Love and Money Page 14

  “No—I shall sell it and put the proceeds towards the liquidation of the mill. It will diminish the sum to be called for from the shareholders to some slight extent.”

  “Aye, but it won’t keep us out of gaol.”

  “Gaol?” exclaimed Dr. Tom.

  “Those of us who can’t pay up on our shares will have to go to gaol.”

  “Are there many of you who can’t pay?” “Most on us, I reckon.”

  Dr. Tom said nothing; but somehow there was a kind of reproach in his silence. The weavers began to see that they themselves were not quite free from blame. In taking up more shares than they could fully pay for they had not only wanted something for nothing in the usual way, but had also promised more than they could perform, which is a course very repugnant to Yorkshire people. Beginning to realise this now, they shuffled their feet about irritably and hung their heads.

  “I am sorry for that,” said Dr. Tom at last in a low voice, “because in that case I fear our building contractors, who did such excellent work for us, may suffer. There may not be enough assets for them to be paid in full.”

  This made the men more hangdog than ever.

  “But how has it all come about? Everything seemed to be framing so well!”

  “Aye! What’s brought us down?”

  “We’ve still got mill. Can’t we sell it?”

  “We must try,” said Dr. Tom gravely. “But I fear it may be difficult without a roadway to the premises. However, a new owner might be successful in persuading Mr. Boocock, where I myself and the Committee have totally failed.”

  “Eli Boocock! That’s the man! It’s him brought us down! Why did he go back on his word?”

  “I blame myself very severely for not having bought the land for the road or at least secured a firm offer in writing from him before we began building operations,” said Dr. Tom. “I am ashamed to say we took Mr. Boocock’s consent for granted. But as he had invested his own money in the mill, and was a Committee member himself, I never doubted his co-operation. He had heard plans for the road discussed a dozen times in Committee and never said a word against them until his sudden announcement a month ago.”

  “You’ve made a proper mullock of it between you, you and Committee.”

  Dr. Tom bowed his head. “I admit my responsibility,” he said. “I can only ask you to forgive me, and believe that I meant to help you.”

  The men shuffled again.

  “But why on earth did Eli Boocock do it? Why did he change his mind? You must know summat about it, doctor!”

  “Aye! What turned Eli against mill, like?”

  “I have no idea,” replied the doctor. He hesitated; a look of intense perplexity crossed his face; he shook his head and repeated in despairing tones: “I have no idea.”

  6

  Next morning the body of Dr. Thomas Thornton Archibald was found lying at the foot of the Mutual mill’s warehouse.

  After evidence of identity had been given and permission to bury the body granted, the inquest was adjourned for a week. The evidence given at the adjourned inquest, as reported in the Annotsfield Recorder, is curious and contains some odd discrepancies.

  The body was found by Daniel O’Prunty, the young Irish drover employed by Eli Boocock, who has appeared in the story before as thought to be courting Annie Callaghan. Coming down into EU’s field early in the morning to collect the cattle for their day’s journey, he saw a crumpled heap lying in the abortive bit of road leading from the mill to the dividing wall. At first he thought the body might be that of a sheep, but on climbing the wall dividing EU’s property from the Mutual’s, he found that it was Dr. Archibald, lying horribly awry. Horrified, he rushed back up the hill to the farmhouse and fetched Mr. Eli Boocock to the scene.

  “He had been dead some hours, I judged,” said Eli Boocock. “The body was very much broken.”

  “Multiple injuries” was the phrase used by the Annotsfield surgeon called in by the police; as a former colleague of Dr. Tom’s he paid a high tribute to the skill and integrity of the promising young physician. The injuries were consistent, he continued, with a fall from a considerable height.

  It seemed probable that Dr. Archibald had climbed to the top of the warehouse, said the police inspector in charge of the case. The top storey had been floored, and the whole building roofed, but there was no glass in the windows and no doors had been placed across the openings on each landing where the bales of wool were to be drawn up and swung in by means of a crane not yet in position. (These openings are still seen and used in West Riding mills, though nowadays factory regulations provide for wooden barriers across their breadth to prevent just such an accident as the inspector described.) On descending by the great stone staircase, opined the inspector, Dr. Archibald might easily have mistaken his way in the dark and walked out of one of these openings, which extended to the floor.

  Troubled as the young doctor was about the affairs of the Mutual, said the Thornton cousin who next gave evidence, it was perhaps not surprising that he had visited the mill that night.

  “My cousin was always actuated bv the highest motives of public benefaction,” said the cousin sternly, “and he had been disappointed by what I can only call the selfish faithlessness of one of his associates. I had seen him two days earlier and advised him that bankruptcy was the only honourable course. He was a man of very sensitive conscience, and he took the matter much to heart. He regarded himself, quite mistakenly in my view, as responsible for the failure of the scheme and the disappointment of the Whin Head investors.”

  At this the Coroner enquired, in a very delicate and tentative manner, whether Mr. Thornton thought that Dr. Archibald’s disappointment might have distressed him so excessively as to disturb the balance of his mind—in a word, did he think that the death should be regarded as suicide.

  “Good heavens, no!” exclaimed the cousin. “Dr. Archibald was a man of firm religious principle.”

  In passing, one cannot but wonder whether those Victorians really talked like that, or whether these ripe round phrases merely represent the Annotsfield Recorder reporter’s view of how they ought to talk. In either case, even their cosy polysyllables do not quite conceal the cousin’s uneasy feeling about the case; it is clear that he liked young Tom but thought him an idealistic young idiot, had no intention of risking the Thornton money in such a wild-cat scheme and was vexed by the appearance of the Thornton name in such a case, but regretted all the same that the bright lad had come to such a sorry ending.

  “His fall was an accident, occurring while he was in a brown study,” he repeated firmly. “My cousin would never run away from his obligations.”

  The man whose wife’s child Dr. Tom had brought into the world that day was also strongly against the idea of suicide.

  “He’d promised to come round first thing in the morning, d’you see,” he explained, “with some medicine.”

  “In his anguish that might have slipped from his mind,” suggested the Coroner.

  “Nay—if he couldn’t come himself he’d have fixed for somebody else, like, to bring it,” said the man stubbornly. “He wouldn’t risk a babby’s life, choose how—not Dr. Tom.”

  The Annotsfield surgeon hastened to add his voice against suicide.

  “Dr. Archibald’s fatal injuries were on the back of his head,” he reminded the Coroner. “This is consistent with tripping and falling backward. Now no suicide in my experience or knowledge ever leaped backwards to destruction.”

  The Coroner nodded in agreement. But on this point the Whin Head folk, as one sees from the later evidence, were not quite so well satisfied. The idea of Dr. Tom running down the steps, forgetting to turn at a corner and plunging straight out of what was in effect a gap stretching to foot level, was a natural one, though the fact that the night was moonlit made it rather odd that the difference between wall and gap should remain unseen. But even granting that he was preoccupied and did not see the gap, how a man in such circumstances could fall backw
ard, nobody could quite make out. Between the discovery of the body and the holding of the adjourned inquest, little knots of Whindale men often gathered on the landings of the unfinished mill and discussed the problem, pointing with their clay pipes as they argued, searching for some loose stone or piece of wood over which the doctor might have tripped, walking a dozen times down the steps from the top storey and turning what was presumably the fatal corner. In the course of these discussions one day some of them examined the top storey floor, and found to their astonishment undoubted traces of a fire. Carpenters’ shavings had certainly been ignited there.

  When this fact about the fire emerged at the inquest the Coroner was evidently taken by surprise, for he exclaimed:

  “Surely you are not suggesting that Dr. Archibald started a fire?”

  “I’m not suggesting owt,” said the witness doggedly. “I’m only telling you what we saw wi’ wer own eyes. But I’ve heard tell from one o’ them as carried Dr. Archibald up the field, like, that his right hand were charred. Now earlier in the evening it weren’t—us saw it in t’lamplight at Whin Grove.”

  “We have heard nothing of this burn from previous witnesses,” said the Coroner sharply.

  “Happen they didn’t think to mention it,” suggested the witness.

  Three witnesses were therefore recalled.

  Daniel O’Prunty, asked whether Dr. Archibald’s right hand showed traces of burns when he found the body, replied : “Ah now, I wouldn’t be knowing. I took just one look, and then off with me up to Mr. Boocock. ’Twas a horrid sight.”

  Eli Boocock stated emphatically that when Daniel had fetched him to the body, the hand was undoubtedly charred.

  The Annotsfield surgeon said irritably that while he had noticed the burn, he was not able to pronounce whether it was fresh or no; as it was a minor injury which in any case could not have contributed to the decease, he had paid it little attention.

  The presence of the burn was, however, thus established, and an uncomfortable pause followed.

  At last the Coroner enquired:

  “Did the Mutual mill carry fire insurance?”

  “I resent that question, Mr. Coroner,” said the Thornton cousin, rising to his feet. “Dr. Archibald was the soul of honour, and any suggestion that he attempted arson in order to gain the insurance money and extricate the Mutual from its difficulties, is nonsense.”

  “I made no such suggestion,” said the Coroner. drily. “But it is my duty to investigate all the possible causes of death. I take it the mill was insured?”

  “Of course,” snapped the Thornton cousin. “I advised Dr. Archibald myself on the matter.”

  “Is it not possible,” said the vicar of Whin Head at this point mildly, “that Dr. Archibald saw a flame in the mill and went down to investigate? That possibility would explain both his presence in the mill and his fall, for he might have been hurrying away to get help to put out the fire.”

  The Coroner welcomed this suggestion with relief, but the Whin Head men shook their heads doubtfully.

  “There weren’t enough fire to make a show across t’valley,” they muttered. “He tried to burn mill to save us going to gaol, and it wouldn’t burn, so he chucked himself out of t’window, poor lad.”

  “He wouldn’t have killed himself and left my babby without its draught,” objected the father.

  “Well, babby’s still alive, isn’t it? Medicine can’t have been all that needful,” said the rest.

  However, they kept these conclusions to themselves, and the jury, though whether from goodwill towards poor young Archibald or from genuine conviction it is impossible to say, brought in a verdict of accidental death, with no reference to arson.

  7

  For the next few incidents in this Pennine tragedy, I am indebted to the admirable index of the Annotsfield Recorder, for old Nat Sykes hereafter failed me. The Mutual enterprise having ended in disaster, the Whin Head men mostly resigned themselves to the inevitable and took jobs in the Roebuck Foot and Annotsfield mills. Nat Sykes’ father was one of these emigrants. He took the first chance that offered and left the dale for Annotsfield and so knew nothing at first hand of what followed. 146

  The Recorder, then, tells us that the Mutual went bankrupt, the weavers paid up if they could or went to prison if they could not, Whin Grove changed hands, the Mutual mill was sold by auction for a thousand guineas, its reputed cost being eight times that sum, and the result was a liquidation of twelve and sixpence in the pound. The name of a very respectable firm of Roebuck Foot solicitors seems to recur in the proceedings, as if they were managing the affair, and as their style was Messrs. Thornton, Brearley, Brearley and Thornton, one cannot but think that they were the solicitors of the High Roebuck Thorntons, who were acting as executors for Dr. Archibald’s estate.

  Meanwhile the registers of St. Matthew’s, Whin Head, show that Rosa Boocock married Eli Boocock a month after Dr. Archibald’s death, and Annie Callaghan married Daniel O’Prunty of Ballyfrilan in County Down, the following week. The Ballyfrilan registers give a whole long line of Dan and Annie’s children: Richard, Daniel, Patrick, Kathleen and two or three more. The date of Richard’s birth is a few months earlier than could have been desired for the sake of Annie’s reputation, poor girl; perhaps that is why the pair married in Whin Head before returning to Ireland to settle down. As for Eli Boocock, there is no Boocock in the next available directory of Whindale; he has left the district with his wife, no doubt owing to his unpopularity in the matter of the road. Poor little Susan Boocock, by the way, died in the January after the liquidation of the mill; one might suppose it was because there was no Dr. Tom to keep her alive through the winter.

  Then there is a gap of thirty years, in which Whin Head seems to have no history save the slow lapse of time. The speculations about Dr. Archibald’s death die down, the purchaser of the Mutual property works out the quarry and leaves the empty shell of the mill alone, the Whin Head population sinks to some three hundred, the shareholders grow into old men, the empty mill decays. The story of the Mutual mill is told with decreasing frequency and decreasing accuracy; the great question, why did Eli Boocock refuse the road, though never resolved is debated less and less by the old because it is received with more and more scepticism by the young.

  “There must have been some reason,” say the shareholders’children, now grown men and women, impatiently; and these shareholders’ children—and still more the shareholders’ grandchildren—reflect how naive and foolish people were in those old days. There had been some dirty work somewhere, no doubt, but poor old dad (or granddad) had simply lacked the nous to tumble to it.

  In 1897 the mill re-enters the columns of the Recorder. By this time it is scarcely a mill, of course; just a derelict building knee-high in weeds. It is again for sale—plans may be obtained on application to Messrs. Thornton, Brearley, Brearley and Thornton. This factory, says the paragraph in the Recorder, “located far up in the Whin Head valley with no building anywhere near it,” was never occupied. “Many of the shareholders were great sufferers by its erection, one of whom committed suicide by jumping out of one of the top storey windows.” (How often history garbles the truth it pretends to record!) On October 23rd, 1897, the place is sold for two hundred and fifty pounds for the sake of the dressed stone alone: the window sills, the door posts and lintels, the huge front steps, the massive stairs, the stone roof tiles, have a quality still worth somebody’s money. A fresh intimation of the difficulty of the site is obtained when we learn that these great stones are to be slung across the Whinburn by means of a “Blondin,” i.e. the kind of tight-rope wire on which M. Blondin crossed over Niagara Falls.

  The dressed stones are torn out of the building, which partly falls.

  Silence again for thirty, forty, fifty years. The mill decays. In 1904 the ordnance map still shows it as disused mill, but the 1930 edition gives merely a vague jumbled outline without a name. It was at this stage when I first saw it, tracked its history down a
nd found an unsolved mystery.

  Then suddenly, this very year, for the last time the Mutual leaps into the pages of the Recorder. A great West Riding city has decided to construct a reservoir in upper Whindale; the wonderful Whinburn water is to be fully used at last. It had been intended, said the Recorder, to leave the ruins of the old Whindale spinning-mill standing beneath the water when the valley was flooded, but it was now found that some of the masonry had recently tumbled afresh and now lay too close to the line of the containing wall and would need to be levelled or destroyed—possibly some of the stone might be moved to form a buttress.

  8

  I went out to Whindale the morning after I read this paragraph, introduced myself to the engineer in charge, and obtained permission to watch the demolition operation. It was foolish of me to come, I decided as soon as I arrived, for the sight of the torn-up valley made me sad, but I wanted to see the last of the old mill, for Dr. Tom’s sake. A crane was at work on the mill now. As we approached, it swung a large stone into the air. A shout arose from the men around. Fearing some accident had occurred, the engineer ran forward. I followed him.

  “Must have been the foundation stone,” said the foreman.

  We stood looking down at the bared patch of black peaty earth, the bed from which the stone had just been lifted. Yes, that stone now swinging in the air had been the foundation stone of the Mutual mill, so joyously laid by Thomas Thornton Archibald, for there in the earth lay the objects traditionally placed beneath foundation stones: a shilling, a sixpence, a silver threepenny bit, a penny, a halfpenny, and a damp yellowed mass which proved to be a copy of the Annotsfield Recorder for June 22nd, 1861. I lifted it gently. Below, pressed into the earth, lay a pocket-book of morocco leather with silver corners; the leather was mouldered, the silver tarnished, but the case had been handsome and tasteful in its day. Stamped across one corner were the initials T.T.A.