The Quality of Mercy

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 brilliant 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.

“What is that, is it something new?”

He told her then about his idea of building a road through the Dene, a road straight through to the sea, only three miles—four if you counted the distance from the pithead. The sides of the ravine were steep and wooded, he told her, but below, where the stream ran, the ground was level, there was space enough. Straight through to the sea without impediment. The land where the Dene opened out was marshy, but the roadway could be raised. He would have a harbor built. “At present,” he said, “a good deal of the coal is sold locally, there at the pit, to save the cost of transport. The road once made, we can abandon that practice, we can have all of it shipped south to the foundries, where the prices are much higher.”

“So the road would pass over where the stream is now?”

“Yes, the water will have to be dammed up somehow, or diverted, otherwise it would wear away the foundations of the road. We will have to fell some of the trees so as to give space for the wagons.”

Erasmus paused for a moment, aware of the face before him, the look of serious inquiry on it, so sweet to him. Love gathered in his throat. “If only you could come and see for yourself,” he said. “If only we could go together. I want you to see it as I see it, and understand what it will mean to the work of the colliery.”

“How could I?” She smiled at his eagerness. “We could not travel together or stay together when we arrived there. I suppose you do not see us as fellow guests of Lord Spenton.”

With a sudden movement Erasmus set down the teacup he had been holding. “Say you will marry me,” he said. He would have knelt before her, but the table lay between them. Instead he rose to his feet and stood glowering down at her. “Say you will marry me,” he said again. “If you will marry me, you will make me live again. Everything I have and everything I am I lay at your feet. I will give up the bank’s holdings in the West Indies, if it will please you and your brother. Anything you ask of me I will do, only say you will marry me, say you will be my wife.”

Her smile had faded with his words. In the surprise of it—not the question itself, she had entertained the possibility of his proposing to her, but the haste and violence of the pleading in it—she felt the color leave her face. She had never thought to be wanted in such a way. Even some pity for him came to her, for the terrible nakedness of his declaration and his promises; some apprehension too, as if, on his feet as he was and with looks so burning, he might move to her, take hold of her, before she could find resolution or words to stay him.

“I cannot decide so quickly,” she said. “You must give me time, Erasmus. You must give me some days. There is my brother …”

“I will speak to him. I will undertake to sever all my connections with the Africa trade. I will declare my support for the abolition of slavery. I will announce it in a form that he and I can agree on together, a form he can use for his purposes, for his cause … When can I have your answer?”

“I must think … You must give me some days.”

“May I hope, at least?”

The look she gave him was an answer sufficiently eloquent, and it was this look, and this hope, that he carried away with him.