“Oh, don’t take any notice of Joth,” urged Sophia in her high childish voice, throwing her arms around Brigg’s neck: “He’s so supurior.”
Will laughed so heartily at this, quite rustling the paper in his glee, that Sophia perceived she had unwittingly made a hit, and repeated the word, and it presently became an acknowledged family joke to speak of Joth as “supurior,” even Mary mildly and fondly twitting her son with it at times. Joth always received this with a lofty smile; it was a pity, he said in his stately tones, that Sophia could not learn to pronounce her words better, but still, it was something gained that she knew so long a word at all, and for his part, he did not deny that there was a certain appropriateness in the epithet. (When Joth used long, eloquent words like this Mary and Brigg looked at him admiringly, Sophia fidgeted, and Will sniffed.)
Sophia’s shrewd little mind had a very clear notion of the differences between her two brothers. They both loved her, but they loved her in different ways; Brigg made tops for her, Joth taught her to read and write. Brigg, a lively bouncing lad with a broad, comical face which he could pull into the funniest shapes, was very good-natured; if Sophia did not want to go to sleep at night, and wailed just loud enough to disturb her father but not enough to anger him, Brigg would almost always be sent upstairs to see what was wrong, and then he and Sophia would have the jolliest times together; they pummelled each other and rolled about till Sophia was quite helpless with laughter; then Joth’s severe handsome face would appear in the doorway, and he would repeat gloomily his father’s command that Brigg was to come downstairs at once and let Sophia go to sleep. Brigg and Sophia then kissed long and rapturously, with many violent hugs, before they would consent to part; during these farewells Sophia sparkled over Brigg’s shoulder at Joth with some immature notion of making her elder brother jealous. Rarely could Joth resist that brilliant little face; he would smile in spite of himself, reluctantly but lovingly; then smooth Sophia’s tumbled cot, tuck her up with gentle hands, and place one solemn kiss in the middle of her forehead before going downstairs.
In the daytime Brigg was always to be found in the Syke Mill dyehouse, with clogs on his feet, clad in an enormous blue smock which reached to his very chin, and surrounded by big pans full of hot dye, into which he threatened to drop Sophia when she pulled the strings of his apron undone at the waist, playfully requesting her to choose her colour at once. Brigg was not nearly a man grown—though already very proud of some tentative black whiskers—when his father made him head of the dyehouse; Will was never gracious enough to put the matter into words, but there was a kind of feeling in New House that he thought highly of Brigg’s dyeing. Joth sometimes, when the family were at table together, magnanimously repeated some commendation of the Syke Mill dyeing which he had heard a merchant customer make; the perspiring and delighted Brigg looked eagerly at his father to see if it were true, and Will, sniffing, occasionally muttered a word or two of corroboration. Sophia was well aware that Brigg adored his father, and thought it rather silly of him; she also unconsciously despised Brigg because of his apron and his funny-coloured hands; what excited her, made her heart beat deliciously as she grew older, was to hear Brigg and his father having a row. Brigg had always been so much his father’s willing slave that the first time he ventured to contradict him the roof nearly flew off the mill in sheer astonishment, and all the men present at the scene stopped work and stood gaping. Will was so astonished himself that he coloured fierily, and shouted at his son, tapping the snippet of cloth he held with his second finger to emphasise his words. Brigg thereupon turned crimson and cried in his deep rough tones:
“It’s a lie! The man’s a fool! He doesn’t know what he’s talking about!”
Sophia flew off to New House to tell her mother that Brigg and father were having a row.
“Never!” cried Mary, almost dropping grandfather’s gruel in astonishment.
“Yes, they are,” persisted Sophia. “It’s about the dyeing of a piece.” Seeing her mother quite confounded, she went on eagerly: “Shall I go back and see how they’re going on?”
Mary gave a dubious assent, and Sophia rushed back across the yard.
Since then it had become understood that from time to time, when the grumblings of merchants about the dyeing of pieces reached a certain pitch, Will and Brigg were likely to have a row. Will, who heard the grumblers in person and had to smooth them down, would on his return from Annotsfield, his store of patience quite exhausted, sometimes rush into the dyehouse and storm at Brigg. On every other subject that Will chose to storm at Brigg—his love affairs in Marthwaite village, for example, to which the absence of any suitable society at New House sometimes drove him—Brigg was crushed by his father’s reprimands, and expressed a sincere penitence; but he simply could not endure to be stormed at about dyeing. There was a tale current in Syke Mill that he had once actually told his father that he, Brigg, understood dyeing better than anybody in the Ire Valley, whatever his name was; and Sophia, though she hardly dare believe this story, yet almost did so, for there was an element of violence in the good-natured Brigg, he was an Oldroyd after all. Besides, Brigg had once confidentially assured Sophia, with much repetition and fist-banging, that merchants didn’t know when cloth was dyed well and when it wasn’t; they were ignorant fools, he said, and merely objected to the dyeing or anything else they could think of to get a few shillings off the price. Sophia believed this too; it seemed to fit in with her notions of human nature. Besides, argued Sophia shrewdly, Syke Mill prospered, so the merchants evidently continued to buy cloth from there, so the dyeing couldn’t be bad. So it was only in the nature of things, and not alarming, that there should be these occasional rows between Brigg and his father; they were loud, hearty, jolly rows, with no malice borne when they were over; it seemed to Sophia that it was better to have a row like that than to go on snapping at each other bitterly like Joth and Will did, but Joth did not think so, Joth hated rows. He once made an allusion to this at table, saying scornfully that no man who professed to be a gentleman shouted at another.
“Well, I don’t profess to be a gentleman,” said Will grimly, taking the remark to himself, for whom it was certainly intended. “I’m a cloth manufacturer.”
“A good answer,” admitted Joth gravely.
“Damn you!” roared Will, spluttering over his ale: “Don’t begin to approve of me, you young whipper-snapper! It’s bad enough when you don’t, but I can’t stand it at any price when you do.”
Joth at once rose up and stalked from the room, leaving his supper half eaten on the table. Mary gave a soft exclamation of distress, but the others went on eating calmly—they were used to this sort of behaviour from Joth. The oddest things set him off: a paragraph read from the paper by his father, a complaint about one of the men from Brigg. One day a filthy old beggar came up to Will as he was crossing the yard with his two sons to New House for the midday meal; without much heeding him Will threw him a coin or two. Immediately Joth, his face as white as snow, flew into the house without a word for Sophia, who was standing in the doorway to greet them, and locked himself into his room at the top of the house. When Mary was told of this she went out into the yard to look at the beggar, who was wandering off up the lane, muttering; she too turned pale, and coming into the house told her husband with an expression of aversion that it was Ben Walker. Sophia naturally was all eagerness to know who Ben Walker was, but got such a scowl from her father, the vein pulsing in his forehead, that she gave up her question and applied herself to her spoon and platter instead. When the family were all well served Mary left them and went upstairs, and they could hear her appealing, presumably through the keyhole to her son.
“There’s a nice cooked dinner for you, Joth,” she pleaded in her rich loving tones.
“That might bring Brigg, but it won’t bring Joth,” thought Sophia shrewdly, and the event proved her right; before they had finished their meal they saw Joth, still very pale, limping across the yard to the m
ill, dinnerless.
There were other differences between Brigg and Joth. In the mill Joth did not wear an apron and stand amid coloured pools; he was always to be found in the counting-house, writing away in his beautiful slender pointed hand—Sophia would never be able to write like that, so it was no use trying—or adding up long columns of figures. It was perfectly understood in the mill and the house that Joth was exceedingly good at writing and figures, and his father relied on him absolutely. He worked very hard, too, early and late, and sometimes even brought big ledgers or masses of papers written in spidery hands to the house at night and toiled over them. Sophia liked to see Joth bending over papers; his fine head with the glossy dark waving hair looked its best then; his pale stern face had an air of content, his dark flashing eyes seemed happy. When he stood up Joth did not look so handsome; his body was rather puny, Sophia thought, and his limp was really a great pity. But sitting at his shining new table in the mill, surrounded by books and papers, replying with haughty accuracy when Will put his head round the door and shouted some complicated question at him—ah, Joth looked noble then! When he was reading to Grandfather Brigg, too, at night, or telling the old man of Brigg’s prowess in dyeing, or listening to his dull silly tales—yes, then too there was a lovely look in Joth’s fine eyes; he looked noble then. Joth was noble, reflected Sophia; yes, he was; but it seemed to her a dull kind of nobleness, just as Brigg’s seemed a dull kind of jollity. Everything at New House seemed to Sophia dull and homely, and it made her feel perverse and cross. It was all so disappointing. She loved her father and mother and Joth and Brigg and Syke Mill and New House and the Ire, of course, in the ordinary prosaic way; she could see that they were all really quite nice people and places, and noble and kind, in a way; but her restless mind wanted more than that; she wanted to adore somebody madly, to protect them fiercely (like she protected the mouse), to play a terrific part in tremendous scenes, to be a great personage, perhaps even a queen; life must be wild and gorgeous and exciting if it were to do justice to the brilliant, the beautiful, the witty, the dazzling, the immensely ambitious Sophia Oldroycd.
2
One dark, cold autumn night Jonathan, after locking the mill door behind the last of the men, instead of crossing the yard homeward went round the corner of the new gas house and stood by the old water-wheel, looking at the Ire. He had had a trying day, and felt that sick aversion to the circumstances of his life which since his mother’s marriage perennially attacked him. The Ire was in spate, and poured thunderously by him; now and again he caught the white flash of the cap of a wave. The wind was cold, there was a damp drizzle in the air and the wet grass soaked his feet; but Jonathan felt soothed and relieved; he threw up his head and sighed with pleasure as the rain damped his hair and brow. All the rest of the family, he mused with a scornful glance towards the lighted windows of New House, would think the night horrid and himself mad for staying out in it, for none of them had any poetry in their veins, they understood only the material things of life, comfortable chairs and good things to eat. Jonathan felt at one and the same time despairingly lonely because he was the only person of the household who could enjoy this wet wild night, and proud of his loneliness; he would not have sacrificed his spiritual isolation for any happiness New House could afford him; but yet he yearned for, craved, desired so much that the desire made his heart ache and burn, somebody to be friends with, somebody who would understand him and not think his ideas foolish and silly. That there were such men alive in Yorkshire, if only he had their acquaintance, he knew from the newspaper, which just then was full of Wilberforce’s campaign against West Indian slavery. There was a man for you! A man who endured obloquy and persecution gladly in order to further this great and noble cause. Oh, how Jonathan longed to know such men as he! Jonathan would have liked to go to some of the anti-slavery meetings which were being held all up and down the West Riding, but when he mentioned them tentatively to his father, Will stared, and gave it as his opinion that those sort of things could get on very well without Jonathan. So Jonathan remained at Marthwaite, lonely. But he was sure that the wind and the trees, the grass and the powerful stream, were on his side, and from them he drew strength and consolation. The drizzle thickened into rain, and came down heavily; Jonathan, frowning and tossing his head, obstinately stayed where he was until he was wet almost to the skin. He preferred this cold, dark loneliness where he could be himself to a comfort which was ruled by Will. At last he reluctantly admitted that to stay there longer would be foolish, and limped across to the shelter of his home with a heavy heart.
The family had eaten their supper without waiting for him, and Sophia was in bed, with Brigg, as usual, upstairs in his parents’ room supposed to be calming her and getting her to sleep. Will was reading the Leeds Mercury, Mary was knitting on the other side of the hearth. She smiled lovingly at her son, but Jonathan’s heart sank lower than ever at sight of this domestic interior; he felt even lonelier, less wanted, more out of tune with his home than before. He sat down to the tray of food which had been left for him, and reluctantly, without appetite, began to eat.
“You’re very wet, lad,” said Will in a kindly tone, looking at him over the top of the newspaper. “Is the rain as bad as that? Come near the fire.”
“Yes,” thought Jonathan in bitterness of spirit: “Food and warmth, that’s all they understand.” Aloud he said shortly: “I am quite comfortable here, thank you.”
“Have it your own way,” returned Will, irritated, as always, by his son’s aloofness. He turned the news-sheet over, making a few technical enquiries about the work which had kept Jonathan late, as he did so; then fell to reading again. Mary drew her chair nearer to her son, and smiled upon him as he ate; she did not, however, speak, because Will did not like interruptions while he read the paper. In the silence the gas jet flared and bubbled, Sophia’s commanding tones and Brigg’s obliging giggle drifted down the stairs, and Jonathan’s heart sank into an abyss. Even dear little Sophia, his own sister, preferrred Brigg to him, he thought; ah, he was lonely, lonely!
Something in the Mercury seemed to be irritating Will. He exclaimed “Pshaw!” loudly, and bent over the paper more earnestly, following the lines with his finger; every line seemed to please him less than the one before; he pished and tushed, his colour deepening all the while, and finally threw the paper violently from him, crying: “The man’s a fool!” The noise from upstairs happening to be rather loud at the moment, his irritation turned itself on this; rushing out of the room, he shouted furiously up the stairs:
“Brigg, will you make that child be quiet! She’s to go to sleep at once.”
“She says she isn’t sleepy, father,” replied Brigg from above, meekly.
“Sophia!” called Will in a stern voice, preparatory to a scolding. He could not, however, proceed further, for Sophia rushed joyously out of her little cot and down the stairs into her father’s arms. “You’re a naughty little girl,” said Will in his fondest and most loving tones, holding the child tightly to him: “You’re a bad lass. Do you hear?” Sophia, her face buried in his neck, merely laughed and gurgled. Will, kissing her bright hair, set her down on the stairs and began to command her to go to bed and sleep.
“Oh! It’s cold!” interrupted Sophia, lifting a delicious little foot from the wooden stair with an expression of distaste.
Will perforce took her up again. “You put me to bed, father,” urged Sophia.“ Well,” hesitated Will. “Yes! Yes!” said Sophia imperiously, casting her arms so tightly about his neck that she nearly choked him. “Well, say good night to your mother, then,” commanded Will, for Mary had come to the door of the room with her knitting in her hand and was watching them fondly.
Sophia leant out of her father’s arms over the banister to Mary, and kissed her.
Jonathan, hearing the sound of the kiss and in a rush of tenderness towards his little sister wanting a kiss himself, got up and limped to the door, but he was too late; the procession—Brigg, Will c
arrying Sophia, and Mary—had already started towards Sophia’s cot.
“Good night, Sophia,” called Jonathan in grave but wistful tones.
“Good night, Joth,” said his sister carelessly, without turning her head.
Jonathan, feeling even lonelier than before, turned back into the empty room. The newspaper which his father had thrown down was lying untidily on the floor: he mechanically picked it up and straightened it, and then idly wondered what item in it had vexed his father so. “Some rival’s success,” thought Jonathan with weary scorn. He turned the page; his eye fell on the heading: YORKSHIRE SLAVERY. “What!” exclaimed Jonathan, startled. He seized the sheet more eagerly, and read on. Beneath the heading came a letter.
To the Editor of the “Leeds Mercury.”
“It is the pride of Britain that a slave cannot exist on her soil; and if I read the genius of her constitution aright, I find that slavery is most abhorrent to it—that the air which Britons breathe is free—the ground on which they tread is sacred to liberty.” Rev. R. W. Hamilton’s speech at the Anti-Slavery Meeting held in The Cloth Hall Yard, Sept. 22nd, 1830.
“A very fine and proper sentiment,” thought Jonathan, his heart beating high in sympathy. “What has this letter-writer to say of it, pray?”
Gentlemen, he read:
No heart responded with truer accents to the sounds of liberty which were heard in the Leeds Cloth Hall Yard, on the 22nd instant, than did mine. One shade alone obscured my pleasure. The pious and able champions of negro liberty and colonial rights should, if I mistake not, before they had travelled so far as the West Indies, have sojourned in our own immediate neighbourhood, and have directed the attention of the meeting to scenes of misery, acts of oppression, and victims of slavery, even on the threshold of our homes.
Let truth speak out, appalling as the statement may appear. The fact is true. Thousands of our fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects, both male and female, the miserable inhabitants of Yorkshire towns, are this very moment existing in a state of slavery. Innocent victims at the accursed shrine of avarice, they are every morning compelled, not by the cart-whip of the negro slave-driver, but by the dread of the equally appalling thong or strap of the overlooker, to hasten, half-dressed, but not half fed, to those magazines of British infantile slavery—the worsted mills in the town and neighbourhood of Bradford!
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