The Paper Cap. A Story of Love and Labor

Here the preacher on the platform said a fervent “Thank God!” But the audience was not yet sure enough for what they were to thank God, and the few echoes to the preacher’s invitation were strangely uncertain for a Yorkshire congregation. A few of the Annis weavers compromised on a solemn “Amen!” All, however, noticed that the squire remained silent, and they were “not going” – as Lot Clarke said afterwards – “to push themsens before t’ squire.”

Then Jonathan Hartley stepped into the interval, and addressing Bradley said, “Tha calls this wonderful loom a power-loom. I’ll warrant the power comes from a steam engine.”

“Thou art right, Jonathan. I wish tha could see the wonderful engine at Dalby’s Mill in Pine Hollow. The marvelous creature stands in its big stone stable like a huge image of Destiny. It is never still, but never restless, nothing rough; calm and steady like the waves of the full sea at Scarboro’. It is the nervous center, the life, I might say, of all going on in that big building above it. It moves all the machinery, it gives life to the devil,1 and speeds every shuttle in every loom.”

“It isn’t looms and engines we are worrying about, Bradley,” said a man pallid and fretful with hunger. “It is flesh and blood, that can’t stand hunger much longer. It’s our lile lads and lasses, and the babies at the mother’s breast, where there isn’t a drop o’ milk for their thin, white lips! O God! And you talk o’ looms and engines” – and the man sat down with a sob, unable to say another word.

Squire Annis could hardly sit still, but the preacher looked at him and he obeyed the silent wish, as in the meantime Jonathan Hartley had asked Bradley a question, to partly answer the request made.

“If you want to know about the workers, all their rooms are large and cheerful, with plenty of fresh air in them. The weaving rooms are as light and airy as a bird cage. The looms are mostly managed by women, from seventeen to thirty, wi’ a sprinkling o’ married men and women. A solid trade principle governs t’ weaving room – so much work, for so much money – but I hev girls of eighteen in my mill, who are fit and able to thread the shuttles, and manage two looms, keeping up the pieces to mark, without oversight or help.”

Here he was interrupted by a man with long hair parted in the middle of the forehead, and dressed in a suit of fashionable cut, but cheap tailoring. “I hev come to this meeting,” he cried out, “to ask your parliamentary representative if he intends to vote for the Reform Bill, and to urge the better education of the lower classes.”

“Who bid thee come to this meeting?” asked Jonathan Hartley. “Thou has no business here. Not thou. And we weren’t born in Yorkshire to be fooled by thee.”

“I was told by friends of the people, that your member would likely vote against Reform.”

“Put him out! Put him out!” resounded from every quarter of the building, and for the first time since the meeting opened, there was a touch of enthusiasm. Then the squire stepped with great dignity to the front of the platform.

“Young men,” he said with an air of reproof, “this is not a political meeting. It is not even a public meeting. It is a gathering of friends to consider how best to relieve the poverty and idleness for which our weavers are not to blame – and we do not wish to be interrupted.”

“The blame is all wi’ you rich landowners,” he answered; “ivery one o’ you stand by a government that robs the poor man and protects the rich. I am a representative of the Bradford Socialists.”

“Git out! Git out! Will tha? If tha doesn’t, I’ll fling thee out like any other rubbish;” and as the man made no attempt to obey the command given, Hartley took him by the shoulder, and in spite of his protestations – received with general jeers and contempt – put him outside the chapel.

Squire Annis heartily approved the word, act and manner of Hartley’s little speech. The temperature of his blood rose to fighting heat, and he wanted to shout with the men in the body of the chapel. Yet his countenance was calm and placid, for Antony Annis was Master at Home, and could instantly silence or subdue whatever his Inner Man prompted that was improper or inconvenient.

He thought, however, that it was now a fit time-for him to withdraw, and he was going to say the few words he had so well considered, when a very old man rose, and leaning on his staff, called out, “Squire Annis, my friend, I want thee to let me speak five minutes. It will varry likely be t’ last time I’ll hev the chance to say a word to so many lads altogether in this life.” And the squire smiled pleasantly as he replied, “Speak, Matthew, we shall all be glad to listen to you.”

“Ill be ninety-five years old next month, Squire, and I hev been busy wi’ spinning and weaving eighty-eight o’ them. I was winding bobbins when I was seven years old, and I was carding, or combing, or working among wool until I was twenty. Then I got married, and bought from t’ squire, on easy terms, my cottage and garden plot, and I kept a pig and some chickens, and a hutch full o’ rabbits, which I fed on the waste vegetables from my garden. I also had three or four bee skeps, that gave us honey for our bread, with a few pounds over to sell; t’ squire allays bought the overbit, and so I was well paid for a pretty bed of flowers round about the house. I was early at my loom, but when I was tired I went into my garden, and I smoked a pipe and talked to the bees, who knew me well enough, ivery one o’ them. If it was raining, I went into t’ kitchen, and smoked and hed a chat wi’ Polly about our awn concerns. I hev had four handsome lassies, and four good, steady lads. Two o’ the lads went to America, to a place called Lowell, but they are now well-to-do men, wi’ big families. My daughters live near me, and they keep my cottage as bright as their mother kept it for over fifty years. I worked more or less till I was ninety years old, and then Squire Annis persuaded me to stop my loom, and just potter about among my bees and flowers. Now then, lads, thousands hev done for years and years as much, even more than I hev done and I hev never met but varry few Home-loom weavers who were dissatisfied. They all o’ them made their awn hours and if there was a good race anywhere near-by they shut off and went to it. Then they did extra work the next day to put their ‘piece’ straight for Saturday. If their ‘piece’ was right, the rest was nobody’s business.”

“Well, Matthew,” said the squire, “for many a year you seldom missed a race.”

“Not if t’ horses were good, and well matched. I knew the names then of a’ the racers that wer’ worth going to see. I love a fine horse yet. I do that! And the Yorkshire roar when the victor came to mark! You could hear it a mile away! O squire, I can hear it yet!

“Well, lads, I hev hed a happy, busy life, and I hev been a good Methodist iver sin’ I was converted, when I was twelve years old. And I bear testimony this day to the goodness and the faithfulness of God. He hes niver broken a promise He made me. Niver one!

“Thousands of Home-loom spinners can live, and have lived, as I did and they know all about t’ life. I know nothing about power-loom weaving. I dare say a man can make good or bad o’ it, just as he feels inclined; but I will say, it brings men down to a level God Almighty niver intended. It is like this – when a man works in his awn home, and makes his awn hours, all the world, if he be good and honest, calls him A Man; when he works in a factory he’s nobbut ‘one o’ the hands.’”

At these words Matthew sat down amid a little subdued inexpressible mixture of tense feeling and the squire said – “In three weeks or less, men, I am going to London, and I give you my word, that I shall always be found on the side of Reform and Free Trade. When I return you will surely have made up your minds and formed some sort of decision; then I will try and forward your plans to my last shilling.” With these words he bowed to the gentlemen on the platform, and the audience before him, and went rapidly away. His servant was at the Chapel door with his horse; he sprang into the saddle, and before anyone could interrupt his exit, he was beyond detention.

A great disturbance was in his soul. He could not define it. The condition of his people, the changing character of his workers and weavers, the very village seemed altered, and then the presence of Bradley! He had found it impossible to satisfy both his offense with the man and his still vital affection for him. He had often told himself that “Bradley was dead and buried as far as he was concerned”; but some affections are buried alive, and have a distressing habit of being restless in their coffins. It was with the feeling of a fugitive flying for a place of rest that he went home. But, oh, how refreshing was his wife’s welcome! What comfort in her happy smile! What music in her tender words! He leaped to the ground like a young man and, clasping her hand, went gratefully with her to his own fireside.

CHAPTER IV – LONDON AND AUNT JOSEPHA

“Still in Immortal Youth we dream of Love.”London – “Together let us beat this ample fieldTry what the open and the covert yield.”

KATHERINE’S letters bore little fruit. Lady Brierley sent fifty pounds to buy food, but said “she was going to Bourmouth for the spring months, being unable to bear the winds of the Yorkshire wolds at that time.” Mrs. Craven and Mrs. Courtney were on their way to London, and Mrs. Benson said her own large family required every hour of her time, especially as she was now only able to keep one servant. So the village troubles were confided to the charge of Faith Foster and her father. The squire put a liberal sum of money with the preacher, and its application was left entirely to his judgment.

Nor did Annis now feel himself able to delay his journey until April. He was urged constantly by the leaders of the Reform Bill to hasten his visit to the House. Letters from Lord Russell, Sir James Grahame and Lord Grey told him that among the landlords of the West Riding his example would have a great influence, and that at this “important crisis they looked with anxiety, yet certainty, for his support.”

He could not withhold it. After his enlightenment by Mr. Foster, he hardly needed any further appeal. His heart and his conscience gave him no rest, and in ten days he had made suitable arrangements, both for the care of his estate, and the relief of the village. In this business he had been greatly hurried and pressed, and the Hall was also full of unrest and confusion, for all Madam’s domestic treasures were to pack away and to put in strict and competent care. For, then, there really were women who enjoyed household rackets and homes turned up and over from top to bottom. It was their relief from the hysteria of monotony and the temper that usually attends monotony. They knew nothing of the constant changes and pleasures of the women of today – of little chatty lunches and theater parties; of their endless societies and games, and clubs of every description; of fantastic dressing and undressing from every age and nation; beside the appropriation of all the habits and pursuits and pleasures of men that seemed good in their eyes, or their imaginations.

So to the woman of one hundred years ago – and of much less time – a thorough house-cleaning, or a putting away of things for a visit or a journey was an exciting event. There was even a kind of pleasure in the discomfort and disorder it caused. The unhappy looks of the men of the house were rather agreeable to them. For a few days they had legitimate authority to make everyone miserable, and in doing so experienced a very actual nervous relief.

Madam Annis was in some measure influenced by similar conditions, for it takes a strong and powerfully constituted woman to resist the spirit and influence of the time and locality in which she lives. So the Hall was full of unrest, and the peaceful routine of life was all broken up. Ladies’ hide-covered trunks – such little baby trunks to those of the present day – and leather bags and portmanteaus littered the halls; and the very furniture had the neglected plaintive look of whatever is to be left behind.

At length, however, on the twenty-third of March, all was ready for the journey, and the squire was impatient to begin it. He was also continually worrying about his son. “Whereiver is Dick, I wonder? He ought to be here helping us, ought he not, mother?” he asked Madam reproachfully, as if he held her responsible for Dick’s absence and Madam answered sharply – “Indeed, Antony, thou ought to know best. Thou told Dick to stay in London and watch the ways of that wearisome Reform Bill and send thee daily word about its carryings on. The lad can’t be in two places at once, can he?”

“I hed forgotten mysen, Annie. How near art thou and Katherine ready to start?”

“Katherine and I are now waiting on your will and readiness.”

“Nay, then, Annie, if ta hes got to thy London English already, I’ll be quiet, I will.”

“I doan’t like thee to be unjust to Dick. He is doing, and doing well, just what thou told him to do. I should think thou couldn’t ask more than that – if thou was in thy right mind.”

“Dick is the best lad in Yorkshire, he is all that! Doan’t thee care if I seem a bit cross, Annie. I’ve been that worrited all morning as niver was. Doan’t mind it!”

“I doan’t, not in the least, Antony.”

“Well, then, can thou start to-morrow morning?”

“I can start, with an hour’s notice, any time.”

“I wouldn’t be too good, Annie. I’m not worth it.”

“Thou art worth all I can do for thee.”

“Varry good, dearie! Then we’ll start at seven to-morrow morning. We will drive to Leeds, and then tak t’ mail-coach for London there. If t’ roads don’t happen to be varry bad we may hev time enough in Leeds to go to the Queen’s Hotel and hev a plate o’ soup and a chop. I hev a bit o’ business at the bank there but it won’t keep me ten minutes. I hope we may hev a fairish journey, but the preacher tells me the whole country is in a varry alarming condition.”

“Antony, I am a little tired of the preacher’s alarm bell. He is always prophesying evil. Doan’t thee let him get too much influence over thee. Before thou knows what thou art doing thou wilt be going to a class meeting. What does the curate say? He has been fifty miles south, if not more.”

“He told me the roads were full of hungry, angry men, who were varry disrespectful to any of the Quality they met.”

Here Katherine entered the room. “Mother dear,” she said in an excited voice, “mother dear! My new traveling dress came home a little while ago, and I have put it on, to let you admire it. Is it not pretty? Is it not stylish? Is it not everything a girl would like? O Daddy! I didn’t see you.”

“I couldn’t expect thee to see me when tha hed a new dress on. I’ll tell thee, howiver, I doan’t like it as well as I liked thy last suit.”

“The little shepherd plaid? Oh, that has become quite common! This is the thing now. What do you say, mother?”

“I think it is all right. Put it on in the morning. We leave at seven o’clock.”

“Oh, delightful! I am so glad! Life is all in a mess here and I hate a tossed-up house.”

At this point the Reverend Mr. Yates entered. He had called to bid the squire and his family good-bye, but the ladies quickly left the room. They knew some apology was due the curate for placing the money intended for relieving the suffering in the village in the preacher’s care, and at his disposal. But the curate was reasonable, and readily acknowledged that “nearly all needing help were members of Mr. Foster’s church, and would naturally take relief better from him than from a stranger.”

The journey as far as Leeds was a very sad one, for the squire stopped frequently to speak to groups of despairing, desperate men and women: – “Hev courage, friends!” he said cheerfully to a gathering of about forty or more on the Green of a large village, only fourteen miles south of Annis. “Hev courage a little longer! I am Antony Annis, and I am on my way to London, with many more gentlemen, to see that the Reform Bill goes through the Lords, this time. If it does not then it will be the duty of Englishmen to know the reason why. God knows you hev borne up bravely. Try it a bit longer.”

“Squire,” said a big fellow, white with hunger, “Squire, I hevn’t touched food of any kind for forty hours. You count hours when you are hungry, squire.”

“We’re all o’ us,” said his companion, “faint and clemmed. We hevn’t strength to be men any longer. Look at me! I’m wanting to cry like a bairn.”

“I’m ready to fight, squire,” added a man standing near by; “I hev a bit o’ manhood yet, and I’d fight for my rights, I would that! – if I nobbnd hed a slice or two o’ bread.”

At the same time a young woman, little more than a child, came tottering forward, and stood at the side of Mistress Annis. She had a little baby in her arms, she did not speak, she only looked in the elder woman’s face then cast her eyes down upon the child. It was tugging at an empty breast with little sharp cries of hungry impatience. Then she said, “I hev no milk for him! The lile lad is sucking my blood!” Her voice was weak and trembling, but she had no tears left.

Madam covered her face, she was weeping, and the next moment Katherine emptied her mother’s purse into the starving woman’s hand. She took it with a great cry, lifting her face to heaven – “Oh God, it is money! Oh God, it is milk and bread!” Then looking at Katherine she said, “Thou hes saved two lives. God sent thee to do it” – and with the words, she found a sudden strength to run with her child to a shop across the street, where bread and milk were sold.

“It’s little Dinas Sykes,” said a man whose voice was weak with hunger. “Eh! but I’m glad, God hes hed mercy on her!” and all watched Dinas running for milk and bread with a grateful sympathy. The squire was profoundly touched, his heart melted within him, and he said to the little company with the voice of a companion, not of a master, “Men, how many of you are present?”

“About forty-four men – and a few half grown lads. They need food worse than men do – they suffer more – poor lile fellows!”

“And you all hev women at home? Wives and daughters?”

“Ay, squire, and mothers, too! Old and gray and hungry – some varry patient, and just dying on their feet, some so weak they are crying like t’ childer of two or four years old. My God! Squire, t’ men’s suffering isn’t worth counting, against that of t’ women and children.”

“Friends, I hev no words to put against your suffering and a ten pound note will be better than all the words I could give you. It will at least get all of you a loaf of bread and a bit of beef and a mug of ale. Who shall I give it to?”

“Ben Shuttleworth,” was the unanimous answer, and Ben stepped forward. He was a noble-looking old man just a little crippled by long usage of the hand loom. “Squire Annis,” he said, “I’ll gladly take the gift God hes sent us by thy hands and I’ll divide it equally, penny for penny, and may God bless thee and prosper thy journey! We’re none of us men used to saying ‘thank’ee’ to any man but we say it to thee. Yes, we say it to thee.”

Kindred scenes occurred in every village and they did not reach Leeds in time for the mail coach they intended to take. The squire was not troubled at the delay. He said, “he hed a bit of his awn business to look after, and he was sure Katherine hed forgotten one or two varry necessary things, that she could buy in Leeds.”

Katherine acknowledged that she had forgotten her thimble and her hand glass, and said she had “been worrying about her back hair, which she could not dress without one.”

Madam was tired and glad to rest. “But Antony,” she said, “Dick will meet this coach and when we do not come by it, he will have wonders and worries about us.”

“Not he! Dick knows something about women, and also, I told him we might sleep a night or two at some town on the way, if you were tired.”

The next day they began the journey again, half-purposing to stop and rest at some half-way town. The squire said Dick understood them. He would be on hand if they loitered a week. And Madam was satisfied; she thought it likely Dick had instructions fitting his father’s uncertainty.

Yet though the coach prevented actual contact with the miserable famine sufferers, it could not prevent them witnessing the silent misery sitting on every door step, and looking with such longing eyes for help from God or man. Upon the whole it was a journey to break a pitiful heart, and the squire and his family were glad when the coach drew up with the rattle of wheels and the blowing of the guard’s horn at its old stand of Charing Cross.

The magic of London was already around them, and the first face they saw was the handsome beaming face of Dick Annis. He nodded and smiled to his father, who was sitting – where he had sat most of the journey – at the side of the driver. Dick would have liked to help him to the street, but he knew that his father needed no help and would likely be vexed at any offer of it, but Dick’s mother and sister came out of the coach in his arms, and the lad kissed them and called them all the fond names he could think of. Noticing at the same time his father’s clever descent, he put out his left hand to him, for he had his mother guarded with his right arm. “You did that jump, dad, better than I could have done it. Are you tired?”

“We are all tired to death, Dick. Hev you a cab here?”

“To be sure, I have! Your rooms at the Clarendon are in order, and there will be a good dinner waiting when you are ready for it.”

In something less than an hour they were all ready for a good dinner; their faces had been washed, Katherine’s hair smoothed and Madam’s cap properly adjusted. The squire was standing on the hearthrug in high spirits. The sight of his son, the touch of the town, the pleasant light and comfort of his surroundings, the prospect of dinner, made him forget for a few minutes the suffering he had passed through, until his son asked, “And did you have a pleasant journey, father?”

“A journey, Dick, to break a man’s heart. It hes turned me from a Tory into a Radical. This government must feed the people or – we will kick them back – ”

“Dear father, we will talk of that subject by ourselves. It isn’t fit for two tired women, now is it?”

“Mebbe not; but I hev seen and I hev heard these last two or three days, Dick, what I can niver forget. Things hev got to be altered. They hev that, or – ”

“We will talk that over after mother and Kitty have gone to sleep. We won’t worry them to-night. I have ordered mother’s favorite Cabinet pudding for her, and some raspberry cream for Kitty. It wouldn’t be right to talk of unhappy things with good things in our mouths, now would it?”

“They are coming. I can hear Kitty’s laugh, when I can hear nothing else. Ring the bell, Dick, we can hev dinner now.”

There were a few pleasant moments spent in choosing their seats, and as soon as they were taken, a dish of those small delicious oysters for which England has been famous since the days of the Roman Emperors were placed before them. “I had some scalloped for mother and Kitty,” Dick said. “Men can eat them raw, alive if they choose, but women – Oh no! It isn’t womanlike! Mother and Kitty wouldn’t do it! Not they!”

“And what else hes ta got for us, Dick?” asked the squire. “I’m mortal hungry.”

The last word shocked him anew. He wished he had not said it. What made him do it? Hungry! He had never been really hungry in all his life; and those pallid men and women, with that look of suffering on their faces, and in their dry, anxious eyes, how could he ever forget them?

He was suddenly silent, and Katherine said: “Father is tired. He would drive so much. I wonder the coachman let him.”

“Father paid for the privilege of doing the driver’s work for him. I have no doubt of that, my dears,” said Madam. “Well, Dick, when did you see Jane?”

“Do you not observe, mother, that I am in evening dress? Jane has a dance and supper to-night. Members from the government side will be dropping in there after midnight, for refreshment. Both Houses are in all-night sittings now.”

“How does Leyland vote?”

“He is tremendously royal and loyal. You will have to mind your p’s and q’s with him now, father.”

“Not I! I take my awn way. Leyland’s way and mine are far apart. How is your Aunt Josepha?”

“She is all right. She is never anything else but all right. Certainly she is vexed that Katherine is not to stay with her. Jane has been making a little brag about it, I suppose.”