The Banishment of Jessop Blythe. A novel

Front matter

JOSEPH HATTON'S NOVELS. NEW HANDSOME LIBRARY EDITIONS. In cloth gilt, gilt top, 2S. 6d. 4th Edition. UNDER THE GREAT SEAL. "There is force and vigour in every line."— Acade?ny. "Bristling with incident and written with ease. We have no doubt it will obtain as much popularity as has fallen to the share of Mr* Hatton's other works."— Pall Mall Gazette. 6th Edition. THE PRINCESS MAZAROFF. "There are so many good things in 'The Princess Mazaroff' this brilliantly written story." — Queen. A MODERN ULYSSES. "There is not a page which has not upon it the stamp of power and style." — Daily Telegraph. "The writer reaches real dramatic force."— Spectator. 14th Edition. BY ORDER OF THE CZAR. The Tragic Story of Anna Klosstock, Queen of the Ghetto. CLYTIE. " If Clytie, in cold, silent Parian, was a favourite, her namesake, in real, hearty, genuine flesh and blood, will be loved a thousandfold. ..

The heroine is as fair and womanl)' as the hero is brave an<l un fortunate." — Standard. CHRISTOPHER KENRICK " The book contains so many well-executed characters and exhibi tions of pleasantry akin to true humour, that it must be pronounced a success that will contribute to Mr. Hatton's popularity." — The Athenæum. THE VALLEY OF POPPIES. "A charming story, tranquil and dreamy as its title." — Daily Telegraph. THE TALLANTS OF BARTON. "It has a certain touch of the grace which belongs to Tennyson's Lord of Burleigh.' " — Illustrated London News. BITTER SWEETS. " His sympathies are always with kindly, charitable, straight forward dealings, and he makes the reader feel that this is genuine." — Pall Mall Gazette. NOT IN SOCIETY "A vastly entertaining work." — Sunday Times. IN THE LAP OF FORTUNE.

"Lucy is picturesque enough for the central figure in a cottage idyll, and it is in such tender bits of domesticity that we see Joseph Hatton at his best. — Athenæum. CRUEL LONDON. "Nothing so powerful has appeared in fiction since Charles Reade wrote his immortal story of 'Hard Cash. '"— Morning Post. THE QUEEN OF BOHEMIA. " To read Mr. Hatton's new novel, 'The Queen of Bohemia,' without being amused would be impossible to anyone capable of estimating and enjoying inventive power, constructive skill, and bright, graphic diction."— -Daily Telegraph. London: HUTCHINSON AND CO., 34 Paternoster Row. A NOVEL BY Joseph Hatton AUTHOR OF "CKUEL LONDON," "CLYTIE, " "THREE RECRUITS," "UNDER THE GREAT SEAL," "BY ORDER Oh THE CZAR," ETC. ETC. Xonfcon 1895 HUTCHINSON & CO. 34 PATERNOSTER ROW (All rights reserved) PRINTED AT N1MEGUEN (HOLLAND) BY II.

Chapter I

god's factory. They were a company of ropemakers. For two hundred years they and their ancestors had been tenants under the Dukes of Devonshire. In this current year of grace the toilers occupy the building in which their forefathers worked, and on the same easy terms. They pay no rent, nor ever did. Yet they possess the most wonderful house of labour in the world. It is the entrance to what is known to topography as the Devil's Hole ; but if ever building gave special evidence of the Divine hand it is to be seen in this cavern of the High Peak. It has a dome and a nave that dwarf St. Peter's and St. Paul's. The ropers' drums and wheels and flying yarn make a music of their own. It is as if the men and women gave tunes to the cordage which they spin. Many and various are the strings of the industrial harp.

Once in a way a woman's voice rises above the buzz of the rotating yarn, and a chorus breaks the monotony of the daily toil. This is generally a jubilate, in which the younger voices fling out the refrain with open throats — "Happy Land! Happy Land! What e'er my fate in life may be; Still again, still again my heart shall cling to Thee ! " Their happy land is this Cave of the Peak in the village of Castleton. Human fancy could hardly conceive for their unconscious worship a more im pressive temple in which the Divine edict should be fulfilled: "In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat bread. " It may be said without hyperbole that this house of toil is frescoed by the Almighty. For countless ages His journeyman Time has been at work decorating the massive walls and dome. Thousands of years before the arts of Greece and Rome, centuries anterior to the rise of civilisation in Central Africa, when Egyptian architecture was only a suggestion in its palm trees, and the artist had not yet been born to translate its lotus flower into decorative design, this factory in the Peak was graven, painted, carved, stencilled, inlaid, embossed, and otherwise beautified by the tireless Master, who still adds daily touches to the greys and greens, the blues and yellows and neutral tints, that make up the general tone of the massive limestone, that was ancient when Noah was a boy.

The floor is solid with the debris of the newly-created world. In this Temple that dominates the Peak, the rope makers of Cavedale, men and women, girls and boys, work and live together as a model Socialistic community, but without the noisy reclame of a cheap democracy. They fulfil their daily duties quietly and in peace, under the unwritten laws of a united family. The Throne is their ground landlord, and ever since there were Dukes of Devonshire, and in the old time before them, the Cavendishes have been the leaseholders. These ropemakers of Castleton, have seven mas ters. When one dies or is thrown out (an excep tional incident, which forms one of the chief motives of this present history) the eldest son of the family takes his place. If there is no son, then the oldest GOD'S FACTORY. 3 workman of the dead master succeeds.

There are to this day some two or three score of persons em ployed under these seven families. Five of the mas ters belong to one family; two to another. It is a very close borough, and picturesque as it is close. Strangers who have observed in books of travels pictures of the High Peak cavern, are inclined to wonder what the weird, gallows-like uprights and posts are, with flying ropes and hanging weights, with adjacent suggestions of vast wheels and curious figures standing out against the darkness. This is the ropery. Each master has his walk. Seven rope walks traverse the stupendous excavation which is the hallway of the so-called Devil's Hole, with its headways and subways, its halls of Eblis and its dripping wells, its underground rivers and its other mysteries beyond. These are things that do not concern the ropers much.

In the old days there were ghosts in the cave, but the ropers were hardy folk and they had their free possession to maintain, so they paid no heed to ghosts nor took any account of the shadowy men in armour, who were said to appear in the grounds of Peveril's Castle, immediately above them. Less than half a century ago the ropers not only worked here, but they lived in the factory, built themselves huts, and one more enterprising than the rest, and of a wider ambition, erected a stable. In those days the cavern presented a more curious appearance than it does now, although there is still a small building on one side of the ropery, which is used as an office by the guide who introduces visitors to the wonders of the ultimate cavern, and for whose behests a pathway has been railed off from the manufactory.

Mr. Ruskin probably never saw this High Peak house of labour. Otherwise the world would have heard something of it, since the recluse of the Lakes loves hand-made things, and delights in the primitive, the lowly, and the natural. The ropers of the Peak, who pay no rent and work in a factory made by God, spin and weave in the old Egyp tian way. Their ropes and twine, their halters and clothes-lines, their whipcord and cables, are all made by hand. Their factory has no doors. It is open to sun and shadow, to summer winds and winter blasts, and the ropers work there right through the year. It is a sheltered site. You arrive at it through a valley which is made musical by the brook that is born in the cavern and which now and then be comes a torrent — angry, yellow, opaque, terrible. At these times you know that the mighty cavern is in possession of the waters that are beneath the earth, that no living thing exists from end to end, though the torrent finds an exit that makes no claim upon God's Factory, which remains calm and still except for the whirr of the ropers' wheels or the chatter of men and women at their work.

Not that, talk loud as they may, their voices make much sound. What would in a smaller place, or one con fined with doors, be a great din, is as nothing in this mighty factory, which is lighted by a heaven made window, always clear and pure. As the floor dips at its furthest end the central opening is somewhat dwarfed. It has the effect of a great window which, as you approach it, opens out into space with a wonderful radiance. Finally it gives upon the cavern footpath, a narrow defile which has no distinctive name of its own. Some people call it Cavern road, others Cavern footpath, and some Under the Torr. Antiquarian authorities are inclined to regard it as a sufficiently integral portion of Cavedale to speak of it under that title, though Cavedale proper is the name given to the adjacent valley that winds round the eastern side of Peveril's Castle; while on the western side you GOD'S FACTORY. 5 look down the face of the rock upon the Devil's cavern, with its flashing brook just released from the cave, that should assuredly entitle the clough through which it sings to the name of Cavedale, by which it shall be known to the readers of the story of Jessop Blythe and the adventures of his daughter Adser.

When you have walked from the cavern until Nature's window reaches to the ground, you observe how the limestone front rises sheer to the sky with lichens and stray flowers upon its wrinkled face, and here and there a wild bird sweeping athwart the iron-grey rock and disappearing into the heavens above. It was in this untaxed factory of freemen that Jessop Blythe was haled before his peers, to suffer the penalty of the drone. For masters and men, labour and obedience was the legacy of God's Factory. In the most democratic of Socialistic communities labour is a condition of existence. When the ideal Commonwealth is started, there will be much more casting out of the lazy and the dissolute than is dreamed of by the open-mouthed idlers, who drink in the sophistries of long-haired and long-headed agitators in London, Chicago, and Paris.

Jessop Blythe had worked in the community since boyhood. Always a truant and a laggard he had over and over again broken the unwritten laws of the masters of Cavedale. Latterly he had taken to drink, and he was untrue to the best interests of his fellows. He had undersold them in the markets. He had reviled their occupation. He worked only by fits and starts, and had generally drifted to the bad. The masters were loth to move against him; but at last their patience was exhausted, and dis cipline demanded that he should be cast out from the hive. Fortunately for Jessop, he had a hardworking mother. She had succeeded to the business of her husband, who was a lapidary. Zodack Bradford was her foreman. He had held a similar position with her husband. Zodack was what Derbyshire people call ■ a character.

" Everybody is "a character" in the Peak country who is not of the common and regular patte'rn of humanity. Zodack in his way was a man of phrases. He shot his controversial opponents down with a queer saying or a rough epigram. He was also the cleverest lapidary in all the country. Old Blythe had put his son Jessop to the rope-making. The lad did not frame well for the cutting, engraving, or polishing of stones. He was dull-mettled, and there was an opening in the rope-walk, which in due course led to Jessop taking a master's place, in lieu of the ordinary succession. On becoming one ofthe Seven Masters, JessopBlythe had married Hesther Grattan, a Tideswell girl, and in less than a month from the day when he stood at the altar and swore to love and cherish her, he had taken to drink with a regularity and persistence that, devoted to his proper calling, would have led to prosperity.

Jessop had always been fond of a glass and a bit of company. He was popular at the alehouse, and the delight of Saturday night smoke-rooms, because he could sing a good song, and was " as sweet a whistler as ever cocked a lip," to quote the verdict of Castleton ; and the old town was fastidious in the matter of music, rejoiced in its Glee Club, and at Christmas time would give forth its " Halle lujah chorus" from the "Messiah," " Hark, the Herald Angels," and "The Star of Bethlehem," with an energy that was stimulated with mulled ale and rum punch, the recognised order of refreshment for the Waits all round about the regions of the Peak. When Jessop Blythe was haled before his fellows he had just been made a father. The new-comer was a girl. He had insisted upon drinking her GOD'S FACTORY. 7 health with his mid-day meal.

Any reason for a drink was a good reason with Jessop. Zodack Bradford said the youngest master roper had in one short year become the oldest waster and vagabond of the lot. Not that Zodack intended to imply that the ropemakers individually or collectively were vagabonds. Zodack was a just man. He knew that the ropers were a law abiding, sober, honest community; though once in six months every master made a point of "going on the spree," but combined business with pleasure. Once in six months each roper went forth into the world to sell his goods. There were no middle men connected with this cordage factory. Each master was his own commercial traveller ; and going upon the road twice a year each man, as a rule, made it a point of honour to enjoy himself, and it is believed by many that to get drunk once in a way is a very enjoyable, if not indeed a very healthy and wholesome, thing.

But the rope-makers would not allow this belief to break down the discipline of the management. Therefore Jessop Blythe had increased the disadvantages under which he laboured as a recalcitrant by being more or less inebriate when, in the middle of tea-time, the men and masters assembled to maintain the vitality of their unwritten laws and regulations. There was a great deal that was good in Jessop Blythe. This may be said of many a worse man. Zodack Bradford declares that nobody is all bad, not even the habitual criminal; but the good is so difficult to find that it is hardly worth looking for. He was very angry with Jessop, because he liked him, and had seen him grow up. Being none too well off at any time, and living to a great extent on his mother and in her house, Jessop had adopted a son.

He did not call him his son, but he treated him with paternal consideration. This youngster was a Welsh lad. His name was Lewis Tregarron. He had found his way from Cardigan, in Wales, with his widowed mother firstly to Cardiff, thence to Liverpool in some small trading vessel, to drift eventually, heaven knows how, to Chesterfield, where the mother had died in the workhouse. WTiile the Guardians, with a proper regard to the fair distribution of taxes for the poor, were trying to discover the parish to which the orphan was chargeable, Lewis Tregarron, with his high-sounding name, his empty pockets, and his no less empty stomach, set out to seek some more home-like nest than that which had been provided for him by the ratepayers of Chesterfield. Lewis Tregarron ran away from the workhouse, and one day, cold, hungry, thin, weird as to his sunken eyes and bony jaws, presented himself before the company of ropers at the entrance to God's Factory.

He was the most weary, dark-eyed, strange-looking little chap they had ever seen. Jessop Blythe took compassion upon him and succoured him. He was an intelligent lad, said he was eight years old, was born in Wales, had lived at Cardigan, had neither father nor mother, and was willing to work, but would rather die than go back to the Union, all of which pleased the ropers, and won the admiration of Jessop Blythe, who said he'd be hanged if any Union workhouse in the world should compel the lad to swig skilly or break stones so long as he lived. So Tregarron was fed and mended by Jessop's mother, not without much grumbling and protest, and was forthwith taken on at the ropery. They love to nickname men and things in the Peak. They called Jessop's mother "Stingy Blythe, " and for this they, no doubt, had warrant ; but they were not always justified in their nicknames, some of which were incongruous as relating to the character nicknamed, and others, when they were not humorous, descended to cynicism.

Be cause the waif Tregarron was thin and odd, and too little to be of any importance, they named him in a grand way "Tregarron, the Welshman," and the oldest master of the ropers, for the reason that he was of a mild and gentle temper, and benevolent and generous to a fault, they called "Billy Nipper."

Chapter II. They Spoke As One Man

Now this William Woodruffe, whom Castleton irreverently and inconsequentially called " Billy Nipper," was the mouthpiece of the community of God's Factory; and when Tregarron saw the men gather together, the women and boys leave the place, and Senior Master Woodruffe call upon Jessop Blythe to stand forward, he knew that his patron was going to have a bad time. Thereupon the lad hid himself behind one of the big drums, with its wreaths of twine, but presently sidled up to Jessop and touched his hand. Jessop looked down upon him and patted his head, as he might have patted a favourite dog, and Tregarron rubbed his head against Jessop's knees. A strange, curious, picturesque-looking little chap, this waif of a busy world. Great, dark eyes, long black hair, a thin wistful face, long arms, thin legs, dressed in a whitey-brown smock-frock, with a bit of yellow ribbon round his neck for a handkerchief; he looked like a Spanish gipsy or an Italian beggar lad, such as you may see lying on the steps of St. Mark's, in Venice, handsome in his shabby attire, just the kind of mortal that an artist would select for study, but with the something dark and uncanny in his aspect that common people, as a rule, would shut their doors against.

" Now yo, Tregarron, go away, " said the Senior Master, as severely as his gentle manner and soft voice would allow ; " yo can come back th' minute half-hour's up. " The Senior Master stood by one of the great twine drums, and the other masters were gathered round with the men, an earnest-looking lot of fellows, some of them lithe and strong, others old and bent. Tregarron looked up wistfully at Jessop, who in response stroked the lad's head, but looked away from him. "Am I to go?" "Aye, lad, do as mesters tell yo; they know what's best." Jessop spoke in a husky voice. There was some thing tender in his manner that seemed for a moment to trouble the Senior Master, who fidgeted with the twine that was wound round the great wheel. He was a white-haired .man, with a grey straggling beard and calm restful eyes.

He had seen his grandchildren grow up about him, men and women, most of them finding occupation in the ropery or at the adjacent lead mines, until cheap foreign lead had killed the English market; but some distant railway works had latterly given employment to others, and the ropery and the little town of Castleton, hard by the cave, was looking wistfully into a future when the locomotive should steam into the place and drive out the coaches and breaks and hired carriages that still give the village an old-world and cheery bustle of life. The lad went his way towards the mouth of the great cavernous workshop, looking back now and then, and at last, after standing for a moment like some fantastic figure of romance against the sky-window, disappeared as the Senior Master be gan to address the comrade who was to be deposed: but not before Jessop Blythe seeing that Tregarron had gone, flung back his head defiantly, and said, "Now, lads, what is it?

Out wi' it! Doan't yo think I'm drunk ! A chap isna made a fayther ivvery day, so I just had a sup to wet th' bargain. Why, good Lord, how black yo all look! And what's gotten yo, Billy Nipper? Cheer up, Billy — " "Jessop Blythe," said the Senior Master, breaking in upon Jessop's remarks, " we're glad yo're sober. " " It's a lie, I'm drunk ! " retorted Jessop, with a tipsy laugh. " Dri nk or sober, " said the Master, without change of tone or manner, "it'll mek no difference to this meetin'. It is no pleasant job we'n getten to do; but we're going to do it." " Ole reight, drive on, Billy, " said Jessop, with a grin that was intended to arouse a spirit of levity in the younger men, but it had no effect ; they had talked the business of the day over too seriously for that, and in a measure felt themselves engaged in an act of government.

The six united masters were their representatives, their tribunes, to whose places and profit, to whose authority they would one day succeed, each going forth twice a year to sell their goods in the towns of Buxton, Derby, Notting ham, and Sheffield, and having the right on those occasions to go on the spree for a day or two just as Billy Nipper himself did twice a year at Buxton, where he had sold his twine ever since he had been a master, now over thirty years. "I will drive on, Jessop Blythe, and it'll be a drive as yo're not likely to forget." "Then stir your stumps, Billy," said Jessop, with a sneer, " I doant want to stand here ole day, and what's more I winnat. " "The six masters and the men, here assembled, with sorrow have come to the conclusion that you re a hindrance to th' work o' th' ropery, and a disgrace to the community, and from this day forth, Jessop Blythe, we refuse to work wi' yo, to eat wi' yo, or to consort wi' yo ; it's felt that it's time we made an example o' yo for th' benefit of th' rest, and for maintainin' th' integrity of the Duke's ropery.

And we hereby and hereon, accordin' to our unwritten but inflexible laws, cast yo out from among us; yo are no longer master or man in this place, and no longer a comrade of any of us out of it; and that's all there is to say." " And so say we all ! " shouted masters and men, speaking as with one voice. It was the first time within the memory of the oldest roper that any man had been cast out ; but a precedent had been established by the second oldest roper who remembered his grandfather telling of a case in his early days, and so deep an im pression had the story made upon the second oldest roper that he had remembered some of the words of the formula of dismissal, more particularly that it was " hereby and hereon, and according to our un written but inflexible laws that from henceforth we neither work with you, eat with you, nor consort with you."

These words were therefore introduced into the Master's brief judgment and verdict. Jessop Blythe pulled his frieze jacket about his shoulders, and stood upright, facing his judges. He was a shock-headed, tall young man, loose of limb, with big hands, blue eyes, a large mouth, with the flabby kind of lips that love the bottle ; but there was something interesting, not to say pathetic, in the appearance of the outcast roper as he wiped his lips on his sleeve, and stretched himself to his full height. "So," he said, "that's what it's come to, mates? Well, I dur say you're reight. Zodack Bradford warned me not long sin' as my brother ropers would shunt me." Then it seemed as if his loose jointed limbs would not bear him stiffly up any longer, and he shifted his position. " Zodack's a bit of a wit, as yo know, and yo should hev heard him emphasize th' word Brother; but there, I doant want no bad blood; I'n long been tired o' this hole."

"Stop, Jessop Blythe," said the Master "yo know what this place means to us and our families, yo know that we doant blaspheme when we call it God's Factory; therefore, whatever yo've gotten to say, we'll not have th' roof defamed that's sheltered us and ours, and our fathers before us, and been a continual answer to our prayer of 'Give us this day our daily bread.' " The ropers remained silent during this dialogue. Some of them were not as enthusiastic about the rope-walk as their spokesman ; indeed, several might have been named who would have been glad to go out into the world and work in houses and finished buildings, and in towns and cities; but there was among them a certain kind of patriotic feeling for their untaxed workshop and their unwritten socialistic laws. " No offence, Billy, " said Jessop, with a smile, " I'd rayther parted wi' yo all over a social glass, but I dur say yo're reight.

I doant think I was ivver made for mouldering in a ropery, or runnin' into useless seed in a one-eyed village like Castleton ; I've often longed to be out and away over yonder hills, as is always a hedging a chap in, and seemin' to brag that yo conna get out; and now Til show 'em: my wife and me's nivver gotten on well, and I leave her i' good hands wi' my mother and Zodack Bradford, and she'll have the youngster as is born to-day to be a soart o' comfort to her; so that's all reight and reglar; and what isn't reight and reglar I'll put reight and reglar." As Jessop spoke he seemed to be mastering him self. His legs stiffened; his lips were now and then pressed firmly together; he stretched out his arms and flung his head back ; he was a sober man. " Whatever we can do for yo irrespective of the judgment we'n had to pass, and yo must remember, Jessop Blythe, that we've all tried to reform yo; and it seems Zodack Bradford had warned yo " "That's ole right," said Jessop, cutting short the Master's apologetic speech, which had excited a stir of satisfaction among the men, who hated to see Jessop take the business in so calm and friendly a spirit.

He unmanned them. They would have liked him to bully the Master and resist the decree; they wanted something to lean their moral backs against ; but here was Jessop making them feel small, not to say sorry, by his resignation. " I say again that's ole reight, dear owd Billy, and may this be the last, as it's the first, performance o' th' kind, I fancy ; but it was this as I wanted to say," and he turned and looked round the factory, fixing his eyes on the bright blue entrance into which the sun was shining, and then with a motion of his right arm in that direction, he said, " There's yonder lad Tregarron, as I've brought up this two year, sin' he were eight and a wanderer on the face o' the earth; keep him i' the ropery." " We will, lad, " said several voices ; the first time any man had spoken except the Master.

" And mek a law for him — yo can do it sin' yo can mek one to turn me out, and I dur say yo're reight; mek it a law as my place is kept oppen for him; so as he shall be mester instead o' me; he'll be man enough for it by he's eighteen— will yo, lads?" Masters and men turned to their spokesman, who nodded his approval, and the answer came straight from every mouth, "We will." "That's all Tn gotten to say. Except, good-bye, lads." Lying at Jessop's feet was an old grey overcoat, thin with wear, bleached by many a sunrise that had seen him striding up Cavedale to work, when he was in good fettle, and which in the factory he used as a cushion for his after-dinner siesta, when he would smoke and talk to the boys about foreign countries and men who made fortunes beyond the seas. Tregarron was wont to be his chief listener on these occasions, and he too would have dreams, as his master had, of going forth and coming home again, rich and famous.