“Well! You’ve heard the news, Sir William?” he said in a puzzled tone. “What do you think of it, eh? I can’t make head or tail of it. I’m not conscious of any fault in myself to deserve it. I made sure some compromise, a retirement from public life or such—”
“I fear you must prepare yourself for Wednesday,” said Sir William, omitting any form of address.
“Wednesday? Good God!” exclaimed Wentworth. His perplexity fell from him; confronted by a certainty so swift and terrible, he was all sentience, all anguish. “Put not your trust in princes, Sir William!” he cried bitterly.
“For in them there is no salvation,” concluded Sir William silently, enjoying a sentiment so much in tune with his own.
“They’re never with you at the crunch,” said the doomed man.
After the execution, when all the unpleasant details were over and the crowd dispersed, Slingsby came to Sir William about some small chattels of the Earl’s which had been left in his apartments.
“Thomas Wentworth’s goods are all forfeit,” said Sir William sternly.
“I wished merely for some small remembrance of him,” said Slingsby, almost in tears.
“Well, come then.”
They went up the stairs together.
“He was a grand man. Warm-hearted, generous, fearless, a great administrator. He set things straight. He held all matters clear and unforgotten in his mind. Thorough he was, indeed; is that a fault?” said Slingsby as they climbed.
“Parliament called him a tyrant, and I stand on that,” said Sir William.
“But why should his enemies pursue him without mercy? Why not allow him to live privately, far from public business?”
“Well, stone dead hath no fellow, as they say,” said Sir William. He spoke cheerfully, for it was an immense relief to him to know he would never hear Lord Strafford’s carping again. “But can you wonder? He thought himself always right, others always wrong, and did not hesitate to say so. Never satisfied. Always denigrating, always on the grumble. Never anything pleasant, always something unpleasant, to the ear. No allowance made for the frailties of human nature, except his own. So he had scarce any supporters of his person; he had vexed them all. His harsh carriage brought him to the axe, believe me.”
“He was a Northern lad,” said Slingsby, frankly weeping. “It is our custom in Yorkshire to speak our mind.”
They entered the room together. It looked very empty, for such furniture as belonged to the Tower had already been removed for the use of another prisoner. A shaft of sunlight struck through the narrow window across the floor. The door hung awry.
“Aye, he was a Yorkshireman,” said Sir William grimly. “They like to disagree.”
“He was right about the hinge, choose how,” said Slingsby.
Malice of the Soul
1845
I
“The malice of the soul,” wrote John Trevisa in the fourteenth century—though I believe he translated the passage from an earlier writer in Latin—“the malice of the soul is more in a woman than in a man.” I do not like to think that this is true, but certainly the story of Rosa Beaumont and Joe Booth seems at first sight to be an illustration of the statement. Although Rosa spoke to Booth only three times from their meeting till the day of her death, she ruined his life, made it continually bitter to him; it is possible too that in some small measure she was responsible for the disaster which presently overtook the whole Yarrow valley.
It all began one pleasant summer Sunday afternoon in the mid-eighteen-forties. A great many people from down the valley were standing along the hillsides gazing across the calm sunny waters of the Ling reservoir. Water—soft, limeless water—is an absolute essential for textile processes, and the hills and moors of the millstone grit Pennines with their heavy rainfall are admirable gathering grounds. Accordingly a few years earlier all the Yarrow Valley millowners had eagerly supported this big reservoir project. To build an embankment across the narrow head of the steep valley, just below the confluence of two strongly tumbling streams, with two culverts and a wooden channel to carry the outward flow straight down the valley, seemed a simple way of securing for them the regular and powerful water supply they all required for their cloth manufacture. A bill for the construction of eight reservoirs was presented in Parliament and passed; commissioners were elected, land acquired, the embankment constructed; a “drawer” appointed to regulate the outward flow of water by appropriately placed valves.
The area and content of this Ling reservoir were found to be so satisfactorily large that the building of any further reservoirs was dispensed with; Ling was enough. The manufacturers whose mills were strung down the long valley towards the neighbouring town of Annotsfield paid rates to the Commissioners for the use of the water and were well pleased with their bargain.
Recently, however, the great containing embankment had been behaving ill. Steep and stone-faced within, on the outer side this wall was covered in grass and earth and sloped more mildly down to the fields far below. Its top, eight feet broad, formed an agreeable promenade this sunny afternoon, except that here and there the surface had sunk a little—in one place indeed it had sunk a good deal. On this promenade were walking at present a good many of the original commissioners with their wives and families; they paused, prodded the earth with their walking sticks, and pointed to a tiresome small stream emerging, on the left as one looked down the valley, fifteen or twenty yards below the foot of the embankment. This stream, it appeared, was alleged by the drawers of the reservoir to be the cause of the subsidence in the embankment. It was evident that workers from Yarrow, Yarrowfirth and Yarrowfield, the villages down the valley, had heard rumours of defects in the embankment, for there they all were in their Sunday clothes, standing on the steep slopes whose bases formed the sides of the reservoir, their children scrambling and screaming along the rough paths, threatening at any moment to fall into the water but somehow always being hauled back to safety at the last moment by irate mothers.
Among the commissioners on the embankment stood Rosa Beaumont and her father. Most of the men came and had a word with them, not only because Thomas Beaumont owned the largest mill in the valley, was a magistrate and an influential member of the reservoir commission, but because of Rosa's outstanding attractions. A tall, finely made girl, with a brilliantly pale complexion, glorious blue eyes and a mass of vivid red-gold hair—it was said, in the phraseology of the day, that her hair was so long, so abundant, that she could easily sit on it, and this was in fact true—Rosa was also agreeably social; she had a witty tongue, talked well, and knew how to flatter the opposite sex by deferential agreement at the right moment. She dressed in good taste, had a ringing laugh, enjoyed superb health and had been well educated (for a girl of that period) in a very expensive boarding-school in London. It was a downright shame, said the men, that such a handsome, lively girl should be tied to her mother's bedside. Mrs. Beaumont, a plain large-boned woman with fine eyes, of a good East Yorkshire family, had done something to her spine as she slipped on the steep steps from the hillside down to Mill House, returning probably from one of her errands of charity. So there she lay, had lain these last many years, on bed or couch, with her daughter and a maid to look after her. (Not that these filial duties seemed to keep Rosa away from many social enjoyments, however, observed the women acidly.) The women indeed generally liked Mrs. Beaumont; the men thought her rather dreary, and commended her husband's decorous fidelity, with their tongue perhaps a little in their cheek.
For as regards Thomas Beaumont, they did not much care for him—short and bald and pompous and thinking rather more of himself than was necessary even if his family had lived in the valley for two or three generations and owned land. (They privately jeered a little at his finicky way of speaking.) At the same time they had to admit that he was a shrewd man of business, he'd enlarged Beaumont Mill, built a new dyehouse across the river, and a row of cottages halfway down the hillside just beyond his own mansion, for his
workers. Yes, there was more in Thomas Beaumont than met the eye; must be. His gold watch chain had cost a pound a link. Pity he had no son to carry on the name and the business. He'd be marrying off his daughter to some suitable up-and-coming young manufacturer, no doubt, said the Yarrow Valley men, directing their sons' attention to Rosa. Not that it needed much directing; her looks and her tongue drew plenty of young men around her. But to please Rosa and her father both, a young man would need to have all his wits about him; Rosa was no fool and her father doted on his daughter.
Now as the commissioners talking to her father, growing heated in argument, began to use technical phraseology incomprehensible to Rosa, her attention strayed, and glancing around for somebody more interesting she saw two persons standing near as if wishing to join the conversation. “Persons” was the suitable word—suitable, that is, for the use of Rosa, who had all the class feeling of the period—for they were obviously working men, dressed in their pathetic Sunday best. One was old, bent, grey, gnarled, weatherbeaten; the other, by his likeness obviously the son of the first, a tall strong young man. They had no business to be standing on the embankment, of course, thought Rosa, slightly tossing her head.
“Father,” she said in a low tone, touching his arm.
Not averse to leaving the argument, for like everything else connected with Ling, he thought crossly, it had become irritating, Mr. Beaumont turned to her. Rosa with a glance indicated the father and son. To her surprise, Mr. Beaumont brightened, and took a step towards them.
“Well, John! Well, Joe!” he said.
“My father would like to have a word with you about this here wall,” said the young man. “To tell you what he thinks, like.”
“Well, he should know better than anyone else, I suppose,” said Mr. Beaumont. “Come on now, John; let’s have it. What’s making the wall sink, eh?”
“It’s yon spring,” said the old man, pointing to the small stream on the left. “It’s wrecking the puddle.”
“How can it when it rises twenty yards away?”
“That isn’t its natural place of rise,” said the old man, shaking his head. “It rises right under the embankment. Them as built the wall tried to push it down and block it off, I reckon; but there it is, you see.”
“This is all supposition,” said one of the other commissioners angrily. “We can’t pull the whole embankment down and spend another forty thousand pounds for a wild notion about a spring.”
“We can’t, because we haven’t got forty thousand pounds to spend,” said another sardonically.
“We can’t leave it as it is, however,” said a third.
“Why not?”
“Well, us don’t want wall to fall down, I take it.”
“That’s all fiddle faddle.”
“John Booth is the drawer here and visits the reservoir every day, so we ought to hear what he has to say,” interrupted Mr. Beaumont authoritatively. “What makes you think the spring is undermining the embankment, John?”
“Watter in t’spring is always coloured, like—muddy,” said John. “There’s puddle in it, Mester Beaumont. Where did clay come from, if not from what’s in the wall?”
“All this is Greek to me,” thought Rosa impatiently. She turned abruptly aside, and found herself face to face at close quarters with John’s son.
All accounts describe Joe Booth as a good-looking young man, shapely in figure, with large brown eyes and curly dark hair, but beyond all that as having something especially pleasant, kindly, goodnatured, so to say affectionate towards all, in his expression. He therefore appeared quite a suitable person for Miss Rosa Beaumont to address; not likely to be gross in speech, and intelligent enough to appreciate the honour. So she gave him a pleasant condescending smile, and was just about to speak to him when she saw a sudden change in his face. A half-smile curved his handsome lips; the brown eyes glowed. Rosa was about to be astonished at his effrontery in looking at her like that, when she perceived that he was looking beyond her. She turned. There a few yards away on the hillside stood an ordinary working girl; fair-haired, pink-cheeked, cheerful, tastelessly dressed, short and solid. Joe Booth’s beaming glance was for her, and she responded with the wide smile of assured love. Her teeth were poor, reflected Rosa, turning away in a fury. Such rudeness! To turn his attention from Miss Rosa Beaumont while she was speaking! How offensive! What were the lower classes coming to!
“I am tired, father,” she murmured in his ear.
“Yes—well—we must have a full commissioners’ meeting soon,” said Mr. Beaumont in a valedictory tone, stepping back from the group. “Take my arm, child. The matter is very serious, gentlemen, and needs careful thought. If large repairs to the embankment are really necessary, we shall have to consider drawing up another Bill.”
“What? Another Parliamentary Bill?” cried some of the commissioners, aghast. “Never!”
“Nay, he’s right.”
“What, all those lawyers’ fees again?”
“If the embankment is to be repaired, we shall need more money. We must be empowered to borrow again, and to levy a higher water rate.”
“The Yarrow Valley manufacturers won’t pay it, and so I tell you straight.”
“Do you propose to find the money yourselves, then?” said Mr. Beaumont stiffly. “For my part I am not prepared to make any further private investment.”
“Aye, that’s right. Me neither.”
“Maybe, but we want no more Parliamentary Bills, choose how.”
“Where are we to find brass, without?”
“And who’s to do the repairs? I make nowt of them engineers that built this wall and left a spring wandering about inside.”
“They did their best, I reckon,” said Mr. Booth mildly. “Maybe it’s us backing up the two streams that started the spring, like.”
“Well, it’s a poor do.”
“We must have a full meeting very soon,” said Mr. Beaumont impatiently. “Meanwhile, I suggest that we instruct John Booth to keep a close watch on the embankment and the spring, and report to us every week. We must prepare a strong case to state in the Bill.”
“No more Bills!” shouted several commissioners.
Mr. Beaumont walked away in a huff. His light springy step was always quick; now his daughter had to hurry to keep beside him. It was not because of this, however, that her cheek was hot and her breath quick.
“I should like to understand this matter thoroughly, father,” she panted when they had reached the lane.
“It is no concern of yours, my dear.”
“But what is puddle? I always thought the word signified a pool.”
“To puddle a wall or bank is to render it impervious to water. The word by a natural transition also means the material used in the process. The Ling embankment has a layer of puddle in its centre, along its whole length. If this puddle layer were to be broken, or removed, then the embankment would no longer be impervious to water. Water would seep through and weaken the whole structure.”
“And old Booth says that tiresome spring is washing away the puddle?”
“Exactly. It is an extremely vexatious and costly situation.”
“Father,” said Rosa in the sugary, deferential tone she knew well how to assume: “You are so good, so honourable yourself that I think there is a possibility which has not occurred to you. To me it appeared at once that the old man Booth held a brief for the former engineers—the firm who built the embankment in the first place. A contract for massive repairs would be worth several thousand pounds to them, would it not? It would be well worth their while to sweeten John Booth, I imagine?”
“If I thought that!” exclaimed Mr. Beaumont stopping abruptly. “But no—John and Joe Booth are both good workmen, very respectable. John worked for me for twenty years and Joe since he was a child—I’ve just made him foreman in the new dyehouse.”
“Ah! I am mistaken, then. It was just that, hearing John Booth praise the firm who built the wall, I was made suspic
ious.”
“He hardly praised them, my dear.”
“He exonerated them from blame with regard to the spring.”
“That’s true,” said Mr. Beaumont uneasily.
“I don’t see why you should incur all the odium of forcing a Parliamentary Bill on unwilling colleagues in order that John Booth may earn a few shillings by bribery.”
“They are very poor,” said the harassed Mr. Beaumont, walking on.
“There you are then!” said Rosa triumphantly.
“There are a good many young children, and John’s hand was pierced by a flying shuttle, so he cannot weave now. Joe has them all to keep.”
“Is that why he isn’t yet married to that lumpish girl?” said Rosa, her voice quivering with hate.
“Lizzie Lister? Yes, I imagine so. That’s partly why I recommended old John for the drawer’s job. Now he has that bit of money and Joe has a foreman’s wage they ought to be better able to manage. But if I thought—it certainly does seem strange—it’s absurd to think that a spring twenty yards away could damage the wall.”
“No one can possibly know what is happening inside the wall.”
“Unfortunately that is so,” said Mr. Beaumont with a sigh.
“To me the spring seemed to come from the direction of the hill slope above at the side,” said Rosa hastily, seeing that she had made a mistake.
“Did it indeed? I must examine it again later,” said Mr. Beaumont doubtfully.
“But not in John Booth’s presence!” cried Rosa.
“No. No. Perhaps not. No,” agreed her father.
Shortly after this conversation John Booth was dismissed from the drawer’s job. He was too old for it, said Mr. Beaumont; too old and feeble—with that maimed hand too!—to manipulate the valves which sent the Ling water flowing down the valley or withheld it in the reservoir. He regretted having recommended him.
Tales of the West Riding Page 5