Taken completely by surprise at this, Spenton raised his head to look more closely at the young man. “I don’t quite follow you, I am afraid,” he said.
On this, clutching his cap, eyes lowered, Michael began to speak about the piece of land down in the Dene that his father had always wanted, always dreamed of having. “Ever since a was a bairn,” he said, “before ever a started doon the pit, he would make mention of that bit of land. He never took to the work underground, you see, sir, he never could see nay sense in it.”
How could he explain to this man, who nodded as he listened, who owned thousands of acres, who might for all he knew have as many rooms in his house as there were cottages in Thorpe colliery—how could he explain his father’s rages, the mask of sufferance that the years had brought to his face?
“His strength is not what it was,” he said. “He has been workin’ doon the mine, man and boy, for forty year or more. There is nowt else for a man to do in Thorpe.” He raised his eyes to look squarely at his benefactor. “So much money a would never have thowt to get, never in the world. A dinna know if it would be enough. It is about two acres, measurin’ to the bord of the beck, so my father says.”
Land well watered and sheltered from the worst of the weather. His father’s idea was to grow vegetables and fruit and take his produce by packhorse to the seaside and sell to folks that were passing. “A dinna know if it would be enough,” he said again, and fell silent.
Spenton said nothing for some time. He was well disposed toward the young man before him, though this had little to do with the fact that he had won five hundred guineas on the result of the match—it was the winning that mattered to him, not the sum. He had noted the bearing of the Thorpe champion, the natural dignity; he admired the athleticism and the fighting spirit he had shown in yesterday’s game. But it was something deeper than this that weighed with him now. In every syllable Bordon had uttered there had been love for the father, strong and unashamed, a love that might never have been directly expressed—Spenton knew the taciturn habit of the mining people. He himself had two sons. For the younger he had bought a commission in the Dragoon Guards; the elder, who would one day inherit the estate, had no profession other than that of man about town. Sometimes he had paid the tradesmen’s bills and on occasion the gambling debts. They were civil to him, but neither of them had ever given him cause to think he was held in any particular affection. Neither of them, really, had ever had to fight for anything, any more than he had himself. He met with money problems from time to time, but these could always be solved in one way or another; they had never obliged him to change his style of life, or even to think of doing so. He rarely went anywhere near the mine, had never been down it. He had his rents, the leaseholders saw to the running. For the first time, listening to Bordon talk of his father, it had occurred to him to wonder what it might be like to toil and hate the toil and never have any freedom from it that was not consumed in weariness.
“It would be enough and to spare if you take the value by acre,” he said. “Young man, the Dene and all the land surrounding it as far as the coast have been in the possession of my family for a very long time.”
He saw his visitor relax the posture of his shoulders in a movement that was not a slump exactly, but a kind of drooping. “No,” he said quickly, “I am not refusing to sell you the land, but there must be a reversion of ownership after a fixed term—I must retain the right of repossession. Wingfield and all that belongs to it must pass to my son when I am gone, and so it must to his son, in due course. We shall insert a clause defining the term of the leasehold. Shall we say forty years? That should be long enough for your father, eh? At the expiry of that time, the land, the acreage, whatever is done with it or built on it, will be returned to the estate. Would such an arrangement be satisfactory to you?”
Hardly believing the words, after the anticipated refusal, Michael began to stammer his thanks. He felt behind his eyes the threat of tears that would shame him if they came.
Spenton held up his hand. “It is agreed, then. A forty-year lease. Would you like the agreement to be made directly with your father?”
“No, sir, thank you, a would like to surprise him with it.”
“Well, it amounts to the same thing. I shall have the notary brought over from Hartlepool. If you will return here, let us say the day after tomorrow, toward eleven o’clock in the morning, we can have the deed of sale drawn up and signed in proper form.”
32
Michael had to find explanations for the summons to Wingfield and for this second visit and the absence from work it would entail. Lord Spenton was thinking of having side walls built on the handball court, he told his father, and this would mean converting to the English game, which was more complicated, as the ball could be bounced from the side walls as well as the front wall, and four players could take part. As this year’s colliery champion, he had been asked to inquire into general opinion on the matter and make a report to his lordship. He was not used to lying and went too much into detail, but his father showed no sign of doubting the matter. In midmorning on the appointed day he set off to walk the two miles or so of rising ground to Wingfield.
Spenton himself was not present at the meeting. He had left instructions with Roland Bourne, who dictated the terms to the notary. Then, while the copy was being made, the steward quit the room on other business, leaving Michael and the notary alone together.
For a while there was no sound but the scratching of the pen. Michael sat and waited, still in a state of only half belief that this was really happening. He had said nothing to anybody about the agreement reached with Lord Spenton, wanting it to come to his father as a complete surprise.
His copying still not quite finished, Bathgate laid down his pen, glanced up, met Michael’s eye, glanced away again, cleared his throat with a rasping sound. “Young man,” he said, “you have been fortunate, but it is within my power to make you more fortunate yet.”
Taken by surprise at this announcement, Michael made no immediate reply. He saw the notary take up his pen again and heard him say, in the same solemn and measured tones, “I am one who believes in helping a young person to fulfill his promise. I am prepared to buy this piece of land from you, as a private transaction between us, you understand. I can offer you double the price you have paid. That is to say, double the price recorded here, which is stated as received, but which in fact has not been paid, since no sum of money has actually passed out of your possession. I will give you one hundred guineas, cash in hand.”
“A want to give the land to my father,” Michael said, and once more encountered the gaze of the notary, which had grown steadier and sharper in the making of the offer.
“He will not get much of a living from such a small plot.” Bathgate glanced down at the paper before him. “Less than three acres. Nothing prevents you from selling. It is leasehold, the period of ownership is stated, the date of reversion is stated, but the document contains no restriction on your right to dispose of the property as you see fit. With a hundred guineas you could quit the mine for good—no more toiling in the dark, sweating your life away. You are a likely fellow, I can see that. You could set up in some business, manufacturing say—there are excellent opportunities in the pottery trade. Or you could set up a shop or buy a share in a slaving venture—that is the thing nowadays, you acquire a share in a cargo of Africans, you buy sugar and rum with the proceeds of the sale, and you make a handsome profit on the London Exchange when your ship returns. You increase your investment on each voyage and in a few years you find yourself a rich man. I have seen it happen to others.”
“A canna sell the land, sir, it is not truly mine.”
“How, not truly yours? We are presently engaged in drawing up a deed that will convey it to you.”
“No, a mean … If a had thowt to make a profit from the first, that would be different. Sellin’ it now would be like sellin’ my own father, it is him that wants it.” He could see no sign
of understanding on the notary’s face. “Tha could offer me double again an’ a wouldna sell it,” he said more loudly, and in a tone more emphatic.
“I see.” Bathgate lowered his head and resumed his copying, and for some minutes there was again only the scratching of the pen to be heard. Michael had not really believed that the notary was concerned to give him a helping hand. But what came now made him less sure of this. Bathgate finished his task, laid the documents side by side on the desk and said, “Mr. Bourne will take these to Lord Spenton for his signature, then he will return to see you make your mark and to witness the signature. I shall sign as second witness. You will not sell to me, well and good. I made you an offer in the line of business. Let me give you a piece of advice. Sell to nobody, nobody at all. I have reason to think, between you and me, that there is interest in that land, and who has a piece of it, however small, will be likely to profit very considerably.”
“A dinna see what tha means, sir.”
The notary paused again, remembering the arrogant manner of the man who had come to question him. Close questions about rights of access, the title to the line of the shore. Only thoughts of making a way through could lead a man to visit a notary with questions of that kind.
“They may be purposing to take the coal that way,” he said. “Here in the County of Durham, who owns the land where the wagons pass can prosper greatly on the wayleave.”
“What is it, a wayleave? Tha means a charge for the passin’ of the coal?”
“When it is over private ground, yes. And when it is a question of saving costs for the owner of the mine or the lessees, the charge can be high. I have a client, I do not mention his name, who receives two thousand five hundred pounds a year, without lifting a finger, for a wayleave over Wickley Moor, a pittance of ground scarcely above two hundred yards in extent. Say nothing of this to anyone, if you know what is in your interest. Of course, I may be wrong—time will tell. But if there is benefit, I would rather see it go to a local man than some interloper from London who puts on airs and thinks he is superior.”
Michael uttered his thanks for the information, which he saw was well meant, and promised to keep it in mind. But nothing in the notary’s words, whose significance in any case he had not yet fully grasped, caused the slightest wavering in his determination to make a gift of the land to his father. When, some time later, he issued from Wingfield with the deed in his hands, this determination was as strong as ever.
His father had left for work that day at the usual hour. These summer mornings the world was alive with birdsong; there were clumps of meadowsweet in the fields, growing tall where the hedges gave protection.
It was in this season that Bordon experienced the bitterness of servitude most keenly. The promise of the day, the sense of strengthening light, the openness of the countryside around him—everything he saw and felt brought home to him the knowledge of his subjection, the knowledge that he would soon be thrust down into darkness. He minded less in the winter, going from the dark to the dark. But at this time of the year the light was clear as he reached the mine, as he bound his limbs in the loops of rope and took a grip on David and heard the banksman shout that all was clear for the descent. It was the world of light he was leaving; it would be a different light he was drawn up to at the end of his stint, a light that had spent its promise, as he had spent his strength in the hours of hacking out the coal in the cramped space of the seam, with no light but the candle flame for guide.
At the time that his eldest son was listening to the scratch of the notary’s pen, about halfway through the shift—though he did not go by any measurement of time, only by the amount of coal he had hewed out—he was on his knees, striking with a short-handled pick at the glinting face of the coal. The putter and his mate were working at his back; they were at a distance from him, dragging the loaded corves along the gallery toward the pit bottom.
He was striking with short, rapid strokes to free the coal from its bedding of slate. The cracking sounds of impact prevented him from hearing the first signals of strain from the timbers overhead, strangely like a man bringing up phlegm from his throat, preparatory to spitting. Had he heard them he would have known what they meant; he would have downed tools and crawled away from the face and might perhaps have saved himself. By the time he heard the roar of collapse, it was too late. The pillar of coal that had been left to support the roof buckled sideways toward him, the heavy timbers and the mass of stone they had held back fell down on him and crushed his back and legs and covered his body.
He was facedown, powerless to make the smallest movement. He felt no pain at first, only a paralyzing constriction of the chest and a sense of terrible harm done to him. The weight of the rock pinned his body down and kept his face pressed close to the ground, but some chance shift in the fall had spared his head and left a space below his mouth and chin, and so granted him the cruel respite of some minutes more of consciousness and growing pain. Into this bowl his blood dripped heavily. He could hear the splash of it. He could see the shine of the beck. Someone was throwing pebbles into the water, trying to prevent his boat from winning.
33
“There is much to be done,” Erasmus Kemp said, “but I knew before I set out that that would be the case.”
He was where he had so much looked forward to being, in the drawing room of Ashton’s house, talking to Jane Ashton, telling her about his plans for the mine. Ashton himself was not present, a happy circumstance. “Time is being wasted there through faulty planning,” he said. “And money with it—the two things go together.”
He was swept by the wish to lay everything at her feet, all that he had seen and learned during his visit, all his intentions for improvement and profit. She was intensely present as she sat there before him, her eyes, her voice, the form of her body in the loose gown. As always now, whether he was with her or not, thoughts of his mining enterprise and the desire to have her in his arms were inextricably mingled—it was like embracing the future. And she saw the desire for her expressed in his eyes and in the postures of his body and felt a response to it, an excited wish to be joined with him in giving and receiving. He was so fine, with his certainty, his passionate directness of speech, his fiery looks, his mouth so firm and determined. His plans for the mine were homage to her; she knew herself to be necessary to him, powerful in granting and withholding.
He told her about his plans to make more shafts and sink them deeper. A thousand feet you could go down if you got the right people to do the boring. It was easier—and cheaper—to sink shafts than to construct long galleries from the pit bottom, galleries that got longer as more coal was conveyed away from the face. Besides, you saved money on labor, because the carriage of the coal took more time if the galleries were long. The putters were paid by the amount of coal they shifted, but this was not an efficient way of doing things, as they varied in their capacities and much time was lost in dragging the corves along the galleries. He thought it better to pay a fixed daily wage for shifting the hewer’s stint, this wage to be reduced if they fell short of their task or left without completing it.
“But won’t that mean they will lose money, these putters?” Jane said.
“No, no, nothing of the sort,” Erasmus said, smiling. “No, it means that more coal will be produced at less cost. The putters will still get their wage.”
Jane felt some shadow of uncertainty at this, as it seemed to her that there was a degree of confusion in his words between the amount of coal produced and the welfare of the working people, which was to put things in the wrong order. But he was so eager and so sure, his face was so full of ardor, such doubts seemed grudging and cold. And of course there was so much about it all that she did not yet understand …
“I suppose it will make their work less hard,” she said. “I mean, if the galleries are shorter, they won’t have so far to drag those heavy sledges with the loaded baskets on them.”
“Exactly.” Erasmus looked at her with a brill
iant air of approval for her sagacity. “You have put your finger on it,” he said. “Beautiful fingers you have got, and beautiful hands—all of you is beautiful.”
These last words had come out in a rush, totally unpremeditated. Her judgment and her person were closely, intimately blended in his mind; he was increasingly given to plunges of impulse in his talking with her. He saw the color rise in her face, though she did not look away. He had gone too far, he had embarrassed her, insinuating a knowledge of her beauties that still lay beyond his experience. There was need to retreat.
“I have discovered,” he said, “that in some collieries, but not at present in Durham, they lay metal tracks along the carriageways so that the loaded sledges may pass more easily along. I am intending to introduce this system at Thorpe. It would have great advantages. Metal tracks of that kind would lighten the task of the putters, enabling them to start the work at a younger age, with a great saving in wages.”
Jane’s confusion at the compliment, abating now but still present, prevented her from giving these last words the attention she might otherwise have paid them. Later she was to remember them and puzzle over how the task of the putters would thereby be lightened. “At what age do they begin this labor?” she asked.
“At seven, or such is the practice in Durham.”
“What, they would start dragging those baskets along the tracks at the age of seven?”
“No, no, at first their work is with the trapdoors, opening and closing the doors to keep the workings of the mine properly ventilated. No, they will not have the strength for the corves until they get to nine or ten.”
He paused now for some pleasurable moments; he had been keeping the best of the news for the end. “Spenton will be back in London the day after tomorrow,” he said. “I am intending to visit him at his house. There is a proposition I wish to make to him, something that came to me during my visit up there.” He waited for the simple question from her that would authorize him to confide his plans, bestow a blessing on them.
The Quality of Mercy: A Novel Page 28