Sleep in Peace (62 page)

And suddenly she began to draw the West Riding, so that they might see.

She drew the men lounging in silent misery at the street corners, the landscape from Awe Bank, a lorry heaped with cloth, a quivering belt and shafting seen through a lighted pane.

Gradually these scattered drawings began to dissatisfy her; they appeared portions of some incomplete series, of which she could not quite see the range. She found herself ignorant, too, of the technical terms which she must understand in order to be able to describe her work in non-technical language; she consulted books from the Municipal Library but found them complicated; it was simpler, if she could bring herself to break her reserve about her work, to consult her father.

She was infinitely rewarded for the effort she made to speak thus to him; for though Mr. Armistead had no large coherent view of his own profession, such as Edward had given her, he was full of textile anecdotes and illustrations. Once on the train of reminiscence started by Laura's asking him the name of, for instance, the peculiar slatted roofs one sometimes saw on the sheds of mills, Mr. Armistead could talk for hours. He had lived as a young man through the great days of the textile trade, when you had only to get a wheel turning, as he said, to make the money come rolling in; he had lived through the coming of the Trade
Unions, through the dreadful times of the American tariffs, through strikes and war and the present slump. It eased his mind, Laura found, to talk about the old times; it helped him to see his present parlous situation as part of a general process instead of as an individual plight. He talked; and from his talk and what she read the pictures formed in Laura's mind of this little unit of earth they called the West Riding: with its hills of dark millstone grit, its scanty pasture, fit only for sheep, its innumerable swift cold streams, its deposits of coal and iron; its skill in cloth, centuries old, its weavers' cottages and its handlooms; the terrific drama of the industrial revolution; the whole huge complex web, which was the history of the textile trade in past and present centuries. “It would be the work of a lifetime to express all that!” exclaimed Laura, appalled; but she listened and listened, increasingly interested.

Interwoven with these textile chronicles of her father's were more personal anecdotes; and gradually to Laura's astonished eyes there was revealed the exciting, pathetic, romantic story of the early lives of Alfred Armistead and Henry Hinchliffe. Alfred Armistead, the young lad apprenticed to the great Spencer Thwaite, after parties often went straight to the mill, threw himself down and slept on the pieces, so as to be there punctually at five o'clock next morning. At the parties he met Spencer Thwaite's daughter —Laura. “Laura,” repeated Mr. Armistead in a surprised tone, amazed to remember that his young wife's name was the same as this familiar daughter's. The sweetness and charm of that young love came to Laura now across the years. From that Mr. Armistead would talk slowly on to the building of Blackshaw Mills, the partnership with Henry Hinchliffe.

“Henry was only a workingman, you know,” said Mr. Armistead in a conspiratorial tone: “Just a workingman from Annotsfield. That's how he came to know the fine worsted trade so well, you see.”

“Was Annotsfield specially famous for fine worsteds, Father?” asked Laura, idly drawing Mr. Armistead's nose.

“Well, of course, Laura!” said Mr. Armistead, annoyed. “Surely you knew that! Yes, Henry was only a workingman, you know; and he went to the Reverend Thomas Taylor's chapel in Annotsfield. He sang in the choir; Taylor's sister sang there, too—they have mixed choirs in chapels, you know, Laura. Then when your grandfather Thwaite built the Cromwell Street chapel, he invited Taylor to come and be the minister there—he was a great preacher, you know, Thomas Taylor. Very eloquent. He went to London afterwards. Well, Henry used to walk over from Annotsfield every Sunday morning to sing in the choir—and to see Alice Taylor, of course.”

“Alice Taylor!” exclaimed Laura. “Oh—Mrs. Hinchliffe.”

“Yes, Alice Taylor,” said Mr. Armistead, nodding. “She was a pretty little thing in those days. But prim. Always very prim. Hardly seemed to see Henry, you know, although he'd walked all the way from Annotsfield to see her.”

“But how did you know all this, Father?” said Laura, thinking: “So that was Edward's mother.”

“Oh, it was talk, common talk at the time, you know,” said Mr. Armistead. “Yes. Henry was a foreman dyer when I first heard of him. Nobody ever thought Alice Taylor would marry him, you know—he was so much beneath her in position. But of course when your grandfather took him up, he was a made man. And after all that, Laura,” said Mr. Armistead bitterly, “he doesn't even leave me executor to his children. The money he made in Blackshaw Mills, he leaves it outside, so I can't get hold of it. If only I had those few thousands in Blackshaw now! But Henry was always like that: a bit mean, you know.” He embarked upon the involved story of the gas-engines, in the course of which he used many technical terms, incomprehensible to his daughter.

“It's no use,” thought Laura, taking a decision: “I shall have to go and draw in Blackshaw Mills.”

It was like removing a skin from herself to propose this to Mr. Armistead; her father, however, seemed rather flattered, and smiled in a pleased way.

“You want the drawings for illustrated articles, I suppose?” he said.

“Yes,” mumbled Laura, who was not at all sure for what she wanted them, if indeed for anything at all.

On her next free morning she began to work in Blackshaw Mills, and thereafter spent much time there. She drew the chimney from the odd angle in the upstairs room; she drew the menders, the men perching. She froze in the yard and drew Tom Byram in the boiler pit; she soaked her feet in the harsh suds of the scouring room; she deafened her ears in the weaving sheds; she wrestled in anguish with the complex threads of a warping and beaming machine. The men were extremely kind and courteous in explaining the function and working of all the machines, though a little disappointed that she did not draw everything from its middle front. They were always telling her of other subjects suitable for pen-and-ink drawings. A woolcomber's, now, they said, there's some grand pictures in a woolcomber's. Noils and tops. Tops all white and plaited. You should go at night, Miss Laura, they said; it would look more exciting-like, at night. Mr. Armistead telephoned to a Bradford woolcomber he knew; “my daughter who does those articles,” he said. Laura took a bus to Bradford, and promptly fell in love with the superb spectacle of wool-combing: the gleaming, lustrous wool, the million dithering needles, the men's grimy humorous faces and naked torsos, the heaped fleeces in shadowed bins.

“Why did I ever begin this job?” she thought, despairing: “I shall never finish it, if I work till I'm a hundred.”

For the scheme grew and grew, gaining strength from, making relevant to itself, every impact on Laura's mind of the West Riding
world. At first she had merely envisaged a few firmly topical drawings; then the thing shaped itself as an illustrated article, then as a book.

“Like George Walker's
Costumes of Yorkshire, 1816,”
thought Laura boldly. “After all, why not?”

But still she was not satisfied; something nagged. Then one day when she was reading J. Redwood Anderson's fine poem
Iron
, the notion was born: But of course Frederick should be writing poems for this book! Laura wrote off at once to Frederick.

Frederick was at this time the editor of a “high-brow” weekly of small circulation, fine taste, and progressive views; it was always on the verge of bankruptcy, but as often escaped because of the real devotion of some of its highly influential subscribers. Laura subscribed to it loyally, in spite of the grumbles of Mr. Armistead, who, having once picked it up and read therein a political article which made his hair stand on end, disliked to see it about the house, and called it “That Bolshevist rag of Frederick's.” Frederick therefore had many pre-occupations nowadays; but he remained a punctual and copious correspondent. On this occasion, however, Laura had to wait a week for her reply. Then Frederick in his large sprawling handwriting declined her suggestion—which, however, he thought quite admirable and had considered very seriously.
I have been absent so long from the West Riding
, wrote Frederick,
and have so completely lost touch with its springs of feeling and modes of thought, that no creative impulse can reach me from that source. I regret more than I can say that I should be cut off from my roots in this way, for I feel that, lacking those roots, I cannot hope to nourish any large poetic growth; but there it is; my native Riding is gone from me
.

Laura was deeply disappointed, for herself, for Frederick, and for the West Riding. That Frederick should have given up all thoughts of producing a major work was terrible. The West Riding had driven him out and lost its poet. For herself, she felt more troubled, more agitated, than ever about her own industrial drawings.
Why? Because there's nobody left but me for the whole damn job, Laura answered herself mournfully. And suddenly, as if with a click, a jar, the scheme fell into order in her mind.

“My God,” thought Laura, “I've been shirking. Of course I must do the whole confounded industry, just as Edward described it to me, from the raw fleece to the finished article.”

She gave a sigh of horrified but eager expectation, feeling at once maddened and exhilarated by the huge prospect of work before her.

Now that her plan was thus finally settled, the hours she devoted to it rose and rose in number, and her earnings as a result sank and sank. Presently she was obliged to impose on herself a strict rule: sufficient work to earn the week's essential contribution to the household had to be begun first thing oh Tuesday morning—she spent most of Monday at Carr Vale—and finished before
Industrial Landscape
was touched. But though one could measure out one's hours, it was not possible to control one's vision.

“Ah, my beloved West Riding,” thought Laura, screwing up her eyes to get a young woman in a shawl, leaning against the door, into better perspective as the tram, crammed with home going workers, toiled painfully up the long steep hill from Carr Vale into Hudley: “Ah, my West Riding, loved and hated, I will express you yet!”

“Ye that do truly and earnestly repent you of your sins,” intoned the priest, “and are in love and charity with your neighbours, and intend to lead a new life, following the commandments of God, and walking from henceforth in His holy ways; Draw near with faith, and take this holy Sacrament to your comfort; and make your humble confession to Almighty God, meekly kneeling upon your knees.”

“Almighty God,” began Ludo, bowing his head and clasping
his hands on his breast: “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed.…”

He was offering the Holy Sacrifice that morning with special intention for all in England who were desolate in spirit and financially oppressed, that they might put off the old sinful Adam and put on the new man.

“We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry for these our misdoings,” murmured Ludo. “The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable.”

Beneath and through the words he was praying that all who dwelt in this little section of God's earth called England might be purged by the suffering they were now experiencing, and be re-created in the joy of true righteousness and holiness.

“Have mercy upon us, Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father,” pleaded Ludo:! “Forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter Serve and please Thee In newness of life, To the honour and glory of Thy Name….”

Ludo was happy; he felt that he was taking all the sins of his country on his shoulders, and making an offering of himself thus burdened before God. He made this offering every morning, for he would not be found wanting to his country in the hour of her distress.

Meanwhile Geoffrey and Madeline left school and came home “for good”.

Geoffrey had shot up into a slim personable young man, taller than anyone else in the house—a fact of which he was very proud. He was also proud of his slender hips and waist, and was apt to stand in a curved attitude, with abdomen retracted, in which he fondly imagined his figure showed to advantage, though to older
observers he merely looked as though he were about to break in the middle. Geoffrey had been a brilliant athlete at school, a fine cricketer, a good runner; he had quite a collection of silver cups, large and small, for various sports where speed was necessary. The Armisteads were all sorry that this brilliant social figure should have to return home to a shabby house and a decaying business, and if the lad had shown any strong desire to enter another profession, would have made great sacrifices to enable him to do so. Laura, remembering Frederick, was in particular prepared to back her nephew to the death if he did not wish to enter the mill. At the same time, for the first occasion in her life seeing a situation as the older generation saw it, she realised she would feel very sorry for her father if Geoffrey should desert Blackshaw Mills, for she knew well that Mr. Armistead had only kept the business going through all these desperate troubles for Geoffrey's sake. But Geoffrey seemed to take it for granted that he should become the mainstay of the family firm—other lads from Rugby did the same, it seemed, so it was quite proper. But since, unfortunately, there was little for him to do at the mill just now, Mr. Armistead decided to send him for a three years' course to the Hudley Technical. Geoffrey loathed this notion.

“Pretty rotten after being at a decent school,” he said.

But Mr. Armistead, so indulgent to his grandson in other matters, was firm in this, for he remembered Edward Hinchliffe with his notebooks and his skeins of wool, and looking regretfully at the difference in business capacity between Edward and Ludo, he put it all down to Edward's studies at the Hudley Technical, and was determined that Geoffrey should enjoy this advantage too. It was a remarkable tribute to Edward, thought Laura; Edward would be amused if he knew. Some other business men, fathers of Geoffrey's friends in the town, were so much struck by Alfred Armistead's good sense—they tended to lean on the older generation, who had lived good, stable lives, in this present insecurity—that they made their sons attend the Hudley Technical
too. So Geoffrey and his friends went off disgustedly together. (Laura thought they must be a great nuisance there—amongst the sober Elementary School lads, the foremen and mechanics of the future—with their obscure public school slang and their arbitrary codes of manners; but after all that was not her problem.) In a casual, careless way, always apparently about to be late, to his mother's distress, but never quite being so, for somebody or other's “bus” always came to the rescue, Geoffrey got himself off to his classes with fair regularity every morning.