Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

  And suddenly the thought came into his head: how agreeable it would be just to give up, and let everything go, to lie down in the snow and let it finish him. What had he to live for, after all? He had lost everyone who made life dear to him, lost them in a peculiarly vile and agonising way; there was nothing left for him, nothing. He might just as well lie down and die. It was the easiest thing to do, too; he was not certain of his path, he could now barely see a yard in front of him, he was alone, he was off the main road. Simplest and best to lie down and let the snow have its way.

  “Fool! Fool!” cried Will suddenly, stamping his foot violently on the whitened earth. What was he thinking of? Die, indeed? The very idea! Something beneath all his misery and wretchedness, something tough, something not easily defeated, something Oldroyd, said: “No! Go on.”

  He struck out manfully. The main road was to the left, a few minutes’ sturdy walking must needs bring him there. As he went the storm began to lessen, the flakes grew smaller and fell more slowly; the Minster Towers slowly emerged from behind their white veil. He reached the main road—to see the coach coming up a snowy stretch towards him. He signalled to the driver, who drew up. Henry Brigg hung out of the window, shouting, exclaiming, regretting, welcoming; in his eagerness to get to Will he hopped out of the coach before the step was down, and fell on hands and knees in the snow. This misadventure made him laugh heartily; Bessy and Mrs. Brigg, and indeed all the passengers on the coach, laughed too; and even Will could scarce forbear a smile, for the fat little man looked really comical as he crouched there on all fours, shaking with laughter, his hat wobbling over one eye. Will helped him up.

  “Get in, lad, get in!” shouted Brigg cheerily, beating the snow from his coat with vigorous thumps. “Wherever have you been? Leaving us like that! I never heard of such a thing! Get in with you this minute, and take a nip from Bessy’s flask to warm you.”

  Will got in, and the coach rolled on, away from York. The blizzard had now quite ceased, and a gleam of pale sunshine lit the white expanse and made it cheerful. Snug between Brigg and Bessy, with a nip of brandy trickling down his cold throat, Will felt that, though he had lost father, mistress and friend in the most terrible way that a man could imagine, life might yet be sweet to him. After all, there was Syke Mill; and he was an Oldroyd, he must go on.

  Book II

  The Three Children

  Chapter I

  Prosperity

  1

  Will awoke next morning at Bin Royd, whither Brigg had insisted on carrying him on their return from York. It was late, for he could hear the stocks going in the mill and the clatter of crockery in the kitchen below, but Will made no move to rise; he lay with his hands behind his head and thought about his future. About his past he declined to think, for that was over and done with; he had put it definitely behind him yesterday, when he decided to strike out through the snow for the main road and for life. Have done with the past and get on to something sensible, he thought impatiently. The main fact of his present situation was that he was abominably lonely. Before the trial he had been sustained by a feverish suspense, but now the mere thought of his solitude at Dean Head threw him into the baffled anger which was the Oldroyd substitute for wretchedness. He had no relative left alive, no friend; he must make an entirely new life for himself; and if he wished to spare himself such unworthy displays of feeling as he had given way to in the snowstorm yesterday, he had better make his new life promptly.

  He became aware that either in the snow or the coach, or during his last night’s dead sleep of utter weariness, he had already decided to marry Bessy Brigg, and he now agreed, with a kind of cold determination, that it was the best thing to do. Indeed he could not see anything else to do, and so he might as well make up his mind to do it. The prospect of definite action warmed him; with characteristic Oldroyd energy he decided to put the matter in hand at once, and ask Bessy to marry him that very morning. He threw back the bedclothes and got up briskly.

  “Perhaps she won’t have you,” suggested a corner of his mind as he was dressing.

  “Pshaw!” scoffed Will, giving himself a look in the glass: “The girl dotes on you.”

  He was amused by his own conceit, and went downstairs in a kind of hard good-humour.

  Henry Brigg was outside, overlooking the stretching of a piece of cloth, which had just been scoured, on the tenters to dry. Bessy, with arms akimbo, stood beside him, apparently arguing with him about what they were to have for dinner; although it was a bitterly cold morning, without a gleam of sun, her cheeks glowed and her arms, bare to the elbow, looked smooth and warm. Will went out and exchanged hearty commonplaces with father and daughter about the way he had slept and his present appetite; Bessy said she would go and see about his breakfast but made no move to do so. There was a pause; they all stood gazing at the cloth, which was quite ordinary and uninteresting; Will however felt it between his fingers from sheer force of habit. After all that fuss at York, attorneys and barristers and judges and so on, the scene was agreeably peaceful and homely; even the strong smell from the scoured cloth was somehow pleasant, because it was a West Riding smell and they were all used to it. Suddenly Brigg struck his forehead with the palm of his hand and exclaimed. The others looked at him questioningly.

  “Them spurs!” he said in mock despair. “I’ll fetch them now.”

  He trotted off towards the house, but on the way was stopped by one of his men. The man pointed; Brigg looked, nodded, turned, and trotted sharply into the mill. Will and Bessy laughed, Will rather ruefully; Bessy, referring again to her guest’s breakfast, moved towards the house, and Will, who was now feeling hungry, followed her without demur. But when they were out of earshot of the men beside the tenters he took his opportunity and said coolly:

  “Bessy, will you marry me?”

  Bessy, who did not appear to be startled, stood still and gave him a shrewd glance. “What about that other girl?” she demanded then in her loud, good-humoured tones. “Joe Bamforth’s sister? Eh?”

  Will stung from his calm, felt the blood rush to his face. “That’s all over,” he cried sharply, furious that she should dare thus to imply a criticism of him. “You know it’s all over and done with long ago.”

  “Well!” said Bessy, as if still uncertain. She moved on again towards the house, then stopped and faced him, crying: “I don’t want to rob any woman of her man, Will Oldroyd!” The sentiment was honest, but her tone was so wistful as to be comic, and Will could not keep back a sudden loud guffaw. Bessy seemed to brighten at this; her black eyes sparkled, and her strong mouth curved into a broad smile. “Of course if you say it’s over,” she began.

  “Now see here, Bessy,” said Will, taking her in a friendly fashion by the elbow: “Make up your mind, lass. Are you going to have me or no?”

  His tone implied that if she threw him off he had a dozen other girls on hand, all dying for love of him, and Bessy with some haste replied, “I am, Will.”

  “That’s settled, then,” said Will comfortably, slipping his arm about her. She gave him a bright admiring look, and he hugged her firm waist closer; they entered the house thus and were received with congratulatory titters by Mrs. Brigg.

  “I always said you two would make a match of it,” she said.

  Will winced. He could remember a time when he had very different views of a wife. But why think of that? The past was dead. Resolutely he closed his mind against it.

  “I’ve no doubt we shall do very well together,” he said with decision.

  Bessy, exclaiming with her hands above her head, suddenly flew about his breakfast.

  2

  Will and Bessy were married in the spring. With the assistance of some money borrowed from his father-in-law Will put up a fine square house beside Syke Mill, and he and Bessy settled into it very comfortably. Bessy kept the house well and cooked admirably, was always cheerful and rarely extravagant, did not worry when Will was late but was always pleased to see him when he came home; a
ltogether she kept her husband comfortable and contented, except when she exasperated him into a rage by her laughter, when they quarrelled heartily. There was no sulkiness in Bessy, however, and no malice in Will, so they were soon reconciled, and perhaps liked each other the better for not giving way too easily. If Bessy loved Will more than Will loved her, still there were times when he liked her well enough. It was true he never felt towards her any of that choking tenderness, that ecstatic melting of the heart, that rapturous hunger, that he had felt for Mary Bamforth, but he had a solid affection for Bessy, and experienced a kind of repose and security, precious to him because his life had lately lacked it, in her strong, hearty, commonsensical love for him. Circumstances favoured them; they had youth and health and strength, and Syke Mill prospered; in the first year of their married life they had some good times together.

  When Bessy was about to become the mother of his child Will’s affection for her deepened into tenderness, though Bessy was so strong and well throughout her pregnancy that she laughed at his loving anxiety, and scolded him for leaving the mill in the middle of the morning to see how she was faring. The child, a boy, was born in the January of the following year; by May he was only a memory, and a memory which Bessy seemed very ready to forget. She wept heartily when he died, and she and Will were perhaps nearer to each other in that moment of grief than they had ever been; but she soon recovered her spirits and went cheerfully about the house, seeming to think that the birth of another child would soon put matters right. Will, however, could not feel as she did. His eldest born! His son! An Oldroyd who would have carried on the name! His pride was deeply wounded. Moreover, he had loved the child. His tiny fingers and toes, his rose-leaf cheeks, his soft round limbs, the warm curve of his downy head—Will had loved them all, and his heart was torn with anguish as the child grew thin, haggard, weak and obviously suffering. The look of despair in the baby’s dying eyes Will thought he never should forget; he could not get over it; he remained morose and brooding beneath Bessy’s lively attempts to rally him; he snapped at the men in the mill; life seemed a dreary thing, which the news that Bessy was again pregnant did not greatly brighten.

  As the months went on, however, he naturally became interested in the coming child, and his spirits revived. He could not find in his heart quite the same tenderness that he had felt on the first occasion for Bessy, but he showed her all care and thoughtfulness, and took precautions which were costly, sending all the way to Annotsfield for a doctor. Bessy again rather ridiculed his anxiety, which she thought womanish and excessive, but she was highly pleased when she was safely delivered of a little girl, and for a few months husband and wife were again closely united. But before their daughter could be weaned she died. Will and Bessy then became not very friendly; each blamed the other for their bad luck; Will cynically gave it as his opinion that Bessy bounced her infants about too much, though in his heart he remembered, and cursed himself for not thinking of it before he married her, that Bessy herself was the only survivor of a large family. During this period he thought with sullen anger of the silly delicate Mrs. Brigg, and was not over polite to her. The next Oldroyd child, at birth a lovely rosy infant, just pined away into Marthwaite churchyard with the others. After this Will became openly ribald upon the matter; he adopted the attitude that Bessy was always having children who always died, and that it was rather a joke than otherwise. Bessy had not given up hope of having a child which should live, but her husband had; and it was in order to guard himself against future hurt that he became so hard and callous about his offspring. What was the use of loving them, of allowing a deep paternal feeling for them to invade his heart, when they were so soon to die and leave him? There was no use in it, and Will declined to grow emotional about them any more.

  Instead he devoted himself yet more closely to his business, which prospered steadily. He had long since paid off the sum he owed to, Henry Brigg, and he now bought: a piece of land beside Syke Mill along the Ire from Sir Archibald Stancliffe—Sir Archibald, who had got his title over that Luddite affair, was always well disposed to Will—and put up one new building after another upon it, until at last he had the whole process of cloth manufacture going on under one roof. He had not intended this arrangement, but it was forced upon him by his own irritation with the careless work he had to put up with from outside; it was his Oldroyd nature to expect perfection, and when the yarn of a piece of cloth was of mixed quality, its dyeing uneven or weaving faulty, Will was always sure that it would have been better done if it had been done in his own mill under his own eye. At such times he bought another loom or two, or decided to take up slubbing in real earnest. Then presently Mrs. Brigg died, and Henry Brigg promptly went to pieces and became a broken and ailing old man. At first Will looked after the Bin Royd fulling mill for his father-in-law, but it was a great waste of his valuable time always having to rush up that abominable Bin Royd lane; Bessy too had to go up constantly to see to her father’s needs, and this was not suitable in her delicate condition—she was then expecting her fourth child. Old Mr. Brigg, too, showed signs of becoming a confirmed drunkard if he were left alone at the top of the Black Syke. So in the end Will thought it best to close Bin Royd, and take Mr. Brigg to live with himself and Bessy down at New House. “We’ve plenty of room,” he observed ironically to Bessy, who burst into angry sobs at this reference to their lack of family. This brought Will a great increase of scribbling and fulling work, for most of Henry Brigg’s customers transferred themselves to him; Will put up yet another building and bought new stocks and carders—of course of the very latest pattern; Will’s machines were always of the very latest pattern; he shrugged his shoulders and gave a grim smile whenever he reflected that there had been all that Luddite fuss about such hopelessly old-fashioned and clumsy things as those first frames. (They were long ago superseded, of course, by an upright machine with spiral blades, which took the cloth lengthwise.) And so it presently came to pass, in one way or another, that Will employed well over a hundred men and, as each new machine made the labour less skilled and more mechanical, an increasing number of children. (Marthwaite grew quite large with men for Oldroyds’ and Smiths’, who came thither from Annotsfield and Emsley.) Will’s work, other things having failed him, was his life, and every piece of work he touched went well; before he was thirty he was regarded as one of the most important manufacturers in the valley. He still ran Syke Mill on the magnificent water-power supplied free by the Ire, but the constantly increasing number of his machines, and a dry summer or two, had inclined him to think that he should have to take to steam; there was coal near at hand at Emsley. The closing of Bin Royd Hecided him to make the change, and he entered upon a correspondence with Birmingham about a Boulton and Watt engine.

  Towards the end of the year Bessy’s fourth child was born, and christened, as one or two of his unlucky predecessors had been before him, William Brigg Oldroyd. Will frankly took little notice of him. He did not dream over the child’s tender rosy limbs, have his fingers clasped by a tiny hand, listen with ecstasy to Brigg’s first babblings, rejoice over his first staggering steps; on the contrary he definitely declined to do these things, for in the first few months the boy was fretful and ailing and seemed to be going the same way as his brother and sisters. Then Bessy had to give up feeding him. The steam engine from Birmingham had arrived and been fixed, and the great new boiler cast in the Smiths’ foundry was turning the awkward corner into Syke Mill Lane, drawn by six horses, when the waggon tilted on the curve and the huge iron cylinder rolled off. It missed Will by a matter of inches, and smashed the low wall which edged the lane into fragments. Bessy, who was watching its arrival from the top windows of the house, had such a shock at Will’s fearful danger that she lost her milk, and the little Brigg had to be weaned.

  Almost at once he seemed to take a turn for the better—at least so his mother said; Will did not put much faith in it, and in any case was busy with his new boiler—he put on weight steadily, and all of a su
dden was a great bouncing boy, shouting all over the house; it was obvious that he was not going to die, he made too much noise for that. Will, quite astonished, said drily to his wife that he thought it was more by good luck than by management, and applied himself to making the acquaintance of his son. But Brigg had already definitely passed from the exquisitely babyish to the dirty boyish stage; Will had been cheated of his charming infancy, and something was missing in his fatherhood; Will did not feel towards him as he had always expected to feel towards his son. Then, too, to Will’s vexation Brigg was dark of hair and eye, and altogether more like the Briggs than the Oldroyds; indeed the only Oldroyd traits his father could discover in him were his strong will and the vein down the centre of his forehead, which swelled, when he was in a rage, just as his grandfather’s had done. Not that Brigg was often in a rage; he was an extremely lively, merry child, bubbling over with animal spirits; he was always falling into streams and off trees, or getting a burn on his hand from the boiler fires, or cutting his finger with somebody’s saw, or stealing somebody’s cream, or getting lost on the moor, returning home on one such occasion twenty-four hours later, having upset the whole of the Ire Valley by his absence, quite cheerful and unharmed, with a mouth stained by eating bilberries. The bilberry incident was typical, for Brigg abounded in common sense and courage; it took a lot to daunt Brigg. The men in the mill, where he spent long hours—fleeing rapidly, though with laughter, whenever his father appeared, for Will was apt to be stern on his business premises—said he was a grand lad, and taught him how to handle all their machines. “Come out, you young rascal!” Will would shout, seeing Brigg’s black curls and sparkling brown eyes peeping round the curve of a willey; Brigg would spring out gleefully, and grasp his father’s leg in a warm loving clutch, and Will felt that Brigg was a well-grown oncoming lad, and patted his head with affectionate condescension. Indeed Will loved Brigg quite heartily—but prosaically, without excitement or exaggeration.