Читать книгу Thompson's Progress - C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne - Страница 4

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Out of sheer joy and exhilaration, Thomas Thompson was indulging in a clog-dance to the accompaniment of his own clear whistle; and the rat-tattle-rattle of the clog-irons on stone pavement drew many eyes to his performance. A stream of white-skirted mill-girls poured out of the door of the weaving-shed beside him. They flung him a good deal of pleasant chaff whilst they pinned the shawls over their heads, and it was very plain to see that he was more than an ordinary favourite amongst them. Tom had not the vaguest intention at that period of cramping his movements or his efforts by matrimony, and said so freely; but he liked popularity and the admiration of women’s eyes, and made it his business to obtain abundance of both.

But presently, when the stream of hands had ebbed away down the narrow, twisted street to make the most of their sixty minutes of dinner-space, there arrived, in the doorway above, the tenant of the mill. He was a man of six-and-twenty, and so some six years Tom’s senior. He was thin and white-faced, and he wore a heavy red whisker cut square from the lobe of the ear to the corner of the mouth; and just at that moment he appeared to be holding back with some difficulty an explosion of bad temper.

Tom winked at him cheerfully, and ended his dance with a final flirt of the clog-iron upon the stone. “Don’t you wish you could step like that, Hophni?”

“I’m Mr Asquith to my hands.”

“Then I think I’ll call you Hophni, like we always did up at Bierley, and you can consider me sacked.” A stray cat came and rubbed at his leg. Tom pulled its tail dexterously, and the cat writhed and gurgled in an ecstasy of enjoyment. “I reckon there’s no more to be learned in your mill now. It seems to me I’ve sucked you dry.”

“You can come in and get your time now, and thankful I’ll be to see the last of you and your sauce. You don’t come back again, either, though you’ll be begging for employment in a week’s time. Half the mills in Bradford are standing to-day, and the other half are only running on short time. Weaving overlookers as good as you, my man, are growing thick on every bush round here, with trade as bad as it is just now.”

Tom whistled a bar or two of a sprightly air. “I can see you’ve got that matter of the dobby-box still in your head, Hophni.”

“It was my patent all along. You were in my employ, and as my paid hand any improvement in the looms which you may hit upon belongs to me.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard that tale before.”

“And let me tell you that your original hint didn’t amount to much. I have had to develop it. The thing has cost me scores of pounds in experimenting. It’s been so altered that none of the original idea is left in it. You wouldn’t recognize that dobby-box as it stands to-day. And it isn’t finished yet. I shall have to spend more on it before it’s ready for manufacture as a perfect machine.”

“They teach you the intention of lying pretty well at thy chapel, Hophni,” said Tom thoughtfully, “but ye make a poor show at following out the practice. I should change chapels if I were thee, Hophni.”

“You let chapel alone,” said Asquith furiously.

“I’m likely to,” said Tom. “Seen too much of chapel ways since I’ve been with you. But what’s this tale about you ordering ten of the new looms, with my—that is, your dobby-boxes, from Keighley? They said you were trying to keep it quiet, but the tale’s slipped out.”

Mr Asquith’s thin white cheeks flushed. It is not pleasant to be caught out in a lie, even by a discharged employé. “Well,” he said, “I don’t see why I need justify myself to you. It’s no concern of yours. I’m paying for them, anyway.”

“Ho, yes,” said Tom delightedly, “you’ll be paying the cost, and a nice fat royalty too, if you don’t want the looms broken up as soon as they are delivered. Ho, yes, Hophni, you’re paying!” And once more Tom’s clogs clattered on the pavement with a joyous rattle-tat-rattle.

“Stop that immoral dancing. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, doing such a thing.”

“Not I. David danced. But I’m just wondering how much royalty you can afford to pay without getting banked.”

“Royalty, you poaching scoundrel! I tell you there is no royalty. The patent’s taken out in my own name.”

Tom froze into a sudden sobriety, and the big chin began to project itself with unpleasant firmness. “Yes,” he said, “you took out the patent, but you waited a few hours too long in doing it. I made you a fair offer to begin with. I took my drawings to you and showed you the invention, on the offer of equal partnership if you would put the money in. You agreed to that. But I’ve known your shifty ways this long enough, Hophni, and I made so bold as to keep an eye on you. There’s a lass you want to marry——”

Hophni Asquith’s pale face grew ghastly. “Leave her out, please.”

“Very well,” said Tom, who was by no means merciless. “But you shouldn’t promise anybody more than you’ve got. I picked up the hint, you see, from your own lips; and as I saw you’d every idea of throwing me over I just got in at the back of you, and took out a provisional protection myself. Yours went off to London Thursday?”

“Yes.”

“Mine was in the Patent Office by then, and filed. It was posted Monday. So you see I’m well covered.”

“Your patent will never hold,” said Hophni violently. “And, at any rate, ye’ve not enough brass to fight me for it.”

“Eh?” said Tom, with one of his dogged looks, “and how much do you put me down for?”

“Your half-week’s wage, which you have yet to draw.”

Tom dived a hand into his pocket and produced a bank passbook. “I thought there’d be some question like this betwixt me and thee, Hophni, and so I brought t’book along. There’s two hundred and thirty-two pound ten shilling there, as you’ll notice, and though it’s a deposit account, repayable at two months, I reckon I can get it out in time to fight thee, my man, if tha’ shows awkward.”

Hophni gasped in amazement. Money was his chief god; it was for him even above the God of the chapel; and he always bowed before it. “Wherever did ye get all that brass from, Tom? Never honest, I know. Why did ye not tell of it before, and I could have used it for you in the business?”

“If it was locked up in a business,” said Tom drily, “ ’appen it mightn’t be easy to come by at a pinch when it was wanted, like—well, say, like now.”

Hophni Asquith gritted his teeth and tugged at his square-cut red whisker. He intended to use the new loom, because vast profit was latent in its improvements; he intended to pay no royalty or fee to Tom if fighting or dodginess could avoid it, because he preferred to have all that profit in his own pocket; and he was setting his nimble brain just then a-rummaging for some scheme by which Tom could be left out in the cold, or be conveniently packed out of the way. He was not scrupulous—they were neither of them very scrupulous, for that matter—and some of the schemes that flashed past him were not over-creditable. By then Tom quite appreciated that in the immediate future he would have to keep his weather eye lifting for squalls. It was all part of the game, and he was perfectly ready to take his risks. In fact, he had a very appreciative taste for a scrimmage, and did not much care whether it was physical or whether it was mental. He had tried his thews many a time, and tried also his powers of strategy, and was chinful with confidence in both of them.

They parted at this point, and it was characteristic of the pair of them that Hophni Asquith should retire forthwith to his narrow little office to grapple there and then with the problem, and permit it to worry him incessantly from then onwards, and that Tom should dismiss the matter entirely from his thoughts. In 1856 there was no Yorkshireman in all the West Riding keener for commercial success than Mr Thomas Thompson, but at the same time he had other objects in life to which he gave portions of his attention. He was a fellow of infinitely quick decisions; once he had made up his mind upon a matter, he could tilt it completely out of his thoughts till the moment came to take it up again, and in the meanwhile find refreshment in some entirely different mental exercise.

Accordingly he took his leave of Asquith, whistled up Clara, and marched off in this company at a smart pace.

He stopped once at the door of a cellar-dwelling, and hailed down, “Maister still playing?”

“Ay, lad. He’s had no wark these three week.”

“Sithee, here’s a couple of rabbits. ’Appen they’ll do for t’bairns.” After which he went on again, whistling cheerfully, with the stolid Clara keeping close to heel, as befitted an elderly dog. These small, unobtrusive benefactions had come to be part of his nature, and he derived a curious inward warmth from them.

They went briskly up through the twisted, hilly streets of Bradford, and, seeing that the town was only some one-sixth of its present size in those days, quickly reached its outskirts. Tom viewed the valley slopes beyond with an appreciative eye. What splendid sites were here for mills and dwelling-houses! It is a matter of history that largely owing to his energy during the next half-century, masonry covered the whole of this district; and Tom was shrewd enough to buy up land, and resell at thumping profits.

But as he walked then, his position was lowly, his capital small, and his schemes correspondingly humble. He had given up successively the trades of collier and vagrant poacher, had entered the manufacturing life of the town in its lowest grades, and had learned very thoroughly all that was then to be taught of spinning, weaving, combing, and had obtained a shrewd insight into wool-sorting, dyeing, and machine-making. He had come equipped to his task with magnificent health, a body that required only four hours’ sleep out of the twenty-four, an abnormally useful memory, and an ambition without any limits to it whatever. And so at an age when other young men are just idling through their first year at Cambridge, this Thompson had got the trade of the worsted district at his fingers’ ends. He had a great idea of making money, and making lots of it; but at the same time he kept very closely in touch with those two other great interests—the capture of game and the cultivation of music.

Tom walked on, enjoying the air, enjoying his thoughts. Clara for the most part puttered steadily along at his heels, to all appearance with no further thought than to follow abjectly. But it is probable that her mind also had its activity, for twice (when they had left the region of houses) she made sudden excursions away from the path, and each time returned unostentatiously with a rabbit. Tom received these gifts with scanty thanks, because the animals did not happen to be plump. He had a great taste for having the finest of everything. But Clara, in spite of her years and experience, could not be taught to differentiate between a fat rabbit and a lean one.

So in time they came out on to the moorland, and once amongst the heather this scheming, dreaming Thompson became the many-eyed and alert poacher. Grouse on their native heath are the most invisible of birds, as many a shooting man will proclaim; but there are here and there rare fellows who by custom and talent can pick out the comely brown creatures with surprising nimbleness, and can, moreover, approach them so delicately that they will not fly, but merely run cowering a few yards away amongst the heather-stems, crouch in the new cover, and presently return to the old one. A dozen times Tom drove single birds or a brood in this fashion, and to his pride never flushed them once. He took his observations of the places from which they had moved, and in ten of them decided that the birds would return, and so set snares of brass wire for their reception. Clara showed her well-preserved teeth in a smile as she watched.

He was poaching for no profit then, and so had no need of nets. He wanted a few brace only, and so he chose this more difficult way from the sheer delight at pitting his own skill and wit against the knowledge of the grouse.

Tom set no more snares after the ten had been twisted on to the heather-stems, but made his way over one of the knolls of the moor to a shallow dingle which was heaped with great grey boulders of sandstone. He trod always with a view of leaving behind him no readable tracks, but this caused him no conscious thought. He had reduced the art of stepping invisibly to an instinct, and so did it automatically.

At a place where three great slabs of sandstone lay heaped together he stopped, and laid hands upon a small boulder which was apparently bedded in black peat. It swung out easily to his pull, as a door swings, and behind it was a tunnel. Clara slipped in first, to make sure the place was clear, and then Tom squeezed through and lugged the stone into place. He had been at much pains to arrange the easy poise of that entrance-stone. He crouched along for half a dozen yards, and then stood up, took flint, steel, and tinder from his pocket, and presently had his residence lit by a rushlight.

The sloping grey stone slabs formed the sides and roof, and for bed and carpet there was bracken and springy heather. To a jutting stick hung three brace of grouse in various stages of maturity; against one wall was stocked a crisp brown heap of peats. But day still rode in the sky outside, and though in those times the moors were not watched with that attention they receive now, Tom did not brazenly light his fire and send forth smoke as advertisement of his trespass. He waited for nightfall for that, and in the meanwhile got out his fiddle, put on the mute, and set to work to enjoy himself.

He had got written music to play from now. There were dealers in Bradford in those days who bought copies and duplicated them (in defiance of copyright laws) with their own pens at a halfpenny a sheet. There was a large sale for these, for all the townspeople, even down to the humblest of the working classes, were musical, and they were passed on as a sort of depreciating currency. If griminess was no object, you could get them as low as seven sheets for a penny at third or fourth hand. But Tom always got his music new, and paid the full halfpenny. Music and gifts were two great joys of his life, and his two extravagances.

At the same time he had an appetite for living well. In Bradford at that period—which was before the era of herrings and tea—the working man lived chiefly on oatmeal porridge, and if you had told him at the end of the century his descendants would be grumbling over daily meals of meat, he would have called you a liar. But Mr Thomas Thompson never fancied himself on this exclusively vegetarian diet. He worked better, he thought better, and more relishing music came to him on higher fare; and as a consequence he saw that he got it.

In this residence, which his troglodytic tastes had made him construct on the moor, he lit a generous fire of peat as soon as night fell, and proceeded to prepare a meal. The primitive cookery of working-class Bradford contained nothing in its principles to meet a case like this, and, as in other things, he used a plan which experience and his own invention had taught him. He plucked and drew three plump young grouse. From one he cut the meat, mincing it fine, and associating with it an equal bulk of bacon. With this mixture he stuffed the other two birds, closing the gaps with wooden pins. Then he took clay, kneaded it soft with bilberry juice, and with this paste luted the birds all over with fastidious care. And finally he dug away the glowing peats from the hearth, clapped in the clay-covered corpses, heaped high the embers over them, and applied himself once more to his fiddle till they should be cooked.

In due season the roast was complete. He raked away the glowing peats and pulled the birds towards him. The baked clay came from them as cleanly as the shell leaves a hard-boiled egg. They were brown, hot, and deliciously juicy. They were tender to a fault. They had been hung the exact number of days to bring out their most exquisite flavour, and Tom said his grace before eating, and meant every word of it. It is worth while at times to whet your appetite with hard work and long hours and plain living, if you have a feast like this to save up for. He was always grateful afterwards that the interruption did not come till he had finished his meal.

It was Clara who gave the first alarm of danger. Clara, who had been lying as near the fire as any dog could lie without getting actually singed, got up, and stood on stiff legs, and bristled. She did not growl; she was a dog who had always been associated with the poaching business, and knew how golden was silence; but she looked round to make sure Tom had noticed her, and then worked with her mottled nose in the air to make further investigation.

Tom jumped to his feet and took out the turf plug from a reconnoitring place. He had three of these posts of observation, and he plugged each carefully after use. It was the third look which showed him Hophni Asquith with two policemen and a keeper searching about for a way into his stronghold.

Now Tom, like a rabbit, had more than one bolting-hole, and at first he was minded to make a run for it. But on second thoughts he refrained from this. Even if his face were not viewed, he was quite certain that Hophni would swear to him. And besides, the keeper carried a gun. He was prepared to risk a charge of shot himself, but he knew that the first barrel would be given to Clara, and if Clara were killed, he was quite certain that he would turn and tear the throat out of somebody.

Still, he was by no means contemplating surrender; he had yet another alternative. At one point in the floor, under the carpet of heather, was a large flat slab of stone. He got his fingers under this and lifted. It came up easily enough; like the entrance blocks, it had been carefully poised. Underneath was a hollow about the size and shape of a grave for two. Into this Tom descended, with the fiddle-case and Clara, and the slab of sandstone clapped down into place above them.

Almost simultaneously the raiders found an entrance, and at first seemed unwilling to trust themselves in the uncanny gloom inside. They shouted for Tom to deliver himself up to justice, telling him that all was now discovered, and it would be much best to come peaceably.

As they got no reply to this courteous invitation they became more peremptory, and snarled threats; and presently the keeper, with the remark that there was “no dang use talking,” shoved his gun-muzzle in through the opening, and followed it with a rush. His comments on finding the nest warm and empty were forcible.

To him came Hophni Asquith and a policeman, peering about them curiously.

“I knew I was right,” said the manufacturer. “I felt sure that this was the place where I marked him down.”

“That’s no evidence of poaching,” said the policeman.

“T’beggar’s got two brace of my birds here, and Lord only knows how many more he’s etten.”

“There’s no evidence who took ’em,” said Robert.

“I nobbut wish we could ha’ copped t’beggar. The way my grouse has been going this last year has been simply Hades. The fashion he can set snares beats anything you ever saw. I should walk into them mysen if I was a bird. He must ha’ been living on grouse, and no trouble either, except just gathering them. Ye must work very short time at yar miln, mister, for him to get up here so often.”

“Thompson’s never done a short day since he’s been with me. But then that wouldn’t interfere with his getting out on to the moor here. I don’t believe he ever sleeps. He’s the most restless man in Bradford. Too restless for my taste.”

“So it seems,” sneered the keeper, with all the clean-handed man’s contempt for the informer. “Well, mister, I don’t know what for ye wanted him locked up out of the way, but I wish you success wi’ your dirty job. I’ve got to stop him poaching, choose ’ow; and if I cannot get him gaoled and out of the way, I must ax t’maister if he willn’t let me tak’ him on as underkeeper.”

“I thought you said you didn’t know the chap,” said the policeman.

“Neither I do. I’ve never so much as clapped eyes on his coit-tails, far less his face. But I’ve seen his work, and I’ve seen my birds go, and that’s enough for me. Here, come out of this, and let’s be getting home to we’r suppers.”

They left then, and promptly Tom disentangled himself. He was angry, of course, at having to abandon his country house, but not especially angry with Hophni. It was all in the game. Only he rather blamed himself for underrating Hophni’s cleverness. He had judged the man to have no eye for anything but business—to be wholly wrapped up in money-getting. From the puny mill-hand of a few years back Hophni Asquith had already raised himself to be a manufacturer; and though Tom admired the feat, until now he had always rather distrusted the cleverness that brought it about, as being too much on a single string. The additional power shown in tracking him to his lair on the moor exhibited Hophni in a new light; here was a fellow of resource; and Tom quickly decided that the fortunes of Hophni Asquith should, to a certain extent, henceforward be advanced with his own. “I’ll go into partnership with him,” said Tom. “I didn’t know he was worth it before. There’s more behind that square red whisker than many folk would guess.”

He knew of a concert-club meeting that night in Bradford where his fiddle would be welcomed, and when the coast was clear he set off for the town at a good sharp trot, with the fiddle-case under his arm and the ungainly Clara loping at his heels. Ahead of him the sky held the glow of blast-furnaces, so that a stranger might well have thought the town ablaze. But to Tom the spectacle was a normal one, and he gave it no consideration. Hophni Asquith, a patented loom, and a girl filled his thoughts to the brim and helped along his pace. He was always in hard training, and at go-as-you-please gaits could cover his easy six miles to the hour. Life for him was too short to allow leisure to move across any considerable distance at walking speed. And just now he was covering the ground even faster than usual.

He had an especial reason for wishing to visit the concert-club that evening. The girl of Hophni’s fancy possessed a rather sweet soprano voice, and she would be there “singing the top line.” Hophni would not be present. Hophni Asquith liked music well enough, but openly stated that he had no leisure to chuck away over its cultivation—business took up all his waking hours.

Tom came into the room when the concert was in full blast, tuned his fiddle, and singled out with his eye that Louisa, who was just then hesitating as to whether or not she should adopt the surname of Asquith. Their eyes kept in touch, and Louisa, presently understood that Tom had something to say to her alone, afterwards, and she signalled back that he might see her home. Tom had a very expressive eye when he chose, and, moreover, was very useful at picking up meanings from other people’s eyes.

“It’s mother that wants me to marry him,” Louisa explained, when they were alone outside together, “and I’m beginning to think she’s about right. I’m stalled o’ being poor. Besides, I like him well enough.”

“There’s nothing comfortable about poverty,” said Tom, “especially for a lass. Then you’d not marry Hophni at all if it wasn’t for his brass?”

“I’d wait and think it over a bit longer,” said Louisa drily.

Tom laughed.

“Oh, you needn’t be so scornful, Tom. He knows quite well how I think about it. He dangled out his brass himself as a bait for me.”

“Well, be sure it’s there, dear, before you’re wed.”

“Is there owt wrong?”

“I can’t say yet, but you’ll see for yourself presently.”

“How do you mean?”

“If you see the firm of Thompson and Asquith joined in partnership presently, that would be a sort of guarantee that I thought well of his chances.”

“That would be good enough for me. But are you going to join him, Tom? Besides, will he have you? He’s a master already: you are only a man.”

“When I make up my mind to a thing, don’t I generally do it?”

Louisa laughed. “They say so. I heard there was a lass said she was going to wed you the other day, and you said no, and I haven’t heard yet that there’s been a wedding.”

Tom twisted his face. “You’ll let that alone, my dear. You and I are very good friends, and I’m sure will always stay good friends if only we’re conveniently forgetful of just a few things that are best forgotten. Now, here we are at the door. I’ll not come in. And I should say you’ll forget to tell your mother who’s walked you home. Good night, dear.”

“Good night, Tom.”

Tom’s evening peregrinations were still unfinished. He went into unsavoury Silsbridge Lane, and walked briskly into the Bird o’ Freedom public-house. The reeking bar-room was filled with Irish, two of them fighting. There were women in that gruesome company as well as men, many of them young women. But Tom had no truck with any of these. He asked one of the attendants, “Meeting still on?” and, being answered in the affirmative, made his way to a door which stood (as it were) half-way up the wall, at the head of a couple of steps.

A drunken Irish bricklayer put out a hand and collared him. “Here, my beauty, yez do not go up there till yez paid your footing.”

Tom’s sharp, quick blow, with eleven stone six at the end of it, was aimed at the angle of the petitioner’s jaw, and that person was hors de combat for the rest of the evening. Tom always considered himself first, and just then he was in a hurry. Besides, he never had any sympathy with drunks. A gangway was made for him to the door; but before he reached it, a girl clasped her arms round his neck and kissed him hotly on the mouth. “Ye’re a brute, lad, but I love tha’ for it,” she said; and Tom laughed and kissed her back, because she happened to be pretty. Then he opened the door and stepped up the stair.

It was before the legal days of trades unions then, and the men who were congregated in that upper chamber conducted themselves after the manner of a secret society. There was a guard at the door, armed with a flimsy sword to keep off intruders; there was a password and sign; and the room within aped to some degree the ritual of a Masonic lodge.

Tom’s reception was not entirely cordial. There was a current of socialism in this assembly—though they didn’t call it socialism then—and Tom was no socialist. He had not the slightest intention of slackening his own pace down to the level of that of the slowest and idlest, and said so openly. He intended to climb to the top, and to get there very soon, and everybody was free to know it; but at the same time, if his principles in this respect were repugnant, they fully appreciated his shrewdness and insight, and the balance there lay well in his favour.

When he entered the subject of a strike at Asquith’s was being discussed with blunt freedom. It was the old tale, which has existed ever since labour first commenced. Expense of living was growing heavier, wages were getting less, and hours showed no tendency to decrease. Moreover, machines were improving, and to the uneducated alarmist it was plain that there would be less demand for labour presently, and the state of the working man and woman would grow steadily worse. A word-bubbling agitator pumped out his twisted arguments through the tobacco smoke, and the meeting rumbled comments of “Let’s strike” at intervals.

Then an elderly hand-loom weaver uprose, and pressed for the old remedy of machine-breaking. He spoke with the dull violence of a ruined man who sticks to an obsolete trade, and his wrongs had endowed him with a certain sledge-hammer eloquence. It was plain at once that he had a large following. Destruction and a riot were always popular cries at these assemblies, and thus are revolutions made. Those who did not assent were for the most part the cowards, and for their conversion cries of cowardice were freely levelled at them, as being the most likely taunt to stir their pluck.

The meeting, then, was in an unpromising temper when presently Tom was called upon for his views, and saw fit to give a flat defiance to everything which had been previously stated. He was no orator at that time, or at any other; he was not much more than a boy then, be it remembered; but he knew his own mind and he knew his own policy, and he stated both in lucid sentences. Others had cursed machinery, but he gave it his uncompromising blessing; others advocated restricted output, he was in favour of turning out every stitch that could be made—and finding good markets for it. “Hard work and good machinery,” he said, “meant high wages.” Hand-looms, he pointed out, were as dead as bows and arrows, and both nowadays were only fit for kindling-wood. But at that point the meeting refused to hear him further, and from the other side of the room an irritated hand-comber flung across at him a heavy pewter pot.

Now, one man with his bare arms cannot in an open room fight five-and-twenty, and Mr Thomas Thompson afterwards appreciated this and stored it amongst his axioms. But youth is warm-blooded, and Tom rather liked a turn-up. He returned the pewter to its owner with the full strength of his arm, and presently was the centrepiece of a very tolerable mêlée. It is a wonder that he did not get the life kicked out of him by angry clogs, for he was in an assembly where a vote of censure was frequently fatal; but activity and luck saved him from any extravagant injury, and though he did leave the room by the window instead of the door he reached the dirty street outside all in one piece, and presently was his own man again. An agitated Clara came up from somewhere to lick his hand.

Most men, after a hint like that, would have adjudged the neighbourhood unhealthy, and have retired from it with speed. But Tom was doggedly determined to get the information he came for. So at the risk of his life he crept back again, and found against the wall a fall-pipe by which he could climb up to the level of the meeting-room. He did not go up at once. As a preliminary, he picked up a stone and sent it neatly through one of the window-panes. Angry men came out to catch the aggressor, and Tom retired for a space whilst they blew off their temper. But when the coast was clear back he came again, and, leaving Clara as a sentry at the foot of the fall-pipe, shinned up, took a lodging on the window-sill, and listened to the balance of the proceedings through the gap. By the time he came down again, and departed towards the house where he had a lodging, he had got the information he needed.

There was battle, riot, and revolution mapped out for the future, but Tom did not lose any sleep that night through thinking of them. He had made his plans, and the matter was dismissed from his mind till the time came for them to mature. In the meanwhile there was leisure. So next morning he engaged himself as a striker at a millwright’s, with the idea of getting some practical knowledge of forging and fitting, and in the evenings he learned the mother tongue of a German clerk who shared his lodging. The German was very content to take his fee in kind, and Tom fed him royally on rabbits and game, which he and Clara went out two evenings a week to collect by way of exercise and diversion.

It was two months after that meeting of the conspirators at the Bird o’ Freedom that the climax was reached. The machine-makers at Keighley had finished the new looms, and they were duly set up in Hophni Asquith’s weaving-shed. The ingenuity of them was plain for anyone to see. As compared with the old looms, with the same amount of over-looking, they would add thirty per cent. to the output, and would probably double it. Mr Asquith announced a diminution in piecework wages, and invited his hands to attend to their duties as formerly. He pointed out very sensibly that he was not proposing to pay them less on the week; he was only readjusting the scale to changed circumstances.

Promptly the political economists of the Bird o’ Freedom uttered their howl against over-production. For Hophni’s hands the case needed little argument after that. If gentlemen who could earn beer merely from their knowledge of finance and economics recommended a strike, it stood to reason that their advice was good. The Spectator, a local paper which was always against any form of government whatever, hounded them on. And so out on strike they came, breaking the mill windows behind them as an announcement of the fact.

Hophni Asquith lived in the mill those days, armed somewhat tremulously with a horse-pistol, which he pointed at visitors. The flesh had sunk underneath the clean line of his red whiskers, outlining the jaw in hard, white relief. He victualled himself on biscuits and tea. When he slept, it was in a hard Windsor chair in the office. His bravery in doing this approached the heroic. He knew that the strikers would stick at little, and that any night a force of them might turn up to wreck the mill or set it alight, and leave him to fry on a grill of smashed machinery. Constitutionally he was a timid man, born of an ill-nourished stock and physically feeble. Every clog that clattered down the paved street without sent him into a sweat of fear. But—he stuck to his mill. He had built up the business in an incredibly short time by sheer industry and cleverness. He knew full well the devils of poverty from which he had arisen. He had tasted the keen delights of handling money, and the power that money gives, and he lusted with all the force of his nature for more. There was another impulse which drove him, but he did not know it then. If he had been forced to make confession at that date, he would have said that it was money and his mill that alone he would fight for.

To this unpromising person then came Thomas Thompson, with a mongrel she-dog at his heels, and bluntly proposed partnership. “And for Heaven’s sake put down that pistol, man!” said Tom, squinting down at a bell-muzzle that wavered against his chest. “Fit a new flint to it if you want the thing to go off. Or, better still, chuck that on the scrap-heap, and buy a new one with percussion lock. I should have thought you’d learned by this, Hophni, that old machinery is not profitable—not even gun machinery.”

Hophni ordered him off the place promptly enough, but the burly Tom pushed inside and sat himself in an office chair. “They’ll be here to wreck the mill for you to-night and smash every loom in the shed. How does that new loom of mine frame, Hophni? I haven’t commenced an action against you for infringement yet. It didn’t seem worth while. It looks as if you’ll either have to give me a partnership, or see those new looms smashed i’ bits.”

“So you’ve set them on to wreck the place.”

“Nay, lad, but I’ve not. I tried to put in my bit of advice at the Bird o’ Freedom, and they threw me out—threw me through the window, for the matter of that. But I’ve made it my business to find out what goes on at the meeting, and here’s the news.”

“I shall go to the police for protection. I shall demand to have the soldiers out.”

“Yes, you’re likely to get that. With the Spectator squawking for liberty of speech and freedom for the individual, you’re likely to get a Bradford magistrate to order guns and cutlasses to be used upon the sovereign people in their legitimate agitation against a merciless employer!”

Hophni recognized the quotation, and cursed the Bradford Spectator.

Tom laughed. “So much for your loyalty, lad. You swear by that paper most times. It’s your own way of thinking in everything that does not touch your own individual pocket.”

“If there’s no way of saving the mill, I shall have to file my petition, that’s all. But I shall start again. Every one will know why I failed, and it’ll do little harm to my credit. Besides——”

“You’ve got some brass put away in a stocking, that the creditors will not lay hands on? Well, maybe. But from all accounts you’re not overly liked, Hophni, and I should say they’ll squeeze you pretty tight once you’re down, and see that you don’t get your discharge in a hurry. Much better not to go into bankruptcy at all.”

“You seem to think you could keep me out?”

“Oh, I don’t think; I know.”

“Come now, I don’t mind admitting that I’m pushed pretty hard just now, Tom. If you’ve got a way of getting over this trouble with the hands, and setting the mill agate running once more, I’ll do the handsome thing by you. Come, lad, you like brass: you’ve said so. I’ll give you twenty pound.”

“Now, once for all, Hophni, what I’ll take for the job is a half-partnership, and no less. It isn’t much to ask: the mill you rent, the machinery you paid for in bills at six months, and most of your other assets are liabilities; but I offer you that bargain because I think you really mean getting ahead, lad, choose ’ow.”

“Oh, you’ve discovered that, have you?”

“If you want to know when, it was that day you sent keeper and Robert on me and Clara on t’moor. It was you that followed us there. I hadn’t given you credit for so much cleverness outside your own narrow little line, Hophni. Look here. I know Bradford manufacturing trade as well as you do yourself, and all the other trades of this district a sight better. You’d better have me with you now than against you afterwards.”

“You don’t get a share of a business like this that way, my lad.”

“A business like this? Poof! I shall have a concern as big as this running just for the export trade to Germany a year after I’ve begun.”

“Germany! What do you know about Germany? Cats and dogs and poaching I believe you understand, but dress goods for Germany!”

“I’ve been lodging with a German for three months and better. I’ve a memory, like you know, and he’s been learning me the language. I can talk German to that chap now as easy as I can talk good plain Yorkshire to you.”

Hophni was obviously struck with this, but he pulled back his interest with an effort of temper. “Be done with your talk and get outside this mill. A workman you are, and a workman you’ll remain, unless you make your way up by degrees from the bottom, like your betters did before you. Away with you now, and let’s hear no more of this.”

Tom got up, stretched good-humouredly, and scratched Clara’s head with an affectionate forefinger. “All right, Hophni, but don’t forget I’ve given you the offer. I said I would, and now I may as well tell her you prefer to be banked to having anything to do with me.”

“Tell her? Tell who?”

“Louisa. Why, who did you think?”

Hophni Asquith’s white face got if anything still whiter. “What have you been doing with her?”

“Oh, I’ve known the lass ever since she was as high as a bobbin skep.”

“Is there—is there anything between you, then?”

“We’re very good friends, that’s all, and I’d like to see her well wed.”

Hophni moistened his lips. “You know I’ve asked her, then?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“I’d be a good husband to her. I’d let her spend t’brass. I care for her more than you’d think, Tom. And I know how she is to me. But I don’t mind about that. It would all come right once we were wed.”

“Don’t see how you could well marry just after you’d filed your petition.”

“No.”

“And you know best whether she’d wait for you.”

Hophni dropped his ghastly face into his hands. He did not say anything. He did not even groan. But Tom saw that he appreciated the full hardness of the difficulty.

Tom let fall a hand lightly on to his shoulder. “Why fail at all, lad?”

“I mustn’t; I daren’t. I’d lose her if I did, and I can’t do that. Tom lad, but you don’t know what that lass is to me. You’re all smiles and jokes and laughs with all the women, but you don’t care a rap for one of them yet. One day you will, and then you’ll understand. Ay, whether t’lass cares for you or not, you’ll know how it fair tears t’heart out of you to think of losing her.”

He turned to the desk, picked up pen and paper, and wrote furiously. “Here’s the partnership for you. You’ll want it in writing, I suppose; and if you get me through this trouble we can have it set out all legal and fair later on. And if we do not it will be so much waste paper, for the business will be gone, and Louisa will be gone—and I don’t blame her—and I shall try the Colonies. Now let’s hear your plan.”

“Well, we’d better doff our coats and be up and moving. There’s too much time slipped by with talking already.”

They toiled then with skilled fingers and frenzied energy. Night had fallen, black and moonless, and they carried lanterns to light them at their work. In the mill-yard a glow of lit fires came from the boiler-house, and from the top of the lofty stack smoke rolled forth in lavish billows.

The rioters did not come to their work cold-blooded. They had warmed themselves first with the beverages sold at the Bird o’ Freedom, and also with the fervid eloquence of an article in that morning’s Spectator; and when at last, to the music of the Marseillaise as delivered from a battery of concertinas, they formed up into a solid regiment in the street, they were ripe for any mischief, and had the pleasant comfort of numbers.

The mill, after the architecture of those days, which paid little heed to light and ventilation, was already something of a fortress. On three sides it was built in with houses: only the fourth side, which flanked the street, remained to be defended. Here the point of attack was really confined to a massive gateway, wide enough for a pair of wheels. Windows there were, to be sure, on the ground floor, but the glass in these had been smashed at the first outbreak of the strike, and staunch iron bars kept out the human invader. They builded strongly in such matters in the fifties.

The attacking force knew all this quite well, but they had confidence in their weight and numbers. The big gates were comparatively flimsy, and once these were down, they surely could rush through in the face of any opposition, and do their work with thoroughness. So they marched on vaingloriously, singing their anthem with fine musical effect.

As they drew nearer, the faint, laundry-like smell of wet steam met them, and some began to sniff curiously. It could only come from Asquith’s mill, and the boiler fires there had been drawn ever since the beginning of the strike. When the next angle of the street showed them that the gates were open, and in place of darkness there was a good healthy glow of a bonfire, they began to suspect that there was some trap laid here. But though the song stopped, the rioters did not. The front ranks certainly did see the prudence of halting for a reconnaissance, but those behind pressed on without consulting their convenience. A Spectator reporter in front loudly complained of the lawlessness of mobs.

They surged round the front of the gateway, and there in the light of the fire another surprise was dished up for them. Instead of the slender, white-faced Asquith, whom they detested, there was that burly young Thompson, whom most of them knew and many of them liked. Beside him was an ugly, powerful-looking mongrel dog. The apparatus in front of him, gently leaking grey pencils of steam from many ill-made joints, needed no explanation to them. They worked for their living in the near neighbourhood of steam every day, and they fell instinctively to criticizing the hasty workmanship of the men who had uncoupled the main steam-pipe from the engines of Hophni’s mill, and led it direct from the boilers to this horrible sprinkler contrivance which threatened the doorway.

Nothing was said. They stood there in the glare of the bonfire, swaying, muttering, and beginning to fear, and then from somewhere amongst their feet a little black kitten ran out, mewing with fright, right into the open before the steam-pipe.

Tom saw it too, and snapped his fingers alluringly. The black kitten, with a kitten’s instinct, recognized a friend and capered lumberingly up. Tom stretched out a dirty, gentle hand and gathered it in. For a moment or two he stroked the kitten into confidence again, then, turning, pitched it deftly out of harm’s way through the open doorway of the mill behind him. After which he turned again, and put hands on the throttle-valve of the murderous steam-pipe in front of him.

Then he laughed and said, “Now, what do you chaps think you’re going to do with my mill?”

A hundred angry voices, glad at having the chance of speech, howled back the answer, “Asquith’s mill.”

Tom waited for silence again, and when they had bawled themselves out, “Partly Asquith’s, of course,” said he, “because Asquith still retains an interest, but partly mine. In fact, you might say it belongs to each of us, because I’ve bargained for a half-partnership. Now, what you intended to do with Mr Asquith’s mill property does not concern me. But it seems to me that some of you there look as if you want to spoil property that’s mine. Well, lads, when I get my fingers into a pie it’s going to be my pie, and if anybody tries to take it away from me they’ll get hurt. See that?”

He delivered this speech in the full breadth of the vernacular and with a smiling face. But the big, dogged jaw of him, and the knowledge that those scalding steam jets would instantly play on them if the throttle were opened, stopped any attempt at a rush by those in front. There were other orators, though, in the snug security of rear ranks, who were by no means satisfied by this brusque change of front. “What abaht t’new looms?” they shouted. “Will ye promise to brak t’new looms?”

“Certainly I will not,” said Tom. “I’ll even promise you to double the number of them within six months’ time. And because why? Because those new looms have come to stay. If they were not used here, they would be used at Halifax and the other towns, and the trade would follow them and leave Bradford. I don’t choose that that should be so. I’m going to run them here, and if I can’t get hands from Bradford, I’m going to bring them in from Halifax—yes, or from France; and if necessary I will lodge them in the mill and give them guns to keep out interferers. And do you know what else I’m going to have with my workpeople here? I’m going to have none but first-class weavers, and I’m going to have none that don’t want to earn high wages. Bradford weavers have been content to earn from eight to ten shillings a week up to now. I’ve been a workman all my life, at one trade or another, and I know.”

“Yes, that’s true enough.”

“Well, a weaver that can’t earn eighteen to twenty shillings in Thompson and Asquith’s shed won’t be asked to stay.”

“Tha’rt bahn to revise t’wages?”

“Certainly we are. The new loom will turn out double quantity if it’s properly worked, and there’ll be just one weaver in the gait between each pair of looms. If that does not mean four times the old output, I’m no scholar. You needn’t let those Bird o’ Freedom chaps squawk to you about ‘over-production.’ Knock off their beer, and let them produce a bit of something more solid than talk themselves for a change. I’ll sell the stuff. Half the markets haven’t been touched by Bradford goods so far, and the other half haven’t been given what they want.”

There is nothing so hysterical as a crowd. A girl plucked the shawl from over her head and waved it in the air. “By goy, Tom,” she shrilled, “I’ll work for tha’, lad,” and promptly a score of others joined in the cry. The mob-leaders in front were quick to catch the changed humour of their following. They began to edge away out of the firelight, lest they should be recognized and remembered to their future detriment. Presently, “It’s late; let’s be getting home,” was the suggestion that was being passed about; and from out of the flickering light of the bonfire they dissolved away, till the last rat-tattle of the clogs faded in the distance. Clara, the unbeautiful, lifted up her mouth and yawned elaborately, and the black kitten came out from the mill door and rubbed her head against Tom’s boot.

Tom caught the infection from Clara and yawned also. “Hophni,” he said, “you may leave tending that fire and shut the gates. The strike’s dead. It’ll take t’engineer all to-morrow to get the boiler coupled on again. There are few men in Bradford that can work on steam-pipes as you and I have done this last few hours. I’ll sleep with you in t’office after I’ve washed me. You haven’t a spare pair of trousers you could lend me? These are fair ruined with that white lead, and I hate being filthy.”

“No, I haven’t,” said Hophni wearily, “and if the only cash outlay you make for your partnership is a pair of trousers you’re getting it cheap.”

Tom laughed. “I like a bargain, lad. But as the bargain’s driven now, I don’t mind giving you a bit back. I’ll come in handsome for a wedding present for Louisa when you marry her.”