Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

  The chauffeur, hot and angry, reluctantly climbed down; Francis took his place and put out the clutch. Mellor laid his hand on the lorry’s bonnet. “You won’t drive this piece out, Mr. Oldroyd,” he said in a warning tone.

  “Won’t I?” said Francis at white heat. “Stand out of my way or I won’t be answerable for the consequences.”

  Matthew stood back. Francis, to whom the lorry gearbox was unfamiliar, was a moment before he got the car to move; but eventually it started forward, and he drove off in fine style. He was disconcerted, however, to hear a loud shout of laughter following him. He swerved a little so as to be able to look back, and saw Matthew, a grin on his face, standing with the piece over one shoulder in true presser’s fashion. Francis, white with rage, turned the lorry and drove back to the picket. Leaning out beyond the lorry’s hood he said in a quiet tone:

  “Mellor, put that piece back on the lorry.”

  “Not me!” said Mellor, and with a single skilful movement of his shoulder he dropped the cloth into the road.

  Francis jumped down and walked towards Mellor, till the two men faced each other across the fallen cloth.

  “Put it back!” ordered Francis from between clenched teeth.

  Matthew laughed.

  Francis stepped forward with his fist raised to strike him, but fortunately the manager seized his arm and held him back. “Now then, now then!” said the manager soothingly. “All this fuss about a piece that came off the loom a fortnight ago. Which of you’ll put it back on the lorry?”

  “I’ll fetch it back to t’mill if tha likes,” said young Thorpe in a joking tone.

  The others laughed, and seemed to agree. “Aye, fetch it into t’mill,” they said: “It’ll be out o’t’rain, then.”

  “Well,” said the manager hesitatingly, looking at Francis.

  Francis perceived that, short of a free fight, there was nothing else to be done; he was beaten by organisation and numbers. Though he could gladly have killed Mellor to avenge his humiliation, he commanded his face, and said cheerfully:

  “Very well, take it in then. If I lose that customer and your looms are short of work for lack of his order, I hope you’ll remember whose fault it was.”

  The men stared at him with faces somewhat sobered, but made no further offer. One or two of them helped Thorpe to shoulder the piece, and he made off slowly towards the outer mill door. Mellor stood with folded arms watching contemptuously while the manager took out his keys and let man and cloth in; he then walked haughtily off without another word.

  Francis, having entered the mill with Thorpe, watched him out again, then dismissed the manager and also, to the man’s surprise, Ackroyd. Then he tugged and dragged at the piece of cloth—it was really astonishingly heavy, he found—mounted it on his shoulder, and carried it to his own open car, which stood in the inner yard. He draped a rug over it, and as soon as darkless fell drove out himself and delivered the piece in Bradford.

  His spirits were agreeably raised by this victory, and he returned to Emsley Hall well pleased with himself. He was later than usual because of his exploit with the piece, and he thought he detected a slight look of anxiety on Carmine’s face, and a note of relief in her voice, when she greeted him. Pleased by this small sign of affection, as soon as they were alone after dinner he told her the whole story with considerable gusto. He laughed heartily over the manner in which he had outwitted the picket. “I don’t know if they call that peaceful picketing,” he said: “Chucking pieces about in the road like that—but at any rate I got the better of them.” He then remembered that Matthew was Carmine’s brother, and feeling genuinely sorry for her in that she possessed such a disgraceful and unseemly relative, said kindly: “What a firebrand that brother of yours is, to be sure!” He glanced at her to see if this had had the soothing effect he intended, and observed that her face was frowning and sullen, and her eyelids lowered. “Oh, confound it! Here we are again,” he thought; and he took a sudden resolution to get to the bottom of it this time. He therefore said in a firm commanding tone: “What’s the matter, Carmine?”

  Carmine averted her head and muttered: “Nothing.”

  “Oh, yes there is,” persisted Francis. “And I’ll tell you what it is, if you like. You’d rather Matthew had won than me—you’re always against me, whatever I do.” He did not altogether mean this, but was determined to provoke her into some declaration.

  “And if I am!” cried Carmine suddenly, springing to her feet. Her dark eyes flashed, her voice was deep and powerful, a vein which Francis had not noticed before throbbed in the centre of her forehead, her breast heaved. Altogether she looked superb; a statue come to life, a smouldering fire leaping into flame.

  “Now we’re off!” thought Francis, and his blood rose joyously to the fray.

  “And if I am,” repeated Carmine in a deep ringing tone: “Isn’t it natural I should feel for the people I was brought up with, rather than for you? You think yourself the lord of the earth, Francis Oldroyd.”

  “Upon my word,” said Francis, astonished, “I assure you I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do,” cried Carmine. “You and all your class do. You think God made the earth for you to do as you like with.”

  “I don’t,” Francis contradicted her flatly. “We don’t, Carmine.”

  “Then why do you behave as though you did?” demanded Carmine. “You expect the people who work for you to be grateful to you for giving them work—they might just as well expect you to be grateful to them for doing it.”

  “We pay them,” said Francis.

  “Yes, and they pay you,” insisted Carmine fiercely. “Don’t deny it, Francis; if it didn’t pay you to employ them, you wouldn’t do it.”

  “But you’ve got it all upside down, Carmine,” said Francis, laughing.

  “Why should you think yourself a better man than my brother?” cried Carmine. “The only useful thing you do better is to speak with a better accent. You’re neither kinder nor cleverer than he is—you’re hard and cruel to anyone who doesn’t conform to your ideas, and you’re stupider than Matthew. You don’t know any more about cloth than he does, and you know a lot less about economics. He does try to speak better, and is sorry when he doesn’t understand things; but you’re proud of not understanding anything but golf and cricket.”

  “Oh, go on, go on,” said Francis good-humouredly. “I shall have something to say to you in a minute.”

  “Yet you think that you’re entitled to all these thousands of pounds a year income,” pursued Carmine, “and that my brother’s only entitled to four pounds a week.”

  “Good heavens, my dear child!” said Francis. “Your ideas of a presser’s wages are quite out of date. Let me remind you that I risk my capital, and have the responsibility of finding work and running the whole mill.”

  “Your capital! Your responsibility!” sneered Carmine. “A lot of capital the Oldroyds would have if it depended on you. You don’t even know your own job; you’re too busy with games and horses.”

  “And how long have you been feeling like this about me, may I ask?” demanded Francis, beginning to be angry.

  “Ever since you expected me to be grateful to you for marrying me!” cried Carmine loudly. “You trample on me, you grind me down, you put me in a position where I’d like to kill myself, and then you expect me to be grateful to you for getting me out of it.”

  “I didn’t expect you to be grateful to me!” cried Francis, stung.

  “Yes, you did,” panted Carmine. “You thought how noble you were being, like all your class do when they give to charity.”

  “Well, you damned well aren’t grateful, and that’s a fact,” said Francis bitterly. “You’re neither grateful nor pleasant nor agreeable nor anything else. All day long in the mill I get grudging work from the men; they nearly all try to do as little as they possibly can for the money, they don’t care a brass farthing whether they do it well or not, so long as they just scrape through well enough to draw t
heir wage on Friday. And then when I come home it’s the same thing—you do as little as you decently can to make me happy, and expect me to love you for it. I’m sick of your sulky ways, so now you know.”

  “I’m glad you realise it’s the same thing here as it is in the mill,” cried Carmine passionately: “For it is—exactly the same. I’m sick of being ruled by you—I don’t admit your right to rule me. Who are you that you should expect me to be grateful to you for ruling me?”

  “By God, Carmine,” said Francis, flushing: “If you say anything about being grateful again I’ll wiring your neck. Was that business all my fault? Why did you meet me and come out with me? You must have known what you were risking.”

  “I came because I liked the luxury,” wailed Carmine, suddenly sobbing wildly, “And I shall be ashamed of it as long as I live.”

  Francis exclaimed and began to pace up and down the room. He was more than wounded, he was outraged by Carmine’s revelations; he could never make Carmine understand it, he supposed, but to find that his own wife was one of those dreadful socialistic wild-cats was to him as if he had found her in adultery, or betraying England to a foreigner, or robbing a church poor-box. Indeed in Francis’s opinion all that sort of stuff was betraying England. Carmine was now crouched in a chair with her face covered, weeping in a steady hopeless way. Francis stopped and gazed at her. The little dark curls at the nape of her neck suddenly seemed to him very childlike and touching; he could not believe that she really thought all those awful things about him; she was just a silly little kid with her head stuffed full of her brother’s mad ideas. “Well, at any rate we’ve had it out,” he thought. “She’ll feel better now she’s got it off her chest.” Aloud he said:

  “Come on now, Carmine; kiss me and let’s forget all this.”

  He put a hand on her shoulder coaxingly.

  “Don’t touch me!” cried Carmine, starting from his grasp.

  Francis lost his temper. “I’ll touch you as much as I damn well please!” he shouted, and seizing her in his arms, kissed her fiercely. She struggled and struck at him, but he would not let her go; he overpowered her utterly, and soothed by his victory, began to kiss her tenderly and laugh. “What a temper you have to be sure, Carmine!” he said teasingly.

  “Laugh! Yes, laugh!” cried Carmine passionately in her deep husky tones. “You’re stronger than I am and you’ve got the law on your side.”

  “Oh, damn!” said Francis, disgusted. He released his wife abruptly, so that she fell across the arm of the chair, and stalked out of the room.

  He spent the rest of the evening with the Stancliffes at Irebridge House—not such a cheerful occupation as it used to be, with Land Taxes and one thing and another—slept in his dressing-room, and went off to Syke Mill next morning without seeing Carmine, who was alleged, by the maid who took up her breakfast, to be still asleep. “Give her time to cool down,” thought Francis as he sat beside Ackroyd, speeding along to Bradford—it was Thursday and Bradford market day, and he must go to the Exchange and see about some yarn, he supposed, even though all the textile Union men were out.

  When he returned to Emsley Hall at night the butler met him with a regretful air and told him that Mrs. Oldroyd had had a message from a relative in London, and been obliged to go there at once. She had left a note for Mr. Oldroyd in his dressing-room. Francis went upstairs grimly, more than half prepared for what he would find. “She’s gone to old Bamforth,” he thought. “Well! I don’t mind her having a week to get over the row.”

  Carmine’s note said simply: “I shall not come back. C.”

  “Won’t you?” said Francis, reading this. “By God, you will!”

  He called for a time-table, and took the first train next morning for London.

  6

  “My idea of marriage, as of every other partnership,” said Henry, gazing thoughtfully into the far corner of his study, “and when I say partnership, I use the word to cover every association between human beings—my idea of such associations is that each member shall contribute to it his or her personality, unrepressed and uncoerced. Thus, and only thus, we obtain the most complex synthesis possible, which may well surpass in beauty, as it surely does in interest and human value, the separate elements of such an association.”

  “I haven’t tried to repress Carmine or whatever you call it,” said Francis, irritated by these theoretic subtleties, which he did not understand.

  “But my dear boy,” said Henry mildly: “You’re doing it now. You’re trying to force her to return to you against her will.”

  “If you’ll excuse me saying so, sir,” said Francis: “You’re a bachelor. I must insist upon seeing Carmine. She’s my wife and I have the right to see her.”

  “She wants you to consent to a legal separation, so that you won’t have that right,” said Henry.

  “I shall not consent to a legal separation,” said Francis, sticking out his jaw. “That’s my last word on that point. I shan’t change. She needn’t expect a penny from me till she returns to her proper place at my side.”

  “I don’t think that argument will help your case much,” observed Henry.

  “Will you go and ask Carmine to see me?” demanded Francis, keeping his temper with difficulty.

  “I will,” said Henry, rising. “But I don’t think for a moment it will be any good.”

  He left the room and went upstairs to Carmine. Returning in a very few minutes, he said to Francis:

  “Will you consent to a legal separation?”

  “No, I’m damned if I will,” said Francis.

  “Then Carmine won’t see you,” said Henry. “She intends to deny you your legal rights, and says your only remedy is divorce or separation. She doesn’t care what you do, she won’t see you, she won’t return to you. She says,” added Henry with a touch of irony, “that it’s her last word and she won’t change.”

  “Then I shall leave her to come to her senses,” said Francis, picking up his hat and gloves. “I trust you, sir, to write to me at once if she shows any sign of doing so.”

  “I promise you I will do that,” said the old man, rising.

  “And what will her mother say?” demanded Francis, suddenly struck by the thought of a possible ally.

  “If you bring her mother down on her you’ll never see Carmine again,” said Henry emphatically. “I know Carmine, and I warn you. Don’t drive her away from my roof, where she’s safe, to take refuge where she isn’t known, I beg of you.”

  “Well, all right. But I shall not consent to a separation, and a divorce is out of the question.” said Francis. He added: “My solicitor shall write to her about money—what’s your bank?”

  “I thought you said she needn’t expect a penny from you till she returned to Emsley Hall,” murmured Henry with a smile.

  “Yes, but I can’t do that,” said Francis uneasily. “You know I can’t do that.”

  “I don’t suppose for a moment,” said Henry in his tired old voice, choosing his words carefully, “That Carmine will accept a penny from you. Why should she? She’s perfectly capable of earning her own living, and ought not to accept money to which she has no right. But I will let her know your generous intentions.” He led the way out of his study to the front door.

  Francis sighed as he followed him. “You think I don’t care for her as I ought and that I’m not upset enough about all this,” he said, turning to Henry on the threshold. “But you’re wrong. The fault isn’t all on my side; Carmine’s been damned difficult lately. I was madly in love with her before we were married, and no other woman will be the same to me. I don’t say I couldn’t fall in love with another woman,” he explained honestly, “but it wouldn’t be the same feeling at all. She’s my wife, after all, and I think we ought to stick together and try to make a go of it.”

  He looked rather wistfully at Henry, who said: “You might write and put that point of view before her.”

  Francis gave an exclamation of disgust. “Write!” he said. �
��What’s the use of that? I couldn’t put all that in a letter to save my life. She ought to have let me see her. Well, good-bye—for the present,” he added threateningly, and marched steadily away down the street.

  Henry looked after him with infinite mournfulness. “They began all wrong,” he murmured sadly as he closed the door. “It might have been so different.”

  7

  Carmine did not return to Yorkshire. After a year or two, when it was no use pretending any longer that she was just away on a visit for her health, Francis urged his mother to come and live with him at Emsley Hall, and Charlotte did so. Francis paid sums regularly into Henry’s bank in Carmine’s name, and took no steps to obtain any kind of separation. There were times when it maddened him to think that he, Francis Oldroyd, had been unable to keep his wife’s love. If he had been a thin, scraggy, undersized, feeble sort of fellow he could have understood it, but he was handsome and agreeable to women, and it was beyond him. He gritted his teeth and felt savage. One thing was certain, he had made a ghastly mess of his life. With a runaway wife and the textile Unions continually in a ferment, there really was not much fun to be got out of anything. But nobody need think he was down and out. No! He kept his head well in the air, declined to fall in love with any woman but his wife, declined to drink except in decent moderation, wrestled with Syke Mill as well as he could, and took his pleasure in training recruits for the territorials.

  Book VI

  End Or Beginning

  Chapter I

  Reconciliation

  1

  Francis was in the usual summer camp with his battalion during the fatal summer days of 1914 when ultimatums were flying hither and thither across Europe. On August 3rd he paid a flying visit to Emsley Hall to tell his mother that the men had been sent home to see their families, as mobilisation orders were hourly expected. He was jubilant and excited; he had expected a scrap with Germany, for the last ten years, and was quite glad that it had come in his time. On the following day war was declared between England and Germany, and England sprang to arms. Francis’s battalion was mobilised at once, slept that night in the Bamforth Secondary School and left the West Riding the next morning.