CHAPTER ELEVEN
Anne was in love. Overnight her whole idea of herself had changed. Her body, her heart, her brain, nothing was the same. She felt the light material of her dress as it swished against her legs when she walked. She felt her mother’s lightweight gold necklace touching the skin of her tender breasts. Brushing her hair, she felt Daniel’s hands as he ran them slowly through the silky mass. When he took her arm to go into dinner, she felt his touch in her stomach.
They spent the entire morning of the second day of their wedding trip in bed, and in the afternoon, they explored the two churches. The following days they also remained in bed for the morning, but in the afternoons, they explored the cliffs. On the final day of their stay they rented horses and rode along the top of the cliffs that looked down on the Bay of Morecombe.
They rode for two hours, then dismounted and ate the picnic the hotel had packed. After he had eaten, Daniel yawned and said he needed a nap. With his distinctive grace, he stretched out on the grass, confided his head to Anne’s lap, and promptly went to sleep.
Anne looked down at his perfect face, then up at the tranquil blue sky. The only sounds she heard were the calling of the birds and the splashes the little waves made as they broke on the shingle of the narrow beach below.
Her heart was bursting with happiness. She had never dreamed it was possible to be so happy. She had never dreamed it was possible to feel this way about a man. She closed her eyes and said a prayer that nothing would change, that Daniel would love her forever, as she would love him.
# # #
They checked out of the hotel in the morning, got into the rented carriage, and were driven toward home.
“I wish we could have stayed longer,” Anne said wistfully as the carriage rolled out of the small town.
“It’s not possible to escape the real world forever,” Daniel said practically. “I’m sure you miss your animals, and I need to get back to work on the factory. The main building is finished, but I can’t hire workers until the cottages are done.”
Anne hesitated, then decided it was safe to ask. “I’ve always wondered why you wanted to build a cotton factory, Daniel. I know you brought a lot of money home from India, so why do something like this? You must know it won’t help you establish yourself in society.”
He was sitting close beside her and when she finished speaking he didn’t move, but she had the definite impression that in some way he had withdrawn. He said crisply, “I built it to provide jobs for people who don’t have any, and to prove that you can provide your workers with a living wage, a decent place to live and still make money for yourself.”
Anne was already sorry she had asked, but now she was committed. She said softly, “I understand that people need jobs. I saw it in London - little girls trying to sell flowers, little boys sweeping manure off the crossings. It was terribly sad, and it was one of the reasons I didn’t like London. We don’t have poverty like that in the country.”
He regarded her with one raised black eyebrow. “You most certainly do have poverty, my dear. Do you have any idea how many small factories in Lancashire have been closed? When the war ended the owners had nowhere to sell their goods, so they just shut down and put all of their employees out of work.” The blue eyes held hers pitilessly. “Do you know how many ‘country people’ are going hungry because of the enclosure laws?”
He seemed to expect an answer so Anne shook her head slightly, afraid to speak.
“Do you know anything about the enclosure laws, Anne?”
He had called her Anne, not Annie. She deeply regretted that she had asked about the factory, but there was no way she could get out of the conversation now. She scoured her memory and answered hesitantly, “Didn’t they have something to do with the government’s taking common land away from the people who were using it and giving it to larger farmers?”
“My dear, the enclosure laws have everything to do with the government taking common land away from the laborers and small farmers to whom it had always belonged. Can you possibly understand how important – how vital – it is for poor people to have access to a piece of land? They can grow their own crops on common land, and they can graze a pig or a goat. But when the enclosure laws virtually confiscated the commonly held land from the people who worked it, all of those small farmers and agricultural laborers no longer had the means to feed their families.”
Anne was starting to pay closer attention to what he was saying. “But what did these people do, Daniel? How did they survive?”
“The mill owners hired them, paid them a pittance, and left them to live in misery. Factory owners made fortunes on the backs of the poor devils, forcing them to work under conditions I wouldn’t wish on a dog.”
Anne was becoming upset. “I didn’t know about this. When Papa is home he has a London paper delivered to the house, but I never really looked at it. I was too busy reading books in the library that had little to do with what was happening in the world I lived in.”
He said ruefully, “I don’t mean to blame you, Annie. There’s absolutely no reason why you should know about such things. But these mill workers live at the lowest level of the population, with no education or sanitation. Most of the men are subjected to long hours and demoralizing drudgery. It’s no wonder that the level of drunkenness among them is so high. I built my factory to demonstrate that it’s possible to make money and treat your workers well at the same time.”
One thing puzzled Anne. “Daniel, you were just a boy when you went out to India. How do you come to know so much about working conditions in England?”
“He leaned his back against the coach cushion and looked straight ahead. “I wasn’t that young when I left for India, and I had seen the enclosure results in my own village. Families I knew, boys I knew…there were no jobs for them, and without jobs there was no money and no food. And in India? Well, let me just say that the discrepancy between the well off and the poor was even greater. They have castes there, Annie, and the differences between the rich and the poor are unchanging and perpetual. It’s simply not moral.”
She was silent, digesting what he had said, when he turned to her with an ironic smile. “I had big plans at sixteen. I was going to make a fortune in India and come back to England to save all my friends and the people like them.”
She reached out and took his hand. “Isn’t that precisely what you’re doing?”
His smile was wry. “One factory seems like a handful of sand thrown on the desert.”
“It won’t be that to the people who work there. And perhaps it will become a model that others will follow.”
“That is what I’m hoping for. I’ve met a few like-minded, men in government, and that’s encouraging.”
She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. “Your factory will be a beacon of light, both to the poor and to those who want to see social conditions in the country change. It probably won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. I’m certain of it, Daniel.”
His gave her his wonderful smile, slid closer and put his arm around her shoulders. “Thank you for saying that, Annie. I’m glad you understand.”
Anne nestled her head into his shoulder and closed her eyes. “You’re welcome,” she said, and fell asleep against the warmth of his body.