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Sister Gertrude. by D. F. E. Sykes, LL.B.

Sister Gertrude,

A Tale of the

West Riding.

D. F. E. SYKES, LL.B.

"The History of the Colne Valley,"

"Ben o' Bill's, the Luddite,"

"Tom Pinder, Foundling,"

Etc., Etc.

WORKER PRESS, 47, MARKET STREET, HUDDERSFIELD.

About the author.

D F E Sykes was a gifted scholar, solicitor, local politician and newspaper proprietor. He listed his own patrimony as 'Fred o' Ned's o' Ben o' Billy's o' the Knowle' a reference to Holme village above Slaithwaite in the Colne Valley. As the grandson of a clothier, his association with the woollen trade would be a valuable source of material for his novels, but also the cause of his downfall when, in 1883, he became involved in a bitter dispute between the weavers and the mill owners.

When he was declared bankrupt in 1885 and no longer able to practise as a solicitor he left the area and travelled abroad to Ireland and Canada. On his return to England he struggled with alcoholism and was prosecuted by the NSPCC for child neglect. Eventually he was drawn back to Huddersfield and became an active member of the Temperance Movement. He took to researching local history and writing, at first in a local newspaper, then books such as 'The History of Huddersfield and its Vicinity'. He also wrote four novels. It was not until the 1911 Census, after some 20 years as a writer, that he finally states his profession as 'author'.

In later life he lived with his wife, the daughter of a Lincolnshire vicar, at Ainsley House, Marsden. He died of a heart attack following an operation at Huddersfield Royal Infirmary on 5th June 1920 and was buried in the graveyard of St Bartholomew's in Marsden.

Introduction.

In all of Sykes' novels he draws heavily on his own life experiences though none more so than in this, his third, semi-autobiographical novel. The Edward Beaumont of the novel is indeed Sykes; his solicitors practice and early political aspirations are featured along with his romance of the daughter of a Lincolnshire vicar. From newspaper articles we can also confirm that he was a councillor and a potential parliamentary candidate for the West Staffordshire constituency; his embroilment with the weavers dispute, bankruptcy and his dependency on alcohol are also well documented. He is however selective in what he chooses to reveal about himself and uses artistic licence to make the book more readable. He does give us an insight into his ideas, opinions and aspirations and the turmoil he must have endured before turning his life around. It is a salutary lesson in how a talented man can be destroyed for his convictions and his struggle, with support, to regain his self-respect.

SISTER GERTRUDE.

It was, then, about eight of the evening of a certain Summer market-day when two young men, arm in arm, lounged leisurely past the Market Place, and stopped for no other reason than to see why others had stopped, for a small and shifting crowd had gathered round the base of the Market Cross, and were giving, some a rapt and sustained attention, others but the brief hearing of a soon-sated curiosity to a speaker standing upon the Cross's pedestal. The audience were, for the most part, of young and little heedful holiday-makers, who took the speaking as part of their outing, and one of the many wonderful things to be heard of market-days, and to be mused upon at leisure, amid the clack of the loom and the hum of the revolving wheels, or discussed in the interchange of feminine experiences for which the all too brief dinner-hour avails.

There was, however, a fringe of the more serious-minded, who listened to the speaker with solemn attention, and regarded her with respectful appreciation. These, one may surmise, were in their several homes Sunday-school teachers or chapel members themselves, with some experience of spiritual exhorting, and feeling under some compulsion to lend their countenance, if only, by the way, even to an unauthorised Evangelist. Nearer to the speaker stood a body of men and women, some with cymbals or other instruments of music or of noise, wearing the scarlet tunic and German-band cap, or the close-fitting serge costume and coal-scuttle bonnet by which the gentler soldiers of the Salvation Army seek to conceal what fairness of feature it has pleased the good God to give them.

These militant believers served not only as a body-guard of the central figure of the gathering, but as a chorus; a stalwart, rugged-featured soldier, whose secular calling was the ungentle craft of a butcher, evoking an occasional subdued note from the drum he beat o' nights to the praise and glory of God; whilst a neat and modest maiden, once the slattern scullery-maid of the Red Lion, gently tinkled a tambourine, that served also as a collection-box for stray coppers earnestly entreated; and their brethren of both sexes punctuated the address of their leader by fervent "Amens," "Glorys," and "Hallelujahs," ejaculated at frequent intervals and interspersed with as little regard to their appropriateness to the spoken word as a 'prentice compositor displays in the sprinkling of his commas in the printed line.

The speaker, to whom all faces were turned, was young and of a rare beauty. Her features were of Grecian cast, her eye of a soft, dark violet hue, her lips of that Cupid arch so seldom seen, her complexion pure, and suffused now with the glow of health or excitement, and her wealth of rippling hair was of dark chestnut hue, just touched by the parting rays of the westerning sun as it declined behind the roofs of the Bank on the opposite side of New Street, off which the Market Place stood. Her dress was of blue serge, fitting closely to a form of just proportions and unrelieved by any kind of ornament, unless a small cross of chased silver suspended round the neck might deserve the term. The hand, which was occasionally moved to emphasise a sentence or point a remark, was white and soft and well-formed. The voice in which she spoke was soft, sweet, pure, musical, almost caressing; her diction the chaste speech of education and refinement.

"Oh! it's one of that Salvation Army lot," replied his friend, Sam Storth. "Come along, Beaumont. The usual thing, you know: hell and brimstone, blood and fire, and a collection."

"Poachers on the preserves of the Church, eh, Sam? Well, you'll admit the saint is pretty enough for a sinner. Let us listen."

Sam Storth shrugged his shoulders, stretched his little legs apart, thrust his hands into his trousers' pockets, yawned drearily, and fixed his big and bulging eyes upon the speaker, eyeing her beauty with the calmly critical survey he was wont to bestow upon the Coryph?es of the local ballet. Edward Beaumont, whom two or three of the more respectably clad of the audience recognised and saluted, turned to the speaker with respectful and serious attention, already repenting of his jesting allusion to her good looks.

"Christ, I think, meant that the lives of the people should be more joyous, more free from carking care, from grinding poverty. I cannot think Christ meant the world should always have its Dives and always its Lazarus. Surely there is a happy board of solid comfort midway between the insolent ostentation and sinful waste of the rich man's table, and the floor on which the dogs fight for the fallen crumbs. Let us find that happy mean, and there will be more of the brotherhood of man and more kinship with Christ.

"I tell you, there are a few other matters that will have to be inquired into there--"

"Oh! come along, Beaumont," said Storth, "we've had about enough of this bally rot. Canting humbug, I call it. Chuck the girl a bob, and let's slide," and he flung the silver coin towards the tambourine of Happy Sal and moved away. Beaumont flung no coin, but, raising his hat, followed his companion.

"I'd have liked to hear the end of it, Storth," he said. "The young lady, for she's that you can see with half an eye, has tackled a big subject. I fancy that's not the usual kind of Salvation Army harangue. If it is, I think I must hunt up their barracks."

"A lot of blooming nonsense, I call it. That is so far as I could understand what the dickens the girl was driving at. But I say, though, if she's a fair sample of Salvation Army lasses, I think I'll put in an hour or two at the Barracks myself. Face like a Mary Magdalene, hasn't she? 'Spose that's about the time of day with her, eh, Beaumont?"

"You'll have to read faces better than that, Sam, or you'll never be any good in Court," said Beaumont. "Do you believe in anything or anybody? Is there no good thing under the sun?"

"You're a Sybarite, Sam, a frankly brutal sensualist. Well, I give you credit for making no pretences. You aren't a hypocrite anyway."

"It isn't worth while with you, Beaumont. There's nothing to be got out of you by make-believe. But I can pull a long face and snivel and turn up the whites of my eyes and groan on occasion. It's in the family, you know. But I'm not paid for doing it. My uncle is. That's all the difference. But here we are at the club. Don't think I'll go in just yet. I'll do a half-time at the theatre. So long."

Beaumont entered the reading-room of the club. There was no library in this feeble imitation of a London club. He took up the current number of the "Nineteenth Century Review." He had to cut its leaves. The members of the club, manufacturers, merchants, and the larger shopkeepers preferred to have their monthlies boiled down for them by Mr. Stead in the "Review of Reviews." But Edward could not concentrate his mind on the weighty problems discussed by the sages of the century. His thoughts wandered to the scene in the Market Place.

Edward Beaumont and Sam Storth, though both solicitors, and partners in the practice of a much and perhaps undeservedly abused profession, were in almost every particular in which men may be compared or contrasted as dissimilar as two men may well be. Beaumont was a native of Huddersfield, and his family connections with the town and district were numerous and intricate. The Beaumonts of that vicinity are a numerous progeny, and may be found in every calling, in every trade and every craft. The Squire of White Meadows is a Beaumont, and traces an unbroken line of descent from one of the most intrepid of the Crusaders, whose effigy may be seen to this day in the small, time-worn church on the ancestral domain. The Beaumonts, or de Bellomontes, were, aforetime, lords of the manor of Huddersfield itself, but that position passed from them many centuries ago. Whether or no our Edward Beaumont was of the Beaumonts of White Meadows is a matter which Edward himself affected to regard as of absolutely no importance. His father had been, like himself, a solicitor, and had founded the present firm of Beaumont and Storth. His grandfather had been a cloth manufacturer, and as to his great grandfather, Edward declared that he, too, had been either a cloth manufacturer of the smallest, or, more likely, a handloom weaver of a saving disposition. As in Huddersfield it is quite exceptional for anyone to be able to refer to a grandfather at all, Edward could very well afford to affect indifference on the score of his great grand-sire's status.

If looks go for anything Beaumont might certainly have pretended to aristocratic lineage. He was tall above the ordinary, and well proportioned, his frame well-knit and active, his features regular, his hair abundant, of the hue of the raven, and with the natural sheen of perfect health. His eyes, well shaped, were dark and full of fire and expression. He had a well-formed mouth, mobile lips, of that fullness that may betoken either the orator, the poet, or the sensualist, a rounded, dimpled chin, the long White hand commonly supposed to be indicative of gentle birth. But the tips of the fingers were square rather than finely pointed, a trait which a palmist had assured him indicated stubborness of character or resoluteness of will, but which Edward asserted more probably suggested that one of his female ancestors had been engaged in the manual exercise of "twisting," one of the many processes of cloth manufacture, and one eminently calculated to stub the fingers of the artist.

Edward Beaumont had been carefully educated, and had taken to books like a duck to water. His natural aptitude and facility of apprehension made his studies easy to him, and though no one who knows what is properly implied in the term scholarship, would have called him a scholar, he had taken a fair degree at his University, at that time a somewhat uncommon attainment in the lower branch of the legal profession, and could no doubt hold his own indifferent will among other educated gentlemen. He was reputed to be a sound and careful lawyer, when he could be induced to take the necessary trouble, but none questioned that he was always a ready one, and it is not, therefore, surprising that he preferred the change and excitement and rivalry of the Courts to the more prosaic and monotonous and retired, if also more profitable, exercise of the dreary art of conveyancing. The same alertness of mind and nimbleness of speech that served him well in the forum inclined him to the political platform, and already he was a warm favourite of the working-classes at the meetings under the auspices of the Liberal Party with which the adults of the West Riding beguile the tedium of the winter months. Edward was wont to declare that he had imbibed Radicalism with his mother's milk, and certain it is he could point with equal truth and pride to more than one of his relations who had suffered in the popular cause. His partner Sam Storth, used to complain that Edward's political engagements took him a great deal away from the office, and if Edward laughingly pleaded that his public appearances were a capital advertisement of the firm, his more sagacious partner retorted that Edward's "clap-trap client?le," as he was pleased to stigmatise it, wasn't worth half the time it took to attend to it, and that for every decent client Beaumont's Radicalism attracted it frightened a dozen better ones away.

"Depend upon it, Beaumont," he said one day, "Leatham's is the right tip."

Now, Mr. Leatham was the respected member for Huddersfield, and sat, of course, in the Liberal interest.

"Expound, most sapient Sam," said Edward.

"Ah! well, Sam, suppose we say I like 'em. I think they're my only serious dissipation. You know I don't go in much for beer and skittles, and am bored at a ballet. Supposing we call politics my little vice. You don't want them all yourself, Sam."

In person, the junior partner of the firm of Beaumont and Storth was small, stout and stodgy, with a broad, flat nose, and eyes that a disparaging critic had likened to boiled onions. In address he was suavely deferential to the verge of obsequiousness to the local magnates, who liked the implied homage of his voice and look, and voted him a sensible young fellow who knew his place. In revenge for his own lackeydom he bullied and swore at his clerks and the waiters and the billiard-markers who ministered to his needs, and they, too, no doubt, had their opinion of Mr. Sam Storth. He was careful in his dress, without being an exquisite, took in the "Daily Telegraph" and "Bell's Life," affected a patriotic interest in the national sport, and played a very judicious hand at whist and other games, as the young nabobs of the club knew to their cost. He had the reputation, in a darkly, mysterious way, of being somewhat of a Lothario among the women, and it was known that he had access to the green-room of the local theatre. But if, indeed, Sam were a sad dog, of which this veracious history alleges nothing, he was a very discreet sad dog, and never imperilled his reputation by any open indiscretion. He was careful, too, to attend church every Sunday morning, and uttered the responses with that modulated fervour that is the hall-mark of good breeding, having neither the perfunctoriness of custom or inattention nor the warmth of spiritual exaltation.

How two men so diverse as Edward Beaumont and Sam Storth came to be partners in the same business had puzzled many, but the explanation was simple enough. Beaumont had been in want of a managing clerk, and a mutual acquaintance had recommended Storth as a safe chamber-man, and a safe chamber-man or desk-lawyer Storth proved himself to be. He made no pretence of knowing more law than had sufficed to satisfy the not very exacting examiners of Carey Street; but he had a very considerable endowment of the not very common faculty called common-sense.

"Law, sir," was Storth's favourite axiom, delivered oracularly, "law is the embodiment of common-sense," and though the reader can scarcely be expected to believe it, Common law is largely common-sense. At all events with common-sense and a tincture of technicalities and a very considerable knowledge of the shady side of human nature, and a very small opinion of that nature in the general. Storth's did very well the kind of work that Beaumont wanted him for, and left that somewhat fastidious young gentleman free to lift his voice in the courts without being harassed by the petty details of a lawyer's practice. Beaumont thought Sam a soulless little animal, but shrewd and steady; Storth thought Beaumont a stuck-up enthusiast with a bee in his bonnet, but a good hand with a brief, and as they saw very little of each other except business hours, there was little friction in the busy office of the well-established and prosperous firm of Beaumont and Storth.

But if there was no friction there was no cordiality between the partners. Beaumont's attitude to Storth was almost of good-humoured contempt. Storth retaliated with undisguised scorn for his partner's unpracticability and want of worldly wisdom.

"What do you want sitting in the Town Council?" he grumbled at times. "There's no honour in it. Why, hang it, the barber fellow that shaves me sits on the Town Council."

"And a very good councillor he makes, too. Why not? Does he shave you any the worse for being on the Council. I'm sure his opinion on matters municipal is none the worse for his being a barber. Shaving is really, if you think of the matter dispassionately, a most reputable occupation. The profession of a barber, you cannot call it a trade, is an ancient and an honourable one. It was formerly, as you know connected with the profession of a surgeon. Probably the barbers cut the surgeons, and that led to a split. But if you reflect you will see that most exceptional qualities are required by a good barber. Sobriety is indispensable cleanliness, which everyone knows to be nearer to godliness than many people attain, some degree of polish and a pleasing loquacity and an intelligent acquaintance with the topics of the day. People trust their barber more than their lawyer, for would you offer your bared throat to anyone armed with a deadly weapon, unless you had the supremest confidence in him? Surely we can confide the gas-pipes and water-pipes of a town to a man to whom we entrust our own wind-pipes. I protest your barber is a most inestimable profession brother."

"That fellow Bradlaugh, as you are pleased to call him, is worth half-a-dozen such respectabilities as either you or I, Sam. In mere ability as a lawyer he is worth a round dozen of us lumped together. But he is more than that, he is a very fair scholar, though entirely self-educated. He has done more for his brains and with his brains than many do who have had hundreds of pounds spent upon their education by fond parents. He has not only brains but a conscience; he might have earned a fat living as a lawyer or a parson. He has not only a conscience but a character, and a good one, too, and besides all that, he's the elected member for Northampton, has as much right legally to sit for that borough as Churchill has for Woodstock, and a great deal better right morally."

"The man's an atheist," said Storth.

"I don't know that he is; but even so, that's his concern and Northampton's. What are you, Sam? What, indeed, is anyone of us that we should throw stones at such a man as Bradlaugh?"

"Well, I call myself a Christian and I rather flatter myself I am one, at least, an indifferent one," replied Sam. "I don't set up for a saint, of course."

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