Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [585]
“I thought he would,” she murmured.
It was a surprise to her when, two days later, she visited Daniel Mason at the little temperance hotel he had set up for himself near the Greencroft on the city’s east side, and was told that Jethro Wilson had undergone a change of heart.
“It may not be permanent, but it is a start,” Mason remarked.
“Mr Mason, you are a wonder. How did you do it?”
He shook his large head and smiled at her.
“As a matter of fact, Miss Shockley, you did.”
“I? I did nothing, except bring them to you.”
“Not according to Jethro Wilson. His children are here. They spoke of your kindness continually. And he has been told that he attacked you.”
“He didn’t. He lurched towards me.”
Mason gave her a quick, shrewd look.
“He thinks he did, Miss Shockley, and the shock is doing him good.”
She smiled.
“As you wish. Is he a perpetual drunkard?”
“No. From all I know of him, he comes into town occasionally but then drinks heavily for several days – heavily to the point at which you saw him. His wretched children then have to put him in the cart and take him home. They fend for themselves like neglected animals.”
“It is terrible.”
“Yes. But the best news is,” Mason told her excitedly, “that he is prepared to give them up and put them in our care. See him,” he urged. “He is already much changed.”
He was indeed.
The figure who now respectfully rose from his chair in the little room Mason had provided, was shaven and washed. He had been provided with a clean coat; it was brown and went well with the now shining mane of russet hair that was combed straight back over his head. His black eyes, no longer swollen and reddened, took her in with a strange gentle intensity she had not encountered before.
“I am sorry for the other night, miss.”
He was still a little pale she noticed. He must have drunk heavily indeed.
“It is forgotten.”
“Not by me. I never tried to strike a woman before.”
A woman, he had said, not a lady; as though she had been one of his own kind. For some reason she did not mind.
“Are you better now?”
“I was far gone.”
“You were indeed.” She smiled. “How long is it since your wife died?”
“Three years,” he answered quietly. “Giving birth.”
“And you have no one to look after them?”
“An old woman. A farm hand and his boy. That’s all there is – except for help at harvest.”
“Where is your farm?”
“Winterbourne – on the edge of the plain.”
“How big?”
“Fifty acres.”
She sighed.
Of all the combinations, this was the worst. For in recent generations, a great change had taken place at Sarum.
Beginning with the threshing machines which the rioters had attacked back in 1830, the process of industrialisation had come to the Wessex region in many forms. Already, not only threshing machines, but the first steam ploughs had begun to appear in Wiltshire.
“Even paying the ploughman more, and adding the cost of fuel,” Mason told her, “the steam plough cuts a deeper furrow for only a third of the price.”
Rich men like Lord Pembroke could afford to purchase a fine Brown and May steam engine from Devizes. Enterprising men with access to capital, like Lord Pembroke’s consulting agent Mr Rawlence, could afford to build up flocks of prizewinning sheep.
She had questioned Mason about the situation many times in the course of their work together.
“The cloth trade’s weak, and a thousand acre sheep farmer up on the downs can keep over twelve hundred sheep with only three men and a couple of boys. There are many more farm labourers than available work, so the labourer is to be had for cheap. Our men are the lowest paid labourers in the county, you know,” Mason explained. “That’s why you see them leaving for Australia – or here in the workhouse.”
“So it is hard for the labourers; what about tenants like Jethro Wilson?”
“Hard for them too. Landlords are looking for tenants to improve their land and give them a better return for as little outlay as possible. That’s why many of the biggest will only give a farmer a one year lease. Men like