Читать книгу The Mill of Many Windows - J. S. Fletcher - Страница 3
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Haverthwaite, as regards its geographical situation, lay in a hollow of the hills; a grey-tinted, smoke-canopied place, over the irregular roofs and gables of which rose the high square tower of the parish church, the spires of others, more modern churches, the copper dome of a nineteenth century town hall, and the tall chimney-stacks of many factories. It was a town of irregular streets and squares, and there were more evidences of to-day than of yesterday within its confines, yet the antiquaries and archæologists of the place, of which there were many, had little difficulty in showing the curious and enquiring stranger multitudinous remains and memorials of a long-dead past. Behind palatially-housed bank and luxurious mercantile office lay hid the post-and-pan work of pre-Reformation ages, or the more pretentious architecture of Tudor and Jacobean periods: the inquisitive traveller turned out of a street gay and vivacious with the smartness of the twentieth century into another suggestive of the sixteenth: while at one moment he saw elaborate methods of transit, of lighting, of paving, in the next he found himself contemplating mullioned windows and deep-porched doorways, and his feet treading unevenly on cobble-stones, set down two hundred years before, and not yet fully smoothed out of their original roundness. Here, more perhaps than in any other town of that wild, mountainous, moor-clad region, the old and the new were mingled together in strange fashion—a fashion which, as shrewd observers well knew, was indicative of the mixture of new and old in the mentality of the Haverthwaite people, a self-contained, jealous-natured folk who regarded any man from without their parish as a stranger and foreigner.
Through the heart of the town, and at its lowest point, where a gloom-filled valley cut in winding fashion along the narrow levels, ran a dark and sluggish river, once clear and pellucid enough, but now fouled and stained by the drainage of dye and refuge—effluent from the mills and workshops. Along its banks on either side stood the principal manufactories of the place: whoever walked in close proximity to them, whether in the cold of winter or heat of summer learnt through his nostrils that the great industry of Haverthwaite lay in the working of wool. Hither, to these high grey walls, pierced with many windows, came wool from the far ends of the earth, to be torn, washed, scrubbed, manipulated by many marvellously-contrived machines, and to undergo many strange changes until it emerged from warehouse and show-room in the shape of cloth or carpet. Wool was everywhere: its slivers floated in the air: its grease permeated the very stones of the streets: the hot, clinging odour of its natural oil infected the atmosphere. The folk talked wool, lived with wool, dreamed of wool: wool was their daily bread: the thinking man, watching the great bales of raw wool, wearily making their slow way from railway to factory, on the last stage of their many thousand miles’ journey from Sydney or Auckland, knew that in them lay his meat and drink, his rent and rates, and the future of his children. Not from idle sentiment had his forebears, the wise men of the old borough in long dead days, set in the midst of its lozenged coat-of-arms the figure of a sheep.
Amongst the various many-storied, many-windowed centres of industry which, since the last years of the eighteenth century had risen, built in the strong white stone of the district, along the banks of the Haver, one rose conspicuous above all the rest. On each side of the river, close to its irregular edges, ran a well-made, firm-foundationed road; a highly necessary piece of engineering, considering the constant traffic of waggon and dray, steam or horse or motor-drawn, that was for ever going to and fro.
The various mills and factories and workshops opened off these roads: in most instances they were approached through arched gateways which admitted to the big, enclosed yards within. But in one case the approach was different, and notably so. Half way along the road which ran beside the north bank of the Haver, whoever followed it came to a mill, which was prominently conspicuous above all its fellows, a big landmark in the general surroundings. An immense affair in the Italian style of architecture, many stories higher than any of the highest buildings in its neighbourhood, still comparatively white and fresh in spite of the smoke of half a century, it formed three sides of a quadrangle, the fourth being left wide and open to the road and the river, and only fenced off from them by a row of granite pillars interlaced by ornamental iron chains. Beyond these decorative protections, and looked down upon by the three enclosing walls, each distinguished by a uniform and handsome façade, lay a square of carefully kept green sward, intersected by broad asphalted walks and brightened with neatly fashioned parterres wherein, at the proper seasons, blossomed many choice things in shrub and plant. Strangers, passing this great house of industry, instinctively paused to admire its spick-and-span exterior, the velvet-like texture of the verdant turf in its midst, the evident care which was taken of its appointments: if they were inquisitive and enquired of any bystander as to what it was, and who owned it, they learnt that this was Marrashaw’s Mill.
Whoever had cause to pass the granite pillars and iron chains and walk into the lawn-laid quadrangle of Marrashaw’s Mill soon acquired certain interesting information about the place and its history. In the centre of the lawn, carefully fenced in by ornamental railings, and surrounded by a pavement of dressed stone, stood an ancient cottage: the veriest neophyte in archæology would have recognised it at once as a relic of the seventeenth century: an expert would have seen, just as quickly, that where it had been restored the restoration was the work of one who knew the true secret of all architectural renovation is not to alter but to preserve. So well had the restoration of this ancient place been carried out that as the spectator stood outside it, he expected to hear the whirr of the spinning wheel from within, or to see a woman, distaff in hand, emerge from the whitewashed stone porch. From that porch he gained some information: above it, fixed to the beamed and plastered wall, was a stone slab whereon an incised inscription remained still clearly legible: John and Mary Marrashaw: In the Yeare of our Lorde: 1697. Here then was the original home of the Marrashaw family, where, in the old days of handcraft, they had scrubbed and carded, spun and woven the wool from their own sheep; now, around its humble walls, in the place where once there had been nothing but open land, running from hill to river, rose the monster factory wherein the Marrashaw of to-day presided over a marshalled army of three thousand workers.
But there was more to be learnt of the Marrashaws by the stranger, who, on his way to office, or counting-house, or show-room, looked round the lawn across which he strode. At the very entrance to the main path of that lawn was a marble statue: it represented a sturdy, thick-set, strong-featured man in the dress of the middle Georgian period. In his right hand he carried a stout staff; the left grasped a leathern belt which, passing over his shoulder, secured a pack on his back wherefrom protruded the ends of various folded lengths of cloth. This effigy represented an ancestor in the act of carrying his homespun wares to market: on the plinth beneath it appeared the inscription, in square-faced solid-looking gold letters: Matthew Marrashaw: 1718-1796. And as he passed up the broad asphalted main walk which led to the old cottage, the visitor became aware of two more statues, placed at each end of an intersecting path that crossed the lawn immediately in front of that ancient memorial. One, on the right hand side, represented another sturdy, well-built man, in the costume of the later eighteenth century, who held in his hands, and attentively examined it, the model of a machine: beneath him, in more gold letters, was inscribed Christopher Marrashaw, 1760-1837: this was a forebear who had introduced machinery into the first factory. The other, at the opposite extremity of the intersecting path, was the figure of a man in middle-Victorian garments, the straight frock-coat, the high pointed collar, the voluminous neck-cloth: he held in his hand a scroll whereon was depicted an architectural design: on his plinth appeared the name Hanson Marrashaw, 1805-1883; he was the builder of the palace-like edifice which rose above his sculptured head.
But this was not all. Passing beyond the old cottage, so carefully preserved and jealously kept, the stranger who approached the main and central wing of the huge building found himself, at its very portals, confronted by a fourth statue, which, from its position seemed to look out commandingly on all the rest, and on the cottage, and the lawn, and the high surrounding walls with their hundreds of windows, and on the road the river and on the steep, dark hill which shut in the view beyond. This represented a man who, in appearance, reverted to the Marrashaw of the entrance—another sturdy, thick-set, strong-featured man, in whose face the sculptor had seen and successfully realised certain qualities of doggedness, stubbornness, obstinacy, and imperiousness. The modern garments of this personage were little in evidence: he was represented in the robes and furs of a mayor; he wore the mayor’s chain of office about his neck and shoulders; one hand carried the mayoral hat; the other held a scroll. Beneath the figure was incised a lengthier inscription than those on the other statues; it informed the reader that this was Charlesworth Marrashaw, J.P., three times Mayor of Haverthwaite: Governor of Haverthwaite Grammar School: Steward of the Honour of Haverthwaite: President of the Haverthwaite Antiquarian Society. But here there was no date: Charles Marrashaw still lived: he was sole proprietor of the world-famed business which bore his name; he was fully conscious of his own worth, and he had seen nothing incongruous in erecting this statue to himself as a completion of his labours in erecting the others; from the windows of his private office, immediately above it, he looked down with pride on it and on all that surrounded it, every day: what he beheld was the cumulative result of the industry, perseverance, ingenuity, ability of four generations of Marrashaws: he firmly believed that it was all crystallised and brought to the full and perfect flower in himself. Whatever any other Englishman might be, he was Marrashaw, of Marrashaw’s Mill.
At this time Charlesworth Marrashaw was a man of nearly seventy years of age, a widower. He had married late in life: needless to say he had married money. There had been two children of the marriage: the elder, Beatrice, was now a young woman of twenty-three: the younger, John Bright, so named because of his father’s admiration of the famous statesman, was two years her junior. Charlesworth had certain definite designs and ambitions in respect of both. He meant Beatrice to marry Victor Ellerthwaite, the only son of his particular friend and crony, James Ellerthwaite, another manufacturing magnate of the town: he wanted John Bright—always known as Bright in the family circle—to marry Millicent, Ellerthwaite’s daughter. There was a lot of wealth in the hands of the two families: these marriages would solidify and increase it. The notion was one that had fixed itself firmly in Charlesworth Marrashaw’s mind for many years: it was welcome enough to Ellerthwaite. And at the precise moment in which this history begins, neither Ellerthwaite nor Marrashaw had any idea or suspicion that anything would or could occur to interfere with their cut-and-dried schemes: each sprang from a race of hard, practical, unsentimental folk, which, in all its men and all its women, preserved the tribal instinct and believed firmly that the destinies of children are to be settled by those who bring them into the world.
