Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

3

  In the middle of David’s next term Janie abruptly died from a heart attack. Francis received notice of this on the same day as he heard the first rumour of Butterworth’s bankruptcy, which if true would be a very serious matter for him; and for a second the thought flashed through his mind that if the news had concerned David’s other grandmother, if it had been Charlotte who had died, and thus left to him the money deeded to her by Brigg, the relief to his own financial situation would have been immense. He was at once so ashamed of this thought that he left the mill early and went to have tea with Charlotte at Stanney Royd, to atone for it. Charlotte, whose snub nose and grey eyes and fresh complexion looked well with her white hair and old lady’s silks, was much concerned about her son’s appearance.

  “You look quite worn and old, Francis,” she said reproachfully.

  “I don’t look any worse than I feel,” thought Francis, but aloud he said: “Well, mother, I’m forty-seven, you know.”

  “Never!” exclaimed Charlotte, astounded.

  “And business to-day isn’t calculated to make a man look younger,” pursued Francis.

  “Then why not give it up?” suggested Charlotte.

  “Give it up!” cried Francis. “What should we live on, then?”

  “You could live on my money,” said Charlotte with dignity. “Your poor dear father settled it on me for just such a case as this.” She hesitated, and added: “Ella told me about the deeds of Emsley Hall.”

  Francis winced.

  “Why not give it up now, while you’ve still a little left?” urged Charlotte. “You’re not fitted for business, Francis, and you never have been—you’re too much a Stancliffe for that.”

  Francis felt so much soothed by this interpretation of his lack of success that he blurted out what he had meant to conceal, namely the rumour that Butterworth the merchant was down, and would hardly be able to pay five shillings in the pound.

  “And will this affect you, Francis?” said Charlotte.

  “I should say it will,” returned Francis grimly. “It’ll about finish me. I’m one of the principal creditors, perhaps the chief of them.”

  “Get out of it while there’s yet time,” counselled Charlotte again earnestly.

  “But there isn’t time,” said Francis, irritated: “You don’t understand, mother. If I ‘get out’ of business now, as you call it, I shan’t have a penny left in the world.”

  “But, my dear boy, I have,” said Charlotte firmly. “You can all come and live with me at Stanney Royd.”

  “Never!” exclaimed Francis. “If I have to leave Emsley Hall, I’ll leave Yorkshire altogether—I couldn’t stand staying on.”

  “Very well,” said Charlotte: “Then we’ll all go and live in the south.”

  She spoke cheerfully, because several of the Stancliffes had already performed the migration and found it. agreeable. Francis, however, who did not see himself living on his mother’s income, turned the subject.

  “What I really came to tell you,” he began, and spoke of Janie’s death.

  “I wonder what she’s done with Brigg’s thousand pounds,” observed Charlotte when he had finished.

  “Really, mother!” protested Francis, vexed at her mercenary tone.

  “Well, Francis, it’s useless to expect me to express sorrow about that woman,” said Charlotte firmly: “Because I don’t feel any and I shan’t pretend I do. I always disliked her. She made your father very unhappy, as a young man, and she brought up her daughter abominably.”

  “Mother,” said Francis quickly, “Please remember that Carmine was David’s mother.”

  “She ought to leave that money to David,” mused Charlotte.

  Francis, irritated, got up and left her.

  Within a week or two he had a badly composed note from an obscure firm of Annotsfield solicitors, saying that, acting for their client, Mr. Matthew Mellor, who was executor for Mrs. Sophia Jane Mellor’s will, they begged to notify him that his son, David Brigg Oldroyd, was a legatee to the extent of one thousand pounds, free of legacy duty. There was a good deal of legal phraseology about David’s minority, from which Francis extracted the fact that the money would be paid in due course. Francis gave the letter to his solicitors to deal with, and forgot about it.

  Indeed he had more pressing matters on hand. The rumour about the firm of Butterworth unfortunately proved well-founded, and to Francis the blow was a fearful one. Not only did he lose an excellent customer and large sums of money due to him; he held a big three months’ bill from the old merchant, which the bank had already discounted, so that Francis automatically owed the bank this additional sum. However, thought Francis, the cleeds of Emsley Hall will cover that; and he was astonished to receive one morning an urgent note from Everard proposing a prompt discussion of Mr. Oldroyd’s overdraft.

  “Damn it!” exclaimed Francis in dismay. “What’s the matter now?”

  He went off to the bank determined not to allow himself either to be bullied or to lose his temper. But the mere sight of the manager’s office, so snug and comfortable, with its massive mahogany table and red carpet and roaring fire, depressed him, and he began to feel his temper, never very equable since the War, slipping from his control. He unleashed it and let it go when the manager, waving a paper slowly in the air, said he was afraid he should have to ask Mr. Oldroyd to give him further security on account of the dishonoured bill. Angrily Francis reminded him that he had the deeds of Emsley Hall.

  “Those were required to cover past overdrafts, I think, Mr. Oldroyd,” said the manager primly.

  “Nothing of the kind!” exploded Francis. “You assured me your-self——”

  “This contingency of the bill was not then in view,” said the manager.

  “But surely!” began Francis.

  “Unfortunately, Mr. Oldroyd,” murmured the manager: “The head office does not take quite the same view of your position as I wish to do.”

  “You don’t mean to tell me you’re going back on your word?” cried Francis.

  The manager coloured and spoke in a more official tone. “My duty is to carry out the policy dictated by the head office,” he said.

  “Your head office’s policy,” said Francis in a fury: “Seems to me to be to lend money to every kind of risky speculator instead of to businesses which have banked with you for fifty years, and to bolster up every country but your own.”

  “Rather a biassed view, perhaps, Mr. Oldroyd,” said the manager, angry in his turn. “You must remember that we are custodians of public money. We can’t sustain an industry at the expense of the country—if we lend too much to a bankrupt industry we shall ourselves be unable to meet the demands on us, and millions of small depositors who have trusted us will be ruined.”

  “Well, I shall give you no further security, and that’s flat,” said Francis. He stood up to go.

  “I think you’ll reconsider that, Mr. Oldroyd,” said the manager. “If you’ll just look over these figures, I think you’ll see that our demand is not unjustified.”

  He proffered the paper which he had held in his hand throughout the interview; Francis without looking at it stuffed it into his pocket and took up his hat.

  “I hope we shall be able to come to some arrangement, Mr. Oldroyd,” said the manager rather wistfully.

  “We’ve already come to an arrangement,” said Francis. “We came to one last Christmas. I shall keep to it; I shan’t exceed the specified amount of overdraft we agreed; and I shall expect you to keep to it too, and allow me to draw on you for that amount.”

  “It’s very near the limit now,” murmured the manager.

  Francis winced, but stalked out with his head in the air.

  For the next few months he put up a desperate fight to save Syke Mill. When he examined the figures presented to him by the manager, he was horrified; did he really owe the bank as much as that? Letters came every day from Everard, urging him to take some further step; Francis continually referred him back to the agre
ement made at Christmas, though he was well aware that as this agreement was merely verbal, he had no case. Letters came at length from the bank’s London office. Francis made the same reply. All this time, however, he knew well that he dared not draw a cheque for fear the bank dishonoured it, which would finish him off completely. So he somehow had to find the money for all bills from other sources. And the entire universe seemed to be made of bills; there was, as always, his spinner’s account, there was, as always, his weekly wages bill; there was his expensive pattern loom continually eating money; there were minor matters such as coal bills and dyers’ and finishers’ accounts, the household expenses at Emsley Hall and David’s school bills. Each twenty-fifth of the month was a nightmare to him; during this year he never remembered, as he said to Ella, whether it was June or December, but he never forgot, even in his sleep, which day of the month he had reached. Would he be able to scrape up, from moneys received, enough for his spinner this next settling day? There came at last a time when he very much doubted it; a week of fearful effort followed, and he was at the end of all his expedients and still unsuccessful; with anguish in his heart he was driven to go to the bank once more and discuss the future with Everard. The bank manager observed that as far as he could see there were but two courses open to Mr. Oldroyd—to go into liquidation (Francis winced), or to allow the bank a debenture on the business in return for a really substantial overdraft.

  “I can’t do that,” said Francis irritably. “You know as well as I do that if I give you a debenture, no spinner will want to deliver yarn to me.”

  “Of course you’re the best judge of what will suit you,” said Everard. “No doubt the bank would be best pleased to liquidate at once—it’s for you to say.”

  Francis groaned and left him, thinking, not for the first time since Charlotte had mentioned it, how delightful it would be to chuck the whole thing up and go and live in peace somewhere else.

  While all this was going on spring had become summer, and David had been to Germany for his Easter holidays, returned to school for the summer term, and now returned for the holidays again, in high spirits because he had done well in some examination or another. Francis was too worried to notice which examination it was, or even to notice David much at all. Ella too was deeply troubled, not only about her husband but about her brother, whose difficulties she now knew—in spite of Francis’s prohibition she had tentatively mentioned to him that her husband needed help, whereupon her brother had replied with an emphatic and dismal sketch of his own similar situation—he couldn’t buy a single pound of yarn, he said, without the consent of the bank.

  David of course perceived at once the misery and uneasiness which clouded the air of Emsley Hall. After dinner Francis, who had an interview at the bank to face on the morrow, retired to his sitting-room to wrestle with figures as usual. David, very much disconcerted by such a proceeding on his first evening, asked his stepmother what was the matter, and was told that business was very bad.

  “Uncle Henry was asking me about it,” said the boy thoughtfully. “I’m sorry.”

  Accordingly next morning when Francis came out of Emsley Hall to go to Syke Mill, he found David standing on the steps waiting for him.

  “I thought I’d like to go to the mill with you, father,” he mumbled, gazing steadily away from Francis. “To help, you know.”

  Francis had a great inclination to weep. The boy’s face was so fresh and candid, his intention so good, his help unfortunately so valueless. Francis felt that it would be his crowning humiliation for his son to see Syke Mill as it then was; yet how refuse him without hurting his feelings?

  “Wouldn’t you rather be out of doors?” he said. It was a glorious summer morning.

  “No,” replied David firmly.

  Francis sighed. “Well, hop in, then,” he said. David climbed into the car with alacrity; Francis followed, and Ackroyd, smiling paternally, drove them away to Syke Mil.

  When they arrived Francis was informed that someone was waiting to see him. He put on a joking tone and bade David make himself scarce in the mill. “There’s Thorpe somewhere about—Ackroyd, take Master David to Thorpe and tell him to show him round,” he commanded.

  As he passed along to the office, he was intensely conscious of the present emptiness and quiet of the mill, as compared with its former bustling hum. What would his father say if he were here to see it? “It’s a damned good thing he isn’t,” thought Francis, at the same time feeling that he would give worlds to discuss the situation with Brigg. He opened the office door and found himself face to face with a man whom at first sight he took for Charley Mellor. “But he’s dead,” thought Francis, puzzled. His mind, confused and harassed by his complicated troubles, and worn by a sleepless night, could not at first find any solution to the problem; then he realised that the shrunken figure, the greying ginger hair, the tilted, angry face, the bristling red moustache, might well belong to his brother-in-law, Matthew. His first thought was one of anger that Matthew should have seen the bareness of Syke Mill.

  “Matthew Mellor?” he said in a cold tone.

  “I’ve come to see you about this money,” said Matthew abruptly. Seeing that Francis’s face remained blank he added: “My mother’s thousand pounds.”

  “Oh!” said Francis, enlightened. He looked at Matthew distastefully. “I wish your mother had left it elsewhere,” he said.

  “I told her long ago I wouldn’t have it,” said Matthew roughly. “I don’t want any of your Oldroyd money, I said, so you’d best leave it back to Carmine’s boy. So she has done. It’s lying in the bank now, and I’ve brought the cheque with me to pay it over.” He drew out a single cheque and stretched towards the table for a pen. “Shall I put your name or his?”

  It flashed through Francis’s mind, in a ghastly flash which lit up a lurid mental landscape, how useful that cheque would be to him. He was by no means a clever financier, but he had learned from experience how ready money could be turned into a much larger amount of credit; skilfully used, that cheque might stave off his surrender to the bank’s debenture scheme a whole month more. These thoughts occupied but a fraction of a second; then he said coldly: “Put the boy’s—David Brigg Oldroyd. He has an account of his own. By the way,” he added: “He’s in the mill now. You can hand it him yourself, and he can give you a receipt or whatever you require.” He pressed the bell and ordered that David should be summoned.

  Matthew, who had listened to this with a marked absence of interest which seemed to Francis unnatural, sat down and wrote David’s name and his own with a shaky hand. When he had finished he sat looking at Francis, who stood by the clock, for a minute, and then said in his sarcastic tones: “Well, neither of us is getting any younger, I reckon. And how are things with you to-day, Mr. Oldroyd?”

  “The same as they are with most people,” replied Francis. “Bad. And you?” Matthew shifted in his chair and coloured, and Francis, suddenly perceiving the truth, exclaimed: “You’re on the dole?”

  “I’m drawing unemployment insurance benefit, if that’s what you mean,” cried Matthew angrily.

  “Sorry. We’re in the same boat then,” said Francis, meaning to speak kindly.

  “Aye—we look like it,” observed Matthew. “I left my car along the road.” His eyes, wandering ironically over his brother-in-law’s well-tailored suit and fine linen, made his meaning plain, and Francis, who knew that the suit was not paid for but did not intend to say so, flushed and slightly shrugged his shoulders. This seemed to infuriate Matthew, who cried out suddenly: “You get us into this mess and then all you can say is lies like being in the same boat.”

  “We get you into the mess!” exclaimed Francis. “I like that! It’s your lot who’ve done it.”

  “Oh? Do we run the mills?” demanded Matthew ironically.

  “As near as damn it you do,” retorted Francis. “You’ve brought the mess on, or at any rate made it worse, by your everlasting strikes.”

  “You did it with
your blasted war!” shouted Matthew.

  “It wasn’t my war,” said Francis, infuriated.

  “Well, it certainly wasn’t mine,” said Matthew ironically.

  “Where would you have been without us to fight for you?” demanded Francis.

  “It were David that fought for me,” cried Matthew: “Not you, thank you. You’ve always made a fuss about your care and responsibility, and pretended to lead us,” he went on bitterly: “Why don’t you do it now instead of fratching among yourselves for the bit of profit that’s left?”

  “You’ve got a Labour government to lead you if you want leading,” said Francis hotly.

  “Aye! trying to tidy up the mess the other governments made,” sneered Matthew.

  “Of course if we’re going to talk politics,” began Francis. He broke off, for just then David came into the room. “This is Carmine’s boy, Matthew.” he said. “David, this is your uncle, your mother’s brother,”

  Matthew took the hand David stretched out to him and gazed avidly at his nephew. “I’ve had a long time to wait to see you,” he said.

  Francis, feeling himself rebuked, flushed. It had never occurred to him to take David to see Matthew; he had felt he was doing his duty sufficiently in allowing the boy to stay so regularly with Henry and Janie. He now began to explain, in a rather dry tone, Matthew’s business at the mill; a clerk was called in as second witness to the transaction, and the cheque changed hands. David took it with a thoughtful expression, and silently folded it away in his note case.

  “Well, your son’s a grand upstanding lad,” said Matthew to Francis, watching him. “He’s like Carmine, and yet he isn’t.”

  “Have you any sons, Uncle Matthew?” asked David abruptly.

  “Aye—two. One’s a fair bit older nor you,” said Mellor. “And the other about the same age.”

  “Are they in the cloth trade?” asked David.

  “They are when they’re working,” said his uncle. “Are you going to put your lad in?” he demanded suddenly of Francis.

  “Not if I can help it,” said Francis with emphasis.