Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

  “May the lions in the square

  Go out for change of air

  If ever I cease to love!”

  sang Janie in the words of a comic song just then popular in Annotsfield.

  “Don’t mock me, Janie,” said Brigg hotly. He had a sudden overwhelming feeling that if once he had her in his arms he’d make her pay for this, and perhaps it showed in his eyes, for Janie fell silent and looked rather struck. “Well? What is my answer to be?” demanded Brigg sternly. “Yes or no? Tell me at once.”

  “Oh, Brigg!” said Janie faintly, her lovely eyes filling with tears. “I don’t know, really I don’t know. Do you suppose I have been playing the coquette with you all this time, chopping and changing on purpose? I assure you I haven’t; my indecision has been just as painful to me as to you.”

  Brigg gave a short laugh. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “Brigg,” said Janie, very pale, fixing her eyes, wide with distress, earnestly on his: “you must give me a few days. You must. I’ll tell you on—on the last day of the month.” she faltered, instinctively deferring the decision as long as she dare. “Yes, on the last day of April.”

  “On your word of honour?” demanded Brigg.

  “On my word of honour,” said Janie faintly.

  “Then I’ll say good-bye till then,” said Brigg, taking up his hat and gloves. “I shall come on the last day of April at four, for your answer.” He slightly bowed to his frightened love, turned on his heel and strode out of the house.

  As he marched down the street he felt proud and glad, and confident that he had taken the right action. The relief of knowing that by four o’clock on the Monday after next the question of Janie would be settled once and for all was simply immense; by its immensity, indeed, he measured the misery of the last few years, and saw that he had been in torment. He was bright and laughing all the day, and as his father was also very cheerful with the hope of starting the Syke Mill looms on Monday, Syke House was brighter than it had been for some time. But when Brigg was dressing to go out that night, humming to himself with relief and glee, his mother came into his room. She leaned against the door-jamb as was her wont, and surveyed her handsome son, as he stood in his shirt-sleeves tying his bow, admiringly.

  “Your father’s been telling me about you and Janie, Brigg,” she said in a pleased tone. Brigg winced a little; although he had inherited from Polly the slightly cynical and jesting manner which marked the Thorpes, he detested it in others, and was particularly annoyed by it in his mother, whom he would fain have regarded sentimentally. “I think you’ve done right, love,” continued his mother with her air of amused malice: “It will have brought her to her senses properly. You know you’ve run after her too much, Brigg; if you’d neglected her more you’d have been more valued.”

  Brigg’s face burned. The idea of neglecting Janie in order to make her value him seemed to him so odious, so ignoble that he felt ashamed to have heard it uttered. “Mother, you don’t understand Janie and never will,” he said testily.

  “She’s a woman, I suppose,” observed his mother with a slight titter.

  Brigg sighed angrily, put on his dress coat, settled his collar, kissed his mother perfunctorily, and escaped. But as his hansom rattled over the cobbles, crossed the new bridge over the Ire, and toiled up the long drive to Irebridge House, his spirits drooped more and more; all his elation left him, and he felt he might have done the wrong thing in forcing Janie to a decision, it had perhaps been ungenerous, unwise. It was some time since he had been to Irebridge House, for Janie, the Radical’s niece, was never invited to that Tory stronghold, and Brigg had been busy courting Janie. He quite blinked in the gay company he found there; jokes and personalities were flying which had arisen since his day, moreover Charlotte Stancliffe was cool to him and inclined to jest at his expense; he felt himself unwelcome and a stranger. How dreary everything was when Janie was not there, he thought, and began to torment himself over his ultimatum of the morning; was it a manly deed, worthy of respect, or a piece of brutality? By the time he returned to Syke House he was in a state of such wretched indecision that he would almost have been glad to speak of the matter to his father. But the elder Brigg was full of the meeting with Mellor which was to take place on the morrow; Mr. Butterworth and Mr. Armitage, whom he had seen that night in the Club, argued most hopefully from it, and had arranged to be present at the time appointed, so that if the negotiation proved successful, it could be extended to other mills. Brigg could not help feeling that if it had not been for the tiresome meeting with Mellor his father would not have been so annoyed about Janie and the roller-skating and put his foot down about Brigg’s marriage, and Brigg himself would not have set that time limit to Janie which was now causing him so much dissatisfaction; and therefore he could get up no enthusiasm about Mellor or the re-starting of Syke Mill; he reflected that business was a sordid affair and wished he were well out of it, and went off to bed abruptly and spent a wretched night.

  Consequently next morning he rose late, and was not yet dressed when he heard a bellow like that of an outraged bull in the hall below. He went out to the landing to see what was wrong; the post had just come, and his father, with a hot, angry face and a couple of newspapers tucked under one arm, was reading a letter.

  “By God, we’ve made fools of ourselves, Brigg!” shouted his father, seeing him. “That confounded Union won’t let the men accept. Here’s a letter from Mellor, declining to meet us altogether; I never read such rubbish in my life. Here! See for yourself.” He stretched up the letter towards his son: Brigg ran downstairs and took it from his hand, ran his eye over the phrases compromise our cause and betray our fellow-weavers, and nothing to be gained by meeting for discussion on those terms, and suddenly broke out into a wild burst of rage.

  “Oh damn them all to hell!” he shouted, his face crimson. That he should have acted so stupidly to Janie, all on account of this meeting, and then be foiled of the meeting after all, and have the Mayor and the Chairman laughing at him to boot, was simply unendurable. He swore again, and threw the letter violently from him.

  “Nay, Brigg,” said his father in astonishment, regaining his temper as his son lost his: “what a temper you have to be sure! We’re no worse off now, lad, after all, than we were before you sent the letter; there’s no cause to take on so.”

  “Aren’t we? Isn’t there?” said Brigg furiously. He could not, however, expose his preoccupation with Janie to his father just then—it would be too undignified, too absurd—so he made a violent effort to control himself, and went on in a high shaking voice: “Here we condescend to meet the men unofficially and offer them these good terms, and they throw it back in our faces. It’s insolence! I don’t see how you can ever have any confidence in the Union again.”

  “Nay, I never had any confidence,” cheerfully observed his father: “but I don’t see that we’ve done any harm. We’ve shown willing, and they’ve duffed—that ought to do us good in Annotsfield with the general public.”

  “But need it be made public?” said the mortified Brigg.

  “Butterworth said last night he should have something put in the Recorder about it,” explained his father. “And being Mayor, and having to pretend to be impartial, like, I shouldn’t wonder if he’s sent it to the Pioneer too. Take it and see, while I look at the Recorder.”

  “There’s a piece a yard long,” cried Brigg angrily, opening his uncle’s paper and rapidly scanning Henry’s trenchant sentences: “Saying the men won’t deserve any sympathy if they betray each other like that, and so on. I think we ought to get out a printed letter explaining our side. He practically accuses us of trying to break the strike by underhand methods.”

  “The deuce he does!” said his father. “Here, give it to me. There’s a nice piece here, mentioning you by name.”

  Father and son exchanged papers, and Brigg was soothed by the Annotsfield Recorder’s glowing account. “All the same I think we ought to put out an explana
tion,” he said, his heart burning.

  “It’s a good idea,” said his father thoughtfully. “I shall have to take this letter to Armitage and the Mayor, and you may as well come with me and we’ll talk it over. For heaven’s sake go and get dressed; what are you doing like that at this hour of the morning? We ought to start at once.”

  “I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” said Brigg, turning to the stairs.

  “And what about your breakfast?” demanded his father. “You look poorly enough already, without missing your breakfast on top of it all.”

  This allusion to his love troubles did not improve Brigg’s temper, and he was in a quite ferocious mood when they reached the large Victoria Mills which housed Mr. Armitage’s firm. “Here we condescended to meet them with this fine offer,” he repeated angrily. “And they throw it back in our faces. They won’t even condescend to meet us at all. Personally I’ve lost all confidence in them. I think they’ve gone clean out of their senses.”

  “I think it would be a good idea to put out an explanation, as you suggest,” said the white-haired Mr. Armitage thoughtfully. “Indeed we might take the opportunity of stating our whole case. Shall we draw something up together, and lay it before the employers’ committee? I can get a meeting called for Monday.”

  Since the appearance of his views in the Pioneer at the beginning of the strike, Brigg had rather fancied himself in print; he now felt soothed and flattered, coloured with pleasure and eagerly agreed. His father saying: “Well, you don’t need me on that job,” departed to Syke Mill, and Brigg was left with the Chairman of the Manufacturers’ Association, composing a manifesto. He set to work eagerly; a draft was drawn up and approved by the committee; it was sent to the printers, and a day later was issued in the form of a handbill to be distributed about the streets of the town; copies of this handbill were also sent to the principal West Riding newspapers.

  The Pioneer of course received it with the rest.

  Jonathan happened to be in the office that morning, and opened the communication; he read with such close attention that Henry’s curiosity was aroused. He asked what the leaflet was; his father told him; Henry stepped round the table and stood behind his father’s chair; adjusting his monocle he stooped over Jonathan’s shoulder, and they read the manifesto together. An expression appeared on the faces of both men as though they had encountered a bad smell.

  “A tissue of lies and bad grammar,” drawled Henry.

  “No, my son, not lies,” said Jonathan in his grave tones. “Not lies—ignorance. They’re perfectly sincere. You don’t know the millowners as well as I do.”

  “But look at that,” said Henry, resting his finger beneath Brigg’s phrase about “condescending” to meet the weavers, which appeared at the top of a page. “Condescend! Condescend! To put it on no higher ground, who are they to condescend?”

  His father sighed. “We must print it of course,” he said.

  “With comments,” drawled Henry.

  He strode round to the other side of the table, and with an expression of profound contempt on his face, took up his pen.

  Accordingly next Saturday evening, when Brigg, who had been out on Marthwaite Moor all day shooting with Frank Stancliffe, returned to Syke House, he found his father looking very grim, with the current issue of the Annotsfield Pioneer in his hand. “You’d best read this, Brigg,” he said, holding it out. “They’re all agog over it at the Club.”

  Brigg began to read Henry’s leader on the manufacturers’ manifesto. “What a silly argument!” he said contemptuously. “If we never tried anything new till we were satisfied nobody would suffer, we should still be weaving by hand.”

  “Look at the end,” said his father impatiently: “Down at the bottom of the column.”

  Brigg skimmed the page down, and came to a passage beginning: Now mark, you fellow-workmen, when troubles spring up between you and your employers in future it will be “condescending” on their part if they speak to you about your differences. “What!” cried Brigg, furious. We knew that the masters were self-willed, he read, but we did not know before that they were snobs, gone mad because they’ve made a bit of money. Just fancy men, many of whom have worked in the loom-gate themselves, and most of whose sires were not ashamed to don the blue smock, talking of “condescending” to meet the very weavers among whom they must look for many of their nearest relations.

  “Oh!” cried Brigg, choked with rage.

  The remark, appropriate to many manufacturers’ families, was peculiarly applicable to the Oldroyds, with their Thorpe relations, and Brigg felt a searing humiliation.

  “What do you think of that, eh?” demanded his father, who, having worn a blue smock himself, had even more reason than his son to think the cap fitted the Oldroyd connection.

  “Think! I’d like to get at the fellow who wrote it!” cried Brigg savagely. “And I’ll bet it was Henry—it sounds just like him.”

  “Aye! It’s the general opinion that Mr. Henry Singleton Bamforth has done for himself this time,” said his father sardonically. “A nice set you’re marrying into!”

  “I shan’t let Janie have anything to do with them when we’re married,” said Brigg, his face still burning.

  At this his father grunted sceptically.

  Throughout the week-end Annotsfield seethed with excitement about the leader in the Pioneer; it was discussed everywhere, there was no escaping it; even Frank Stancliffe, who usually ignored the existence of the textile industry, had heard of it and asked Brigg what it was all about. Brigg carried his head high and laughed at it heartily in public, but his private humiliation was such that he felt he could never touch Henry’s hand in friendship again.

  Chapter IV

  Loss

  1

  Brigg was very far, therefore, from being in a loverlike mood when the time came for him to present himself in Eastgate for Janie’s answer. As he walked along the streets in the soft spring sunshine, however, and thought of Janie’s bright loveliness, of kissing her exquisite red-gold eyelashes and delicious cheek, his spirits somewhat revived, and he decided that, in order to soothe Janie’s pride and make it easy for her to accept him, he would not just ask for her answer, but repeat that he loved her and wished her to be his wife. With beating heart he rang the Bamforths’ bell.

  To his annoyance Henry admitted him, and led him into the front room, which was empty. “Janie will come to you,” he said quietly. He paused, then added in his drawl: “May the best man win, Cousin Brigg.”

  Brigg flashed him an angry look and said nothing; and Henry did him the justice to reflect that it is always easier for the loser to appear noble than for the winner. He closed the door, and went to summon Janie, who, with scarlet cheeks and wild eyes, was standing in the dining-room, gazing at the uninspiring view of steps and street and house-backs, afforded by the window.

  “Thank you,” panted Janie before he had spoken, without looking round.

  Brigg’s patience was almost exhausted before at last the door opened and closed softly and Janie entered the room.

  He turned from the hearth to greet her. She wore a rather unbecoming and shabby dress, having angrily declined Helena’s mild suggestion that she should honour her lover by a silk frock; her face was drawn into an anguish of indecision, and her flushed cheeks did not become her. And suddenly Brigg felt his love for her drop out of his heart. He felt sick of the whole business, and wished heartily that he were comfortably back in the Stancliffes’ drawing-room. The thing had to be gone through with, however; but he simply could not bring himself to utter words of love to her; having declined the chair she offered, he said in a stern tone;

  “Well, Janie? I have come for my answer.”

  “Brigg,” began Janie in a flutter, “I do want to make it clear to you that I’ve not been coquetting with you all this time. It hurt me very much that day when you seemed to think I had.”

  “Did it?” said Brigg grimly.

  “I wanted to explain to
you,” continued Janie, who like Brigg had made up her mind to say certain things and characteristically held herself to her task: “That I had real difficulties to contend with in making a decision. Before I knew you at all, Henry had asked me to be his wife. Many ties of gratitude and early affection bind me to Henry.”

  “Is she going to refuse me after all?” thought Brigg. “And for that fellow!” His passion for Janie rose again, hot and strong. His heart beat fast, he longed to say what he thought of Henry, but with a great effort controlled himself and said nothing.

  “I admire and respect Henry very much indeed,” faltered poor Janie, whp felt that the moment when she must accept Brigg was at hand, but was unable even yet quite to bring herself to do it.

  Brigg still managed to hold his tongue, though the effort made his face crimson and the vein in his forehead throb.

  “Henry—” began Janie again.

  “Damn Henry!” roared Brigg in a sudden uncontrollable burst of rage.

  “Brigg!” cried Janie, deeply shocked and wounded by this breach of the manners of the day. That he should coarsely swear in her presence! By her standards it was unforgivable; Janie coloured, outraged.

  “I beg your pardon, Janie,” said Brigg quickly, regaining his self-control. “I’m very sorry, I am indeed. But I’m not feeling very friendly towards Henry just now. Am I right in thinking that he wrote that leader in Saturday’s Pioneer about the manufacturers’ manifesto?”

  “Yes,” said Janie defiantly, throwing up her head. “Henry wrote it.”

  “Well, it was a damned ungentlemanly thing to do,” cried Brigg in a fury: “Throwing people’s ancestry in their face.”

  “It’s not considered very gentlemanly to swear in a woman’s presence,” cried Janie in return, beginning to be very angry indeed. “And it certainly isn’t gentlemanly to be ashamed of your relations just because they’re poor, as you appear to be.”