Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

  “One of the town councillors,” replied his son clearly.

  “Oh, a councillor,” said the old man, nodding his head. “Which will it be now, I wonder? Charlotte hasn’t sent me the paper in lately,” he continued in a tone of reproach, “So I don’t know who it’s likely to be.”

  Francis saw that the end of this speech was even less comfortable to his father than the beginning, and he was not surprised to hear him give a sharp command to the coachman to turn his horses and make a still wider circuit to avoid the block. The man, rather flurried, tried to obey; but the crowd was growing thicker every minute, and by the time he had turned through a right angle there was so much confusion and so many reproaches, as well as a certain amount of danger, that without offering any apology he gave up the attempt, and simply sat there with his back to his passengers, motionless. The result of this manoeuvre was to bring the carriage parallel with the route of the funeral; we shall have a good view, thought Francis. There were many workmen in the crowd—Francis was surprised to see them all out in the middle of the afternoon; a great many children were playing about, and the number of white-haired old men, leaning on sticks and weeping into red handkerchiefs, was quite astonishing. Evidently this was no ordinary funeral, thought Francis, beginning to feel interested.

  “They’re coming!” cried someone excitedly; and at the same moment a man dressed in mourning came into Francis’s view in the middle of the road.

  A hush fell on the crowd. Those of the younger men who wore caps took them off; Francis had already removed his straw hat, and after a moment’s hesitation his father followed suit. Old Brigg looked at them approvingly, and murmured in his son’s ear that he would take off his own hat when the hearse itself passed. Brigg with a contraction of his brow agreed soothingly. It seemed to Francis that the hearse would never come; however, so long was the procession. A woman standing by the front wheel of the carriage told her little girl what all the different groups of mourners represented. Francis listened; the men with the blue scarves were Temperance men, he learned; then there were members of the Mechanics’ Institute Committee, of the School Board, of the Technical College Council, of Eastgate Chapel Sunday School, of a dozen other institutions of which Francis had never heard. Then there came a group of children—“I know who they are,” piped the little girl by the wheel: “They’re from the Bamforth Secondary School.”

  “What? What? What school did she say?” cried old Brigg suddenly, leaning forward.

  “I don’t know, father,” said his son, giving Francis a warning look.

  “I don’t know,” stuttered Francis, scarlet.

  “Ye’re lying, both on you,” said the old man fiercely. “She said the Bamforth Secondary School—that’s the one they’ve called after Joth. Is it Joth’s funeral?” he cried suddenly, striking his son’s knee with his fist. “Ye said it was a councillor—is it Joth? Is it? Eh?” He thrust his face into his son’s.

  “Father, I’m afraid it is,” said Brigg.

  “Then why didn’t you tell me?” cried the old man piteously. “Why didn’t you tell me he was dead? Charlotte hasn’t sent me the papers lately—I didn’t know he was dead.”

  “I didn’t know either,” said his son quietly. “Father, don’t make a scene now; here’s the Mayor and Corporation, the hearse will be next; don’t make a scene.”

  “Joth, Joth!” mourned the old man. “My own brother! And you never told me!” He threw aside the rug and stumbled to his feet, and with shaking fingers pulled his hat from his head. “Joth, Joth!” he repeated. Francis was horrified to see tears rolling down his lined old cheeks. The old man swayed on his feet; Francis stood up and seized his arm. “Those were good days,” muttered his grandfather. “I’ve never been so happy since.” His head fell on his breast and he sobbed aloud.

  Altogether it was most embarrassing and Francis felt a fool, but there was nothing for it but to go on clutching his grandfather’s arm, and he did so, his young face flushed and perplexed. The hearse, with a very plain coffin and no flowers, passed, and a long procession of carriages with mourners began; suddenly Francis felt his grandfather’s full weight pulling away from him; he staggered and almost fell, but managed to lower the old man into his seat without disaster. Brigg, his face white and his eyes burning, replaced the old man’s hat on his head, then leaned over the side of the carriage and murmured to the bystanders that he was afraid his father was ill; with awed looks they moved aside, and the coachman was able to turn and drive away. He made a circuit and got them out of Annotsfield, crossed the dark filthy river at Irebridge, and began the long climb of Emsley Brow. They passed the Stancliffes’ lower gate, followed the park wall for nearly a mile, passed the upper gate, topped the brow and began to descend. Still old Brigg lay back silently in his seat, his head bobbing as the carriage jerked, shaking his dusty hat further and further down on his brows; he made no move even when steam trams, of which he had been very nervous since his wife’s death, bumped past them; his eyes were shut, his mouth open; he looked dreadful.

  “Shall I stop at the Coach and Florses and get a drop of brandy, sir?” suggested the coachman with a scared look over his shoulder.

  “No—get home as quickly as you can,” said Brigg harshly.

  The man whipped up his horses, and at last they were clear of Emsley, left the setts and the tramlines behind, and turned into the peaceful drive of the Hall. To Francis’s relief his mother, in a light frock, her fair hair drawn into a knot on the top of her head, her face calm and assured and bright, was standing on the board steps to greet them. In the hurly-burly which followed it would not have been suitable for mother and son to kiss, but they exchanged a look which served almost as well. Old Brigg was with infinite pains carried into the house and put to bed; the doctor, hastily summoned, said that he had had another very severe stroke, and would probably not recover. Nurses were fetched from Annotsfield. During an interval in all this Francis stood leaning over some recent issues of the Annotsfield Recorder, which he had spread out on the table in his mother’s sitting-room—his father had commanded that the papers should be retrieved from the servants’ hall, in case old Brigg should recover consciousness and ask for them. There were columns and columns about this Councillor Bamforth, Francis found; he had died most dramatically, while making a speech in the Council in favour of turning the long-disused Cloth Hall into a Free Library; some of the Council had opposed it on the score of expense, and the old fellow had become very angry and very eloquent, and died in the middle of his appeal. From the length of his obituary notice he would appear to have been a very important person indeed. It seemed strange to Francis that his father had not noticed the accounts of the death in the paper—his mother, he knew, like himself, read little of anything, and paid scant attention to the Annotsfield papers, which she thought very small beer, but his father usually read them assiduously. Francis hardly felt able to accuse his father of lying to his grandfather, but still it seemed strange. He said so to his mother, who seemed to agree with him, for when her husband came into the room to announce that he was going down to the mill for an hour, she said to him:

  “Brigg, how came it that you didn’t see the notice of Mr. Bamforth’s death in the paper?”

  “I never read anything about the Bamforths,” said Brigg shortly.

  “And pray why not, Brigg?” demanded his wife in a tone which struck Francis as strange.

  “Because I don’t wish to be provoked,” replied her husband.

  “Oh! Brigg!” his wife rallied him. She shook her head at him and smiled.

  Her husband smiled in reply, then left the room with a hasty step.

  “But, mamma,” objected Francis, when he had enquired who Mr. Bamforth was, and received the reply that he was a connection by marriage of his grandfather’s: “If you didn’t know about his death, if it wasn’t for that you kept the newspapers from grandfather, I mean, why was it? He complained about it—I was sorry.”

  “Oh, my dear!” e
xplained his mother in her clear frank tones: “They’re talking about putting those dreadful tariffs on in America again, and we were afraid of the effect on him if he read it. That’s why I put it into his head to come to the station, you know—I thought it would take his mind off the newspaper. I don’t want him to see it to-day, because there’s a lot in about the tariffs. There’s a Trades Union Congress on at Liverpool too; very worrying.”

  Francis gave an impatient sigh. It was bad enough, he thought to be presented with a funeral and a dying grandfather on the first day of his holidays—in Jubilee year too!—but to have American tariffs thrust upon him as well was really too much. What a nuisance business was!

  3

  This was an opinion Francis saw no cause to change as time went on, and when he finally returned to Emsley Hall after the completion of his education, a battle royal was waged between his father on the one hand and Francis and his mother on the other. As Francis was as yet completely ignorant of the processes of cloth manufacture, Brigg insisted that his son should not only spend some months in each department of Syke Mill, including the London office, but also that he should attend textile classes at the Annotsfield Technical College. Francis thought this latter proposal quite outrageous—the Annotsfield Technical College after his school! It was really absurd of his father to expect it. Besides, he was too old to sit on a bench and pore over text-books now—and then look at the fellows who went there! No; really he couldn’t do it. In this his mother supported him.

  “None of the boy’s friends go, Brigg,” she said in her clear convincing tones.

  “The more fools their fathers,” replied Brigg grimly. “I shouldn’t like to think of you having to leave Emsley Hall and live in poverty after my death, Charlotte.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk so much about dying, Brigg,” his wife reproved him, with a slight pettishness which betrayed her real anxiety. “You’re a young man yet. Your father lived to be eighty.”

  “I’m not thinking of dying just now, Charlotte,” said Brigg in a dry tone. “But all the same I want Francis to go to the Technical this autumn.”

  His wife sighed. “How obstinate you are, Brigg!” she said.

  At this Brigg smiled, whereupon Charlotte laughed—they were very good friends nowadays, and their occasional battles were fair fights, in the open, which left no sting behind.

  In the end Brigg won, because he held the purse-strings, and he made it quite clear to Charlotte that if Francis did not attend evening classes at the Technical, no money would be forthcoming for hunting and dancing and tailors’ bills, or for Francis’s uniform and sword—he had joined the local regiment of volunteers, of which one of his Stancliffe uncles was the colonel, and seemed to be earning good opinions there.

  “So you’ll have to go, my dear,” said Charlotte to her son cheerfully. Francis groaned. “Well, you know what your father is, when he’s made up his mind,” continued Charlotte. “It’s useless to argue with him. I’ve done my best, and failed; so you may as well do what he wants with a good grace.”

  Accordingly Francis put his name down for classes in weaving and dyeing; a few mottled exercise books, filled with badly spelled notes in his large writing, were occasionally to be seen lying about the house, and strands of curiously dyed wool were from time to time retrieved from the carpet of his room by the housemaids. He supposed he must be learning something about cloth, but felt a little doubtful; for there were his volunteer nights, and there was tennis, and there were dances—Francis was fond of dancing, and always a great favourite with his partners—and in any case Emsley Hall was such a long way from Annotsfield, and the classes clashed with the dinner hour, so that altogether, with one thing and another, he was more often absent from them than not. However, he attended Syke Mill dutifully every day with his father, and supposed he must be learning something there too.

  One summer Saturday afternoon when Francis had nearly completed his probationary period at Syke Mill, his father said to him over lunch: “I want you to go to Old Mill with me this afternoon.”

  Why on earth does he chose Saturday afternoon for a visit to the old dyehouse, thought Francis, vexed, when there’s all the rest of the week to go in? It was very inconvenient, too, for Francis was expecting guests for tennis. He shot a glance at his mother, who played up promptly.

  “I’m expecting several young people to tea, Brigg,” she said.

  “We shall be back before then,” replied her husband.

  His tone brooked no further objection, so Francis, making the best of a bad job, said cheerfully: “What time do you want to start, sir?”

  “As soon as lunch is over,” replied his father, whose lunch had consisted chiefly of hot water. “I ordered the car.”

  The motor car was still a delightful novelty, and Francis brightened.

  Father and son sped noisily down the valley, through the dirty little mining village of Emsley, and over Emsley Brow; then turning west again, ran up the busy streets of the Ire Valley, lined with shops and mills, took the paved surface of Mill Lane, and drew up in the small inner yard of Old Mill. As it was Saturday afternoon, the doors were closed and the machinery was not working; and in the blazing sunshine the whole place looked to Francis old, dirty, worn out, and sordid. The walls were black and bulging, the short chimney appeared almost out of the perpendicular. Francis sighed a little as his father drew keys from his pocket and unlocked the door; what a way to spend Saturday afternoon! In silence his father walked through the place, upstairs and down; pausing at times to gaze reflectively at the dye-baths and washers, and poking his head inside the tentering room. Francis followed drearily, and their steps, ringing on the flags, echoed in the empty mill. When they had completed their inspection of the building, Brigg led the way out, motioned Francis to follow, and relocked the door. He then stepped back and looked up at the building, and seemed to be considering. Francis, considerably perplexed, stood by in silence; he knew his father as a man who always had good reason for what he did, but could make nothing of this afternoon’s performance. Fie had not long to wait for an explanation, however, for Brigg said abruptly:

  “I can’t make up my mind whether to sell it or not.”

  “Oh!” said Francis, enlightened. He looked at the mill with different eyes, then said doubtfully: “But would anyone buy it?”

  “My dear lad!” exclaimed his father impatiently. He then named the number of thousands of pounds which he had been offered for the place by a Bradford dyeing combine, which, formed a few years ago, had been very successful and was conducting operations on a large scale.

  “And they’ll pay as much as that!” said Francis, astonished.

  “It’s the water rights,” Brigg told him.

  “Where is the water?” enquired Francis, staring about him.

  His father took him by the arm and led him round the building to a corner formed by the junction of a small dirty stream with another larger and dirtier.

  “I see,” said Francis distastefully. As they stood looking out on the inky waters of the Ire he blurted: “What makes you hesitate about selling, father?”

  “The place has been in the family a long time,” said Brigg. “Your grandfather was devoted to it.” He mused a moment, then went on bitterly: “But with strikes and tariffs and these short-hour days and all this new factory legislation and one thing and another, there’s not much fun to be found in the cloth trade nowadays. And you don’t care for it.”

  Francis, colouring guiltily—his father had noticed his absences from the classes, then—mumbled that he’d hardly had time yet to know. Perhaps when he’d seen the London end … His father gave him a shrewd look, and smiled sardonically.

  “It might be as well not to have all our eggs in one basket,” continued Brigg. “If I sell Old Mill I shall settle the money on your mother by deed—it may come in useful for you both some time.” He turned away and began to walk back towards the car. “I have to give my decision on Monday.”

  �
��If you sell, shall you give up dyeing?” asked Francis, feeling he owed it to his father to give the matter his serious attention.

  “Yes,” said Brigg.

  They climbed into the car.

  “Do you think you will sell, father?” ventured Francis.

  “Yes,” said Brigg. He added, as the engine began to clatter: “I shall make Syke Mill a limited company at the same time. Times change, and we must change with them.”

  “Quite,” said Francis.

  Chapter II

  Discontent

  1

  There was a bang on the door of the room Carmine shared with her mother, and Matthew’s voice called:

  “Hope you like your new job, Min.”

  Brotherly affection and angry scorn jostled each other in his tone, and Carmine, opening dark rebellious eyes, called “Thank you!” sarcastically, without raising her head from the pillow. She heard him clatter down the stairs, exchange a quick word with her mother, who was preparing Carmine’s breakfast, then raise the sneck of the house-door and fly up the street.

  “He’ll be late again,” thought Carmine, for her elder brother’s work lay on the other side of the town from Booth Bank, in Irebridge. A feeling of compunction arose in her heart as she remembered how he had sat up late over his books the night before, and she wished she had got up to say good-bye to him. But then he should not vex her by calling her “Min.” Min Mellor! What a name! It was Matthew’s way, she knew, of protesting against her real name, which he thought pretentious and silly and aristocratic. Carmine thought it rather silly too, but still she liked the sound of it—it was new and different, it hinted at Spain, which was romantic, and the rich crimson the word signified was just what she wanted life to be. Deeply coloured, thrilling, gorgeous. In any case the name was her father’s choice, and therefore Carmine always praised it staunchly.