Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

  “I shan’t consult anyone!” cried Sophia with decision, tossing her wilful head. “Joth would only scold me,” she added petulantly. “He always does.”

  The course of their pleasure-filled life together, lately shadowed by the dark threat of economy, seemed luminous and brilliant again, and their gaiety was restored. Frederick perched himself on the arm of his wife’s chair, and putting one arm about her waist, began to caress her firm little chin with one of her own auburn curls, and murmur loving trifles in her ear. Sophia’s cheeks flushed with ecstasy; she leaned her head against his shoulder and adored him. How handsome he was! How smooth and fair compared with the dark hirsute Brigg! Never, never should he be short of money, never should he work in a horrible sordid warehouse, never should they descend to the homely, countrified, cramped, wearisome kind of life which prevailed at New House. Never! How could Brigg possibly know anything about railways, living miles from everywhere as he did? “We’ll go and see the solicitor to-morrow,” said Sophia firmly.

  They were out on this errand when Mary arrived.

  3

  When Brigg in due course received the formal notice of withdrawal from the solicitor, he stamped and fumed in a manner which reminded Mary of Will. He could not pretend, after his stepmother’s report of Sophia’s evasions on the subject, that the demand was unexpected, but still was naively surprised that anyone, much less an Oldroyd, should descend to the infamy of deserting Syke Mill.

  “Father would turn in his grave if he could see this,” he remarked every evening emphatically to Mary, turning the attorney’s letter over and over in his thick hands as they sat together by the parlour fire. “Father’s fondness for Sophia is like to cost Syke Mill dear, I can tell you. He spoiled her. Aye! He spoiled her. He’d turn over in his grave if he could see this letter; he’d turn over in his grave.”

  Mary, who entirely agreed with her stepson, gazed at him with frightened eyes and quavered: “Will it be so very difficult to pay her the money, Brigg?”

  “Of course it will,” said Brigg irritably. “The money isn’t there, really; it’s all tied up in machines. I shall have to get a mortgage on some of the land. Of course in the long run I shall be glad to have the place to myself, but in the meantime it’s a damned nuisance. And all this interviewing of attorneys, and one thing and another—its such a confounded waste of my time.”

  “It’s almost a pity Joth isn’t here,” faltered Mary, glancing timidly at him. “He understands lawyer’s papers and such.”

  But Brigg’s face had hardened. “I can manage without Joth, thank ye,” he said grimly. “I don’t need any Radicals or Chartists to run my affairs.”

  After a final furious interview with Sophia, in the course of which they both shouted and Frederick almost wept, Brigg resigned himself to the inevitable and took the necessary steps to pay Sophia out of Syke Mill. He refrained from telling Sophia he should never darken her doors again, partly because she was looking very lovely, in a ball-dress of shot lavender silk, when the angry interview took place, and partly because he thought it really too absurd, almost undignified, for all three of his father’s children to quarrel. Relations between New House and Treding House were therefore, though strained, not broken off, and Brigg was very glad of this a month or two later, for Sophia had a bad miscarriage from a fall, lost her child and had to lie up for several weeks; and when in brotherly duty he went to see her, he found her looking very white and miserable. As meanwhile the mortgage had been fixed up on fairly easy terms, with Enoch Smith as the mortgagee, Brigg was able to feel sympathetic towards his sister.

  “And how did it happen?” he demanded kindly.

  It appeared that Sophia’s foot had slipped from her stirrup as she was dismounting.

  “But were you riding?” cried Brigg, horrified. “Sophia Oldroyd! Do you mean to tell me you were on horseback, and you so far gone as you were? Well!”

  Sophia had the grace to blush and mumble.

  “Sophia, why are you so wilful, lovey?” Brigg reproached her, in a solemn, loving tone. “You know you’re so naughty—one of these days you’ll do something you’ll regret all your life. If indeed you haven’t done it already,” he added, thinking of Syke Mill.

  At this Sophia, who was naturally thinking of the horse and her own physical sensations, burst into tears. “Oh, Brigg, I’ve lost my baby, and suppose I die too,” she wailed.

  “Nonsense! Why should you? Of course you aren’t going to die,” said Brigg staunchly.

  “I shall! I shall!” sobbed Sophia pettishly.

  “Well, of course, if you’re so determined about it,” agreed Brigg with a smile: “I daresay you will.”

  This had the effect of bringing Sophia to her senses; she giggled, wiped her beautiful eyes and arranged her pale blue bedwrap more becomingly about her shoulders. “Brigg, if I should die,” she said in a much brisker tone: “If I should die, don’t be offended, Brigg, but I should like Joth to look after Freddie’s education, and you to look after his money. Don’t be offended, Brigg, but somehow I think Joth and Helena would bring him up rather well.”

  “Well, Joth’s your own brother,” began honest Brigg. “Of course you understand about all that better now,” he broke off to say: “Now you’re a married woman and all that. Joth’s your own blood brother.”

  Sophia, flattered by these adult confidences, inclined an ear and listened pleasurably to the rather confused and inaccurate account of Jonathan’s birth which Brigg now gave her.

  “He’s your own brother,” concluded Brigg, “So of course it’s natural you should want him to have to do with young Freddie. But you aren’t going to die just yet,” he added cheerfully, getting up to go. “I shall tease you many a time about this afterwards.”

  In this prophecy Brigg was perfectly correct, for Sophia rapidly recovered her blooming health, and after a judicious interval became again pregnant and was safely delivered of a little girl. She continued to live a life of passionate pleasure, and Brigg to pay money over to her in large monthly instalments; and if her cheeks were particularly glowing or her eyes particularly brilliant when Brigg called, he was wont to remark slyly that he thought there was no need to send for Joth about Freddie’s education yet awhile. On these occasions Frederick always smiled with pleasure to think how very much alive Sophia was, but Sophia blushed—her husband did not perceive that she had not wished to entrust him with their son’s education. She did not want him to perceive it, but his lack of perception was one of those traits in him which she desired passionately to hide from the world. At the same time, whenever he betrayed how much of a fool he was she felt a terrible physical subjection to him, an agonising love. So when he smirked at Brigg over her being alive and not dead, she usually went up to him, touched his cravat or his fair well-groomed curls and felt that, however strongly Brigg would disapprove if he knew, she must continue the course they had begun, the course which gave Frederick the kind of background where alone he shone, the course which enabled them to live a brilliant, exciting, pleasurable life, to cut a dash in Annotsfield, to own splendid horses to run hither and thither about England—the course which consisted, quite simply, in spending the large capital sums of Sophia’s inheritance as fast as Brigg paid them in. Perhaps, sometimes, a little faster.

  4

  It was a spring morning in the fifties, and Brigg, standing in the Annotsfield warehouse which had superseded the Oldroyd room in the Cloth Hall, was in rather a bad temper. He had private reasons for annoyance just then; moreover, he was always rather cross in his warehouse. For this warehouse, instead of the fine high block of his own he had intended, was, thanks to Sophia, a mere set of rooms on the second floor of somebody else’s building—there was no money to spare at Syke Mill just now for building warehouses. Now Brigg did not consider a set of rooms on the second floor suitable to the dignity of Syke Mill; his father had always had everything good and handsome, and Brigg wished to do the same; he hated anything shoddy. Confound Sophia, he alw
ays thought irritably when he climbed the stairs; and the warehouse staff had quite a different notion of his temper from that sustained in Marthwaite. He was re-perching a piece which a merchant had returned with grumbles which Brigg considered unjustified, when one of the clerks came and told him that Mr. Enoch Smith wished to see him.

  “Mr. Enoch Smith?” said Brigg, astonished that the savage old iron-founder, reputed the richest man in Annotsfield, should have climbed those two flights of stairs; moreover he had thought Enoch Smith was off to London about a contract, by an afternoon train the day before. Surely the clerk must have made a mistake, and it was one of Enoch’s sons who had called. With a sudden quick fear at his heart Brigg hoped there was nothing wrong about the mortgage. When, however, he reached the handsomely furnished office where he entertained the merchants who were his customers, Brigg found that it was indeed the hawk-faced, white-haired, lean old man who, with his silk hat still on his head, his hands clasped in front of him over his silver-headed stick, sat erect in the stiffest and straightest of Brigg’s mahogany chairs.

  “Well, Brigg,” began Enoch immediately in his gruff tones, which age had dried but not robbed of surliness: “There’s bad news about your Sophia.”

  “There always is,” muttered Brigg, nevertheless struck to the heart. He leaned against the table, feeling rather sick, as he thought of his sister and her just weaned little girl, and remarked mechanically: “I thought you’d gone to London yesterday.”

  “I set out,” said Enoch Smith. “I got as far as Penistone. Then I heard this news and turned back. After all,” he concluded with a biting contempt: “Frederick’s my nephew, I suppose. But you don’t know what I’m talking about, I reckon?” he went on. “There’s been an accident on the railway, Chester and Manchester line.”

  “But what’s that got to do with Sophia and Frederick?” demanded Brigg, surprised.

  Enoch Smith scowled at him from beneath his white bushy eyebrows. “Happen you don’t know they were at Chester yesterday for the races?” he said drily.

  “The races!” said Brigg in astonishment. “Sophia at Chester races! But why on earth! Surely she’d have more sense!” As he spoke, however, he felt a twinge; Sophia had lately shown so little sense. And racing; horses. “An accident!” said he uneasily, beginning to realise the serious nature of the news. “Are there any hurt?”

  “Aye, and some killed,” said Enoch Smith.

  Brigg blenched. “I must go up to Sophia’s at once and see if they’re really gone,” he said.

  “You can spare yourself the trouble,” replied Frederick’s uncle, “I’ve been. There’s nobody there but the servants—though there’s plenty of them,” he added sardonically. “They expected Mr. and Mrs. Smith-Oldroyd”—(he pronounced these words with ineffable contempt)—“home last night, so I’m told.”

  “But are the children gone too? I must be off to Chester at once,” said Brigg wretchedly.

  “I’ll go with ye,” said old Enoch. “We’d best take the first train, I suppose, though it’s only a Parliamentary. The express doesn’t go for an hour yet.”

  Brigg having despatched a messenger to Mary to say that he should stay at Sophia’s that night—this was the most reassuring lie he could think of—and given a few instructions to the warehouse foreman, pronounced himself ready to start. Old Enoch got himself slowly down the stairs and into his waiting carriage, Brigg followed deferentially, and the two were driven down the road and across the new square to the station.

  “I can’t understand Sophia going to races, I really can’t,” repeated Brigg mournfully when they were settled in the slow train for Manchester. “Are they a very big affair—the Chester races?”

  “Aye—big as the fools who go there,” said the old ironfounder. “There were three full excursion trains coming away last night—that’s how it happened.”

  He went on to repeat what he had heard of the accident, and Brigg’s spirits fell still lower at the recital. One excursion train had left Chester about seven in the evening, and not being able to get up enough steam, had stuck in a tunnel a few miles away. A second train coming shortly after was fortunately also short of steam, and though it overran the rear of the first, did little damage beyond giving the passengers a good shaking. The tunnel was now full of carriages and steam, so that even if anyone had the sense to put a red light at the tail of the second train—which was doubtful, observed Enoch sarcastically—it probably wouldn’t be visible. At any rate a third train, with fewer carriages and fewer passengers and so better able to mount the incline, came rushing up and crashed into the lot. Brigg had a horrible vision of a woman’s white face in the dark, the mouth round and the eyes squinting with fear. But Sophia was not in those trains, he told himself firmly; not his bright naughty little Sophia, no. She and Frederick had stayed the night unexpectedly in Chester, no doubt, perhaps because the railroad was blocked by the accident, or perhaps just because they wanted to—expensive whims of that sort, indeed of any sort, were just in Sophia’s line.

  The two men eventually reached the station on the near side of the fatal tunnel, and on enquiring for the injured were directed by a sympathetic station-master across some fields to a couple of small cottages which stood beside the railway line. This man confirmed the account Enoch had heard, and added details; Brigg received an impression of shrieks, darkness, splintering wood. “There’s six dead,” concluded the man with gusto: “One of them a woman in an ermine tippet. And more than twenty hurt.”

  “I don’t know of Sophia having such a tippet,” said Brigg as they left the road and entered the field path. “But she might have—she has lots of dresses and such.”

  “New ones every day of the week, from what I hear,” said Enoch, sombre.

  Brigg fidgeted impatiently along the muddy path, fretted by the need to modify his usual quick if rather lumbering gait to Enoch Smith’s slow pace. This delay was dreadful! And then all of a sudden the mean little cottages were on top of them, and Brigg wished they were a mile away. Now the two men stood beside the fence which separated the field from the line; Enoch Smith was parleying with some sort of attendant, while Brigg stood aloof; Enoch pointed with his stick to the further cottage; they entered it, climbed a steep stone stair and went into a little room where something lay on a board on the floor, covered with a sheet. The attendant turned the sheet down.

  “It’s very difficult to tell,” murmured Brigg, frankly weeping. An amber curl which had escaped from her bonnet while she was yet in life, and now lay coiled like a spring across the matted white fur, told him that this disfigured head was in truth Sophia’s, but he would not believe it. No! He would not believe that all Sophia’s vivid life, all her bright waywardness and passionate desire, all her striving and her fierce ambition, had come to this so soon. Was it for this, just for these few short years of life, this brief span of being, that his father had begotten her? “I don’t see what Sophia should come to the races for,” muttered Brigg, his face contorted.

  “I reckon it’s Sophia, Brigg,” said Enoch Smith in a very kind tone. “And I reckon this settles it.” He beckoned Brigg round to the other side of the board, and drawing down the sheet further, revealed a small white waxen face and the body of a young child.

  “Good God!” cried Brigg in horror: “It’s little Freddie!” A groan burst from his lips. There was to be nothing left of Sophia, then; her life was to be utterly wasted! “But where’s the other one?” he demanded wildly. “The little girl? Jane or whatever her name is? She’s barely weaned! She can’t walk.“

  Enoch looked interrogatively at the attendant, who shook his head.

  “She must be somewhere,” objected Brigg, looking wildly round. “She must be found—we must find her. Perhaps,” he suggested on a note of hope, “she was with Frederick?”

  “From what I hear, Frederick’s dying in the next house,” said Enoch brutally.

  Brigg tried to feel shocked, but was really relieved. If Frederick had lived and Sophi
a died it would have been quite unbearable. “Sophia must have left the baby at home,” he suggested.

  “She isn’t at Treding House,” said Enoch. “We must start a search for her. But we’d best see Frederick now.”

  The attendant made as if to raise the sheet. “Oh, no, no!” protested Brigg, deeply shocked. “Don’t cover her up like that. Sophia!” He knelt down, and taking one of the cold hands in his, tried to raise it to his lips. But it was not Sophia’s hand any longer; his little sister was gone from him. He stood up, the tears rolling down his broad red cheeks. “It would have broken father’s heart if he’d known of this,” he said emphatically. “Yes, it would have broken his heart. I’m glad he died before he knew.”

  Enoch looked at him curiously. “But what about Mrs. Oldroyd?” he said, taking Brigg’s arm and leading him away. “Won’t it be a bad blow for her?”

  “Aye, of course it will,” said Brigg indifferently, stumbling down the steps. “But you know, since father’s death she doesn’t seem to feel things so much. She’s getting old. But Sophia at the races!” he broke out again, almost sobbing in his violence: “What on earth did Sophia want to go to races for? She was always wilful and fond of horses,” he answered himself. “Oh, Sophia, Sophia! You’ve done it this time, lovey, you have that.”

  They followed the little path of beaten earth to the neighbouring cottage, and in the doorway ran into the arms of a lame man who was just coming out. It was Joth, looking stern and old and haggard. Brigg felt this intrusion on his grief, by one who had at once a better and a worse right to grieve for Sophia, quite unbearable; he started back as though stung, then coldly and solemnly bowed, keeping his eyes averted from his brother. In that moment he felt that Sophia’s death was all Joth’s fault; if they had all been friends, the three of them, he thought, surely Sophia would never have become so naughty. Joth gave him a piercing glance, then sternly bowed his head and moved away.