The Paper Cap. A Story of Love and Labor

“I will come gladly, father. I wish you would let me do all the writing about business there is to be done. Just take me for your secretary.”

“That is a clever idea. We will talk it out a bit later. Come thy ways with me, now. No doubt thy mother and sister hev their awn things to talk over. Women hev often queer views of what seems to men folk varry reasonable outcomes.”

So the two men went out very confidingly together, and Kitty remained with her mother, who sat silently looking into the darkening garden.

Neither spoke for a few minutes, then Kitty lifted her cape and bonnet and said, “I am tired, mother. I think I will go to my room.”

“Varry well, but answer me a few questions first. What do you now think of Dick’s fancy for Faith?”

“It is not a fancy, mother. It is a love that will never fade or grow old. He will marry Faith or he will never marry.”

“Such sentimentality! It is absurd!”

“Dick thinks his love for Faith Foster the great fact of his life. He will never give her up. Her ways are his ways. He thinks as she thinks. He would do anything she asked him to do. Dear mammy, try and make the best of it. You cannot alter it. It is Destiny, and I heard Mr. Foster say, that no person, nor yet any nation, could fight Destiny unless God was on their side. I think it is Dick’s destiny to marry Faith.”

“Think as you like, Katherine, but be so kind as to omit quoting Mr. Foster’s opinions in my presence.”

“Very well, mother.”

“And I do wish you would make up your quarrel with Harry Bradley; it is very unpleasant to have you go mourning about the house and darkening the only bit of good fortune that has ever come to your father. Indeed, I think it is very selfish and cruel. I do that!”

“I am sorry. I try to forget, but – ” and she wearily lifted her cape and left the room. And her mother listened to her slow, lifeless steps on the stairway, and sorrowfully wondered what she ought to do. Suddenly she remembered that her husband had asked her not to trouble him about foolish love affairs and Dick was sure to take Katherine’s view of the matter, whatever the trouble was; and, indeed, she was quite aware that the squire himself leaned to the side of the lovers, and there was no one else she could speak to. It was all a mixed up anxiety, holding apparently no hope of relief from outside help.

Yes, there was Aunt Josepha, and as soon as she stepped into the difficulty, Katherine’s mother felt there would be some explanation or help. It was only waiting a week, and Madam Temple would be in Annis, and with this reflection she tried to dismiss the subject.

Indeed, everyone in Annis Hall was now looking forward to the visit of Josepha. But more than a fortnight elapsed before she arrived, bringing with her experts and advisers of various kinds. The latter were pleasantly located in the village inn, and Josepha was delighted with the beautiful and comfortable arrangements her sister-in-law had made for her. She came into their life with overflowing good humor and spirits, and was soon as busily interested in the great building work as her happy brother.

She had to ride all through the village to reach the mill site, and she did not think herself a day too old to come down to breakfast in her riding habit and accompany her brother. It was not long, however, before the pair separated. Soon after her arrival, the village women, one by one, renewed their acquaintance with her, and every woman looked to Miss Josepha for relief, or advice about their special tribulations. Many of them were women of her own age. They remembered her as Miss Josepha, and prided themselves on the superiority of their claim. To the younger women she was Madam, just Madam, and indeed it was a queer little incident that quite naturally, and without any word of explanation, made all, both old and young, avoid any other name than Miss Josepha. “Yorkshire is for its awn folk, we doan’t take to strange people and strange names,” said Israel Naylor, when questioned by some of the business experts Josepha had brought down with her; “and,” he explained, “Temple is a Beverley name, or I mistake, and Annis folk know nothing about Beverley names.” So Madam Temple was almost universally Miss Josepha, to the villagers, and she liked the name, and people who used it won her favor.

In a few weeks she had to hire a room in Naylor’s house, and go there at a fixed hour to see any of the people who wanted her. All classes came to this room, from the Episcopal curate and the Methodist preacher, to the poor widow of a weaver, who had gone to Bradford for work, and died of cholera there. “Oh, Miss Josepha!” she cried, “Jonathan Hartley told me to come to thee, and he said, he did say, that thou hed both wisdom and money in plenty, and that thou would help me.”

“What is thy trouble, Nancy?”

“My man died in Bradford, and he left me nothing but four helpless childer, and I hev a sister in Bradford who will take care of them while I go back to my old place as pastry cook at the Black Swan Hotel.”

“That would be a good plan, Nancy.”

“For sure it would, Miss Josepha, but we awned our cottage, and our bee skeps, and two dozen poultry, and our old loom. I can’t turn them into brass again, and so I’m most clemmed with it all.”

“How much do you want for the ‘all you awn’?”

“I would count mysen in luck, if I got one hundred and fifty pounds.”

“Is that sum its honest worth, not a penny too much, or a penny too little?”

“It is just what it cost us; ivery penny, and not a penny over, or less.”

“Then I’ll buy it, if all is as thou says. I’ll hev my lawyer look it over, and I’ll see what the squire says, and if thou hes been straight with me, thou can go home, and pack what tha wants to take with thee.”

This incident was the initial purchase of many other cottages sold for similar reasons, and when Josepha went back to London, she took with her the title deeds of a large share of Annis village property. “But, Antony,” she said, “I hev paid the full value of ivery deed I hold, ay, in some cases more than their present value, but I do not doubt I shall get all that is mine when the time is ripe for more, and more, and more mills.”

“Was this thy plan, when thou took that room in the Inn?”

“Not it! I took it for a meeting place. I know most of the women here, and I saw plainly Annie would not be able to stand the constant visitations that were certain to follow. It made trouble in the kitchen, and the voice of the kitchen soon troubles the whole house. Annie must be considered, and the comfort of the home. That is the great right. Then I hev other business with Annis women, not to be mixed up with thy affairs. We are going to plan such an elementary school as Annis needs for its children, with classes at night for the women who doan’t want their boys and girls to be ashamed of them. And there must be a small but perfectly fitted up hospital for the workers who turn sick or get injured in the mill. And the Reverend Mr. Bentley and the Reverend Mr. Foster come to me with their cases of sorrow and sickness, and I can tell thee a room for all these considerations was one of the necessities of our plans.”

“I hevn’t a bit of doubt of it. But it is too much for thee to manage. Thou art wearying soul and body.”

“Far from it. It is as good and as great a thing to save a soul as it is to make it. I am varry happy in my work, and as Mr. Foster would put it, I feel a good deal nearer God, than I did counting up interest money in London.”

In the meantime the home life at Annis Hall was not only changed but constantly changing. There was always some stranger – some expert of one kind or another – a guest in its rooms, and their servants or assistants kept the kitchen in a racket of cooking, and eating, and unusual excitement. Mistress Annis sometimes felt that it would be impossible to continue the life, but every day the squire came home so tired, and so happy, that all discomforts fled before his cheery “Hello!” and his boyish delight in the rapidly growing edifice. Dick had become his paid secretary, and in the meantime was studying bookkeeping, and learning from Jonathan all that could be known, concerning long and short staple wools.

Katherine was her mother’s right hand all the long day, but often, towards closing time, she went down to the village on her pony, and then the squire, or Dick, or both, rode home with her. Poor Kitty! Harry no longer wrote to her, and Josepha said she had heard that he had gone to America on a business speculation, “and it is a varry likely thing,” she said, “for Harry knew a penny from a pound, before he learned how to count. I wouldn’t fret about him, dearie.”

“I am not fretting, aunt, but how would you feel, if you had shut the door of your heart, and your love lay dead on its threshold. Nothing is left to me now, but the having loved.”

“Well, dearie, when we hevn’t what we love, we must love what we hev. Thou isn’t a bit like thy sen.”

“I have never felt young since Harry left me.”

“That is a little thing to alter thee so much.”

“No trouble that touches the heart is a little thing.”

“Niver mind the past, dearie. Love can work miracles. If Harry really loved thee he will come back to thee. Love is the old heartache of the world, and then all in a minute some day, he is the Healing Love and The Comforter. I hev a good mind to tell thee something, that I niver told to any ither mortal sinner.”

“If it would help me to bear more cheerfully my great loss, I would be glad to hear anything of that kind.”

Then Josepha sat down and spread her large capable hands one over each knee and looking Kitty full in the eyes said – “I was at thy age as far gone in love, with as handsome a youth as your Harry is. One morning we hed a few words about the value of good birth, and out of pure contradiction I set it up far beyond what I really thought of it; though I’ll confess I am yet a bit weak about my awn ancestors. Now my lover was on this subject varry touchy, for his family hed money, more than enough, but hed no landed gentry, and no coat of arms, in fact, no family. And I hed just hed a few words with mother, and Antony hedn’t stood up for me. Besides, I wasn’t dressed fit to be seen, or I thought I wasn’t, and I was out with mother, and out with Antony, well then, I was out with mysen, and all the world beside; and I asked varry crossly: ‘Whativer brings thee here at this time of day? I should hev thought thou knew enough to tell thysen, a girl hes no liking for a lover that comes in the morning. He’s nothing but in her way.’”

“Oh, auntie, how could you?”

“Well, then, there was a varry boisterous wind blowing, and they do say, the devil is allays busy in a high wind. I suppose he came my road that morning, and instead of saying ‘be off with thee’ I made him so comfortable in my hot temper, he just bided at my side, and egged me on, to snap out ivery kind of provoking thing.”

“I am very much astonished, aunt. The fair word that turneth away wrath is more like you.”

“For sure it is, or else there hes been a great change for t’ better since that time. Well, that day it was thus, and so; and I hev often wondered as to the why and wherefore of that morning’s foolishness.”

“Did he go away forever that morning?”

“He did not come for a week, and during that week, Admiral Temple came to see father, and he stayed until he took with him my promise to be his wife early in the spring.”

“Were you very miserable, auntie?”

“Oh, my dear, I was sick in love, as I could be.”

“Why didn’t you make it up with him?”

“I hed several reasons for not doing so. My father hed sailed with Admiral Temple, and they were friends closer than brothers, for they hed saved each other’s lives – that was one reason. I was angry at my lover staying away a whole week. That was reason number two. Ten years afterwards I learned, quite accidentally, that his coming was prevented by circumstances it was impossible for him to control. Then my mother hed bragged all her fine words over the country-side, about the great marriage I was to make. That was another reason; – and I am a bit ashamed to say, the splendid jewels and the rich silks and Indian goods my new lover sent me seemed to make a break with him impossible. At any rate, I felt this, and mother and father niver spoke of the Admiral that they did not add another rivet to the bond between us. So at last I married my sailor, and I thank God I did so!”