boot from stirrup, fell upon its side, with Dick crushed beneath. The broken ribs were pressed into the lungs, and though he lingered a few days at Mr. Hinchliffe’s house, he was borne from it a corpse.
“You will be good to Dorothy?” he said to Jabez and Jabez had pressed the clammy hand in silent promise.