“What a temper you have to be sure, Will!” mocked Bessy. She had said this to her husband some hundreds of times since their marriage, but never quite in this manner, for her voice was high and cracked, and she laughed wildly.
“Good God!” thought Will, “She has it.” He stared at his wife, afraid. “Do you feel ill, Bessy?” he asked her hoarsely.
“I’ve got the fever, if that’s what you mean,” replied Bessy in a tone of unconcern.
“Bessy!” cried Will horrified. “Why didn’t you say so when the doctor was here?”
“Why, what could he do?” demanded Bessy, with a strained cackle, pitiably unlike her usual hearty laugh. “It has to run its course.”
Will rushed from the house, saddled the mare and flew after the doctor. Luckily he caught him by the Ire Bridge, where he had been visiting some patients; on hearing Will’s distracted account, a shade fell over his face, and he readily agreed to return to New House. But when he had been, pronounced that Bessy had the fever and gone again, Will was inclined to agree with Bessy that he was of little use. He blamed the man for not having warned him earlier of Bessy’s danger; and his remedies were certainly powerless to stay the fever’s course.
For Bessy did not make a long fight for life. From a state of humorous acceptance of her illness she fell with fearful rapidity into one of anguish, delirium and defeat; it was but a few days after the doctor’s first warning to Will that they sat together beside Bessy’s bed through the light summer night, and watched her life ebb away. Her death was lonely. Little Brigg having passed through a sharp crisis was now definitely though slowly improving, and old Henry Brigg was stubbornly holding his own; but neither of them were yet fit to be told of Bessy’s plight, or brought to bid her a last farewell. Will, too, had now the fever upon him, having caught it, he shrewdly surmised, when kissing Bessy on the day she first fell ill; and at the moment of his wife’s death he was feeling so wretchedly heavy, aching, and out of sorts, that he could scarcely flog up a decent regret for her. Having given the necessary orders for her funeral Will flung himself into bed and knew nothing of what went on for weeks; Bessy went unwept into her grave.
Chapter III
Reparation
1
When at length Will staggered, white and weak, out into the mill yard, which lay singularly quiet in the cool September sunshine, the first thing he saw was a pair of boys sitting on the ground with their backs against the mill wall, deep in conversation. As he drew near he discovered them to be Brigg and Jonathan, and he experienced a great relief. The fever had left him so confused that he really did not know who was alive and who was not; now he perceived that at any rate he still had two sons. Brigg scrambled up and came running to him, and Will took his dirty little hand gratefully. The child had a band of black stuff tied round his arm; ah, yes, poor Bessy! Indeed Brigg looked as though he lacked a mother; his hair was tousled and his coat had a hole. Well! That could soon be put right, for Will meant to marry Mary Bamforth as soon as he had strength to sit a horse as far as Marthwaite Church. The thought of it was what had pulled him through his fever; he had clung fast, in his worst delirium, to the notion that he must get well soon to marry Mary. Jonathan, who looked thin but a better colour than Will remembered him, helped himself up by the wall as Will approached, and stood awaiting him with a rather embarrassed air. And suddenly Will was stricken with an awful fear. He had always assumed that Mary was alive and well, waiting up at the Moorcock till he should be well enough to marry her; but why should he have thought so? She had been ill with the fever, the last he heard of her. If she had died of it like poor Bessy, and left him without her! Oh, God! At the mere thought the world turned black. In a trembling exhausted voice he said to Jonathan:
“How is your mother?”
“She’s quite well now,” replied Jonathan, and added reluctantly: “Thank you.”
The relief was so great that Will staggered under it, and had to lean against the wall, or he would have fallen. His heart raced, he hung his head and gasped for breath; the two boys looked at him anxiously. After a while his sight cleared and he felt better; he straightened himself, and smiling down at the frightened children, said kindly:
“So you’re playing together, are you?”
“There isn’t any slubbing to do,” Jonathan defended himself quickly.
“No slubbing?” exclaimed his father in surprise. Suddenly he realised why the yard seemed so quiet; the engine was not going, and there was no hum of machinery from within the walls. “Good God!” exclaimed Will. He stared at Jonathan, and the child seemed to understand the question which he did not put, for he replied:
“There hasn’t been any slubbing for a long time.”
Will, now thoroughly roused, stood up, and having steadied himself, strode off towards the mill door. “Tell your mother I’m coming up to see her as soon as I can ride,” he threw over his shoulder to Jonathan.
The boy’s pale dace darkened, and the vein down the centre of his forehead slightly swelled.
In the mill Will found everything at sixes and sevens. The head overlooker, whom he found standing alone, with an expression of worry on his elderly face, came up to him with immense relief and explained their parlous plight; the Ire Valley weavers would not send their wool to be slubbed in a mill where fever was raging; the merchants would not buy cloth woven in Syke Mill for the same reason. The result was that they had little or no work to do. Moreover, Will had left no instructions about the payment of wages; the overlooker had paid as long as he could from various moneys which came in; then when there was no more to pay with, the men and children had mostly left to try their luck elsewhere. “Another week or two of this would have ruined me,” thought Will. The overlooker hinted that everyone thought Will was going to die. A great gust of life blew through Will’s veins at the thought.
“Me die?” he cried, slapping the overlooker on the shoulder. “Not likely!”
He instantly set on foot arrangements for the cleaning of the whole mill, for the re-engaging of the men, and for the lighting of the boiler fires, which had been drawn, the man told him, more than ten days ago. “What day of the week are we at?” demanded Will. “I must go to Annotsfield next Tuesday, choose how.” A voice from outside arrested his attention; he glanced out of the window, to see Brigg and Jonathan chasing one another up and down the yard. “There’s Mary, too,” he mused, “I must see about that.” He had a momentary impulse to put Mary on one side for a while till he got Syke Mill into working order again. But he repressed this impulse vigorously; he had delayed, he had put Mary on one side for a while, once before, and look at the results! No! There must be no delay this time; that awful moment when he thought her dead had taught him what he would feel if he lost her; there must be no delay; if people chose to say he had married in indecent haste after his first wife’s death, let them say it. It was perhaps madness to take on such a ticklish affair with Syke Mill worries crowding upon him, mused Will—and enjoyed the notion, laughed and braced his shoulders to it. Other men might think they had enough on hand to restore a ruined business, but he was able to carry through an awkward marriage as well, without turning a hair and in spite of his recent illness; he was an Oldroyd. He decided to have himself driven out to the Moorcock from Annotsfield next Tuesday evening.
2
Accordingly when Jonathan returned home on Tuesday night he found the Moorcock in a great state of excitement. Mary, sitting beside the kitchen hearth with her work-roughened hands lying idly in her lap, wept and blushed alternately. Martha, whose fair face also showed traces of tears, was talking at the top of her voice about grand weddings she had known in her time. Jonathan had seen a carriage standing at the door of the inn, and wondered to whom it belonged; he now guessed that it had brought Mr. Oldroyd, who was just saying farewell on the threshold of the Moorcock kitchen as Jonathan came in. Will was in high good humour, and playfully pinched the boy’s ear as he passed. Jonathan naturally did not like this at
all. He went over to his mother and stood by her, frowning, anxious for this hated intruder to go so that he might receive her usual loving embrace. Martha continued to shout, however, Will to make laughing replies, and Mary to tremble, for some few minutes longer; the contraction of Jonathan’s brows deepened into a scowl. At length Will departed; at once Martha, turning to Jonathan, began gleefully:
“What dost think?”
“Leave me to tell him, Martha,” interposed Mary quickly.
“Oh, all right! Just as tha likes! Have it thy own way!” grumbled Martha, vexed, flouncing out of the kitchen.
Mary took her son into her arms and kissed him. He began to relate, with great animation, a rather involved story about Brigg and a slubbing billy; Mary did not listen much to what he was saying, but understood that he was talking about Will’s motherless boy, and smiled at him fondly. Presently, drawing him closer to her breast, she laid her cheek against his, and murmured softly: “Jonathan, me and Mr. Oldroyd’s going to be wed.”
“Mother!” screamed Jonathan, revolted in every corner of his being. “You’re not, you’re not!” He tore himself from her arms and gazed wildly at her, panting.
“We are, lovey,” said Mary. She spoke happily, mistaking his emotion for surprise and joy at this change of fortune. Smiling lovingly upon him, she reached out to take his hand.
Jonathan struck aside her arm with a clenched fist. His face was dreadful. “I don’t believe you,” he gasped. “You’re making it up to mock me. You’re telling lies.”
“Jonathan!” cried Mary in horrified bewilderment. “I thought you’d be glad, love.”
“Glad!” cried Jonathan. A torrent of words poured from his lips: Mr. Oldroyd was a hateful, wicked man; Mary had no need to marry anyone; she had Jonathan to love her, Jonathan to work for her; a wicked man, a man who had sent Uncle Joe to his death; a wicked, cruel man; a man he hated, hated. “Yes, I hate him!”
“Jonathan!” cried Mary in anguish. “Don’t speak so, lad; he’s thy father.”
“I know, I know!” screamed Jonathan. “That’s why I hate him. Oh, Mother, no, no, no! You won’t wed him, you won’t, you won’t, please say you won’t.” He flung himself upon her, buried his face in her lap, wept and implored her not to do it. No, no! She must not do it; Jonathan was earning nicely now; Jonathan would work for her; they must stay together, by themselves as they were now, and not have any cruel, wicked man—Jonathan beat his fists against his mother’s knee—any dastardly William Oldroyd coming to live with them. Martha, attracted by the sound of sobs and railing, now returned, curious; when she understood what was going on she first shouted at Jonathan for a bad unkind lad who wanted to break his mother’s heart, and having thus plunged him into unspeakable anguish, so that he writhed and moaned and Mary pityingly rocked him against her breast, suddenly turned round and took his side, told Mary scornfully that she could marry if she liked, and welcome, and Jonathan could stay on at the Moorcock with her.
“Tha talks as if he were Joe’s lad, Martha,” cried Mary to this with some shrewdness: “But he’s Will Oldroyd’s, after all.”
“Well, tha should know,” muttered Martha insultingly, vexed.
“I’m not, I’m not!” cried Jonathan, raising a swollen, tear-stained face in which the forehead vein was noticeably pulsing. “I’m not! I won’t be!”
Mary, seeing the vein, with a deep sigh kissed him and smoothed the dark wavy hair back from his brow. Jonathan’s heart melted. “Mother,” he crooned, his arms about her waist, “You won’t, you won’t! You won’t, will vou?”
“But, lovey,” began Mary, and paused, almost distracted between her love for Jonathan and her love for Will. Will was her man, she loved him and wanted him; the thought of being married to him was an ecstasy to her, it was as though the sun had come out over her life after long years of shadow, and she bloomed beneath it like a flower. But Jonathan! Her boy! Her little love! Her son whom she had borne in grief and pain! All the tender offices she had done him since he was a helpless babe; all the miseries they had suffered together; the way he read to her, the text on their wall with its pathetic ribbon; his fine grave eyes, his thin little body, his pride when he poured his shillings into her lap, every look and word and turn of his head, everything that made Jonathan, her son, came over her in a rush of pitying love. How could she decide between these two she loved the best in the world? She covered her face and burst into anguished tears.
“You don’t want to wed him!” cried Jonathan triumphantly. “I knew you didn’t.”
“Of course she does,” sniffed Martha, who had changed sides again since Mary’s shrewd hit at her about Joe.
“She doesn’t,” Jonathan told her contemptuously over his shoulder.
“Oh, leave me be,” cried the wretched Mary, struggling up from her son’s embrace. “Let me get t’lad simmat to eat. Fetch t’milk, Jonathan.”
She said it to get rid of the boy and distract his attention, and her ruse was successful, for Jonathan, helpful and obedient always, immediately got up and crossed the room towards the cellar head. And at once Mary knew that her decision was made. For as she watched him he limped, lurching unevenly on his poor bent leg. Mary knew well enough why the leg was curved; thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, eighteen hours a day standing in a mill, poor food, a long tramp through all weathers in wretched clothes. Mary had seen in Scape Scar other children who had worked in the mills perhaps a few years longer than Jonathan; stunted, crippled, pale, untaught. Now if she married Will Oldroyd, Jonathan would be spared all that; Will was the boy’s father, after all; he would see Jonathan treated right, perhaps even get the leg made straight again. A wave of joy coursed through Mary’s veins at this delicious union of the welfare of her loved ones; her cheek flushed, and she gave a soft happy sigh. Jonathan swung round and regarded her suspiciously.
“Promise me you won’t wed Mr. Oldroyd, mother!” he demanded.
Mary shook her head. “Nay, Jonathan,” she said kindly. “I can’t do that.” She went to him and put her arm lovingly about his shoulders. “Tha mun make up thy mind to it, Jonathan,” she said, speaking with more decision than she had ever used in her life: “For I mean to wed him.”
“Mother!” cried Jonathan piercingly. “I can’t bear it.”
“Why, it’ll be a lot better for thee to be a rich man’s son,” said Martha soothingly.
Jonathan stamped with rage. “It isn’t for that, is it, mother?” he cried. “It’s non for my sake?”
“No,” said Mary firmly.
She thought thus to spare his pride, but struck his jealous love a fearful blow. “It’s just because you want to, then?” panted Jonathan, fixing his eyes, bright with unshed tears, accusingly upon her. “You want to wed him?” His unspoken question was: “You love him better than me?” But he was too proud to utter it, and Mary, strong in her knowledge that she was serving him by the marriage, could not imagine that he should question her love.
“Aye,” she said, nodding.
Jonathan gave a shuddering cry, and hung his head.
“Tha mun be a good lad and non stand in thy mother’s light,” Martha admonished him.
“Don’t take on so about it, lovey,” pleaded Mary.
Jonathan wrenched his shoulder from her grasp and fled from the room.
The two women debated whether to follow him, but they were both rather afraid of Jonathan when he was in one of his moods, and hardly dared intrude upon him. Mary went as far as the bottom of the staircase and stood, listening earnestly; she thought she heard a sound of weeping, and went up a few steps, then with a deep sigh withdrew.
“It’ll happen do him good to have a man over him,” suggested Martha, who was watching her from the kitchen door.
Mary sighed again, for she saw the possibility of an endless clash of wills between her husband and her son, and it frightened her; for a moment her determination to marry wavered. But the clothes, the food, the freedom to play and, more important still, to learn,
which the match would gain for Jonathan! Her clever boy must have his chance, mused Mary fondly, and she hardened her heart against Jonathan for his own good.
Half an hour later the boy came downstairs, pale and stern and calm, his head held high. Without saying a word to either woman, he marched across the kitchen to the hearth, and threw into the fire some shreds of paper he was carrying. The tears stung Mary’s eyes as she saw they were the torn remains of the wall text.
“Jonathan!” she murmured pleadingly.
Jonathan turned on her a look of cold distaste and made no reply.
3
The wedding was celebrated quietly a few days later, in Marthwaite Church. Jonathan, who had borne himself with lofty fortitude as far as the door of the church, there gave way; he turned as white as wax, and shivered so that his teeth chattered, and the two women had to leave him outside. During the ceremony there were times when the boy felt he simply could not bear to see the awful thing being done, and then he wandered wildly among the gravestones, sobbing; at other times he felt he could not bear to let his mother out of his sight for this, the last half hour when she would be his mother—for afterwards she would be merely William Oldroyd’s wife. Then he stole up to the church porch and peered in timidly round the creaking door. Brigg, who was sitting high up in the central aisle with his grandfather, was immensely intrigued by these proceedings; he turned round and stared hard whenever the door creaked, and sometimes when it didn’t, in the hope of seeing his half-brother’s tragic face, and had to be cuffed into manners by old Henry Brigg. Martha, enjoying herself, sobbed noisily; Mary was overcome by conflicting emotions; her hand shook so that Will could hardly slide the ring on her finger, her voice was a mere whisper, tears stole from her eyes and lay on her flushed cheeks like dew on a rose. Altogether, as Will told himself with sardonic amusement, it was a cheerful affair. They were, however, duly and truly married.
Inheritance Page 20
