The Adventures of Tom Leigh (7 page)

Meanwhile Mrs. Firth was busy spinning at her wheel; she was indeed a notable spinner, the yarn she spun was very fine and even. Mr. Firth preferred his wife's yarn to any other, so he had Josiah's daughter come to the house to help his wife with domestic tasks, so as to give her more time to spin.

Every Saturday Mr. Firth went to Halifax to market. It was a great business getting him off very early, grooming and saddling the horse, laying the piece of cloth across his saddle-bow. Mrs. Firth laid out his market clothes the night before, with his good wig and his newly-starched neckcloth, and I had to polish his riding-boots and Bess's harness—Bess was the name of our sturdy little mare. I could not see why he had to set off so exceedingly early, but it seemed the Cloth Hall, where the cloth was sold, opened punctually at six with the ringing of a bell, and in a few minutes all the cloth for sale was brought in, the merchants entered and the doors closed again, and in an hour or so all the cloth was sold. I wished very much to see this market and the town of Halifax, and one Friday plucked up courage to ask Mr. Firth to let me go next day. I could set off very early on foot, and meet him at the inn where he put up his horse.

“It's a goodish walk, Tom,” said he, “and you don't know the way.”

“I could easily find it if you gave me directions, master,” I said eagerly.

“Aye. And there are signposts,” put in Jeremy.

I was surprised by this support from Jeremy, as he usually crossed my wishes if he could, and next time we were alone together I thanked him. He gave me one of his sneering smiles.

“You've a mind to run away and think to slip off in the Halifax crowds, eh, Tom?” he said.

“No!” I replied indignantly. “I am bound apprentice, and shall keep my time. Where could I run to, in any case?”

“Aye, that's true. Where could you run to?” said Jeremy thoughtfully.

My hopes for the morrow were dashed at supper time, however, by Mrs. Firth, who, when the project was mooted by her husband, asked crossly why I should miss a day's work to no purpose.

“And there's his dinner at the inn, and wear and tear of shoe leather. What are you thinking of, husband?”

“I could take some bread and meat with me,” I suggested.

“Disposing of your master's goods now, are you?” began Mrs. Firth, tossing her head. “At my father's nothing of that sort would have been allowed.”

“Enough, Meg!” said Mr. Firth. “Don't put yourself about. I shall not take the lad tomorrow.”

I was keenly disappointed, as I had longed for this treat, and I think Mr. Firth was sorry, for next day he very kindly brought back from Halifax market a blanket to go on the bed which he and Jeremy had made for me. With summer coming I did not need this extra covering so much, but I should be glad enough of it in the winter. For in these Pennine hills the wind blows often and it is cold.

As to this bed I must say a word because it played its part in the theft story.

As a baby Gracie had slept in a little cot in her parents' bedchamber, but only the year before, Mrs. Firth had put her into a little room of her own, and Gracie was proud of this and did not wish to leave it. Jeremy slept in a largish room at the back of the house, where there was space for another bed, and Mr. Firth took it for granted that I should sleep there. But this prospect was hateful to me, and luckily Jeremy disliked it also. He expressed his opposition to sharing a bedchamber with me in terms so opprobrious and insulting that I could have struck him, but since his wish coincided with mine, I held my peace and stood motionless, though I know my face was scarlet with fury. The only sleeping-place left open to me was the workshop. Mrs. Firth objected strongly to this at first, but on my promising to open door and window as soon as I rose in the morning, at length agreed.

One very pleasant thing happened to me during these months. One morning there was a knock at the house door, and on my running down to answer it, Mrs. Firth having her hands in pastry at the time, I found Harry Norton standing there. Of course I showed him in, though Mrs. Firth was a good deal flustered at being caught in her apron, pastry-making. I went up to fetch Mr. Firth from the workshop, but was soon called down again. By this time Mrs. Firth had recovered her composure and was laughing with Harry, who sat in Mr. Firth's chair by the fire, drinking a glass of milk and eating oatcake with a plate of butter beside him.

“Well, Tom,” said Mr. Firth cheerfully. “Here is Master Harry Norton come to ask you to spend the day with him on the moors. Wouldst like to go, eh?”

“Yes, sir,” I said eagerly. “If you can spare me.”

“Why, to oblige Sir Henry I would do a much greater thing,” said Mr. Firth. “It seems Sir Henry is away on public business, and Mr. Harry's tutor is away to see a sick relative, and so he is alone.”

“I have brought some provisions,” said Harry.

“Go up, Tom, take off your apron, and brush your clothes,” said Mr. Firth. “We don't want wool blowing all over Master Harry off you. Wife, put up some meat for Tom. Now, if it should rain, Master Harry, and from the look o' t'sky it well might, don't you hesitate to come back to Upper High Royd. We can give you a bite of dinner, you know.”

So we two lads went off together. First we scrambled down a very steep path to one of the valleys, then we climbed up a lane on the far side, up and up, till we passed all the houses and left fields and walls behind, and were right out on the open moorland. Rough grass, sombre heather, dark peaty soil, and everywhere little brown becks tumbling downward over rocky beds. The wind blew, the sun shone; larks sang overhead, lapwings (their green backs so dark they looked black, their undersides white) somersaulted in great swift curves overhead; Harry fell to singing and I joined him, and we were happy.

When we stopped to eat our meat in the shelter of a dip in the moor we were so high that we could see for miles around, a landscape of rising and falling hills dotted here and there with homesteads, with Halifax lying on a slope in the distance. From here the hill on which Barseland stood, high as it was, lay far below us. The air was so clear we could see the Fleece Inn, and the cluster of trees and bushes which hid Sir Henry's mansion, and Upper High Royd, and even the tenters in the tentercroft beside the house, a piece of blue cloth on them bright in the sunshine. I pointed it out to Harry.

“Aye, I see it,” he said. “Of all the daft customs, this of leaving cloth out on the tenters all night is the daftest. My father is away to Halifax this morning to confer about it. For the past five weeks there has been cloth stolen in the neighbourhood every week. But for heaven's sake,” he added hastily, “do not, I pray you, mention it to Mrs. Firth while I am with you. I do not fancy a woman in a screaming fit, and Mrs. Firth is nervous and somewhat given to emotions.”

“Yes—but for all that Mrs. Firth is a good and kind woman,” said I. “Her bark is worse than her bite, as they say.”

“You're content at Upper High Royd, then, are you?”

“I should be well content,” I said, “if it were not for Jeremy, who loses no chance to work me ill.”

“He looks a sullen sort of chap,” said Harry.

“He is always mislaying things and blaming me to Mr. Firth for it, and complaining that I am slow and idle. I am not idle, Harry,” I said firmly.

Harry looked at me. “I believe you, Tom,” he said.

“Mr. Swain had cloth stolen from his tenters,” I reminded him. “Has Sir Henry not discovered who was the thief?”

Harry was silent for so long, I feared I had vexed him.

“I did not mean that as a reproach to Sir Henry,” I said.

“Listen, Tom,” said Harry. “But mind, do not repeat what I say to you to anyone. Do you remember when we first quarrelled?”

“That I do.”

“What did we fight about, eh?”

“My father's watch,” said I sadly, for as I spoke my former life and Lavenham and my father all came back to me.

“Just so. Now my father bought the watch from a reputable watchmaker in Bradford, who had bought it cheap from a countryman he did not know. The countryman cannot be traced. But it is thought that a man who would steal a watch from a drowning man would not scruple to steal cloth from tenters.”

“I never thought of that!” I cried.

“Well, think of it now. But keep your thoughts to yourself. Here comes the rain!” cried Harry suddenly, springing up. “We must get down to shelter.”

We were well soaked by the time we reached Upper High Royd. Mrs. Firth made a great fuss over Harry, drying his clothes, and—to be fair—she showed some concern over me, too. She persuaded Harry to stay for his dinner, and
gave us a very good meal, at which Harry chattered and laughed and kept us all in a good humour—except Jeremy, of course, who sat silent and scowling and rather subdued.

“May Tom come out with me again sometimes, Mr. Firth?” said Harry as he made his farewells.

“Aye, so long as he doesn't leave his work undone,” said Mr. Firth rather doubtfully.

“On Sunday afternoons perhaps?” suggested Harry.

Mr. Firth looked at his wife to see what she thought of this. To my surprise she nodded. As Mr. Firth said: “Very well,” he seemed rather surprised too.

Mrs. Firth was a little kindlier in manner to me after that day. Partly because she was pleased to have Sir Henry Norton's son dining in her house and I had brought him there, but partly, I think, for a better reason, namely that Harry set me laughing and chattering with the rest, so that I was more my natural cheerful self than the silent and perhaps morose lad she had previously taken me to be.

But Jeremy's ill-will towards me seemed continually to deepen.

On the very next Saturday after Harry's visit he gave me a real fright. Mr. Firth was off long since to market when Josiah came in with a woven piece. Jeremy sent me down to attach it to the hook as I had done before, and threw the wrapping cloth with the rings down out of the taking-in place with such force that had I been under it (as I nearly was) my neck could well have been broken. Vexed and startled, I began to get the wrapping round the piece, thinking to myself that Saturdays, when Mr. Firth was absent, were really very disagreeable days at Upper High Royd. In the porch Mrs. Firth was arguing sharply with Josiah as she paid him.

I knew why she was vexed. Getting a piece dried on the tenters in time for Saturday market was always an anxious matter because of the uncertain weather, so the earlier in the week a piece was fulled in the fulling-mill down in the valley, the better for the clothier. A custom had therefore grown
up among the Barseland clothiers of taking pieces to be fulled on Sunday. This was quite illegal and Sir Henry disapproved of it, but Jeremy was all for it and Mr. Firth was inclined to be led by the other clothiers. Mrs. Firth disliked the custom strongly—nothing like that, of course, had ever been done at her father's—and so it vexed her when Josiah brought a finished piece on Saturday because of the temptation it offered Mr. Firth over this Sunday fulling. So she snapped at Josiah in her shrill voice till (luckily for me) Gracie tired of it and ran into the yard to be out of the way.

For just as I grasped the big hook in one hand to put it through the rings, there was a sudden violent jerk and I found myself swinging in mid-air. Jeremy had hauled on the rope. I brought my other hand to the hook quickly, and held on; I had no desire to fall ten feet, especially with those iron rings below me.

“Jeremy! Let me down!” I cried.

I had thought, of course, that this was just a spiteful joke, very uncomfortable for me but not meant to be dangerous, but as I looked up into Jeremy's face I felt a pang of fear; such a look of hatred, of evil will, I had never seen in any man's eyes before. Moreover, he now wound the end of the rope round its staples in the workshop wall, so that I was held in mid-air; and then, reaching out, he began to sway the rope from side to side, and twist it, so that I spun round. I felt sick and dizzy, and tried to make up my mind to jump, while Jeremy's sneering face seemed to swing back and forward above me, when Gracie screamed suddenly:

“Mother! Mother! Come quick! Mother!”

A scream from Gracie always brought everyone at Upper High Royd to her at the run. So now Mrs. Firth came rushing round the corner, Josiah lumbered after, and Harriet (Josiah's daughter) followed gaping with a broom in her hand.

“What are you about, Jeremy? Let the boy down at once! Josiah, hold him up! Help him down!” shrilled Mrs. Firth, while Josiah shouted:

“Jump, lad! I'll catch thee!”

Gracie broke into loud sobs. Harriet said: “Eh! I never!” and they all stood gazing up at me, their open mouths and upturned eyes giving a comical effect.

Jeremy writhed his face into an expression of surprised consternation, loosed the rope and let me down with a bump. I fell into Josiah's arms and knocked him over, and we rolled together in the yard.

I own I felt shaken, and did not resist when Mrs. Firth, calling me “Poor lad”, led me into the house and put me into a chair by the fire and brought me a mug of dandelion beer to drink. Jeremy came down and laid his hand as if fondly on my shoulder, with many expressions of regret and explanations how he had not seen me on the hook, he thought it was the piece he was hauling up, and so on. But these were all lies and I shrank from him.

He was very solicitous about me for the next few days, the more so as Mr. Firth, who had doubtless heard all about the hook affair from Mrs. Firth and Gracie, was decidedly ill-tempered with him. To distract Mr. Firth's attention from the matter, as I thought, Jeremy began to be urgent with him to weave broadcloths instead of kerseys. A kersey is usually about a yard (thirty-six inches) wide, whereas a broadcloth is fifty-four inches at least, often more. Broadcloths, of course, command a bigger price than kerseys, not only because they have more stuff in them but because it is easier to cut suits and coats from broader cloth—tailoring from narrow cloth is very wasteful and needs more seams. A broadcloth must be very evenly and closely woven, lest it sag, but as Jeremy kept saying, with Mrs. Firth's fine, even yarn and the good, close weaving of himself and Mr. Firth, he was sure that Upper High Royd broadcloth could soon become quite renowned.