The Furnaceman.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXIV, Issue 1217, 29 October 1897, Page 7

The Furnaceman.

(By A. Ml. Clelland.)

CBAPTER I

When Geordie Donee died in Blacktown hospital, and was followed to the graveside by such a motley crew of boiler-makers, riveters, milimen, and nippers, with a fair sprinkling of women, there were many among the latter who regretted that he had never been married. The Blacktown women of the working class had keen eyes for the good points of a likely husband (in this bearing a strong resemblance to their sisters in higher spheres of life), and were unanimous in their opinion that the foreman of Top Lane Works ■would have made a model • man ' for any who could have found favor in his eyes. But Geordie had lived and died a staunch bachelor, dwelling alone in his queer little house, squeezed in among boiler yards, foundries, and locomotive sheds, his few wants attended to by a ciece, the only woman ever allowed to step beyond his threshold. A confirmed misogynist, who, strange to say, •was not altogether disliked by the womenkind around him. For more than one mother took note that no child was ever ' frighted ' by the looks of the stern old man, with his grim visage, his grizzled gray hair, and straight-out thin lips. Nor were there wanting some among the younger women who, had they been pressed upon the subject, might have told of sundry occasions upon which they had consulted Geordie upon some affaire de cceur, drawn by that unerring instinct which tells a young girl who among her male acquaintances may be trusted to guide her in such delicate matters as love, courtship, and marriage. But perhaps the best indications Geordie gave that he held that divinest of all possessions — a feeling heart — were connected with those too frequent and often fatal accidents of which Blacktown had its share. For this was long before the days of the Employers' Liability Act, long before the idea of the legal protection of machinery was regarded as anything more than the dream of a body of meddlesome faddists. And when a man left his home and children in the morning, and was carried to his wife in the afternoon an almost unrecognisable mass of quivering flesh, little was the hope of future biead for the orphans left behind. It was then that Geordie, that taciturn, unsociable bear of a man, took comfort of a solid and practical kind to the heart of the widowed mother, accompanied by dire threats of what would happen if ever she breathed a word about it to any living soul. Such visits were always made at night-time, when the moon was down, and none in Blacktown but the recipients knew of Geordie's many acts of charity. So his neighbours had some excuse for looking upon him as a crossgrained, gnarly species of animal, whom it was wisest to humour as much as possible. Great was the public wonder, too, when his married niece, his sole relative and legatee, announced that her total inheritance only amounted to exactly twenty-seven pounds thirteen shillings and fivepenco, which sum lay to her uncle's credit in the Penny Saving's Bank. And yet he had been in regular employment all his life, and had always stuck to his work like wax. But now he was dead, the objects of benevolence could keep silence no longer. They bruited abroad his many kindly act?. Women told how the gates of the * House,' more horrible to them than the gates of Hades, were opening to admit them when Geordie's strong hand pushed them to. Others spoke of times when their f man ' being sick, and the cupboard bare, Geordie's watchful eye and open purse had kept the wolf from the door. And so, little by little, the truth became known and the man who few had understood in life was known and honoured in his death. Yet this old man of forbidding aspect and unattractive appearance had had romance in his younger days. Love and a woman had come to him, as they come once, at least, to all men. He had built his Chateau en Espagne ; had played a rubber with Cupid — and lost. Bat the episode had taken place so many years ago that none in Blacktowu remembered it. And besides, at the time it happened, Geordie was working for Jabez Drew at Castor Heath, two or three miles out in the country, and any one in Blacktown would have told you on the day the old man was buried, that Jabez Drew, the well known ironmaster, had died at least thirty-five years ago. So time had obliterated the memory o£ Geordie's love story from the minds of all but one lonely old man, who was not overclean in his habits, much given to strong Jar.guage, and habitually clothed in iron stained moleskins and a waistcoat which had once been of fur, but which at the time of his death, bore a strong resemblance to a piece of black and greasy leather. Yet, as the manager of the Top Lane Works knew only too well, the late foreman had been unequalled for integrity, honesty, and faithful service, in spite of his reprehensible language and quaint attire.

Had you known Geordie in those far off days, when he was head ftirnaceraan at Castor Heath Ironworks, yeu would have found him to be as specimen of a British workman as those days produced. The type has changed since, the, spread of education and other softening influences having made the l»est of our toilers something more of men and less of brutes, but when Geordie was a young sprig of twenty-six or thereabouts, the majority of the workers in the Black Country were gigantic, muscular and ignorant fellows, muoh given to fighting, drinking and swearing, yet not without some capacity for nobleness, The head furnaceman at Castor Heath stood six feet three-and-a-half inches in his clogs, was as active and upright as a Life Guardsman, possessed a tuneful voice, which could roll out as good a tenor aong as one would wish to hear, and was known amongst his confreres as the jolliest and most good natnred man in all the yard. It wag a pleasure to watch him at work in those days. He put such a whole hearted swing into it, as if the greatest joy in the world was to stand in front of a glowing, puddling furnace ' for twelve or thirteen hours a day, while the perspiration ran in streams down his bare breast and arms, and his brawny muscles stood out in beautifully rounded and glistening masses, as he worked up ball after ball of soft metal. And never did work seem so easy, never did the balls appear so light as during that summer after he and Liz Perrin had come to an understanding:, .and were to be married in the autumn. Harder and harder the furnaceman worked in front of his glowing fire, thinking the while that thud it was he would work for Lie in years to come. The balls of metal thrpw out dazzling and radiant stars of light as he carried them to the jaws of the ' alligator,' or to the rumbling shingling hammer, keeping him in mind, he thought, of the bright eyes of his sweetheart. And as he watched the lambent blue flames, flickering here and there over the surface of the half-plastic moss of ruddy me' a! beyond the furnace doors, working at it vigorously the while till it should come to nature,' what could be more like the colour of those same bewitching eyes than tke color of the dancing flames. The wooing of Liz had not been an easy matter. An only daughter, somewhat spoiled by father and mother, a beauty of the healthy buxom type by no means uncommon in the, Black Country, where parents are physically as perfect as possible, and a coquette who loves to exercise her power, Liz had dallied with Geordie and some half dozen others for a long time ere she had finally sneeumbed to the bio; I furnaceman, with his honest laugh and good-tempered nature. Both father and mother thought she might have looked higher, might have chosen Tim Snncker, for instance, who owned a house and furniture in his own right, while Geordie had nothing but his fortnightly wage. j However L ; z had apparently fixed i her fickle affections on Geordie, and the happy lover flung about the iron halls for the following two months as if they had been but feather weights. | He took a house in Milton Row (then 1 but a cluster of cottages, but now a fair-sized suburb of Blacktown), which lay about a mile from the works and maybe two from Burter's Buildings (the latter being a kind of mushroom hamlet that had sprung around Naylor's ironworks), lying on the far side of Castor Heath. And almost every other evening the loungers about the • Buildings ' might have observed Geordie's tall figure stalking down the heath-side, and making straight for a certain house at the end of the row of squat cottage?. The new home in Milton Row was partly furnished by Geordie's own hands, the work giving him the keenest pleasure. He kept this part of his happiness entirely to himself, allowing Liz to understand that they were to live with his old landlady for a week or two after they were wed. He wanted to surprise his newly-acquired treasure by leading her straight to what was for the future to be her own home. The cottages in the Row were so ; much alike that a stranger would have: been puzzled to tell one from another. 1 Each contained a living room on the 1 ground flour, with a kind of outhouse! beyond, while above were two tiny bed-cbamber3, reached by what was more like a step ladder than a staircase. Into one of these quaint boxes of houses, which rose straight from the edge of the road, and were destitute of the tiniest scrap of garden or yard, Geordie brought sundry articles of furniture. He bestowed his greatest efforts on the bridal-chamber, carrying thither a small chest of drawers, very loosely fitted, an iron bedstead and a picture. Somewhat short, one would think, of a complete bedroom suite, but wanting nothing, in Geordie's opinion, when he had hammered four tenpenny nails into the walls for Liz to hang her clothes on, fastened the picture behind the door, put the bedstead in frocks, and bestowed a ewer and basin on the top of the chest of drawers. That ewer and basin would have told any one in Milton Row (no one saw them, for they were smuggled in one evening after dark) to what a

height Geordie had raised Liz in his affections. For the ladies and gentlemen of the Row when they found leisure and inclination, not to mention soap and towel, to perform their ablutions, usually adjourned to the outhouse and employed the slopstone. But in one of his furniture-hunting expeditions to Blacktown, Geordie had observed a ewer and a basin standing upon a chest of drawers, and being informed by the shopman that they were used for { weshing ' in, had purchased them forthwith. He had also noticed in the same establishment a picture of a bed in { frocks,' and the idea had taken his fancy ; it looked bo genteel, he thought. Not knowing, however, what material the frocks were made of, and being too bashful fco inquire, he had hit upon the brightest thing he could think of. The bedstead was accordingly frocked by Geordie's own hands, and he looked forward with the keenest delight to witnessing his wife's surprise and pleasure when she should see the two sides and one end of the green painted iron bedstead girt about with short ' frocks ' of shining oilcloth, bearing upon it a startling pattern in red and yellow. No clouds rose upon the horizon of his happiness during the time theee preparations were being made. Not even when it was hinted to him, and pretty broadly — a3 was customary among the denizens of Milton Row — that Tim Snacker was seen rather too frequently about a certain house in Burter's Buildings ; not even then did Geordie suspect evil days. He, was told he ought to keep a close eye on Liz, in case she gave him the go -bye. 4 Not me,' he replied, with his hearty laugh ; ' let Liz have her fling. She'll settle down to the best wife the Row ever seen when we're married.' 'Then tell her old man not to let Tim be there so often,' urged one wellmeaning friend. 5 Not me,' he replied again ; ' Tim's right enough, He's better off than me I know ; but then Liz loves me lad, and she doasn'fc love Tim.' Whereat the friend shrugged his shaudlers and went off, with an inward hope that all would be well, leaving Geordie with his undimmed happiness. • No, no, my lad,' he thought aloud ; ' Tim's got more brass than me, but he's not the man I am. Fancy her takin' to a man as goes about every erenin' dressed as if for Sunday, with his woman's ways too. No, no. If,' and he laughed aloud at the utter absurdity of the thought, •if Liz gives me over for any one, it'll be for a finer fellow nor Tim. Besides,' he went on, 1 it's on'y nat'ral she should like the young fallows to see her, an' nat'ral enough they should like to cum. They may cum just as often when Liz is my missis.' From which you will gather that the big heart was not big enough to hold any portion of jealousy. His sweetheart loved him, of that he was fully assured, and what better guarantee cowld he have 1 So he continued to tread the primrose way, with never a thought of thorns in his path, and in clue course the sun rose on his wedding morn. A resplendant sun it was, flooding the whole land with light, making even the dull, black and grimy presincts of Milton Row somewhat beautiful by imparting to them a transient golden glory. (To be continued.)