The Paper Cap. A Story of Love and Labor

“Go to London, father, and see what sort of a job these new men make of a parliamentary opening.”

“I suppose Jonathan and thysen could manage for a week without me?”

“We would do our best. Nothing could go far wrong in a week. This is the twenty-fifth of January, father. Parliament opens on the twenty-ninth. London was getting crowded with the new fellows as Faith and I came through it. They were crowding the hotels, and showing themselves off as the ‘Reformed Parliament.’ I would have enjoyed hearing thee set them down a peg or two.”

Then the old fire blazed in the squire’s eyes, and he said, “I’ll be off to-morrow afternoon, Dick. I’m glad thou told me. If there’s anything I hev a contempt for it is a conceited upstart. I’ll turn any of that crowd down to the bottom of their class;” and the squire who left the Pomfret house that night was a very different man from the squire who entered it that afternoon.

Two days afterwards the squire was off to London. He went first to the Clarendon and sent word to his sister of his arrival. She answered his note in person within an hour. “My dear, dear lad!” she cried. “My carriage is at the door and we will go straight home.”

“No, we won’t, Josepha. I want a bit of freedom. I want to go and come as I like. I want to stay in the House of Commons all night long, if the new members are passing compliments on each other’s records and abilities. I hev come up to London to feel what it’s like to do as I please, and above all, not to be watched and cared for.”

“I know, Antony! I know! Some men are too happily married. In my opinion, it is the next thing to being varry – ”

“I mean nothing wrong, Josepha. I only want to be let alone a bit until I find mysen.”

“Find thysen?”

“To be sure. Here’s our medical man at the mill telling me ‘I hev what he calls nerves.’ I hevn’t! Not I! I’m a bit tired of the days being all alike. I’d enjoy a bit of a scolding from Annie now for lying in bed half the morning, and as sure as I hev a varry important engagement at the mill, I hear the hounds, and the view, holloa! and it is as much as I can do to hold mysen in my chair. It is that thou doesn’t understand, I suppose.”

“I do understand. I hev the same feeling often. I want to do things I would do if I was only a man. Do exactly as thou feels to do, Antony, while the mill is out of sight and hearing.”

“Ay, I will.”

“How is our mill doing?”

“If tha calls making money doing well, then the Temple and Annis mill can’t be beat, so far.”

“I am glad to hear it. Wheniver the notion takes thee, come and see me. I hev a bit of private business that I want to speak to thee about.”

“To be sure I’ll come and see thee – often.”

“Then I’ll leave thee to thysen”

“I’ll be obliged to thee, Josepha. Thou allays hed more sense than the average woman, who never seems to understand that average men like now and then to be left to their awn will and way.”

“I’ll go back with thee to Annis and we can do all our talking there.”

“That’s sensible. We will take the early coach two weeks from to-day. I’ll call for thee at eleven o’clock, and we’ll stay over at the old inn at Market Harborough.”

“That is right. I’ll go my ways now. Take care of thysen and behave thysen as well as tha can,” and then she clasped his hand and went good-naturedly away. But as she rode home, she said to herself – “Poor lad! I’ll forgive and help him, whativer he does. I hope Annie will be as loving. I wonder why God made women so varry good. He knew what kind of men they would mebbe hev to live with. Poor Antony! I hope he’ll hev a real good time – I do that!” and she smiled and shrugged her shoulders and kept the rest of her speculations to herself.

The two weeks the squire had specified went its daily way, and Josepha received no letter from her brother, but at the time appointed he knocked at her door promptly and decidedly. Josepha had trusted him. She met him in warm traveling clothes, and they went away with a smile and a perfect trust in each other. Josepha knew better than to ask a man questions. She let him talk of what he had seen and heard, she made no inquiries as to what he had done, and when they were at Market Harborough he told her he had slept every hour away except those he spent in The House. “I felt as if I niver, niver, could sleep enough, Josepha. It was fair wonderful, and as it happened there were no night sessions I missed nothing I wanted to see or hear. But tha knows I’ll hev to tell Annie and mebbe others about The House, so I’ll keep that to mysen till we get all together. It wouldn’t bear two talks over. Would it now?”

“It would be better stuff than usual if it did, Antony. Thou wilt be much missed when it comes to debating.”

“I think I shall. I hev my word ready when it is the right time to say it, that is, generally speaking.”

Josepha’s visit was unexpected but Annie took it with apparent enthusiasm, and the two women together made such a fuss over the improvement in the squire’s appearance that Josepha could not help remembering the plaintive remarks of her brother about being too much cared for. However, nothing could really dampen the honest joy in the squire’s return, and when the evening meal had been placed upon the table and the fire stirred to a cheering blaze, the room was full of a delightful sense of happiness. A little incident put the finishing touch to Annie’s charming preparation. A servant stirred the fire with no apparent effect. Annie then tried to get blaze with no better result. Then the squire with one of his heartiest laughs took the apparently ineffectual poker.

“See here, women!” he cried. “You do iverything about a house better than a man except stirring a fire. Why? Because a woman allays stirs a fire from the top. That’s against all reason.” Then with a very decided hand he attacked the lower strata of coals and they broke up with something like a big laugh, crackling and sputtering flame and sparks, and filling the room with a joyful illumination. And in this happy atmosphere they sat down to eat and to talk together.

Josepha had found a few minutes to wash her face and put her hair straight, the squire had been pottering about his wife and the luggage and the fire and was still in his fine broadcloth traveling suit, which with its big silver buttons, its smart breeches and top boots, its line of scarlet waistcoat and plentiful show of white cambric round the throat, made him an exceedingly handsome figure. And if the husbands who may chance to read of this figure will believe it, this good man, so carefully dressed, had thought as he put on every garment, of the darling wife he wished still to please above all others.

The first thing the squire noticed was the absence of Dick and Faith.

“Where are they?” he asked in a disappointed tone.

“Well, Antony,” said Josepha, “Annie was just telling me that Dick hed gone to Bradford to buy a lot of woolen yarns; if so be he found they were worth the asking price, and as Faith’s father is now in Bradford, it was only natural she should wish to go with him.”

“Varry natural, but was it wise? I niver could abide a woman traipsing after me when I hed any business on hand.”

“There’s where you made a mistake, Antony. If Annie hed been a business woman, you would hev built yoursen a mill twenty years ago.”

“Ay, I would, if Annie hed asked me. Not without. When is Dick to be home?”

“Some time to-morrow,” answered Annie. “He is anxious to see thee. He isn’t on any loitering business.”

“Well, Josepha, there is no time for loitering. All England is spinning like a whipped top at full speed. In Manchester and Preston the wheels of the looms go merrily round. Oh, there is so much I want to do!”

They had nearly finished a very happy meal when there was a sound of men’s voices coming nearer and nearer and the silver and china stopped their tinkling and the happy trio were still a moment as they listened. “It will be Jonathan and a few of the men to get the news from me,” said the squire.

“Well, Antony, I thought of that and there is a roaring fire in the ballroom and the chairs are set out, and thou can talk to them from the orchestra.” And the look of love that followed this information made Annie’s heart feel far too big for everyday comfort.

There were about fifty men to seat. Jonathan was their leader and spokesman, and he went to the orchestra with the squire and stood by the squire’s chair, and when ordinary courtesies had been exchanged, Jonathan said, “Squire, we want thee to tell us about the Reform Parliament. The Yorkshire Post says thou were present, and we felt that we might ask thee to tell us about it.”

“For sure I will. I was there as soon as the House was opened, and John O’Connell went in with me. He was one of the ‘Dan O’Connell household brigade,’ which consists of old Dan, his three sons, and two sons-in-law. They were inclined to quarrel with everyone, and impudently took their seats on the front benches as if to awe the Ministerial Whigs who were exactly opposite them. William Cobbett was the most conspicuous man among them. He was poorly dressed in a suit of pepper and salt cloth, made partly like a Quaker’s and partly like a farmer’s suit, and he hed a white hat on.[3 - A white hat was the sign of an extreme Radical.] His head was thrown backward so as to give the fullest view of his shrewd face and his keen, cold eyes. Cobbett had no respect for anyone, and in his first speech a bitter word niver failed him if he was speaking of the landed gentry whom he called ‘unfeeling tyrants’ and the lords of the loom he called ‘rich ruffians.’ Even the men pleading for schools for the poor man’s children were ‘education-cantors’ to him, and he told them plainly that nothing would be good for the working man that did not increase his victuals, his drink and his clothing.

“Is that so, men?” asked the squire. He was answered by a “No!” whose style of affirmation was too emphatic to be represented by written words.

“But the Reform Bill, squire? What was said about the Reform Bill and the many good things it promised us?”

“I niver heard it named, men. And I may as well tell you now that you need expect nothing in a hurry. All that really has been given you is an opportunity to help yoursens. Listen to me. The Reform Bill has taken from sixty boroughs both their members, and forty-seven boroughs hev been reduced to one member. These changes will add at least half a million voters to the list, and this half-million will all come from the sturdy and generally just, great middle class of England. It will mebbe take another generation to include the working class, and a bit longer to hev the laboring class educated sufficiently to vote. That is England’s slow, sure way. It doan’t say it is the best way, but it is our way, and none of us can hinder or hasten it.[4 - In 1867, during Lord Derby’s administration, it was made to include the artizans and mechanics, and in Gladstone’s administration, A. D. 1884, the Reform Bill was made to include agricultural and all day laborers.]

“In the meantime you have received from your own class of famous inventors a loom that can make every man a master. Power-loom weaving is the most healthy, the best paid, and the pleasantest of all occupations. With the exception of the noise of the machinery, it has nothing disagreeable about it. You that already own your houses take care of them. Every inch of your ground will soon be worth gold. I wouldn’t wonder to see you, yoursens, build your awn mills upon it. Oh, there is nothing difficult in that to a man who trusts in God and believes in himsen.

“And men, when you hev grown to be rich men, doan’t forget your God and your Country. Stick to your awn dear country. Make your money in it. Be Englishmen until God gives you a better country, Which won’t be in this world. But whether you go abroad, or whether you stay at home, niver forget the mother that bore you. She’ll niver forget you. And if a man hes God and his mother to plead for him, he is well off, both for this world and the next.”

“That is true, squire.”

“God has put us all in the varry place he thought best for the day’s work He wanted from us. It is more than a bit for’ardson in us telling Him we know better than He does, and go marching off to Australia or New Zealand or Canada. It takes a queer sort of a chap to manage life in a strange country full of a contrary sort of human beings. Yorkshire men are all Yorkshire. They hevn’t room in their shape and make-up for new-fangled ways and ideas. You hev a deal to be proud of in England that wouldn’t be worth a half-penny anywhere else. It’s a varry difficult thing to be an Englishman and a Yorkshireman, which is the best kind of an Englishman, as far as I know, and not brag a bit about it. There’s no harm in a bit of honest bragging about being himsen a Roman citizen and I do hope a straight for-ard Englishman may do what St. Paul did – brag a bit about his citizenship. And as I hev just said, I say once more, don’t leave England unless you hev a clear call to do so; but if you do, then make up your minds to be a bit more civil to the strange people than you usually are to strangers. It is a common saying in France and Italy that Englishmen will eat no beef but English beef, nor be civil to any God but their awn God. I doan’t say try to please iverybody, just do your duty, and do it pleasantly. That’s about all we can any of us manage, eh, Jonathan?”

“We are told, sir, to do to others as we would like them to do to us.”

“For sure! But a great many Yorkshire people translate that precept into this – ‘Tak’ care of Number One.’ Let strangers’ religion and politics alone. Most – I might as well say all– of you men here, take your politics as seriously as you take your religion, and that is saying a great deal. I couldn’t put it stronger, could I, Jonathan?”

“No, sir! I doan’t think you could. It is a varry true comparison. It is surely.”

“Now, lads, in the future, it is to be work and pray, and do the varry best you can with your new looms. It may so happen that in the course of years some nation that hes lost the grip of all its good and prudent senses, will try to invade England. It isn’t likely, but it might be. Then I say to each man of you, without an hour’s delay, do as I’ve often heard you sing —