Читать книгу A Pit-brow Lassie - John Monk Foster - Страница 7

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About twenty years before the time our story opened there lived at Pendleton, near Manchester, a married couple named Jonathan and Margaret Leigh! These two were then about thirty years of age; they had been married about ten years, had had several children, none of which, however, had lived, and, on the whole, had lived their married life not unhappily—that is when judged by the ordinary life of married folks of the humbler class of life.

Jonathan Leigh was a native of Pendleton, whilst his wife hailed from the city of cotton hard by. The man was a coal miner, and prior to his marriage the pretty woman he had espoused earned her bread as a cotton spinner in the Ardwick quarter of Manchester, where she was born and bred.

"Jonty" Leigh, as his chums called him, was neither higher nor lower in intellect than the ordinary run of pitmen, nor were his aspirations or pleasures in any appreciable degree better or worse than theirs. That he was an enthusiastic patron of the noble sports of dog-racing and Lancashire wrestling passes without saying, and his love for the sparkling brown ale was inferior to no man's.

Now Jonathan Leigh's wife was considerably above the man she had married in intelligence, aspiration, as well as solidity of character. She could read and write, while he was wholly illiterate. She was temperate, prudent, and earnestly desirous of getting on in the world, whereas he was intemperate and imprudent—a go-a-day, come-a-day, God-send-Sunday sort of a fellow. He worked hard, but spent most of his earnings over and above what was needed for the house-hold expenses.

This was the cause of much dissatisfaction to Margaret Leigh. It pained her extremely to see her husband working from five o'clock in the morning until four or five in the afternoon—always tolling hard, and as a rule regularly, and then when reckoning day came to see him flinging away the money obtained by the personal expenditure of so much effort.

Her marriage with Leigh was in no way a mistake save in its results. She was well acquainted with his character, and prior to their union had fondly imagined that when they were settled down she could easily break him of his intemperate habits and make a better man of him.

The old adage which says that "a man is what his wife makes him" is true in some cases, but in some cases only. Margaret Leigh, prior to her wifehood, was a fervent believer in the old saw, but after half a dozen years of married life her faith in it had completely disappeared.

In spite of her expostulations and entreaties Jonathan Leigh went his own way after his own fashion. He was not a worse husband than his mates, but he fell far short of the standard of excellence his wife had expected him to reach. Perhaps both husband and wife were to blame—the latter for expecting too much, the former for attempting to achieve so little.

So matters had run, and Margaret Leigh was a greatly disappointed woman. With her personal attractions she might have made a much better match—she had had the refusal of a clerk in one of the Manchester banks—but she loved "Jonty" Leigh, and had married him believing his reformation possible in her hands.

Thus things stood when Margaret Leigh's wedded life was ten years old and when her fifth child saw the light. The new-comer was a girl, and contrary to all her predecessors she was a fine healthy child.

Soon after this event a dispute arose at the Pendleton collieries between employers and employed, and finally a strike resulted. As there seemed to be small probability of the dispute ending for many weeks Jonathan Lee and his household made a move eastward, and the spot selected was Ashford.

Some of Leigh's mates had gone thither some months before the strike at Pendleton, and as they reported well of the place he had decided to follow them and settle down there. He sought employment at the King pit, got work there, and commenced the next morning.

For some time things went on very much as usual with the Leigh household. Jonathan was still his old self, working hard, and drinking deep, with his old happy-go-lucky philosophy of life. The movement eastward had not worked any reformation in him such as Margaret had hoped for.

She had jumped readily at the idea of leaving Pendleton for Ashford, thinking that her husband would be more amenable to her promptings when divided from most of his old companions. But here again she met with disappointment. In a fortnight after their coming to the place "Jonty" Leigh had picked up with a lot of new mates of the same devil-may-care order as those he had left behind him, and all hope of his reformation had to be despairingly dismissed from the mind of his disgusted wife.

A few months after they left Pendleton Margaret Leigh encountered a great surprise. It was the fortnightly pay-day, and as Jonathan was unable to go for his wages, owing to a severe illness brought on by a drinking bout, she went for his money.

When her husband's name and number were called out she entered the pay-office, and the cashier who handed her Jonathan's wages proved to be none other than George Bamforth, the gentleman who had once been a clerk in the Manchester District Bank, and who, about twelve years before, had asked her hand in marriage.

The surprise was mutual. George Bamforth was astounded at meeting his old love so unexpectedly, and she noted the expression of commiseration her appearance brought into his eyes. He was deeply pained, she could see, to perceive that she was badly dressed and ill-looking, in no ways different from any other collier's wife.

Margaret Leigh returned home not a little disturbed by her chance meeting with her old wooer, and although she had never given a single love-thought to the man, she was humiliated before him owing to her indigent appearance. Unbidden the thought ran through her mind—How different my life would have been had I married the clerk instead of the miner.

George Bamforth had never quite got over his early passion for Margaret Hampton. The offer of marriage he had made to her was not renewed to any other woman, and he was now a confirmed bachelor of forty. He was a man of keen sympathies and generous impulses, his disappointment in love not having soured his heart in the least, and the sight of the loved one of yore, with whom things seemed to be going hardly, cut him to the very soul.

That chance meeting in the pay-office, and the feeling it engendered in George Bamforth's breast, set him to work at once to improve the condition of Margaret Leigh and her husband, and the first task he set himself was that of reforming Jonathan.

But in this the cashier was not more successful than the miner's wife had been. Jonathan did sign teetotal and keep his pledge for a week; then he relapsed into his old condition, but instead of stopping there he became worse and worse each week. The miner grew sullen and lazy, and Mr. Bamforth's persuasive words were received with curses, and the cashier was told to mind his own business.

Jonathan had learned from his wife that Bamforth was the man who had proposed to her years ago, and this knowledge had set the miner's heart aglow with jealous imaginings.

Leigh's jealousy increased to such an extent—fed by the flippant taunts of his comrades—that he openly accused Bamforth of designs on Margaret, and swore to kill him if he entered the house again.

When the cashier went away there ensued a furious quarrel between man and wife. Stung to madness by the suspicion he harbored, he taunted his wife with infidelity, and vowed to leave her next day and go to America.

Next morning Jonathan got up when the knocker-up called him at half-past four, donned his pit clothes, took his lamp, and went out. It was a nasty morning in the depth of winter. A storm of sleet was roaring outside, and through the bedroom window Margaret watched him go down the street in the direction of the King Pit.

But she never saw him again; whither he went she had never learned. When evening came and her husband returned not she made enquiries at the colliery and was told that he had not been working that day. That he had kept his passionately uttered vow of the preceding night was evident, and to disarm her suspicions and so get clear away he had gone away in his working clothes.

For a fortnight the deserted wife lived on at Ashford, hoping and praying for the return of her misguided husband; but never a word concerning him reached her, and when a fortnight had passed waiting in vain for that which came not Margaret Leigh prepared herself for the struggle for existence.

Then all the nobility of this woman's character showed itself. The shame of being deserted was too keenly felt by her to make her remaining at Ashford possible. Save Mr. Bamforth she had no friends to whom she could turn, and the cause of her husband's flight debarred her from accepting the slightest help at his hands.

Her only relative, a brother, had gone to try his fortune in Australia before she was married, and she had since heard nothing of him. She was inclined to think him dead—struck down probably in some remote quarter of the great southern continent.

Hearing that cotton spinners were required for a mill just then erected at Orrelham, a large village situated between Bolton and Wigan, she went there immediately, was fortunate enough to find employment, and in the village she obtained lodgings for herself and child, now a fine girl of three years.

Ten years slipped away, and the wife and child Jonathan Leigh had deserted still resided at Orrelham. Mrs. Leigh had ceased to work in the cotton mill. A year ago the only company of cotton spinners in the place failed and the mills were closed.

When this happened Margaret cast about for other work. She did not wish to quit the place, and having an excellent character and some friends she obtained odd jobs, such as charing, at the houses of the gentry round Orrelham.

Her daughter Kate was now thirteen, a tall slip of a girl whose face showed then no trace of the great beauty it attained half a dozen years later. The lass was working on the brow of an adjacent colliery, and she had taken up that kind of work because none other was to be obtained since the cotton mill closed.

It was with considerable misgivings that Mrs. Leigh allowed Kate to commence working about the mines, but as her own earnings were not sufficient to maintain them she submitted to the inevitable. Besides, the girl began to work as a pit-brow hand on the understanding that if she did not like the work they would both leave Orrelham and go to some town where employment in the cotton mills could be obtained.

The first morning that Kate Leigh donned the garb of a miner lassie was of course a time of trial to the young girl. Of a quiet retiring nature it required not a little courage on her part to make her appearance in trousers before a number of strangers composed of both sexes.

But Kate was both a good girl and a brave one. She understood to some extent the trials her mother had faced and overcome, and being earnestly desirous of decreasing her parent's burden as far possible, stuck to the work on the pit bank.

After the first day or two the feeling of strangeness passed away, and being acquainted with many of the other girls she soon grew to like the work. It was summer time then, and the uglier aspects of pit-brow-life did not present themselves. Working under a genial sun and soft blue skies is an altogether different matter from toiling amidst storms of wind and snow, torrents of rain and sleet, to all of which the pit-brow hands are often subjected through the callousness or indifference of their employers.

At an old dame's school In Orrelham village Kate managed to pick up a smattering of the three "R's" and this knowledge her mother had done much to increase by sedulously fostering in her daughter a love for reading. Mrs. Leigh was herself a great reader of cheap romances, and from her mother Kate probably inherited her literary taste. She had been accustomed to perusing the old penny journals Mrs. Leigh had bought, read, and afterwards put by, and when she began to work on the pit-brow, with the first week's "spending money" she bought the first two numbers of a periodical she had seen in the village stationer's window.

Thus at thirteen Kate Leigh became one of that great "Unknown Public" whose existence once puzzled Wilkie Collins so much; and regularly for years did she continue to purchase her favorite "Penny Novel Journal."

This taste for cheap literature in no way militated against any virtues Kate possessed; it rather fostered their growth and ennobled the girl's ideas of life. Living as she did in a dull country village, she would have grown up thick-witted as a clod had not the romances she devoured shown her glimpses—often caricatures it is true—of the great world that struggled, surged, seethed, and breathed around her.

What if the heroes of her cheap stories were invariably models of manly beauty—the heroines paragons of virtue and loveliness—the one performing impossible feats of valor and intellect, the other enduring intolerable wrongs and suffering for Right's sake?

What if the characters of the stories were too often the clumsiest of lay figures, woefully overdrawn, and inevitably surcharged with every passion, human and divine? In the end the virtuous reigned triumphant and the wicked were consigned to a righteous perdition. To her uncritical eye the blemishes of the stories were not discernible; she was only able to see in them that which was good and inspiriting.

So the years rolled by and Kate Leigh grew up to womanhood, living, as it seemed to her, two lives—one the hard practical life of the pit-brow girl, the other a dream of romance passed in the companionship of her heroes and her heroines.

As she approached the end of her teens Kate developed into a strikingly beautiful woman, though hers was not the beauty met with commonly in women of her class—a bold sort of masculine handsomeness—but a sweet, unostentatious kind rarely found in village maidens.

Lovers she had in dozens in Orrelham, but none of them had in her a lover. Her reading of romance had steeled her heart against all wooers such as the village could furnish, and poor pit-girl though she was she was dreaming her dreams and building her air-castles. As yet she had to meet the young fellow who could compare favorably with her ideal.

That Kate was conscious of her loveliness need not be recorded, nor need it be written that she was proud of it. As yet it had proved a source of pure satisfaction to her; presently she was to learn that its possession had its own dangers.

At the colliery where she worked the agent was a man named Robert Gregson. He was a middle-aged man, married, with a large family, but these things did not prevent him from forming designs upon Kate Leigh. Her loveliness had excited his lascivious nature, and her modesty only inflamed his desire.

He set about his designs in a snake-like fashion. Kate was removed from the pit-brow and instituted "office-cleaner." The change was at first agreeable to her in every way. The work was cleanly, easy, and the pay better than she had formerly received.

In the suite of offices attached to the colliery Kate, of course, often encountered Mr. Gregson, and he soon informed her that the change in her work and wages was due to the kindly feeling he entertained for one who was so much above ordinary pit-brow girls. Suspecting nothing she thanked him warmly for what he had done.

Some time after this the agent unmasked himself and his attentions. He waited one evening—it was winter time—in the lane along which Kate journeyed homeward, and made such proposals to the girl as to send her flying home almost heartbroken.

Neither to her mother nor to anyone else did Kate breathe a syllable of what had happened; she was too utterly ashamed of the position in which the insult had placed her. She went to work next day as usual, and for some time the agent ceased to persecute her.

But the man's evil intention had not been given up; it was only laid aside for a time. One day when Kate was cleaning Mr. Gregson's private room he entered hurriedly and closing the door behind him confronted the astonished girl, who, after gazing on him a moment continued her occupation of sweeping the floor.

Kate's silence regarding the fellow's previous insult perhaps incited him to offer her another, thinking it would pass unpunished also. Anyhow, without a word he strode across the uncarpeted floor, caught her in his arms before she could spring away, and in a moment he had kissed her twice on the lips.

Then he loosed his hold on her, stepped backward a pace, and stood there smiling. Almost choking with indignation and shame, Kate stood there clasping the long-handled brush as if she were petrified, though her face was the color of fire, whilst her great brown eyes shot forth lightning flashes at the craven who had dared again to insult her.

Then a wave of passionate craving for revenge surged through the girl's breast; she swung round the implement in her hands with fierce purpose and sure aim, and the next moment Robert Gregson went crashing to the floor, a loud cry welling from his lips.

The heavy head of the brush had caught the agent full upon the temple, and as he went down before the sweeping stroke his head came in contact with a table edge, inflicting a nasty scalp wound from which the blood gashed out.

There was a rush of feet and half a dozen clerks ran into the room, brought thither by the agent's shout and the noise of his fall. Each of them assailed Kate with questions on seeing her standing there, white-faced now and vengeful-eyed, with the stunned man at her feet.

"He Insulted me!—kissed me!—and I knocked him down!" she burst forth.

Then she walked from the place, got her basket and can from another room, and went home. She told her mother all that had taken place, telling her also of the agent's previous insult.

The affair created quite a stir in Orrelham, setting every gossip's tongue awag in the place. The agent denied Kate's version of the matter, but despite the advice of his friends he did not take out against her a summons for assault and battery.

A week afterwards Mrs. Leigh and her daughter said adieu to Orrelham for various reasons, and the spot they ultimately settled upon was the town wherein they lived when the husband of one and the father of the other disappeared.