The Quality of Mercy

31



At about the same time that Erasmus Kemp was making his way to the alehouse for a word or two with the fiddler, a servant of Spenton’s was knocking on the door of the Bordon cottage with the message that his master would greatly like to have a word or two with Michael Bordon.

Michael at this time was well into his fourteen-hour shift. The labor was the same as always: with the help of the boy, a thirteen-year-old named Jack, he gathered the coal cut from the face by the hewer, loaded it into the corves, dragged and pushed the sledge with the full corves on it to the foot of the shaft, where they were tallied and hoisted to the surface by the banksmen. But the ceiling was low in the gallery where they were working this morning; he had to keep his head well down and move in a sort of a half crouch, and he was beginning to feel this in the tendons of his neck and the muscles of his shoulders. It was only when he reached the foot of the shaft that he could stand upright, and it was here that the deputy overman found him and relayed the message.

He had to walk back home, wash in the yard, get into his best suit. He was driven to the house in a two-wheeled carriage. The manservant, who had come from London with Lord Spenton, was supercilious and spoke little to Michael in the course of the journey, though he strove to give the impression that he was fully conversant with his master’s wishes and knew the reason for the summons.

Michael had never been to this house before, and a certain awe descended on him as the trap proceeded smartly up the broad driveway and drew up before the great stone façade. He was handed over to another servant, conducted to a sitting room and told to wait. He spent a quarter of an hour in company with furniture of a grandness never before seen. There was an imposing table surmounted by a mirror with lamps on either side fixed on a brass rail and drawers below with lions’ heads carved on them, each lion with a brass ring through its jaws, by means of which, as he supposed, the drawers could be pulled open. There was a smaller table, for which he could see no need, two easy chairs set facing each other with a stool between them so one could either sit or lie, a settee of a type he could scarcely have imagined, specially designed to fit into a corner of a room. The armchair he sat in was deep; the back and sides were thickly padded, and the wings cut off his vision, making him feel strangely enclosed and imprisoned. On the walls were pictures of hills and lakes. The abundance and elaboration and uselessness of the objects in this room made a deep and abiding impression on him.

The servant who had led him here came now to inform him that Lord Spenton was ready to see him. He followed this man down a carpeted corridor, through a small anteroom and then into what he thought must be his lordship’s study, as the walls were lined with books. Spenton was at his desk and without rising waved him to a seat opposite. “Well, young man,” he said, “perhaps you would care for a glass of wine?” Without waiting for an answer he spoke to the servant, who had remained at the door, and asked him to bring a bottle of the white and two glasses.

While they waited for this, Spenton contemplated his guest in silence for some moments, noting the stiffness of his posture as he sat bolt upright in his chair, turning his cap in his hands. “I asked you to come here so I could thank you,” he said. “You played a splendid game yesterday—all who saw you thought so. I was delighted with our win over Pemberton—over Northfield colliery, I mean to say—and I am resolved you shall be our champion again next year.”

Michael uttered thanks for this praise, but the stiffness of his bearing was not relaxed, and Spenton, in an effort to set him more at his ease, began to question him about his family. The intention of kindness was obvious, and Michael was emboldened by it. He spoke about his parents and his brothers, especially Percy, the youngest, who was soon to be going down the mine. “We dinna know how old the lad is, not to the day,” he said. “The births are not written, nor the deaths neither. So my father says come mid-August he shall gan doon.”

Spenton nodded. “Are you walking out with someone?” he said.

“Yes, sir, Elsie Foster. We are plannin’ to wed.”

“You will be getting a barrowman’s pay?”

“Two shillin’ for shiftin’ the stint, sir. It is nay so much to start a family on, but a’m gannin on for twenty-two, a can hope to be cuttin’ the coal soon, an’ then a’ll be on six shillin’.”

“You will make your way, I have no doubt of that. But I would like to help you on a little. I have felt that it would be a fitting way to mark the occasion of our win yesterday.”

At this point the wine was brought in. The servant waited for some moments, but Spenton dismissed him, rose to pour the wine himself and brought Michael’s glass to him, setting it down on the small table beside his guest’s chair. “Here’s to our victory!” he said, raising his glass.

Michael drank and found the taste distinctly agreeable—he had never drunk wine before. He was puzzled by this repetition of “our,” not really seeing how it could be thought of as Lord Spenton’s victory, though of course his lordship had always shown great interest in the handball matches, and seen that the court was kept up and the lines freshly marked out. He must mean the colliery too; it was a victory for Thorpe, certainly. Then a further reason came to him like a shaft of light: everyone he knew with any pennies to spare had bet on the result; his own father had put a shilling on him, he knew that for certain; Lord Spenton and the colonel would have done the same.

He drank some more wine, settled back in his chair. A bit more than a shilling, he thought, a canny bit more. The id ea, once lodged, took on the immediate force of conviction. This was the explanation for all the condescension and affability; there could be no other. The belief that there had been material gain on Lord Spenton’s part did more to give him self-assurance than all the words that had gone before.

There was a short silence between them. Then Spenton said, “I would like to show my appreciation of your performance by making you a small gift, no more than a token really, in recognition of the skill and spirit you showed yesterday. I thought that fifty guineas might meet the case.”

It took Michael some moments to follow this ornate phrasing and arrive at the meaning. Fifty guineas! He could barely imagine what so much money would look like if it was all put together—he had never seen coins in a quantity great enough to do more than cover the palm of one hand. Had it not been for the warmth of the wine and the reassuring thought—so reassuring that it had to be true—that Lord Spenton, so powerful and grand, had cause to be grateful, had made money out of him, Michael Bordon, a common pitman, he would never have found the courage even to think what he thought now, let alone say the words that came to him to say to this man at the desk, whose face had lost all expression at his hesitation.

“It is generous in you, sir, more than a could ever have thowt, only for winnin’ at the handball. A dinna know if it would be enough … Would it be enough to buy the bit of land doon by the beck?”

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.”