The Rise of Henry Morcar Page 24

Accordingly Morcar was shown the blue piece, and taken round the mill, by Oldroyd alone. As Mellor had said, the buzzer had sounded, and as he had implied, the workpeople had left; the engine was not running, the premises were silent, and no mill ever looked at its best when its machinery was still. In spite of this disadvantage Morcar was constrained to admit that he could not have arranged Old Syke Mill better himself. The machines were new and good, their location with relation to each other sensible; useful gadgets—wooden slopes, handy shelves, wheeled tables, good lighting—ameliorated the working conditions and expedited the work; the cloths on the looms were good sound stuff and suited to modern requirements; altogether there was an air of cheerful and intelligent enterprise about the place which Morcar liked. Long before they had finished their inspection, Morcar was asking questions and giving advice as if the owner of Old Syke Mill were a favourite nephew, while young Oldroyd displayed his arrangements and his problems quite as if asking for approval and guidance.

  “It’s no affair of mine, of course,” said Morcar presently: “But where did you find the money to pay for all this?”

  “It isn’t all paid for,” said David, colouring. “I only wish it were. I had a small legacy from my grandmother when I was a boy—luckily when we came to go into it we found I couldn’t touch the cash until I was of age, so it escaped the crash period. I used it to get more from the bank, you know, in the good old way—or the bad old way, whichever you prefer.”

  “Ah, the banks! That’s a big subject,” said Morcar feelingly.

  “When I was a student at Leeds I used to think I would never allow myself to owe a bank anything,” said David ruefully. “But I couldn’t have started this place without them—and I believe I can make it pay, so I had to take the chance.”

  “Didn’t your cousins invest anything, then?”

  “No; heavens, no. Matthew works here, that’s all. GB is at Oxford at present. Ruskin, you know.”

  “Ah,” said Morcar. He did not know, but could pick up information without betraying ignorance, rather faster than the next man.

  “GB comes here a good deal during his vacations,” continued David.

  “Well, what about that piece?” said Morcar, who was tired of GB—he would tire of that young man very easily always.

  The blue piece was altogether admirable.

  “You’ve had some trouble with your dyer, to get a really blue blue like that,” said Morcar, admiring it.

  “You’re right—I argued with him for weeks,” said David, laughing.

  “What do you call the blue?”

  “I haven’t given it a name.”

  “A name’s a great help in selling,” advised Morcar seriously.

  He went on to recommend methods of making the quality of the Oldroyd product known. In doing this he gave David advice about merchants and markets which some of Morcar’s competitors would have paid large sums to hear, and set him right on one or two over-naïve suppositions carefully.

  “Well—I reckon you did right to leave that train, lad,” said Morcar as they sat down at last in the neat little office. “Now what about a bite of lunch with me at the Club?” He looked at his watch and whistled ruefully. “Half-past two—won’t be much left,” he said.

  “Come out with me—that is if you can put up with a cold meal for once,” said David eagerly. “I have a cottage on the hillside here, up at Scape Scar.”

  Finding that the young man lived alone, so that there would be no household to upset by his intrusion, Morcar agreed. They left his car in the yard and set out in David’s, drove up to Mar-thwaite, crossed the river by the new bridge and dashed up a narrow moorland lane, full of stones large and small and of so uncompromising a gradient that Morcar was quite glad not to be driving his own handsome car over it. They drew up in front of two cottages just under the brow of the hill. An Annotsfield Corporation sign, white on blue, labelled the cottages Scape Scar; they had long rows of windows in their upper storey, such as Morcar had often seen in cottages on the West Riding hills. David inserted a large cottage key and raised the sneck on the door; they came at once into a low room with a beamed ceiling, where a substantial cold luncheon was already set. David took additional china and silver from a corner cupboard for Morcar, and they began the meal.

  “I haven’t had this place long, so you must forgive me if I’m still houseproud. It’s an ancestral abode, as they say—forbears of mine lived here in 1812. I lived in Booth Bank with my cousins before I came here, so this seems particularly pleasant.”

  “How did you like Booth Bank?”

  “How does anyone like a small house in a row in a West Riding street with no indoor sanitation? It was hell,” said David cheerfully. (Morcar remembered his first Saturday morning at Number 102 Hurst Road, and winced.) “I had to live with some relative till I was old enough to start at Old Mill—my father insisted on that—so I thought it might as well be the Mellors. A useful experience. My father was vexed but I couldn’t help it.”

  “Do you live here alone, then?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Ackroyd next door ‘do’ for me,” said David. “Ackroyd was my father’s chauffeur, his batman in the last war. You may remember him.”

  “I do vaguely,” said Morcar, who at once saw the trench on the day of Charlie’s death—and the shell-hole and Charlie’s dead face, and Jessopp’s face with the jawbone sticking out. “But why the ‘last’ war?”

  “Don’t you think we’re heading for another? Or don’t you?”

  Morcar moved uneasily. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t like the way we back away every time our toes are threatened.”

  “And you think it invites further toe-treading? Just my view,” said David. “I hate war, but we can’t just let freedom and justice slip down the drain without lifting a finger to stop them.”

  “It’s a great pleasure to me to hear you say so!” exclaimed Morcar warmly. “I don’t know much about these things, but that’s just how I feel myself.”

  David rose and opened the cottage door, where a whining and scratching had become audible. A rough-haired, low-hung, black and brown dog with upright ears bounced in, wagging a rapturous tail; after greeting David ecstatically, it turned mild brown eyes on Morcar and advanced to sniff at him, eventually raising itself and laying a pleading paw on Morcar’s arm.

  “Down, Heather, down, old boy,” said David. “Please don’t give him anything to eat. He’s a mixture of Lakeland terrier and Scotty,” he replied to Morcar’s question.

  “Mongrels always have the nicest dispositions, I’m told,” said Morcar, stroking Heather’s head and enjoying the pleasure in the dog’s beautiful loving eyes.

  “Yes—look at the English,” agreed David. “Shall we have coffee upstairs? I live mostly in the loom-chamber because of the view.”

  Somewhat mystified, Morcar followed him up the narrow stairway into the room with the long row of mullioned windows. The view was certainly fine; one could see down the winding length of the industrial Ire Valley almost to Syke Mills, or up the valley to the rocky moorland. The furniture of this room was old, he noted, and in cottage style: an oak chest, an oak settle, a large round table, a couple of spindle-back chairs, a wooden clock on the wall. The table was covered with papers, some old, with seals attached as if they were property deeds, some new, typed in the modern fashion.

  “I was just making out the family pedigree,” said David. “But I think this would probably interest you most.” He turned over the papers and handed Morcar a long narrow book backed in crumbling whitey-brown paper. “It’s an account book for 1728—the oldest Oldroyd document in my possession. The Old-royds were cloth-manufacturers then, as you see.”

  Morcar turned the leaves slowly, in astonishment. Two packs of wooll, he read; woad—madder—teazles. They were items which figured often in his own accounts.

  “And is this quite genuine?” he asked. “Was cloth really made in the West Riding in those days?”

  “My dear Mr. Morcar!” e
xclaimed David quickly, colouring. “Cloth has been woven in the West Riding certainly for seven hundred years and possibly for twelve hundred. Excuse me,” he said in a tone of apology, breaking off: “The honourable antiquity of the cloth-trade is rather a hobby-horse of mine, and I’m apt to gallop away when people question it. But you’ve read all the books on the subject, of course.”

  “No, I can’t say I have,” said Morcar slowly. “In fact, I can’t say I’ve read any of them.” He turned the pages of the account-book, fascinated. Note that a pack of wooll as many pounds as it cometh to so many pence it is a lb, he read. “That’s still true of course,” he thought, “for wool-packs still hold two hundred and forty pounds—as many pounds in weight as there are pennies in a pound sterling. I suppose the old chap found it useful when he was costing his cloth.”

  “I’ve masses more of a similar kind,” said David. He threw back the lid of the oak chest, and revealed a tumbled mass of books and papers. “I’m going to sort them all out,” he said, speaking eagerly. “When we left Syke Mills a lot of these were turned out and put to be burned in the boiler fire, but luckily I rescued them. And then I got some from a great-uncle who took an interest in these things—he left me his papers when he died. They’re really interesting. Here for instance is a copy of a letter from an ancestor to Richard Oastler. Here’s an Order Book for 1835. See the tiny patterns stuck at the side? Wanted by waggon immediately— that has a modern ring. Here’s the poster of a meeting about settling spinners’ accounts. This is the correspondence about the first steam engine in Old Mill, with Boulton and Watt, you know.”

  “Oastler!” thought Morcar. “Boulton and Watt! Loom-chamber! Hell!”

  “I have the modern accounts too,” went on David, nodding towards a row of tall ledgers in the low bookcase: “A sorry tale they tell! But I’m boring you, Mr. Morcar—I’m apt to forget that everybody doesn’t share my zeal for the antiquities of the textile trade.” He made to close the lid of the chest.

  “Nay,” said Morcar slowly, stretching out a hand to prevent him: “It’s very interesting.”

  As soon as he had spoken he realised that he had accented the last word on the est syllable, a Yorkshirism of which he knew he was sometimes guilty, for Christina teased him about it. He looked quickly at David to see if the young whippersnapper were laughing at him. David was indeed smiling, but with a look of such friendly candour, such gentle affection in his agreeable young eyes that Morcar was not offended but encouraged.

  “I’m a West Riding manufacturer, you see,” explained Morcar. He sounded hesitant, laborious, because he was speaking with a sincerity he had hitherto used only to Charlie and to Christina, in the whole course of his life. He intended to express that he had no pretensions to be a gentleman or a scholar, but only to make good cloth, and he saw by David’s nod that he was understood.

  “Everything about the West Riding textile trade is dear to me,” said David. “Its past, its present and its future.”

  “I’ve been too much concerned with its present only, perhaps,” said Morcar slowly, fondling Heather’s ears. “With my own small part in the present, perhaps I should say.” He hesitated, and added: “I should like to learn about its past, though. But I must be off!” he exclaimed, as the clock struck an hour and he was visited by a mental picture of his laden desk.

  “I’ll turn the car before you get in—it’s rather awkward,” said David, hurrying downstairs. “No, Heather, you can’t come.”

  As they drove through Marthwaite village David suddenly checked the car.

  “Look at that,” he said.

  A poster outside the village newsagent’s read: Germany’s sensational Rhineland move.

  Morcar exclaimed.

  “I’ll hop out and get a newspaper,” said David.

  They bent over the Annotsfield evening paper together. German Troops Re-Enter Rhineland: Sensational Move by Hitler This Morning: Germany Sheds Last Shackles of Versailles.

  “That next war we were discussing is beginning now,” said David grimly.

  “Aye! They’re at it again. I reckon I shall soon have to get down my old tin hat,” said Morcar.

  They looked at each other and knew that they were friends.

  29. West Riding

  It seemed to Morcar that he spent the next twelvemonth walking the West Riding and listening to David Oldroyd’s talk about its long and fascinating story.

  David knew every mile of the West Riding countryside—every fold of the sweeping hills, every high and lonely purple moor, every outcrop of sombre rock, every bracken-covered hillside. He knew every wood whether of oak or pine, every stretch of sweet short springing turf, every clear brown foaming stream, every waterfall, every mossy stepping-stone. It sometimes seemed to Morcar that David knew also all the dancing delicate mauve-blue harebells, the buttercups and daisies, the pink and white clover, the tall spiky purple thistles, the nettles of acrid scent, the red sorrel, the blatant dandelions, the crimson foxgloves, the white hemlock, which edged the sloping fields; the long bulrushes with thick black heads which lined the becks, the tiny green fronds of the ferns which clung to the niches of the rough stone walls. David knew all the lean tough grasses which battled undaunted with the wild bleak winds. David knew every lane and every path, whether by moor or fell, by wood or stream—nay, thought Morcar with affectionate amusement, even the dog Heather knew them, and would pause expectantly at some almost invisible moorland track or gap in the wall. David knew the soaring larks singing in the blue, the black and white lapwings which somersaulted through the spring twilight squeaking their harsh leathern cry, the grouse which cried go-back go-back amongst the heather; he knew the black-faced moorland sheep with their defiant hazel eyes, their fleeces shaggy and ragged in spring, close-fitting jackets of fawn velvet after shearing-time.

  Morcar had seen these things, more or less, all his life but had not paid them much attention; now David made them into a design, a pattern.

  The pattern was this. The hills of the Pennines rolled down the centre of England in interlocking spurs, which formed a chain. The West Riding links of this chain were part white limestone, part hard dark millstone grit, coated with peat, fringed with coal, pocketed to the south with iron ore. Millstone grit, said David, cannot grow rich grass or deep abundant grain. It cannot pasture many cattle, it cannot grow fields of waving corn; oats, and the sparse rough grass short-haired sheep can feed on are, with heather, its only produce. But coal and grit country are rich in springs and streams. So it is that our hillsides are seamed by innumerable hillside cloughs, countless narrow winding valleys, each with its tumbling thread of water. In the West Riding, said David, you are hardly ever out of the sound of tumbling water. And so these rough, sweeping interlocking hills of millstone grit, crowned with dark rocks and purple heather, with their cold turbulent becks rushing swiftly down from the moorland through the fields to the little river in the steep wooded valleys below—these, said David, are the cause of the textile trade. Wool and soft water; coal and iron when you find you want them; no good living to be had by farming alone; these, coupled with human invention and human need, add up to weaving cloth.

  The story is indelibly stamped, said David, on the West Riding land and the West Riding life.

  Look at these grey stone homesteads scattered about the folds of the hills, with the long row of windows in their upper storey. Those are the homes of the hand-loom weavers of old; their looms stood in those rooms with many windows, built thus to give ample light to the loom-chamber. Scape Scar is such a weaver’s cottage; my Bamforth ancestors wove cloth there two hundred, three hundred years ago, said David; here are the house-deeds, here is a will bequeathing the loom and the spinning-wheel, to prove it. They wove a piece or two a month and grew oats on their scrap of land, from which they made oatmeal porridge and oatcake; this fine old chest is a meal-ark, said David; you find meal-arks mentioned often in the old diaries. As for oatcake—well, in this water-colour sketch on my wall, dated 18
16, a cottage woman is baking the spongy brown ovals; we still eat and enjoy it to-day—here on our supper-table to-night you see it, crisp and brown.

  The weaver carried his piece on his shoulder, left arm akimbo, down the many moorland miles along tracks like these, said David, to market; when he grew richer, perhaps he had a horse or a donkey. My ancestors carried their pieces thus ten miles down the Ire Valley to Annotsfield; they bought a stone or two of wool there and carried it back to Scape Scar and sat down to spin and weave again. The wife spun for her husband.

  Look at these beautiful old single-span bridges across the valley streams, said David; those are packhorse bridges; their parapets are built thus low so that the cloth across the back of the horse should swing clear of them.

  In the old days, said David, the cloth was displayed on a church wall or a bridge in the towns; on the bridge in Leeds; on the church wall in Bradford and Annotsfield.

  Oh, the cloth trade is much older than that, said David; there’s a letter in the British Museum from Charlemagne in 796 to the king of the northern midlands in England, asking that woollen cloaks sent to him might be made of the same pattern as used to come to him in the olden time—it’s a pity the first record of West Riding textiles is about woollen goods not up to sample!

  Well, yes, perhaps that is a bit far-fetched as to date, said David; but old Yorkshire law cases, way back in the thirteenth century, speak of men named Webster and Walker and Lister, which as you know mean weavers and scourers and dyers of cloth. Webster isn’t a common name in the West Riding now? No—there were too many weavers after a while to use it as a distinguishing appellation. Tax records in 1396 show that there were then three hundred and fifty-seven cloth-makers in Yorkshire, not counting those in York.

  Yes, there are records. You see there was a fourpenny tax on each piece of cloth offered for sale, said David; it started in 1353 and went on for about four hundred years, I seem to remember. A lead seal had to be affixed to the cloth to show the tax had been paid. In 1468 nearly five thousand cloths were sealed thus in Yorkshire. The clothiers were always having rows with the king’s tax-gatherers about this tax; they petitioned the king about it continually. In 1611 there was a terrific bust-up about it; suspecting that some manufacturers were evading the tax, a tax-collector broke into some bales of cloth travelling by pack-horse to London, while the drivers were sleeping the night at an inn on the Great North Road. The drivers woke up sooner than was expected, and there were heads broken.