CHAPTER XIV
THE MANCHESTER MEN
Basset knew every path that crossed the Chase, and had traversed them at all seasons, and in all weathers. But when, some hours later, he halted on a scarred and blackened waste that stretched to the horizon on every side, he would have been hard put to it to say how he came to be there. He wore his hat, he carried his stick, but he could not remember how he had become possessed of either.
For a time the shock of disappointment, the numbing sense of loss had dulled his mind. He had walked as in a dream, repeating over and over again that that was what she thought of him-and he had loved her. It was possible that in the interval he had sworn at fate, or shrieked against the curlews, or cursed the inhuman sky that mocked him with its sameness. But he did not think that he had. He felt the life in him too low for such outbursts. He told himself that he was a poor creature, a broken thing, a failure. He loved her, and-and that was what she thought of him.
He sat on the stump of an ancient thorn-tree that had been a landmark on the burnt heath longer than the oldest man could remember, and he began to put together what she had said. He was trifling away his life, picking stray finds from the dust-heap of the past, making no man wiser and no man better, doing nothing for any one! Was she right? The Bohun pedigree, at which he had worked so long? He had been proud of his knowledge of Norman descents, proud of the research which had won that knowledge, proud of his taste for following up recondite facts. Were the knowledge, the research, the taste, all things for which he ought to blush? Certainly, tried by the test, cui bono? they came off but poorly. And perhaps, to sit down at his age, content with such employments, might seem unworthy and beneath him, if there were other calls upon him. But were there other calls?
Time had been when his family had played a great part, not in Staffordshire only but in England; and then doubtless public service had been a tradition with them. But the tradition had waned with their fortunes. In these days he was only a small squire, a little more regarded than the new men about him; but with no ability to push his way in a crowd, no mastery among his fellow-men, one whom character and position alike cast for a silent part.
Of course she knew none of these things, but with the enthusiasm of youth she looked to find in every man the qualities of the leading role. He who seldom raised his voice at Quarter Sessions or on the Grand Jury-to which his birth rather than his possessions called him-she would have had him figure among the great, lead causes, champion the oppressed! It was pitiful, if it had not been absurd!
He walked on by and by, dwelling on the pity of it, a very unhappy man. He thought of the evenings in the library when she had looked over his shoulder, and one lamp had lighted them; of the mornings when the sun had gilded her hair as she bent over the task she was even then criticizing; of afternoons when the spirit of the chase had been theirs, and the sunshine and the flowers had had no charm strong enough to draw them from the pursuit of-alas! something that could make no man better or wiser. He had lost her; and if aught mattered apart from that, she had for ever poisoned the springs of content, muddied the wells of his ordered life.
Beyond doubt she loved the other, for had she not, she would have viewed things differently. Beyond doubt in her love for the other lay the bias that weighted her strictures. And yet, making all allowance for that, there was so much of truth in what she had said, so much that hit the mark, that he could never be the same again, never give himself with pleasure to his former pursuits, never find the old life a thing to satisfy!
And still, like the tolling of a death bell above the city's life, two thoughts beat on his mind again and again, and gave him intolerable pain. That was what she thought of him! And he had lost her! That was what she thought of him! And he had lost her! Her slender gracious figure, her smiling eyes, the glint in her hair, her goodness, her very self-all were for another! All were lost to him!
Presently the day began to draw in, and fagged and hopeless he turned and began to make his way back. His road lay through Brown Heath, the mining village, where in all the taverns and low-browed shops they were beginning to light their candles. He crossed the Triangle, and made his way along the lane, deep in coal-dust and foul with drains, that ran upwards to the Chase. A pit, near at hand, had just turned out its shift, and in the dusk tired men, swinging tins in their hands, were moving by twos and threes along the track. With his bent shoulders and weary gait he was lost among them, he walked one with them; yet here and there an older man espied the difference, recognized him, and greeted him with rough respect. Presently the current slackened; something, he could not see what, dammed the stream. A shrewish voice rose in the darkness before him, and other voices, angry, clamant, protesting, struck in. A few of the men pushed by the trouble, others stood, here and there a man added a taunt to the brawl. In his turn Basset came abreast of the quarrel. He halted.
A farm cart blocked the roadway. Over the tail hung three or four wailing children; into it a couple of sturdy men were trying to lift an old woman, seated in a chair. A dingy beadle and a constable, who formed the escort and looked ill at ease, stood beside the cart, and round it half a score of slatternly women pushed and shrieked and gesticulated. On the group and the whole dreary scene nightfall cast a pallid light.
"What is it?" Basset asked.
"They're shifting Nan Oates to the poorhouse," a man answered. "Her son died of the fever, and there's none to keep her or the little uns. She've done till now, but they'll not give her bite nor sup out of the House-that's the law now't seems. So the House it be!"
"Her'd rather die than go!" cried a girl.
"D-n them and their Bastilles!" exclaimed a younger man. "Are we free men, or are we not?"
"Free men?" shrieked a woman, who had seized the horse's rein and was loudest in her outcry. "No, nor Staffordshire men, nor Englishmen, nor men at all, if you let an old woman that's always lived decent go to their stone jug this way. Give me Stafford Gaol-'tis miles afore it!"
"Ay, you're at home there, Bet!" a voice in the crowd struck in, and the laugh that followed lightened matters.
Basset looked with pity at the old woman. Her head sunk upon her breast, her thin shawl tucked about her shoulders, her gray hair in wisps on her cheeks, she gazed in tearless grief upon the hovel which had been home to her. "Who's to support her," he asked, "if she stays?"
"For the bite and sup there's neighbors," a man answered. "Reverend Colet he said he might do something. But he's been lammed. And there's the rent. The boy's ten, and he made four shilling a week in the pit, but the new law's stopped the young uns working."
"Ay, d-n all new laws!" cried another. "Poor laws and pit laws we're none but the worse for them!"
The men were preparing to move the cart. The woman who held the rein clung to it. "Now, Bet, have a care!" said the constable. "Or you'll go home by Weeping Cross again!"
"Cross? I'll cross you!" the termagant retorted. "Selling up widows' houses is your bread and meat! May the devil, hoof and horn, with his scythe on his back, go through you! If there were three men here, ay, men as you'd call men-"
"Easy, woman, easy!"
"Woman, dang you! You call me woman-"
"Now, let go, Bet! You'll be in trouble else!" some one said.
But she held on, and the crowd were beginning to jostle the men in charge when Basset stepped forward. "Steady, a moment," he said. "Will the guardians let the woman stop if the rent is provided?"
"Who be you, master?" the constable asked. "You'd best let us do our duty."
"Dang it, man," an old fellow interposed, "it's Squire Basset of Blore. Dunno you know him? Keep a civil tongue in your head, will you!"
"Ay," chimed in another, pushing forward with a menacing gesture. "You be careful, Jack! You be Jack in office, but 'twon't always be so! 'Twon't always be so!"
"Mr. Colet knows the old woman?" Basset asked.
"Sure, sir, the curate knows her."
"Well, I'll find the rent," Basset said, addressing the constable, "if you'll let her be. I'll see the overseer about her in the morning."
"So long as she don't come on the rates, sir?"
"She'll not come on the rates for six months," Basset said. "I'll be answerable for so much."
The men had little stomach for their task, and with a good excuse they were willing enough to desist. A woman fetched a stub of a pen and a drop of ink and Basset wrote a word for their satisfaction. While he did so, "O'd Staffordshire! O'd Staffordshire!" a man explained in the background. "Bassets of Blore-they be come from an Abbey and come to a Grange, as the saying is. You never heard of the Bassets of Blore, you be neither from Mixen nor Moor!" In old Stafford talk the rich lands of Cheshire stood for the "mixen" as against the bare heaths of the home county.
In five minutes the business was done, the woman freed, and Basset was trudging away through the gathering darkness. But the incident had done him good. It had lightened his heart. It had changed ever so little the direction of his thoughts. Out of his own trouble he had stretched a hand to another; and although he knew that it was not by stray acts such as this that he could lift himself to Mary's standard, though the battle over the new Poor Law had taught him, and many others, that charity may be the greatest of evils, what he had done seemed to bring him nearer to her. A hardship of the poor, which he might have seen with blind eyes, or viewed from afar as the inevitable result of the stay of outdoor relief, had come home to him. As he plodded across the moor he carried with him a picture of the old woman with her gray hair falling about her wrinkled face, and her hands clasped in hopeless resignation. And he felt that his was not the only trouble in the world.
When he had passed the wall of Beaudelays Park, Basset struck-not far from the Gatehouse-into the road leading down to the Vale, and a couple of hours after dark he plodded into Riddsley. He made for the Audley Arms, a long straggling house on the main street, in one part of two stories, in another of three, with a big bay window at the end. Entering the yard by the archway he ordered a gig to go to the Gatehouse for his portmanteau. Then he turned into the inn, and scribbled a note to John Audley, stating that he was called away, and would explain matters when he wrote again. He sent it by the driver.
It was eight o'clock. "I am afraid, Squire," the landlord said, "that there's no fire upstairs. If you'd not mind our parlor for once, there's no one there and it's snug and warm."
"I'll do that, Musters," he said. He was cold and famished and he was not sorry to avoid the company of his own thoughts. In the parlor, next door to the Snug, he might be alone or listen to the local gossip as he pleased.
Ten minutes later he sat in front of a good plain meal, and for the time the pangs of appetite overcame those of disappointment. About nine the landlord entered on some errand. "I suppose, sir," he said, lingering to see that his guest had all that he wanted, "you've heard this about Mr. Mottisfont?"
"No, Musters, what is it? Get a clean glass and tell me about it."
"He's to resign, sir, I hear. And his son is to stand."
"Why?"
"Along o' this about Sir Robert Peel, I understand. They have it that Sir Robert's going to repeal the corn taxes-some say that he's been for it all through, and some talk about a potato failure. Mr. Mottisfont sees that that'll never do for Riddsley, but he don't want to part from his leader, after following him all these years; so he'll go out and the young gentleman will take his place."
"Do you think it is true about Peel?"
"They're saying it, and Mr. Stubbs, he believes it. But it'll never go down in Riddsley, Squire. We're horn and corn men here, two to one of us. There's just the two small factories on the other side, and most of the hands haven't votes. But here's Mr. Stubbs himself."
The lawyer had looked into the room in passing. Seeing Basset he removed his hat. "Pardon, Squire," he said. "I did not know that you were here."
"Not at all," Basset answered. He knew the lawyer locally, and had seen him often-at arm's length-in the peerage suit. "Will you take a glass of wine with me?"
Stubbs said that he would with pleasure, if he might take it standing-his time was short. The landlord was for withdrawing, but Stubbs detained him. "No, John, with Mr. Basset's leave I've a bone to pick with you," he said. "Who are these men who are staying here?"
Musters's face fell. "Lord, Mr. Stubbs," he said, "have you heard of them?"
"I hear most things," the lawyer answered. "But repealers talking treason at the Audley Arms is a thing I never thought to hear. They must go."
The landlord rubbed his head. "I can't turn 'em out," he said. "They'd have the law of me. His lordship couldn't turn 'em out."
"I don't know about that," Stubbs replied. "He's a good landlord, but he likes his own way."
"But what can I do?" the stout man protested. "When they came I knew no more about them than a china babe. When they began to talk, so glib that no one could answer them, I was more took aback than anybody. Seems like the world's coming to an end with Manchester men coming here."
"Perhaps it is," Basset said.
Stubbs met his eye and took his meaning. Later the lawyer maintained that he had his suspicions from that moment. At the time he only answered, "Not in our day, Mr. Basset. Peel or Repeal, there's no one has attacked the land yet but the land has broken them. And so it will be this time. John, the sooner those two are out of your house the better."
"But, dang me, sir, what am I to do?"
"Put 'em in the horse trough for what I care!" the lawyer replied. "Good-evening, Squire. I hope the Riddsley parliament mayn't disturb you."
The landlord followed him out, after handing something through the hatch, which opened into the Snug. He left the hatch a little ajar when he had done so, and the voices of those who gathered there nightly, as to a club, reached Basset. At first he caught no more than a word here or there, but as the debate grew warm the speakers raised their voices.
"All mighty fine," some one said, laying down the law, "but you're like the rest, you Manchester chaps. You've your eyes on your own rack and manger!"
"I'm not denying it," came the answer in a Lancashire accent, "I'm not saying that cheap bread won't suit us. But it isn't for that-"
"No, no, of course not," the former speaker replied with heavy irony-Basset thought that the voice belonged to Hayward of the Leasows, a pompous old farmer, dubbed behind his back "The Duke." "You don't want low wages i' your mills, of course!"
"Cheap bread doesn't make low wages," the other rejoined. "That's where you mistake, sir. Let me put it to you. You've known wheat high?"
"It was seventy-seven shillings seven years back," the farmer pronounced. "And I ha' known it a hundred shillings a quarter for three years together."
"And I suppose the wages at that time were the highest you've ever known?"
"Well, no," the farmer admitted, "I'm not saying that."
"And seven years ago when wheat was seventy-seven-it is fifty-six now-were wages higher then than now?"
"Well," the Duke answered reluctantly, "I don't know as they were, mister, not to take notice of."
"Think it out for yourself, sir," the other replied. "I don't think you'll find that wages are highest when wheat is highest, nor lowest when wheat is lowest."
The farmer, more weighty than ready, snorted. But another speaker took up the cudgels. "Ay, but one minute," he said. "It's the price of wheat fixes the lowest wages. If it's two pound of bread will keep a man fit to work-just keep him so and no more-it's the price of bread fixes whether the lowest wages is eightpence a day or a shilling a day."
"Well, but-"
"Well, but by G-d, he's got you there!" the Duke cried, and smacked his fat thigh in triumph. "We've some sense i' Riddsley yet. Here's your health and song, Dr. Pepper!" At which there was some laughter.
"Well, sir, I'll not say yes, nor no, to that," the Lancashire man replied, as soon as he could get a hearing. "But, gentlemen, it's not low wages we want. I'll tell you the two things we do want, and why we want cheap bread; first, that your laborers after they have bought bread may have something over to buy our woollens, and our cottons, and your pots. And secondly, if we don't take foreign wheat in payment how are foreigners to pay for our goods?"
But at this half a dozen were up in arms. "How?" cried the Duke, "why wi' money like honest men at home! But there it is! There's the devil's hoof! It's foreign corn you're after! And with foreign corn coming in at forty shillings where'll we be?"
"No wheat will ever be grown at that price," declared the free trader with solemnity, "here or abroad!"
"So you say!" cried Hayward. "But put it at forty-five. We'll be on the rates, and our laborers, where'll they be?"
"I don't like such talk in my house!" said Musters.
"I'd certainly like an answer to that," Pepper the surgeon said. "If the farmers are broke where'll their laborers be but flocking to your mills to put down wages there!"
"The laborers? Well, they're protected now, that's true."
"Lucky for them!" cried two or three.
"They are protected now," the stranger repeated slowly. "And I'll tell you what one of them said to me last year. 'I be protected,' he said, 'and I be starving!'"
"Dang his impudence!" muttered old Hayward. "That's the kind of thing they two Boshams at the Bridge talk. Firebrands they be!"
But the shot had told; no one else spoke.
"That man's wages," the Manchester man continued, "were six shillings a week-it was in Wiltshire. And you are protected too, sir," he continued, turning suddenly on the Duke. "Have you made a fortune, sir, farming?"
"I don't know as I have," the farmer answered sulkily-and in a lower voice, "Dang his impudence again!"
"Why not? Because you are paying a protected rent. Because you pay high for feeding-stuff. Because you pay poor-rates so high you'd be better off paying double wages. There's only one man benefits by the corn-tax, sir, there's only one who is truly protected, and that is the landlord!"
But to several in the room this was treason, and they cried out upon it. "Ay, that's the bottom of it, mister," one roared, "down with the landlords and up with the cotton lords!" "There's your Reform Bill," shouted another, "we've put the beggars on horseback, and none's to ride but them now!" A third protested that cheap bread was a herring drawn across the track. "They're for cheap bread for the poor man, but no votes! Votes would make him as good as them!"
"Anyway," the stranger replied patiently, "it's clear that neither the farmer nor the laborer grows fat on Protection. Your wages are nine shillings-"
"Ten and eleven!" cried two or three.
"And your farmers are smothered in rates. If that's all you get by Protection I'd try another system."
"Anyways, I'll ask you to try it out of my house," Musters said. "I've a good landlord and I'll not hear him abused!"
"Hear! Hear! Musters! Quite right!"
"I've not said an uncivil word," the Manchester man rejoined. "I shall leave your house to-morrow, not an hour before. I'll add only one word, gentlemen. Bread is the staff of life. Isn't it the last thing you should tax?"
"True," Mr. Pepper replied. "But isn't agriculture the staple industry? Isn't it the base on which all other industries stand? Isn't it the mainstay of the best constitution in the world? And wasn't it the land that steadied England, and kept it clear of Bonaparte and Wooden Shoes-"
"Ay, wooden ships against wooden shoes for ever!" broke in old Hayward, in great excitement. "Where were the oaks grown as beat Bony! No, master, protect the oak and protect the wheat, and England'll never lack ships nor meat! Your cotton-printers and ironfounders they're great folks now, great folks, with their brass and their votes, and so they've a mind to upset the gentry. It's the town against the country, and new money against the old acres that have fed us and our fathers before us world without end! But put one of my lads in your mills, and amid your muck, and in twelve months he'd not pitch hay, no not three hours of the day!"
Basset could hear the free trader's chair grate on the sanded floor as he pushed it back. "Well, gentlemen," he said, "I'll not quarrel with you. I wish you all the protection you deserve-and I think Sir Robert will give it you! For us, I'm not saying that we are not thinking of our own interests."
"Devil a doubt of that!" muttered the farmer.
"And some of us may have been cold-shouldered by my lord. But you may take it from me that there's some of us, too, are as anxious to better the poor man's lot-ay, as Lord Ashley himself! That's all! Good-night, gentlemen."
When he was gone, "Gi' me a coal for my pipe, John," said the Duke. "I never heard the like of that in Riddsley. He's a gallus glib chap that!"
"I won't say," said Mr. Pepper cautiously, "that there's nothing in it."
"Plenty in it for the cotton people and the coal people, and the potters. But not for us!"
"But if Sir Robert sees it that way?" queried the surgeon, delicately.
"Then if Sir Robert were member for Riddsley," Hayward answered stubbornly, "he'd get his notice to quit, Dr. Pepper! You may bet your hat on that!"
"There's one got a lesson last night," a new-comer chimed in. "Parson Colet got so beaten on the moor he's in bed I am told. He's been speaking free these last two months, and I thought he'd get it. Three lads from your part I am told, Hayward."
"Well, well!" the farmer replied with philosophy. "There's good in Colet, and maybe it'll be a lesson to him! Anyway, good or bad, he's going."
"Going?" cried two or three, speaking at once.
"I met Rector not two hours back. He'd a letter from Colet saying he was going to preach the same rubbish here as he's fed 'em with at Brown Heath-cheap bread and the rest of it. Rector's been to him-he wouldn't budge, and he got his notice to quit right straight. Rector was fit to burst when I saw him."
"Colet be a born fool!" cried Musters. "Who's like to employ him after that? Wheat is tithe and the parsons are as fond of their tithe as any man. You may look a long way before you'll find a parson that's a repealer."
"Serves Colet right!" said one. "But I'm sorry for him all the same. There's worse men than the Reverend Colet."
Basset could never say afterwards what moved him at this point, but whatever it was he got up and went out. The boots was lounging at the door of the inn. He asked the man where Mr. Colet lodged, and learning that it was in Stream Street, near the Maypole, he turned that way.