Forge and furnace: A novel — Reading Companion

Thud, thud. Amidst a shower of hot, yellow sparks the steam hammer came down on the glowing steel, shaking the ground under the feet of the master of the works and his son, who stood just outside the shed. In the full blaze of the August sunshine, which was, however, tempered by such clouds of murky smoke as only Sheffield can boast, old Mr. Cornthwaite, acclimatized for many a year to heat and to coal dust, stood quite unconcerned.

Tall, thin, without an ounce of superfluous flesh on his bones, with a fresh-colored face which seemed to look the younger and the handsomer for the silver whiteness of his hair and of his long, silky moustache, Josiah Cornthwaite’s was a figure which would have arrested attention anywhere, but which was especially noticeable for the striking contrast he made to the rough-looking Yorkshiremen at work around him.

Like a swarm of demons on the shores of Styx, they moved about, haggard, gaunt, uncouth figures, silent amidst the roar of the furnaces and the whirr of the wheels, lifting the bars of red-hot steel with long iron rods as easily and unconcernedly as if they had been hot rolls baked in an infernal oven, heedless of the red-hot sparks which fell around them in showers as each blow of the steam hammer fell.

Mr. Cornthwaite, whose heart was in his furnaces, his huge revolving wheels, his rolling mills, and his gigantic presses, watched the work, familiar as it was to him, with fascinated eyes.

“What day was it last month that Biron turned up here?” he asked his son with a slight frown.

This frown often crossed old Mr. Cornthwaite’s face when he and his son were at the works together, for Christian by no means shared his father’s enthusiasm for the works, and was at small pains to hide the fact.

“Oh, I’m sure I don’t remember. How should I remember?” said he carelessly, as he looked down at his hands, and wondered how much more black coal dust there would be on them by the time the guv’nor would choose to let him go.

A young workman, with a long, thin, pale, intelligent face, out of which two deep-set, shrewd, gray eyes looked steadily, glanced up quickly at Mr. Cornthwaite. He had been standing near enough to hear the remarks exchanged between father and son.

“Well, Elshaw, what is it?” said the elder Mr. Cornthwaite with an encouraging smile. “Any more discoveries to-day?”

A little color came into the young man’s face.

“No, sir,” said he shyly in a deep, pleasant voice, speaking with a broad Yorkshire accent which was not in his mouth unpleasant to the ear. “Ah heard what you asked Mr. Christian, sir, and remember it was on the third of the month Mr. Biron came.”

“Thanks. Your memory is always to be trusted. I think you’ve got your head screwed on the right way, Elshaw.”

“Ah’m sure, Ah hope so, sir,” said the young fellow, smiling in return for his employer’s smile, and touching his cap as he moved away.

“Smart lad that Elshaw,” said Mr. Cornthwaite approvingly. “And steady. Never drinks, as so many of them do.”

“Can you wonder at their drinking?” broke out Christian with energy, “when they have to spend their lives at this infernal work? It parches my throat only to watch them, and I’m sure if I had to pass as many hours as they do in this awful, grimy hole I should never be sober.”

The elder Mr. Cornthwaite looked undecided whether to frown or to laugh at this tirade, which had at least the merit of being uttered in all sincerity by the very person who could least afford to utter it. He compromised by giving breath to a little sigh.

“It’s very disheartening to me to hear you say so, Chris, when it has been the aim of my life to bring you up to carry on and build up the business I have given my life to,” he said.

Christian Cornthwaite’s face was not an expressive one. He was extraordinarily unlike his father in almost every way, having prominent blue eyes, instead of his father’s piercing black ones, a fair complexion, while his father’s was dark, a figure shorter, broader, and less upright, and an easy, happy-go-lucky walk and manner, as different as possible from the erect, military bearing of the head of the firm.

What little expression he could throw into his big blue eyes he threw into them now, as he pulled his long, ragged, tawny moustache and echoed his father’s sigh.