Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [562]
“If Porteus tells them Ralph is a traitor, he’d better not show his face here,” the doctor concluded.
Sarum thought of nothing but the war. Porteus, cold and self-righteous, could be inflexible.
In the months after the departure of Ralph, Barnikel often saw Agnes. She lived now at her own small house in New Street; but most afternoons, when Canon Porteus was out, she would be found with Frances, and it was there that Barnikel would call, twice a week, before escorting her back to her own door, where he left her. He gave presents to the children. Sometimes, either with Frances or alone, he would walk with her, but always in some public place, usually in the cathedral close.
Several times he also met Frances alone and would ask her whether Porteus showed any signs of relenting.
“Not yet doctor, I fear,” she would reply stiffly, and it was impossible to tell what she really felt about the matter. The nearest hint came early in 1805 when one day, without meeting his eye she remarked: “My husband is like Mr Pitt, doctor. His passion is very great, but it is for his country.”
“I think your brother is a man of passion too,” he replied.
But she shook her head.
“Ralph has sudden enthusiasms, which pass. That is not passion. He knows nothing of passion.”
He wondered what else her strange life with Porteus behind the closed doors of his house, and his mind, had taught Frances; he wondered if there lay in her words a message of understanding for him too.
For the passion of Thaddeus Barnikel for Agnes, like a charcoal fire, gave little outward sign, but it burned all the same with a steady, relentless heat, as fierce as any furnace.
“The truth of the matter is,” he confessed to himself, “she is my whole life.”
Ralph wrote frequently: usually to Agnes, once or twice to Mason.
He told Mason of his visit to the cotton factory and received a depressing letter in reply.
The terrible machines you describe still, thank God, have scarcely appeared in Wiltshire and I see no prospect of such things at Salisbury.
Our own broadcloth industry continues very weak. Two more poor weavers went out of business last month. It is sad to see that old Sarum broadcloth trade entering its final decline.
To Agnes he wrote tenderly, and told her his return could not be long delayed.
Apart from his work as tutor, he was not idle. The horror of what he had seen at the cotton mill drew him back to the city again and again. He would take a horse and ride over there on a spare day; or he would go further and visit the port beyond. He soon discovered that what Lord Forest had told him was perfectly true: there were far worse places than his mill.
But worst of all, he visited the mines, where the precious coal to fuel the great machines was dragged up, “As though,” he wrote to Agnes, “from the infernal regions themselves.” To Mason he wrote:
I have seen mines, three hundred feet deep, lit by candles – and considered safe until the gasses snuff the candle out. Safe that is, unless there is an explosion below, from which the other day I saw bodies brought out with no more concern than if they had been so many rats killed down their holes by terriers.
Worse even than the dead, are the living. In some mines they still use little boys to open and shut the ventilation doors below ground, and I have frequently seen little girls,