The Adventures of Tom Leigh (5 page)

“Now then, Jeremy!” he said. “No bad language either in house or tentercroft, if you please. This is Tom Leigh, my new apprentice.”

“Aye, I've heard his name,” said Jeremy in an angry tone. “You promised me, master, that you wouldn't take an apprentice.”

“I did nowt o't'sort,” replied Mr. Firth sharply. “I said I shouldn't take him unless he seemed a useful sort of lad.”

“This lad'll never make a clothier.”

“Why not? His father were a weaver.”

“Missus will have something to say,” muttered Jeremy.

“That's enough!” bawled Mr. Firth, his fair face crimsoning. “The boy's an orphan, and I've bound him apprentice, and that's that. This is Jeremy Oldfield, my journeyman weaver,” he went on to me, dropping his voice to a more ordinary note. “You two will have to work together, so let me have no nonsense between you.”

“Of course not, master,” said Jeremy smoothly. “Pleased to meet you, Tom.”

He offered his hand and I took it. It was cold and clammy, so that it sent a kind of shudder through me.

“Mr. Oldfield,” I said, bowing my head.

“Oh, call me Jeremy, lad,” said he in a sugary tone.

I said: “Jeremy,” obediently, though it almost choked me.

“Father, father, father!” cried a voice, and a child came running out of the house towards us.

“My poppet, my darling,” said Mr. Firth fondly, picking her up in his arms. “How have you done without father this morning, love? Eh?”

“Mother says dinner is ready and you must come in,” said the child.

Her face was now turned towards us, so I saw her clearly. She was a pretty little thing enough, about seven years old I thought, with a reddish-gold colour of curly hair, very blue eyes and a very fair skin, like her father's. She had a merry smile, and over her left arm was draped a big sleek cat, of so exactly the same colour as her hair that it was somehow
comical. The cat, surprised and indignant no doubt at finding itself suddenly squashed between father and daughter, mewed and clawed for safety at what was nearest. This was Mr. Firth's arm, and he winced a trifle.

“Let Sandy down, love,” he said, still in the same fond tone. The child released the cat's waist, and it sprang away in a hurry to the top of a wall, then suddenly paused and sat erect gazing round, as if we did not concern it in the least. “This is my little girl, Gracie, Tom,” said Mr. Firth to me. “And you must always be very kind to her.”

“Yes, sir,” said I.

But Gracie scowled at me.

“Is he to live with us?” she asked.

“Yes, love.”

“Will he be like Jeremy?”

“Aye, I suppose in a way he will.”

Gracie buried her face in her father's shoulder and seemed to whisper to him, something probably adverse to me, for he coloured a little.

“Well, well, never mind, we shall see, we shall all do well enough together, I doubt not. Come in now, lads; dinner.”

“I can't leave the tentering, master,” said Jeremy in a sanctimonious tone.

“Well, come in as soon as you've done,” said Mr. Firth comfortably. “Come along, Tom.”

I thought Jeremy had expected I would be told to stay and help him, for his eyes had a gleam of hatred towards me; but Mr. Firth pushed me in front of him towards the trough.

“Best clean yourself up a bit, Tom,” he said. “Mrs. Firth is very particular about being clean at table.”

I washed myself at the trough, and Gracie danced out with a towel for me, and I went into the house feeling neat enough but ill at ease. The doorway went straight into a big room, the housebody they called it, with a long table and plenty of chairs and a big meal-ark and a tall clock in the corner and a huge coal fire blazing up the broad chimney, and a hearthrug of coloured bits of cloth in front of it, on
which lay Sandy the cat washing himself. A broad staircase rose up at one side. The table was set for a meal, with a big jug of ale in the centre and a plate piled with crisp oatcake, and Mrs. Firth was taking a pie out of the oven, with a rough brown oven cloth in her hand.

“Margaret, this is Tom Leigh, our new apprentice,” said Mr. Firth.

Mrs. Firth put the pie carefully on the table and then looked sideways at me.

“He's big for his age,” she said disapprovingly.

She was tall and thin, with very fair hair rather tightly dressed under a very stiff cap, and blue eyes like Gracie's only a little paler. A few years ago she had been a pretty woman, I thought, but now her lips were rather too tightly closed, and she had an air, not exactly peevish or petulant, but rather as though she thought herself superior to being a clothier's wife and found its tasks too heavy for her. For all that, I thought, she was a woman of good principle, who would do her duty if it killed her and however uncomfortable it might make those around.

“He'll be handy for fetching coals and water for you, Meg,” said Mr. Firth in an apologetic tone.

“He'll eat his weight in meat, I'll be bound,” said Mrs. Firth in her rather prim speech, tossing her head.

“Your father has apprentices, Meg,” said Mr. Firth.

“Yes, but not from the poorhouse. From good respectable families we all know.”

“Well, give the lad a chance,” said Mr. Firth.

We sat down at table and Gracie said a childish grace. The pie was delicious, and a loaf of bread we ate with it was crisp and new. Mr. Firth asked me if I would have a second helping, but I declined though I could well have eaten it, fearing to appear greedy after what Mrs. Firth had said.

“I'm sorry you don't care for my pie, Tom Leigh,” said Mrs. Firth, again tossing her head.

“I don't wish to eat more than my share,” I blurted.

“Foolish boy! Pass up your plate,” said Mrs. Firth severely.

Jeremy came in and ate very heartily, though not in a very elegant style. I marvelled he did not see how much Mrs. Firth disliked his manners, for she kept primming her mouth and looking away from him.

When the meal was over Mr. Firth took me upstairs to the workshop.

This was a big room, with two looms standing side by side beneath a long row of windows. Two or three loom beams, long round baulks of timber, leaned empty in one corner; in another lay a great sack of wool. A couple of very old pieces of cloth, the sort you use to cover the loom when you stop work on Saturdays, had been tossed into a third corner. A peg board for warping stood by the wall opposite the looms, and on a table near by stood a neat pile of straw spindles full of yarn. At one end of the room was a big double door, going right down to the level of the floor; as we drew near it Jeremy suddenly skipped ahead and threw the leaves wide. I stepped back, startled, for another couple of steps forward would have taken me right out into the air. Mr. Firth was vexed.

“Be careful, Jeremy,” he said. “We don't want the lad to take a tumble.”

“No, indeed, Mr. Firth,” agreed Jeremy; but his black eyes glittered with malice so that I felt he would have been only too pleased to see me fall.

“What are the doors for?” I asked.

“It's a taking-in place,” said Mr. Firth carelessly. “Now, Jeremy, you show Tom round and then let him help you; or you can put him to carding. I'm going to weave.”

He spoke like a man who withdrew from vexations to a loved craft, and so it proved. He sat down at one of the looms and began to work the treadles and throw the shuttle from side to side—at least “throw” is the word they use for this action; it is really more like sliding. I watched him for a moment or two; the cloth grew rapidly. Mr. Firth
with his quick temper might be a trifle uncertain in everyday life, I thought, but he knows cloth, he weaves evenly and well.

The other loom was empty; probably the piece of cloth now drying on the tenters had been woven there. Jeremy set to work warping, that is getting the yarn on to the beam in the loom, for a fresh piece of cloth.

This warping is such a difficult and complicated business to explain, though simple enough to do when you know how, that I most earnestly hope I do not have to explain it in court. I do not really see why I should have to do so, as it does not concern the story of the thefts, except that from the moment I began to turn the beam handle for Jeremy as he stood ready with the loops of yarn over his left arm, it was settled for good that I should get no fair dealing from him. For I had often done this for my father, and knew just how it should be done, so there was no reason for Jeremy to be continually “calling” me, as they say here when they mean scolding. He complained that I stood in his light, that my feet were in the way, that I turned the handle before he was ready and too quick and too sudden and too late—in fact, everything I did was wrong. My heart swelled as I listened to him; I thought: “Seven years of this!” However, presently Mr. Firth rescued me, saying irritably:

“Put him to carding, Jeremy, if he frames so ill.”

Carding is hardish work but not unpleasant. A pair of cards is something between a pair of hairbrushes and a pair of wooden hands for patting butter into shape; each card is flat and square, with a flat handle off one side, and covered all over with little metal bristles. You put a lump of wool, a lump of sheep's fleece, on to one card, and then you draw it off with the other card, and so back and forth until what has been a curly, yellowish fleece turns into a soft white flat tissue. It is always a pleasure to me to see this happen. When the wool is all soft and white like this it is ready for spinning into yarn. It is an odd and amusing thing about cloth making, as my father used to say to me;
you go from breadth to length and then from length to breadth. The fleece, broad across the sheep's back, has to be turned into a long fine thread of yarn, and then many threads of yarn have to be woven together to make a broad piece of cloth. This wool had been dyed blue; it was a cheerful colour and made a bright tissue. I got on well enough at carding, for I had done it before; Mr. Firth looked at my work himself, and approved it, so Jeremy could not complain.

All the same, the afternoon seemed terribly long; I was most truly thankful when at last the light began to dim a little, and Mr. Firth stopped work. The evening passed drearily enough; we ate a good supper; then Mrs. Firth went upstairs to put Gracie to bed, and Jeremy slipped out while she was absent; Mr. Firth sat smoking a long white pipe and reading a newspaper, and I sat hunched in a chair far from the fire, trying not to go to sleep. It grew dark, Mrs. Firth returned and lit the candles and began to knit a stocking.

“Shall I go out and fetch the cloth in from the tenter, master?” I said timidly, wishing to show myself willing for any task.

“Fetch piece in? Nay, lad, it'll not be dry yet,” said Mr. Firth. “Druft was poor today—not much wind.”

“You mean you'll leave it out all night?” said I, astonished.

“Aye, Tom. Weather's set fair. Did you not do so at Lavenham?”

“Why, no,” said I, for indeed when a piece was completed and came off the loom it was taken away and we saw no more of it.

“Ah, you've a lot to learn, Tom,” said Mr. Firth, shaking his head comfortably. “But never mind; you're a willing lad, I can see that. I daresay you'll do well enough come a month or two. Draw up to the fire, Tom, you must be starved to death out there.” By “starved” he meant, as I learned later, “very cold”.

“He'd be better to go up to bed and get his sleep,” said Mrs. Firth without looking up from her needles. “He can hardly hold his head up as it is.”

“Well, happen so,” agreed Mr. Firth. “Off with you, lad.”

“And where is he to sleep, pray?” said Mrs. Firth acidly. “You have given no thought to that, Stephen.”

“Jeremy and I will knock a bed together for him tomorrow.”

“What about tonight?”

“If it please you, mistress, there are some old pieces in the workshop where I could very well sleep tonight,” I said hastily, not wishing to become an object of contention between man and wife, nor to share a room with Jeremy.

“It's a good notion,” said Mr. Firth. “Let it be so, Meg.”

“I will get you a coverlet,” said Mrs. Firth, rising.

She opened a press and drew out a thick woollen cover.

“Give him a candle, wife,” said Mr. Firth.

“He doesn't need a candle,” snapped Mrs. Firth. “There's moonlight enough.”

So I took the coverlet and bade them goodnight—to which Mr. Firth replied heartily, Mrs. Firth with her disapproving air—and climbed the stairs in darkness, and I spread the coverlet over the pile of cloth and smoothed it out, in darkness too. Then I cried out and started back, for something had torn a deep scratch on my hand. I sucked the wound and looked more carefully, and there in the moonlight two green orbs gleamed, as Sandy the cat turned his head.

“Well, it's certain nobody wants me here,” I said.

Jeremy hated me, little Gracie scowled at me, Mrs. Firth abominated me, Mr. Firth had been persuaded into taking me against his will. Now even the cat resented me. It was the last straw. I had either to laugh or cry. I was ashamed to cry, so I laughed and put out a hand and stroked Sandy's head.

“I mean thee no harm, pussy,” said I jokingly. “If this is thy usual couch, bed here with me.”

After a moment, enjoying my caress I suppose, the cat began to purr, then he rolled over on his back and played paws with me, keeping his claws now carefully sheathed. The end of it was we lay down together, with Sandy curled into my side, his head on my ribs, my arm round his flanks. I own I took some comfort from his friendliness and the warmth and softness of his fur.

I am writing down only those events which really concern the thefts and their discovery, but it is surprising how many things, appearing very small at the time, turned out to matter. The cat Sandy, for instance, had quite an important part to play, though little he knew it, and so had the taking-in doors. However, the next thing of importance that happened was the visit of the pedlar.