Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

  “Curse the young rascal,” thought Will, feeling in his pockets. On an impulse, a feeling that he should pay for his pleasure, he put a sixpenny piece into the outstretched hand, and closed the dirty little fingers over it tightly. The child relinquished the mare’s bridle, opened his hand and saw the silver coin; he gave a loud cry of joy, and in a sudden ecstasy flung his arms round Mary’s knees and buried his face in her skirt. Smiling, she bent over him and touched his towy hair.

  “Well, Charley!” she said fondly. “Tha’s done well, lad!”

  Something in her loving pose, her sad smile, her low gentle voice, pierced Will to the heart; he felt weak with tenderness for her, his bones were like water with pitying love. His voice stuck in his throat. “Don’t fret, Mary,” he said in a high uneven tone very unlike his usual resonant utterance. “Don’t fret now. I’ll wed thee, lass, never fear.”

  He meant it with his whole heart, he longed above everything to envelop Mary in his strong protective love for always, and the knowledge that he meant it where so many lovers did not made him feel stronger and kinder still. But Mary turned from him, and the colour deepened in her cheek. After a moment Will coloured too, for he grew uneasily conscious that she was ashamed, not for herself but for him; she blushed for him that he should think it necessary to utter such a promise. His faith to her should be too strong to need a promise; that was what her blush meant. He felt chafed and disappointed, bade her farewell rather shortly, mounted the mare in silence and rode down the lane toward Marthwaite with a scowl of chagrin on his face and perplexed resentment in his heart. The winter had gone now, it was all spring; the sun dazzled in his eyes, the air blew mild, the grass was green and dripping, the lane gurgled with running water. At the bend of the road—which was neither as steep nor as rough as the one he had come up, and that at any rate was something to be thankful for—there was a little copse of thorn; and as Will passed by he heard a vernal twitter. All his young blood rose in him at the light sweet sound; his heart was hot again with love for Mary, he ached to hold her in his arms, soothe her and console. He turned in his saddle and looked back up the hill. The little Mellor lad was just running to his own door, no doubt to show his silver treasure to his mother; Mary stood where Will had left her, her dark hair about her shoulders, her rich young figure very still, her gentle face, he fancied, sad; her spirits no doubt drooping. He could not bear to leave her thus, downcast; he called her name, waved his hand, blew her a kiss, laughing at his own childishness as he did so. She saw and heard him, for she started, moved her arm and let it sink again, as if uncertain what response should be made to such a signal, then shaded her eyes with her hand to gaze after her lover. Something in the carriage of her head was now happy and content; and Will, reassured, turned the bend and rode cheerfully enough down into Marthwaite.

  2

  He found Enoch Smith, a heavy, dark man in the early thirties, with a caustic tongue and the alarming reputation of being an atheist—and certainly he never came to Marthwaite Church—standing in the door of his smithy waiting for him.

  “I’ve been looking for you a clock hour, young Mester William Oldroyd,” he began at once roughly. “Your father went by long sin’, but he said he couldn’t stay, you’d be coming to see about frames. I suppose he’s gone down to Annotsfield.”

  “Aye, it’s market day,” said Will. “No use making cloth if you don’t sell it, you know. Trade’s bad enough as it is,” he added gloomily.

  “That’s the war,” said Enoch. “I reckon yon Bonaparte ought to have been drowned when he was a pup—and Wellesley along with him. Then we should have had a bit of peace and quiet.” He shouted, and a grimy apprentice came out and took the mare.

  “Well, what about the frames?” continued Will testily, stooping his head as they went into the dark smithy. He felt sleepy and stupid, and no match for the smith’s sharp tongue. “Are they ready?”

  “One on ’em’s done,” replied Enoch on a note of grievance. “One will be done next week or so and t’others the week beyond.”

  “Then why haven’t you sent the one that’s ready down to Syke Mill?” demanded Will sharply. “They’re no good to us in your shop, are they? Besides, we want the cropping bench back you borrowed; we can’t spare it for ever.”

  “Not so fast, not so fast, young Mester William Oldroyd,” objected the smith in his sarcastic tones. “I thought your father’d happen be getting some redcoats up from Annotsfield to see them into your shop from mine.”

  “Soldiers from Annotsfield!” exclaimed Will in a tone of contempt. “Pray whatever for?”

  “It’s a pity you can’t thoil to learn to read,” said the smith rudely. “Then you’d know why.”

  “Of course I can read, curse you!” shouted Will. Enoch laughed, and Will, perceiving that the smith was mocking him, with an effort got the better of his temper, and said good-humouredly: “Well, come; let’s have the whole tale.”

  “You didn’t read the Leeds Mercury o’ Saturday, then?” persisted the smith.

  “I read about the war,” said Will in an uneasy tone, remembering where he had left the Leeds Mercury—on Mary’s table.

  “Aye! I’ll bet tha did!” jeered the smith familiarly. “Well, if you’d sread a bit further you’d have seen as some frames as were going to Liversedge last week were smashed to bits atop o’ Hartshead Moor by it’Luddites.”

  “Luddites!” exclaimed Will contemptuously. “There’ll never be any Luddites in the Ire Valley,” he added with the assurance of youth.

  “Why not?” demanded the smith. “Folk in the Ire Valley’s much the same as them in other parts, I reckon. One o’ my frames does the work o’ ten hand-croppers; that’s nine croppers out o’ work to every frame put in. Your father’s putting in four frames. Why should the Ire croppers like that better nor the Liversedge men, eh?”

  “Well, perhaps you’re right,” admitted Will crossly, convinced of youth and ignorance, and not much liking the experience. “I’ll tell my father what you say. Now let me see the frame that’s finished.” He stepped out, and tripped over a piece of iron.

  “Mind where you’re going,” urged the smith belatedly, holding him up with a grip like a vice. “We’re a bit full up. If trade i’ frames goes on as it’s begun, we’ll have to get a bigger shop.”

  “That’ll depend on the Luddites, I suppose,” sneered Will, angered by his helplessness in the smith’s grasp.

  “You may laugh, young Mester William Oldroyd,” retorted the smith in a maddeningly superior tone: “But it’s well known there were plenty of Ire Valley men i’ that do on Hartshead—young Mellor, for instance.”

  “What, George Mellor?” cried Will, startled out of his irritation.

  “Aye. It’s said he’s the King Lud i’ these parts,” rejoined Enoch, lowering his voice.

  “What, the Mellor that lives next to the Bamforths up by Scape Scar?” cried Will.

  “That’s the one,” said Enoch. “His mother married yon Wood down by the Ire Bridge——”

  “I know, I know,” interrupted Will impatiently. He was disturbed. “That was a Luddite’s lad I gave sixpence to this morning, then,” he reflected uneasily. Luddites next to Joe and Mary! He must say something to Joe, warn him; he was just the sort of soft lad to be led astray. “But why don’t they take Mellor up if they know he’s a Luddite?” he demanded, incredulous.

  “No evidence,” said the smith laconically.

  Will’s young conviction of the security and general rightness of his own surroundings was uncomfortably shaken. It was quite all right that Luddites should rise and smash stocking-frames away in Nottingham, for such things happened in distant places, and made agreeable reading in the newspapers; it was not out of place when the frames belonged to cloth manufacturers twenty miles off, in Liversedge; but when such conduct occurred in the valley of the Ire it was monstrous, outrageous, appalling! “Where is the frame?” he demanded in a peevish uncertain tone.

  “Here,” said
the smith. He called his brother, and the two pulled off the piece of rough cloth which covered the machine.

  Beside the long narrow “bench” or cropping table which Enoch had borrowed from the Oldroyds he had erected a grooved iron frame, to part of which a pair of hand-shears seemed to be clamped, so that they rested in position over the curved surface of the bench. There were various connecting shafts and ropes about the machine, but the whole affair was so much less than his grandiose ideas of frames that Will felt dubious and disappointed.

  “I don’t see how it works,” he objected, eyeing it sceptically.

  Enoch sniffed. “I didn’t think tha would,” he said. He threw the cloth which had covered the machine across the cropping board and pinned it down, then moving to the side of the frame began to turn, by hand, the wheels which in Syke Mill would be turned by the power of the Ire. Immediately the wooden “nog” controlling the blades of the shears began to agitate them rapidly, so that they nipped the cloth and cut off its nap; at the same time the carriage to which the shears were clamped moved on the frame towards the right, bearing the shears steadily across the breadth of the cloth.

  As the regular clicking of the mechanism continued, Will’s unease and discomfort melted away; pride gleamed in his eyes, and he laughed aloud joyously.

  “It’s grand!” he cried with enthusiasm. He stooped down and peered at the wheels, moving so steadily and smoothly; asked questions about the crank which controlled the nog, and the revolving shaft which was to transfer the power of the water to the machine. “It’s grand!” he repeated.

  “It’s quick!” tittered Enoch’s brother.

  “Quick enough,” agreed Will pleasurably.

  He felt strong and proud and energetic; undoubtedly the Oldroyds were going up in the world; they were pioneers, always in the van, masterful, determined, able men, always ready for new things. If the Luddites wanted to prevent them using such fine new things as these frames, well, so much the worse for the Luddites, that was all. Now that he had seen them completed he understood his father’s passion for the frames; and already, so swift are the reactions of youth, he had accepted and assimilated the fact that there were men in the Ire Valley who Wanted to destroy the frames, and his Oldroyd blood had determined him to fight them to the bitter end. “I’ll tell my father what you say about the redcoats,” he said firmly.

  “Aye, do,” urged Enoch. His tone was friendly now; he was mollified by Will’s admiration for his beloved frames. “It’d be a shame to, have them broken.”

  He took Will’s arm again to steer him out of the smithy. This time Will did not mind his touch, and accepted his own occasional stumbles as a joke; so closely had a common purpose united the two men.

  Will mounted and rode the half mile down the valley to where, in the angle formed by a moorland stream tumbling into the Ire, the Oldroyds’ new mill stood. It was a fine two-storeyed building with a big water-wheel and many windows; Will was proud of its appearance this bright spring morning, though it was a little quieter than usual, for the waggon and two of the men were off to the market long since with his father. Now that the spring was almost here, he reflected, no doubt the masons would push on with the house, the lines for which were marked out beside the mill; Will hoped it would be finished soon, for really the inconvenience of living up at Dean Head and having a mill down here at Black Syke was very great—everybody else in the Ire Valley thought his father mad to put up with it at all; if he wanted a bigger mill, they said, why didn’t he enlarge his old one up at Dean Head? To this Mr. Oldroyd always replied with contemptuous candour that the lower you went down the valley the broader the Ire was, and left his critics to make what they could of that.

  Will put up the mare, and went into the mill. All the men on the ground floor seemed extremely busy except Joe, who, his dark eyes fixed on something far away, his long limbs slack, was standing in the middle of the room holding a pair of heavy hand-shears by their curved handle, whistling a mournful little tune, and doing nothing. Will, however, knew well enough that while the other men had probably been idling during the Oldroyds’ absence, becoming busy only when they heard his mare’s hoofs in the yard, Joe had almost certainly been working all the time, and this in spite of Joe’s distressed look of conscious guilt and the quick colour which overspread his sallow cheek as he met Will’s glance, so that he looked like a child caught stealing sugar. That was just Joe’s usual excess of conscientiousness; Joe always felt guilty for what he had left undone where others felt proud they had done so much. Will’s heart warmed to Joe now, as it always did; he smiled at him, shook his head in playful reproof of Joe’s idle attitude, and walked towards him with a feeling of pleasure. He had almost reached him when the thought that he, Will, had seduced Joe’s sister suddenly transfixed him like a fiery spear. His heart seemed as though it would burst with the sudden anguish; he stopped as though stunned, and the room swam before his eyes. Had he, Will Oldroyd, really done something so vile as to seduce Joe’s sister? But no, no; no, of course not; he drew a great breath of relief as the soothing answer came to him; he was no seducer, he had only anticipated the wedding-day by a few weeks. Many a man did that, and his wife was not thought a penny the worse for it. His courage and his self-assurance came up again; he had done nothing really wrong. Nevertheless his brow was not quite clear, nor his look quite straight, when he spoke to Joe, asked him what was going on, fingered with him a piece which had just come in from an outlying weaver in the Oldroyds’ employ, inspected, at his request, the blades of the shears he was holding, which had inexplicably—none of the men, if they were to be believed, having touched those shears for the last fortnight—developed a ragged edge.

  “But who used them last?” demanded Will. “Who has used them at all lately?” He fixed his eyes on Joe accusingly.

  “I don’t know,” said Joe quickly, colouring and looking away.

  Will felt vexed; he was certain Joe knew perfectly well who was responsible for the dulling of the shears, but as usual would not betray the culprit. It was his one fault; he was too soft, too yielding, too kindly, incapable of uttering a word against anyone even when it was obviously desirable.

  “They dulled themselves, happen, for the fun of it,” said Will grimly. “Well, we shan’t have that sort of trouble much longer.”

  By a natural train of association his words brought into his mind not only the new frames but Enoch, the smithy and the Luddites; and he remembered that he meant to give Joe a word of warning about George Mellor. He opened his mouth to begin, but the words would not come; instead he flushed from brow to chin and hung his head. For the name of George Mellor brought a picture of the two cottages beneath Scape Scar, of Mary standing in the doorway, of the pale child solemnly walking the mare up and down while he was within, of the ginger cat and again of Mary. His own deed stuck up so in his mind that he felt Joe must perceive it if their talk approached within a mile of the Scape Scar cottages. Would Mary tell Joe of it, he wondered; and answered himself: no, never. He left George Mellor alone, and began to discuss with Joe where, the new frames should be placed. The men were listening; heads were turned and eyes followed him about.

  “When will t’frames be coming, Mester Will?” asked one man anxiously.

  “I don’t know for certain yet,” replied Will? “But soon.”

  A sigh seemed to echo round the corners of the room.

  “Some of the lads are fleyd they’ll have to go when the new frames come,” explained Joe diffidently.

  “Aye, they will,” agreed young Oldroyd. “But of course,” he added hastily, “Not you, Joe. Of course father doesn’t mean to let you go.”

  Joe coloured again but said nothing; and Will had the same unease as when, at the door of Scape Scar cottage, he had promised to marry Mary. Why did the Bamforths make him feel, to-day, that they were of finer mould than he? He shook his shoulders impatiently, spoke a sharp word about the nap of a piece which was just coming off the raising-frame, and bade it be re
-teazled.

  The day wore on in its accustomed routine. About six o’clock, while Will was in the upstairs room looking over some yarn, there was a great clattering and roaring in the yard; Will looked out in the falling light and saw that his father had arrived. Every line of Mr. Oldroyd’s powerful body expressed rage, and his blue eyes were bloodshot with the same emotion; his face was crimson, his heavy eyebrows bristled, the vein down the centre of his forehead was swollen and pulsing; he swung his hat in his hand as though he was altogether too hot to bear it on his head for another moment, and his ruddy hair, thus released, seemed to flame with fury. Almost before he was out of the saddle he shouted angrily: “Will!”

  “I’m here, father,” said Will, hurrying down. He wondered if his father had by some odd chance come to know of what had happened up at Scape Scar, and braced himself pleasurably for the scene which in that case would certainly follow.

  “Did you see Enoch Smith about them frames?” cried Mr. Oldroyd. “Did you ask him why he hasn’t sent them before?”

  Will explained what the smith had said, concluding succinctly: “If you don’t want them smashed by the Luddites he thinks you’ll have to get the military out.”

  “The military!” exploded Mr. Oldroyd, stamping into the mill. “The Luddites! Curse the Luddites! I’ve heard nothing but Luddites all day; I’m sick to death of hearing about the Luddites. A few stupid ignorant men that don’t know what’s good for them, that’s what your Luddites are. And Enoch Smith daren’t send a couple of frames five hundred yards in broad daylight for fear of the Luddites. The cowardly fool!”

  “On Hartshead, father,” began Will.

  “I’ve heard all I want to know about Hartshead, thank you,” roared his father. “The fools can’t talk of anything else in Annotsfield to-day—I’ve just left two on ’em at the top of the lane now. And they advise me, me, not to go on with my frames! Who do they think I am, I’d like to know? A cowardly fool like themselves? Am I like Henry Brigg, I’d like to know? No, by God! I’ll work those frames in this mill if I have to ride in Luddites’ blood up to my saddle-girths.” He glared round at the men, who, not unaccustomed to scenes of this sort, Mr. Oldroyd’s temper being notoriously as warm as his heart, bent over their work and hid their smiles discreetly. Joe, however, Will noticed, looked disconcerted and upset. “He’s soft, as father says,” thought Will, provoked. “So now you know!” shouted Mr. Oldroyd. “All on you!” The next minute he dropped his voice to a tone of affectionate goodwill and observed to one of the men: “You’d best be off home, lad; your wife’s just had her third; they told me down by the Ire Bridge as I came along.”