Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

  This time David had more difficulty in finding what he wanted, for both sides of the Marthwaite road were now lined with houses and small shops, and a petrol station with red and yellow pumps now faced the site of William Oldroyd’s murder. The grimy little road beside it was, however, duly labelled Mill Lane, and with a quickening of his pulse David turned into it. A few minutes later he stood in the presence of Old Syke Mill.

  A bitter disappointment seized upon him; he felt more disheartened than ever in his life before. For the mill stood empty and derelict; its paintless door was closed, looked indeed as though it had never been opened; the water pipes down the walls were cracked and jagged; some of the window panes were broken. He went under the archway; a few clumps of dirty grass actually mottled the uneven stones of the little yard within, and tin cans and shards of broken pottery lay about. The steps down into the boiler pit were covered with dried mud; the boiler was yellow with rust. He walked further and looked out upon the dirty waters of the Ire; the mill dam evidently needed repair, for the water was rushing through the gaps.

  “They don’t make cloth here any longer,”murmured David. “Oh, God.”

  Old Syke Mill was closed and ruined, and New Syke Mill would soon be closed and ruined too. The glory of the Oldroyds was indeed departed. He could not help feeling, as he stood there, that perhaps the Oldroyds’ luck had been out since the old mill went to strangers. Was that superstitious, silly? Yes, of course it was; the selling of the old mill was a symptom of the cause which made for the Oldroyds’ decay, not the cause itself. What was the cause? Well, he didn’t know; but he rather thought that whereas old William Oldroyd, and Will, and Joe Bamforth, and the elder Brigg at the beginning of his life, had really cared for cloth, in the elder Brigg’s life there had come a point—perhaps when he had had that bother with Sophia—when his love for cloth had turned into a love for money, and ever since then that was what the Oldroyds liked. Brigg the second must have felt like that, for he had sold Syke Mill. The change was marked, thought David, by the change in the name of the Oldroyds’ houses; they used to be the Oldroyds of Syke Mill or Syke House and be proud of it; but now they lived in Emsley Hall: they had ceased to be proud of being cloth-manufacturers, and wished to be thought moneved gentlemen. Even David’s father, perfectly straight and honourable as Francis was, looked upon New Syke Mill as a means for making money first, for making cloth only incidentally. Though as a matter of fact, decided David sadly, Francis was so busy being honourable and public-schoolish and esprit de corps and all that kind of thing that he had hardly any time left to make either cloth or money. Well! It was pretty ghastly. What would old William, and Will, and the first Brigg, say if they could see Syke Mill now?

  A man now appeared at David’s side, and seemed to have a caretaker’s interest in the place and to question David’s presence there.

  “My ancestors used to own this mill,” explained David frankly; and asked how it came to be deserted.

  The man informed him that the large dyeing company to whom it had been sold were doing badly—“like everybody else,” he observed with a mournful intonation—and so had closed some of their mills and concentrated their work in the remainder.

  David sighed. “The West Riding seems to be in a bad way,” he said.

  “Aye, it is that!” agreed the man emphatically. “There’s some as say that it’ll never be better, and grass’ll grow in the streets of Annotsfield.”

  “Oh, no!” cried David.

  “Well, that’s what they say,” insisted the man. “Happen you’ve nowt to do wi’ textiles?”

  David turned scarlet. What a question to ask an Oldroyd! He hung his head, and mumbled. “We have a mill in Irebridge—my name’s Oldroyd.”

  “Oh, is it?” said the man sympathetically. “Then I reckon your father’s got a packet of trouble on, Selling up next week, is, Oldroyds, so I’ve heard tell.”

  “Oh, damn!” whispered David beneath his breath. He turned and strode back through the archway to the outer yard; he he felt he couldn’t stand much more of this.

  “Well, good afternoon,” said the man kindly, stopping at the door of another derelict building which might once have been a house.

  “Good afternoon,” replied David.

  The Ire Valley mill buzzers were now sounding to mark the close of the working day; David walked away up Syke Mill Lane with his head sunk on his breast.

  6

  The Oldroyds, as the man at Syke Mill had remarked, were selling up next week. The whole affair was being rushed through at top speed by Francis, who felt that only so could he endure it at all. The men had been discharged with as much notice as Francis could afford to give them—in fact perhaps more than he could afford—and were now presumably on the dole. Catalogues of the Syke Mill buildings and plant had been prepared and printed, under the charge of Francis’s accountants; and now great bills were being posted all over Irebridge and Annotsfield, advertising the sale, which was to open on the following Monday. David stood in the New Syke Mill yard, reading one of these bills mournfully. A few weeks ago the announcement that such items as “one hundred and fifty-four 76 in. reed space single-shuttle worsted coating looms” were to be sold by auction would have meant nothing to him, but he had been studying the practice of textile manufacture as well as its history, and could now form a very clear mental picture indeed of these particular looms and of all the others mentioned. Oldroyd looms! And they were to be sold! David felt as though his heart would break. Just then his father appeared at the mill door; David skipped away from the poster and pretended he had not been reading it.

  Francis, though he looked fearfully white and haggard, was still spruce and well-groomed. He was holding on to his self-respect grimly, but it was a tough battle and he had been losing for a long time, and he knew that if he gave in for a second about his personal appearance, his defences would crack and it would be all up with him. tie had learned that in the War, and did not mean to forget it. Once he had been proud of being Francis Brigg Oldroyd, an officer, a gentleman, the owner of Emsley Hall, a man to whom worry about money was low-down and not done. Then, driven from that position, he had taken up the stand that he wasn’t losing any more money than anybody else in the West Riding, and probably less—at any rate he wasn’t in debt to the bank. Then he was in debt to the bank, but only a little; then he was in debt a good deal, but had given ample security; then he had deposited the deeds of Emsley Hall, but meant to get them back again. Then he knew that he would never get them back, but at: any rate he would act like a gentleman, he would take the thing standing up, he wouldn’t whine, and he would pay twenty shillings in the pound. Now he was beginning to feel even a little doubtful of this last item, and he was tempted a thousand times a day just to let the whole thing slip and not bother about it. If only David had been a little older, so that he could have had somebody to talk to! If David had been born when, so to speak, he ought to have been born, instead of that dead child, David would have been a young man in the twenties now, able to help, instead of just a lad—a very dear lad, but a mere boy. There he was now, skipping about cheerfully as though nothing was wrong.

  “Come along, David,” commanded Francis, making his voice as kind as he could manage—he had been very irritable at home lately, and was ashamed of it.

  He got into the driver’s seat—he had discharged Ackroyd, but was keeping the car till after the sale—David climbed in beside him, and they drove off.

  “Father,” said David wistfully as they flew along: “I wish I were older. I wish I could do something to help you.”

  Francis was so startled by this echo of his own thoughts that without meaning to do so he blundered into a statement of his hopes and fears about Monday’s sale. He hoped to make enough to pay all his creditors in full and have a few thousands over; but times were bad for sales, and prices would be terribly low.

  “But there’ll be enough to pay everybody in full, won’t there?” cried David in fearful anxiety.<
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  “Yes, I think we shall manage that,” said Francis.

  “Oh, we simply must” urged David. “It’s terribly important. I couldn’t bear it if we didn’t. If only we can manage to do that it won’t matter so much, will it? There’s my thousand pounds, you know—we can put that in as well.”

  “You’re very anxious to part with that thousand pounds,” said Francis, laughing. He had not laughed for months, and the sound quite startled him, but David’s sympathy was really very heartening.

  “Will you promise me to use it if necessary, father?” demanded David.

  His tone was quite stern. Francis glanced at him in surprise, then said seriously: “I give you my word of honour that I will.” To himself he thought: “The boy’s growing up, and I’m going to be proud of him.”

  On Monday the sale began. All that week cars poured into Irebridge to attend it. By the beginning of September Francis neither owed any man a penny, nor owned a penny; he had, however, managed to achieve this result without touching David’s thousand pounds. But the Oldroyds no longer owned a mill, a yard of land, a loom or a piece of cloth; their ruin was complete. All that remained to them was Charlotte’s jointure, the price of Old Syke Mill.

  7

  Motor charabancs stood outside the Moorcock, and the little parlour was so full of their occupants that David could hardly see the walls. A pale sandy cat by the hearth mewed piteously from time to time, alarmed by the crush and noise; David picked her up and soothed her. David, who had imagined himself standing silent and sombrely meditative in this cradle of textile conflict, was vexed but also amused by the thronged scene; he did not grudge these holiday-makers their fun, “and it’s my own fault,” he reflected, “for coming on a Sunday afternoon.” But on Monday the Oldroyds were to leave the West Riding for ever, so this was his last chance. “And when you come to think about it,” reflected David, “I daresay it was noisy and jolly like this when the Luddites were assembled here.” It was no use staying there any longer, however; he left the inn and began to wander across the moor in the direction of Scape Scar.

  It was a golden September afternoon; the sky was blue and high, the wind crisp; the distant swells and hollows of the moor gleamed in the sunshine. It was just the time and the place which David particularly loved; and the thought that to-morrow he had to leave all this and go and live in Hampshire pierced his heart like a sword. Of course the New Forest was very beautiful, but then it was not the West Riding of Yorkshire. However, there were Stancliffe cousins living there, and doubtless it would be very agreeable once the wrench of parting was over. David stumbled along moodily, his thoughts flying from his father to Will Oldroyd, from Uncle Matthew to George Mellor, from Uncle Henry to dear Joe. He was glad that by some chance his name had a friendly association with Joe’s; though of course, reflected David, that was the purest sentimentality on his part. Impatient with himself, he raised his eyes, to observe in front of him, at a hundred yards’ distance, an enormous notice board printed in red: DANGER OF DEATH.

  “Hullo!” said David, startled. Then he remembered where he was, nodded his head and said: “Of course.” He threw back his head and gazed upwards, and saw what he had expected to see, namely, the three soaring masts of the northern wireless station. In the autumn sunshine they looked very white, very slender and very beautiful. “‘Nation shall speak peace unto nation,’” murmured David. “H’m. I fancy old Joe would have liked that.” He had come to the edge of the moor in this direction, and now he swung himself on to a wall and looked about him.

  To his left, perched on the very summit, were the long squat buildings and the superb aspiring masts of the wireless station; just below them in the shelter of the brow stood the two cottages where old George Mellor and Joe Bamforth had lived. At David’s feet lay the Ire Valley, a confused mass of streets and little houses, out of which mill chimneys sprang like black trees; as the valley rose up towards the west the buildings thinned, and beyond the reservoir the moors claimed their own. The river was so screened by the buildings as to be visible only at rare intervals; a train was just puffing laboriously up the incline, it crawled slowly into Marthwaite tunnel and disappeared.

  David sighed.

  He knew, now, all the Oldroyd story; he knew of the coming of the frames and of the murder which followed; he knew of Will’s two marriages; he knew of the noble Jonathan, the jolly Brigg and the naughty Sophia (type, thought David, of the nouveau riche); he knew of Will’s death after the Plug Riot; he knew of Janie and her suitors and the strike; he knew something of the marriage of Francis and Carmine, which seemed to him to typify the uneasy pre-war bonds which held and irked capital and labour; and he knew—alas, too well—of the Oldroyds’ final ruin. The story of the Oldroyds was spread out before his mental vision just as the Ire Valley was spread before his physical eyes now, and he thought that all the various incidents of the story were no more disconnected than the various yards of Ire Valley land; on the contrary they were one, they made a coherent whole. It seemed to him that in 1812 a certain conflict had begun, and that the conflict had worked itself out until it reached the ruin of to-day. The Oldroyds—pushing, determined, able men—see their advantage in “the introduction of machines; the Mellors and the Thorpes see their advantage in the maintenance of hand-labour; and the conflict of interest, a conflict in which each side ever strives to impose its wdll on the other, begins. Between the two opposing parties stands Joe Bamforth, a man in fair compassions skilled, a man indifferent to his own interest and eager for the welfare of others, a man who understands and loves both parties, a man who might have interpreted them to each other and reconciled them. Instead of that, mused David bitterly, between them they get him hanged. His sister is deserted, and the Oldroyds in the person of Will ally themselves to comfort instead of to compassion. In the next generation the master manufacturers alienate the compassionate Joth and drive him from the mill; in the next masters and men, in the course of their conflict, drive Henry from Annotsfield. And so we come to a state of affairs, reflected David, when the compassionate men won’t go into industry at all; men of that type shun industry, and seek the professions where the humanities are observed. Look at the Bamforths, for instance! Not one of them is in industry to-day. As one result of this, the men who are in industry are not as proud of it as they used to be, they want to make money and be gentlemen if they are masters, make money and be comfortable if they are men, instead of wanting to make good cloth. For another, the conflict between masters and men becomes ever more bitter. And so to-day, when a tremendous economic re-adjustment is required of the whole industry, they haven’t the habit of co-operation, nor the pride of enterprise, to make it; masters and men are too busy attacking each other to work together to save the cloth trade; they can’t see the world wood for the trees of self-interest, and so they’re going down together in ruin.

  Whether this tale of the Oldroyds, so illustrative, so typical of the cloth trade, was perhaps symbolic of all industry since the industrial revolution, David did not know, but he rather had a notion that it might be. All human conflicts happened because people didn’t understand each other; they didn’t explain things to each other; they didn’t interpret. Of course in the old days, mused David, when people didn’t understand complexes and inhibitions and sex and all that sort of thing, there might be some excuse for them; but really nowadays, when all these things were mapped out and understood, there was no excuse at all for quarrels; all that old conflict nonsense must be thrown aside, they must arrange things in a new way altogether, there must be a new synthesis. The men skilled in compassion and life-development must be called in, and their advice taken; or perhaps, to put it in a better way, each person must listen to the advice of the compassionate side of his own heart. Well! I’m getting rather mixed, David thought; these are hard matters for the young. Though they seem even harder for the old, he sighed, thinking of his father and Matthew Mellor. But then perhaps it’s easier for me, he reflected, because I have both
Mellor and Oldroyd blood in my veins; I am the fruit of a reconciliation, an impulse of union, which sprang from England’s danger in the War. When you come to think of it, mused David, the blood of all those people who began the conflict in 1812 runs in my veins: Oldroyd, Bamforth, Mellor, Thorpe, Smith, Stancliffe, Brigg—only Walker doesn’t come into me, and I’m glad of that. There are others in me too, he thought, whose names I don’t know; God! how deep I am in the West Riding; my roots go right down into the Ire Valley soil. And I expect most of our elegant gentry are the same, he mused; we’re all blood brothers, we’re all bound up together. And in the same way all the ideas the Bamforths and the Mellors and the Oldroyds stand for are woven together too; if there had never been any frames there probably wouldn’t have been universal education, and the Annotsfield Free Library is paid for, you might say, by the rates on New Syke Mill. Yes, everything is all woven up together—which just shows how silly this conflict business is.

  Rather attractive, though, resumed David, holding up his hand and looking at it with interest, rather attractive to reflect that in that hand there are bits of all those stalwarts of 1812. Why do I call them stalwarts, he asked himself. Well, he replied, at any rate the Oldroyds of that day had the courage to try something new; the change to machinery must have been really very daring. I don’t think the later generations have had as much courage as that, he thought; it seems to me that Syke Mill has been running for a good many years now cm the momentum imparted to it by those early generations. But I should like to try something new, he thought; yes, by God I should. But I shall never have the chance; we’re off to Hampshire in the morning. Perhaps that’s what it means, he thought, looking at his hand again; it ought to mean something, and perhaps that’s what it means; the blood of all those people is united in me, and the story’s finished, and we go. But it’s a dismal ending, he thought, revolted. If that is what it means, then I wish all those ancestors of mine had married differently and acted differently, and then I should be different, and the Ire Valley would be different, and the West Riding might not be going down in ruin as it is to-day.