Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

  “It’s a good letter!” he said. “Every word of it is true, and I shall not withdraw one single accusation.”

  His handsome face was set, and the vein down the centre of his forehead pulsed with determination, as he climbed into bed.

  Chapter II

  Journey

  1

  Will and Mary both thought that this letter affair was a mere isolated incident, an exasperating but single instance of Joth’s difficult character and the silliness of political agitators. Events, however, proved them wrong. Mr. Oastler’s letter had been a trumpet-call to more than Jonathan; armies sprang up from the soil to fight out this tremendous question, and the West Riding became a battleground. Letters and pamphlets poured from the press; meetings were held; the short-time committees already existing among the men were galvanised into activity, and many new ones were established. The personality of Oastler was canvassed all over the county; Will (who like all 1830 manufacturers was a staunch Whig without much thinking about it, supporting by instinct the Reform Bill which gave power to the industrial towns and took it from the landed proprietors) took a particular delight in telling Jonathan that Oastler was a Tory, a High Churchman, and a man who, having gone bankrupt as a merchant in Leeds, was now agent to the absentee owner of a large estate—and, he added, according to rumour considerably in debt to his employer. Jonathan, who by nature and training was a Radical and Nonconformist, was rather disconcerted by this revelation of his idol’s politics and religion—the rest he put down to mere malicious scandal—but he felt himself justified when a large public meeting of cloth-workers in Annotsfield, Radicals of the most pronounced type, passed a vote of thanks to Oastler for his able and manly letters on behalf of their children, although they knew, as they said, that he was a Church and King Tory of the old sort. Jonathan was present at this meeting, for he had now begun to go regularly to these factory agitation meetings down at Annotsfield. He deliberately refrained from asking Will’s permission to go, for the cause of the pieceners was a matter of conscience with him, his very own affair, in which he meant to brook no interference; and Will was puzzled how to stop him by any means short of physical violence, which the whole circumstances of Joth’s life forbade him to employ. As in his boyhood Jonathan had been much too proud to ask Will to let him ride, it was erroneously supposed by the Oldroyds that his lameness prevented his riding, and he had to limp about on his errands. At his meetings he therefore usually arrived late, and had to remain at the back, peering between other people’s shoulders; but even from that distance he grew to love Oastler’s tall, commanding figure, which radiated life and power, his vehement, telling gestures, the thunderous periods he declaimed in his firm yet flexible tones. How his voice rang, like a trumpet, when he denounced the selfish manufacturers! How it softened and sobbed, so that Jonathan’s heart melted with anguish, when he spoke of the poor little factory child! This was eloquence, this was a hero indeed! God had not forgotten His children, but had raised up this mighty man to deliver them from the oppressor, rejoiced Jonathan, as he limped painfully back up the Ire Valley through the dark. By the time he reached home he was usually so exhausted that he could hardly stagger up the stairs, but he never failed to appear punctually at the mill next morning—he would not deprive his father of one jot of what was due to him; he would not give Will any chance to say that the factory regulation agitators were a lazy lot.

  The movement presently settled down into a deliberate demand for a Parliamentary Bill to regulate the hours of employment in factories, and the phrase Ten Hours Bill was constantly bandied back and forth in New House, as it was in other households all over the country, till it seemed to Mary the most odious set of words she had ever heard, only excelled as a trouble-maker by Oastler’s nick-name of King Richard. This, at first thrown at him in scorn by the Mercury’s editor in allusion to his dominion over the factory workers, was adopted by the thousands of his “subjects” as a title to be proud of, and nothing irritated Jonathan so much as jeering references by his father or brother to the sacred name. On his side Will, furious at a proposal to interfere in his mill, in his own mill, devoured the newspapers angrily, and pointed out, with bitterness and truth, that most of the factory agitation leaders had never been inside a mill in their lives, that they knew nothing of cloth, and that the language they used (especially Oastler) was disgustingly abusive—Jonathan would have something to say, he hinted angrily, if anyone used such language at New House. At Annotsfield on market day, which simply seethed with the discussion, Will picked up a few arguments about laissez-faire, and competition, and the right of the working man to sell his labour in an open market without restraint, and non-interference with economic laws, which he then hurled at Jonathan’s head, while Brigg sat by nodding approval. In reply Jonathan argued that a system which brutalised and enslaved its children could never be advantageous to any country, and for his part he would rather no cloth was ever woven at all than that children should work fourteen hours a day—a remark which naturally never failed to infuriate his father. Thus the division at New House grew deeper every day; it made Jonathan unhappy, Brigg troubled, Will angry, Mary wretched and Sophia bored; but Jonathan, strong in his conviction of right, never yielded or wavered in the struggle. In a thousand houses all up and down the county the same battle was waged, with the same result, and accordingly, in the spring of 1832 the supporters of the factory movement felt strong enough to organise a county meeting at York. More than six hundred signatures were triumphantly obtained for the proper requisition, which was perforce accepted by the High Sheriff of Yorkshire; and the meeting was summoned for the third Tuesday in April.

  This was a heavy blow to Will. At first he simply could not believe it. When convinced of its truth, he laughed it off, declaring that the sheriff was a fool who didn’t know his business; but he was secretly impressed, and when it became evident that the factory workers from the West Riding meant to walk to the meeting in such large numbers that few mills could be kept open either on that day or the one preceding, and that most of the mill-owners felt that nothing could be done about it, he became really troubled and uneasy, and his irritation with Jonathan changed its key. Could there really be something to fear in this preposterous King Richard business after all? Could Jonathan be going to prove a dangerous fool instead of merely a silly one? Will remembered uncomfortably that Jonathan’s uncle had perished on the scaffold, and for the first time in his life he felt doubtful and perplexed; it struck him suddenly, apropos of nothing, that he was no longer a young man, and this gloomy thought recurred with irritating frequency.

  He was in a particularly heavy mood on the Sunday before the great meeting—Syke Mill was running that day, being throng with work. He knew that something would have to pass between him and the Syke Mill men about the affair before the day was over, and he did not know what he should find to say to them. He could hardly object to their attending a meeting sanctioned by the High Sheriff of the county, especially as the leaders of the factory movement had given a public pledge on the men’s behalf that all time lost in attending the meeting should be made up, and yet the thought of having to close his mill, Syke Mill, for a day, perhaps two days, at the bidding of a Tory steward who wouldn’t know woollen from worsted if the two were put in front of him, aroused in him a bitter wrath, and he could not bring himself to do the sensible thing and give his men permission to leave work on the morrow, though he strongly suspected they would take it if it were not given. In this state of mind he could settle to nothing, but wandered uneasily up and down the mill, finding fault everywhere but not staying long in any one place. On one of his appearances in the counting-house Jonathan, who was bent over the week’s accounts, suddenly lifted his head, and said “Father!” in his usual controlled yet defiant tone.

  “Well?” muttered Will ungraciously.

  “Are you going to close the mill to-morrow and Tuesday?” demanded Jonathan.

  “Why?” said Will as before.

 
“Because I want to go to the meeting at York,” replied Jonathan proudly, throwing back his head.

  “What?” cried Will. The vein in the centre of his forehead pulsed heavily, his neck turned crimson, and he stood gazing at his son like a lowering bull. The whole history of Jonathan, his mother, Joe Bamforth and Syke Mill coursed through Will’s mind, and a confused sense of the strangeness and cruelty of life’s devices pressed upon him. This defiant, haughty lad who wanted to bring the interference of strangers upon Syke Mill was his eldest son. Well! For the first time in years Will remembered his father, and wondered what Mr. Oldroyd would have thought of Jonathan. Well! So his eldest son wanted to go to a meeting of scoundrels who were trying to ruin the cloth trade, did he? “If you want to go to t’meeting, of course you mun go,” he said heavily at length, with an ironic intention.

  Jonathan however missed the irony, and an expression of delighted surprise appeared on his face; without intending it he murmured: “Thank you,” adding happily, “Of course I shall make up the time.” There was something in his voice and the bright look in his eyes at that moment so like Mary that Will felt pierced to the heart; with an impatient exclamation he swung out of the mill and strode up and down the yard to relieve his over-heated feelings. Jonathan to attend that meeting! Suddenly an idea came to him; pushing open the door of the dyehouse he called out grimly:

  “Are any of you lot going to King Richard’s meeting on Tuesday?”

  Several of the men, colouring and looking sheepish or defiant according to their character, admitted that they were.

  “Then mind and keep an eye on Master Joth,” said Will, enjoying the effect of this announcement. “Just see that he gets home safe, will you? He’s going too.” He gave a short laugh in their surprised and discomfited faces, and closed the door.

  When he had repeated this manoeuvre in every department of Syke Mill he felt better, admiring his own skill in thus killing two birds with one stone so neatly, but he had by no means finished with annoyances arising from the York meeting yet. For when that night Mary heard of her son’s proposed journey, she burst into tears—an unprecedented occurrence which caused Sophia and Brigg to stare at her in reproachful alarm. Will coloured and angrily bade Joth note what came of his silly work; had he no regard for his mother? At this Jonathan turned very white, and announced in a strangled tone: “I must go. It’s my duty.”

  “Tcha!” said Will, quite out of patience.

  Mary fled from the room, crying bitterly. Rather to Will’s irritation he found, when he followed her to comfort her, that her chief distress seemed to be an irrational horror of York. Joe had gone to York and never came back, she wailed, and Jonathan would never come back either. Never, never! Will, pointing out that this was absurd, that Joth was a grown man now, with a tongue in his head and well able to take care of himself, all the same began to feel rather uneasy. It was some forty miles to York from Marthwaite, and the newspapers seemed to say that the men were going to march all the way, or at any rate the twenty-four miles from Leeds. This was quite impossible for the lame Jonathan, but it would be just like his perversity to try it, thought Will. And where did he mean to spend Monday night? Will, who did not pay his young sons wages, merely feeding and clothing them as occasion required and giving them pocket money when badgered by Brigg for it, realised with exasperation that he would be obliged to give Jonathan money for this accursed York expedition, of which he intensely disapproved. “And more likely than not he’ll refuse it,” thought Will, clicking his tongue—his impotence where Joth was concerned was really too provoking. He decided to give Mary the money, so that she might represent it to Jonathan as spared from some store of her own. Mary, the gold clutched in her hand, at once ran weeping to her son, who was in his bedroom, and cast her arms about his neck.

  “Doesn’t tha love me, Joth?” she sobbed against his breast. “Don’t go! Don’t thee go! Not to York! I can’t bear thee to go to York, lovey.”

  “Mother, I must go,” replied Jonathan, pale and shivering from emotion, but unshaken.

  “Tha’ll break my heart,” wailed Mary, lifting her face, still richly beautiful in line and hue, to her son’s. “Joth, if tha loves me, don’t thee go.”

  Perhaps if she had used his full name Jonathan might have seen the matter differently. As it was her request seemed to him merely unreasonable, and he repeated in his stern young tones: “I must go, mother.” He did not kiss her cheek or put his arms about her, and Mary, with a deep sob, drew away from him. “Take this, then,” she said in a tone of despair, holding out the two gold pieces.

  “No! I don’t want it!” cried Jonathan, shrinking. He was too well aware that Will was the source of all the money in New House to regard this as having an untainted source.

  “Tha mun take it!” cried Mary, her voice rising to a note of anguish which was almost a scream. “Tha shall take it.”

  Jonathan, frightened by her unusual vehemence, changed colour, drooped a little from his firm pose, and confusedly put out a hand to take the money. “But I shan’t use it,” he thought to himself, and this determination showed so clearly in every line of his fine young face that Mary, throwing herself down on the bed, covered her face with her hands and sobbed wildly. At this Will, who had been standing on the staircase outside the door, listening to the interview in a fury of jealousy, could bear no more, and rushed into the room.

  “You want to kill your mother, seemingly!” he shouted at Joth, putting his arm round his wife and raising her.

  “No, I don’t,” protested Jonathan, looking white and sick. “But I must go.”

  “Go and be damned to you,” said Will with concentrated bitterness, leading Mary away.

  The Oldroyds spent an uncomfortable and disturbed night, for the nerves of all were on edge, and the oldest and the youngest of the household gave way under the strain. Sophia had a screaming fit, threw her arms and legs about, declined to stay in bed or behave at all reasonably, and finally struck out at her mother; there followed an unpleasant contest of will between father and daughter, which ended in Will’s whipping the child ferociously without any satisfaction to himself, for under punishment Sophia always became hard and contemptuous. Hardly had the tumult of this subsided than old Henry Brigg, who was very fond of Jonathan and therefore very much upset by his absurd York project which, as communicated to him by Sophia, he but half understood, feebly rang his hand-bell, and was found to be in one of his attacks. It was some time before he could be brought round, and he then looked greatly weaker than on the conclusion of any previous attack. The very air of New House was laden with the notion that all this was Joth’s fault, and in the few hours which remained before daylight the young man lay awake with burning eyes and throbbing heart, counting himself verily an outcast and wretched—but not so wretched as those children he meant to free, Jonathan reminded himself, and set his lips and clenched his hands; he would go to York, it was his duty, it was the duty of every right-thinking man, the duty of everyone who cared for freedom, for humanity, for the injured and oppressed. His eyes flashed, his spirits rose; he longed for the day to come so that he might depart on this noble errand.

  He set out under a cloud of disgrace and after a wretched farewell, Old Henry Brigg had fallen into an uneasy doze and took no notice of him. Mary wept uncontrollably, Will scowled heavily in the direction of the closed door of Syke Mill and was silent; Brigg with a sullen air and his hands in his pockets muttered: “I don’t see how you can go, Joth, with grandfather so ill.” Joth, who had never been more conscious that he was nobody’s grandchild, could hardly bear this, and turned aside to embrace Sophia to conceal his agitation. Sophia, however, was in a particularly lively and coquettish mood that morning, and was so busy showing off, dancing about on the threshold, that she could hardly stand still to receive her brother’s kiss, much less return it. Jonathan stumbled off up Syke Mill Lane hardly able to hold himself erect for anguish.

  Turning the corner into the Marthwaite Road, he
saw a group of men trudging ahead of him. One of them carried aloft a white banner. The cold morning breeze rippled the cloth, and Jonathan read, roughly stitched in wool:

  FOR GOD AND OUR CHILDREN

  He bounded forward.

  2

  It was Tuesday morning, and Jonathan was nearing York. He was drenched to the skin and faint with hunger, but his eyes blazed with excitement in his white face. It seemed to him that an immense stretch of time as well as of distance separated him from New House; already the early incidents of his journey were almost forgotten, crowded out by later and deeper impressions. He had made up his mind to walk to York, and now he was nearly there; but it had not been an easy journey.

  By exerting himself almost beyond his physical capacity he had managed to reach Annotsfield in time to set out with the procession which formed there. When this procession poured out of the town, several hundred strong, its banners—some stitched with mottoes, some roughly painted with pathetic scenes from the factory child’s life—flapping and cracking in the strong wind, the faces of all bright with hope, the men joking to conceal their feelings, the children’s little clogs pattering on the cobbles, Jonathan felt happier than he had ever done in his life before. The band which was leading the column struck up the children’s chant:

  We will have the Ten Hours Bill,

  That we will! That we will!

  Jonathan threw back his head and poured out his soul in the song. He had already lost his hat in the pushing and jostling of the crowd, and his fine exalted face, with the dark hair streaming backwards, combined with his limp and his superior accent, attracted the attention of the men he was walking with, who asked him who he was and told him he was a plucky lad and had a champion voice. In reply Jonathan merely gave his name and said he had been a piecener, for he was ashamed to mention Will. The sympathy which was so ready to flash in his dark eyes drew the men’s confidences—most of them were unemployed, living on their children’s earnings—and Jonathan was very happy indeed to receive them. But after a few miles he was obliged to rest a little and so drop behind, and as the hours went on and he felt the lack of food increasingly, he lagged more and more. Then the rain, which had been threatening all morning from grey skies, came down. Jonathan thought he had never seen such rain, even on Marthwaite Moor; it flowed over him like a flood, and was beaten into every corner of his person by the fierce north-east wind, which was now blowing a gale. Hours and hours passed while he still trudged on; his clothes were sodden and heavy with water, the rain had become an oppression almost too great to be borne, the wind seemed icy, his lame leg ached and throbbed, his boots—never quite as good or as well-repaired as Brigg’s, because of his fastidious delicacy about Will’s money—were letting in the wet as he splashed through the puddles of the muddy road, and one of them was beginning to hurt his heel. But he pressed forward doggedly, and at long last saw the smoke of the Leeds chimneys flying towards him in long shreds, driven by the angry wind; the first stage of his journey was over.