2
The trouble about the reservoir continued.
Mr. Beaumont, who had been expected to lead the movement for repair, seemed to have changed sides and deem it unnecessary, and men who would reluctantly have submitted to his demand for expenditure on repair because of his standing in the valley, now gladly followed his new line, which saved their pockets. They gloated over their surprised and resentful opponents, and thus the discussion became exacerbated. Arguments raged; men quarrelled; the original builders of the embankment hotly denied responsibility. More experienced engineers were sought; one gave advice and instruction which seemed to support John Booth’s view of the matter; his instructions were privately countermanded by Mr. Beaumont and he left in a huff. The other commissioners fumed, for no Yorkshireman can bear to have his committee overridden. Perhaps it was on this account that eventually Mr. Beaumont was voted down and the decision taken to put forward a new Parliamentary Bill. Lawyers were employed, the Bill was drawn, but at the last moment pronounced wrongly framed. Next session a freshly drawn Bill was at length presented; it passed the Commons but was thrown out by the Lords.
By this time the commissioners in general, and Mr. Beaumont in particular, were so exhausted by their protracted contention, so maddened by the mere sound of the word Ling, that they just let the whole matter drop. Some day they must have a meeting and take a decision, but for the present it was wisest, they said, to wait a while, give all the members a chance of cooling down. Besides, as it chanced, this summer brought a drought and the intrusive spring dried up. They sighed thankfully and left Ling alone.
Meanwhile the centre section of the Ling embankment sank slowly but steadily lower.
3
Rosa of course was not interested in Ling reservoir, except that the tiresome place was connected in her mind with the Booths and so she hated it. What interested her, it seemed, were errands of charity or friendship up or down the valley on both sides of the Yarrow.
A stone packhorse bridge crossed the little river just above her father’s mansion beneath the hill; on the other side the cobbled lane, before turning sharply up to the main road, was lined by Mr. Beaumont’s new dyehouse. Passing along the lane one would naturally sometimes encounter the dyehouse foreman. This happened one autumn afternoon. In his dirty, rough mill clothes, striped apron and wooden clogs Joe Booth still had an air of refinement and goodwill. He smiled and touched his cap. His hands, stained with blue dye, remained well-shaped and slender. Rosa looked through him coldly and walked on. Her heart beat fast, her cheek flushed, she felt as if she had won some notable victory.
“Does that dark blue dye stain hands permanently, father?” she enquired that night.
“Indigo? Oh, it wears off,” said her father indifferently. “In time, of course. It takes time.”
The next time Rosa passed the shed Joe was standing in the doorway talking to a lad; as she approached he broke off their talk abruptly and went in. Rosa was furious.
“Ask Joe Booth to come here at once,” she commanded the lad. He gave her a frightened glance and ran away.
“You wanted me, Miss Rosa?” said Joe Booth at her elbow.
How dare he call her by her name! Impertinent! Yet one must be fair: all my father’s workpeople know my name, Rosa told herself with a sense of virtue. She smiled; her smile seemed charming; childlike and sweet.
“Is my father in the dyehouse?” she asked. (She knew perfectly well he was not; she had left him asleep by the fire at home.)
“Well, no, I’m sorry, he’s not,” said Joe Booth. “I’m sorry.” He seemed really distressed that he could not produce her father for her. “I could send a lad across to the mill to fetch him,” he offered eagerly.
“No. It’s no matter. Thank you. I just remembered—something I had forgotten,” said Rosa, laughing, “which I wanted to tell him. It’s no matter.”
He smiled, enjoying her laughter—she had a pretty laugh. She nodded and passed on.
That evening Rosa was at her sweetest. She read to her mother, lying in bed upstairs, fetched her father’s slippers, sang to him the old-fashioned ballads he preferred. Her handsome face looked softly happy in the firelight.
“How many children have the Booths, father?” she asked in an idle tone.
Her father sat up briskly and showed alarm.
“For heaven’s sake, Rosa,” he urged, “don’t mention the Booths’ children in front of your mother. Mrs. Booth lost one of them, the next to Joe I think, at birth. It was as your mother returned from a visit of sympathy to Mrs. Booth that she fell down the steps from the hillside to the yard. So any mention of the Booths to her recalls her own accident, for which she blames herself. You were only a year old at the time, so you don’t remember.”
“But the steps aren’t dangerous? You mean the flight beside our house? I run up and down them a dozen times a week.”
“No, they’re not dangerous,” said Mr. Beaumont sadly.
“But mother fell,” argued Rosa.
“You are a grown woman now, Rosa,” said her father, putting on a stern air to cover his embarrassment, “So I can speak freely to you. Your mother was pregnant at the time. She slipped only from one step to the next, but suffered a miscarriage and some spinal displacement.”
“Poor mother,” said Rosa softly.
Her father dashed down the newspaper he was reading and without a word went upstairs. She heard his tread on the floor above in her mother’s room.
“He is genuinely attached to her,” marvelled Rosa, and fell to thinking of the chances and changes of married life.
A few days later she passed the dyehouse again. Joe Booth was again standing at the door. Rosa could not but remind herself that through the windows of the dyehouse she would be visible crossing the bridge. She smiled, well pleased. Let him admire her, she thought, tossing her head; he would feel her scorn the keener.
“Well, Joe,” she said.
“Miss Rosa,” replied Joe, touching his cap politely.
“It’s not true that you’re betrothed to Lizzie Lister, is it, Joe?” she demanded, her voice implying her utter incredulity at such a union.
“Aye, we’re tokened,” mumbled Joe, colouring and looking down. “We’s looking to get wed o’ Christmas.”
“I wish you every happiness, I’m sure,” said Rosa. “I was surprised when I heard, because she’s so much older than you are.”
“Nay!” said Joe, startled into candour. “You’re wrong, miss. Me and Lizzie’s of an age. We were babbies together.”
“You do surprise me,” said Rosa.
Her voice, meant to be freezing, trembled with fury, her cheeks blazed. She struck away up the hill at a running pace, stumbling as she went. Loathsome, hateful, impertinent fellow! How dared he speak to her in that way! Telling her straight out she was wrong! Speaking to her of babies! How insulting! In rough Yorkshire, too! She was so indignant, so outraged, that she found she was sobbing. She struck off the main road down a quiet lane, sank down in an angle of the wall and burst into tears.
When her first fierce paroxysm was over she stood up, dried her eyes, settled her dress and hair, and decided that she would never pass the dyehouse again while Joe Booth was there. She looked about her; she had wandered some distance from the road; to reach home without passing the dyehouse she would need to walk down the valley for some miles and cross the river at Yarrowbridge. From there the Beaumont mansion, Mill House, was some four miles upstream. Her return home would be belated; her mother would be troubled, her father cross. Setting her fine lips in an angry line, she strode off towards Yarrowbridge.
It was long dark when she reached home; her father was standing on his doorstep with a lantern in his hand, and greeted her irascibly.
“Where on earth have you been, Rosa? Your mother has been worried to death about you. I was about to set out on a search. Come in at once.”
“I was obliged to go round by Yarrow bridge,” said Rosa, stripping off her gloves. “
I could not return by the packhorse bridge.”
“Why not, for heaven’s sake?”
“I could not pass the dyehouse again,” cried Rosa loudly. “Joe Booth insulted me as I went by.”
“What? What?” shouted her father. “It’s impossible, Rosa! He’s a good lad, the best workman I’ve got.”
Rosa burst into tears and rushed upstairs, sinking down beside her mother’s bed.
“Is anything wrong, dear?” said her mother. “You mustn’t take your father’s scoldings too seriously. He was anxious about you, that is all.”
Looking at that pale, quiet, austere face, calm, ennobled by long suffering patiently borne, Rosa was ashamed to admit, even to herself, the hollowness of her accusation.
“He didn’t touch you, Rosa? He didn’t touch you?” cried her father anxiously, rushing into the room.
Rosa shook her head.
“No. He was just—insufferable,” she said.
“I shall have to sack him. Pity, because he’s the best workman in the Valley,” said her father. “But of course he’ll have to go.”
“You didn’t encourage him in any way, Rosa?” said her mother.
“Now, Hester, you know our daughter is incapable of such conduct,” said Mr. Beaumont with an angry flush.
“Not intentionally. But perhaps without thought?” pressed Mrs. Beaumont.
“No, no, no!” cried Rosa, beating her fists on the white counterpane. “I can’t bear to talk about it!” she wailed, and bowing her head she buried her beautiful face in her hands.
“I’ll sack him first thing tomorrow morning,” said Mr. Beaumont with a sigh.
4
The dismay on Joe Booth’s face when he heard this decision was very painful.
“But what have I done wrong?” he faltered. “I thought you were right pleased with dyehouse, Mester Beaumont.”
“I am, Joe.”
“What’s wrong, then?”
Greatly embarrassed, Mr. Beaumont managed to get out that Joe Booth had been exceedingly rude to his daughter.
“Never! I never did no such thing,” said Joe, colouring. “Why, only yester afternoon Miss Rosa congratulated me on getting wed. She spoke to me herself, she did, and smiled.”
“Well—you must have said something, you must have said something,” said Mr. Beaumont. “You’ll have to leave, Joe. I’m as sorry as you are, but you’ll have to leave.”
“I shall have to put off getting wed again, then, I suppose,” said Joe, the colour fading slowly from his face.
“Nay, you’ll soon get another job,” said Mr. Beaumont, falsely cheerful.
“I can’t make head nor tail of it,” said Joe.
His perplexity appeared so genuine that Mr. Beaumont was shaken. But he could not now withdraw without discrediting his daughter.
“You’ll leave at the end of the week, then,” he said slowly.
“Nay, I’ll leave now.”
“Take your week’s wages, anyway,” said Mr. Beaumont kindly, pushing a pile of silver across the office table towards him.
Joe put out his hand and with a disdainful sideways movement swept the coins to the floor.
“I’ll bid you and yours good-day, Mester Beaumont,” he said as he walked out.
5
Doubtless none of the parties concerned deliberately intended to make the cause of their disagreement public; but the maids of the Beaumont household had overheard much of Rosa’s complaint and invented more, and when Joe, seeking work, was asked with astonishment why he had left Beaumonts’, he replied in a burst of fury that it was some tuppeny-ha’penny complaint of Mr. Beaumont’s daughter. The story spread like wildfire up and down the Valley, embellished, exaggerated, told sometimes in suggestive tones.
It had already reached the Yarrow inn that evening when Joe, sick at heart after a long day’s refusals, and dreading the return home without work or wages, dropped in for a pint.
“Now, Charlie,” he said wearily, nodding to Lizzie’s brother, who was standing by the bar.
To his surprise the face the young man turned to him was coldly angry.
“What’s all this, then?” he said.
“What’s all what?” snapped Joe.
“All this about thee and yon daughter o’ Beaumont’s,” said the sandy-haired young man. “Us thought tha were tokened to our Lizzie.”
“I am.”
“What have you been up to with that proud piece Rosa, then? Eh?”
“Nowt!” shouted Joe, losing his temper. “If anyone says different, it’s a vile lie!”
“Are you calling me a liar?” shouted Charlie, thrusting his face into his erstwhile friend’s. “I’ll call thee summat worse, I will!”
He threw out a vile epithet. Joe struck him in the face. He fell, but pulled Joe down with him, and in a moment they were fighting all over the sanded floor, while the other drinkers backed away to the side out of reach, shouting and laughing to egg them on. Joe, who was not aggressive by nature, was getting decidedly the worst of it when the inn door was thrown open and Lizzie came hurrying in. She seized the shoulders of the combatants and tried to pull them apart.
“Stop it! Stop it, will you! Don’t be so daft! Give up now, or I’ll clout you both! I mean it! And you standing round, can’t you give me a hand? Do you want murder done?”
Somewhat ashamed, the landlord and the rest fell to and pulled the men away from each other.
“I were only standing against Joe’s hankering after yon Rosa,” said Charlie sulkily.
“That’s my business and I’ll thank thee to keep out of it, Charlie Lister,” retorted Lizzie.
“I’ve had nowt to do with yon daughter of Beaumont’s,” cried Joe, mopping his bleeding face. “Believe me, Lizzie.”
“Of course I believe thee,” replied Lizzie robustly. She laughed, and added: “Tha’s too soft and gaumless, Joe, to try any fancy work.”
At this the bystanders laughed, and even Charlie managed a sickly grin.
But the affair, to which this fracas gave even wider circulation, naturally did not enhance Joe’s reputation—or Rosa’s.
The workers’ wives, with the customary fierce morality of married women, felt indignation towards both, while their husbands showed resentment towards Joe—wasn’t Lister’s Lizzie good enough for him, that he must needs run after a mester’s daughter? The millowners’ wives thought there was no smoke without fire, and that haughty affected beauty Rosa Beaumont had only herself to thank for the scandal, while the manufacturers, their husbands, thought Joe Booth was getting above himself since he’d been made foreman—a stuck-up, pushing, plausible young scamp. They eyed him sardonically when he approached them, looked aside and said in a dry tone that they would let him know if any vacancy turned up.
However, Joe was too good a workman to let slip if you needed one whatever his morals, and after some weeks of hardship he was taken on at a mill higher up the Yarrow stream; but the mill was smaller, the pay and prospects poorer, than at Beaumont’s.
At Christmas the wedding of Joe and Lizzie took place as planned. But it was rather an uncomfortable affair. The two families had lived side by side, friendly neighbours, in the two central cottages of Beaumont’s Row, for upwards of twenty years; now they felt sore towards each other. The Listers were not really suspicious of Joe. Even Charlie had come round to a belief in his friend, but thought him a fool to have involved himself in such a silly affair.
“If he’d got summat out of it,” he grumbled lewdly, “I’d ha thought better of him.”
But they were all vexed with Joe. A highly respectable family, they strongly disliked being thrust into the pillory of public notice, and resented the slur on one of their womenfolk. Lizzie’s hearty scoldings kept them in line, and they did their best to behave with decent politeness at the wedding, but they looked cross and peevish.
On the other hand the Booths, who regarded Joe as a victim, suspected the Listers of suspecting him. Old Booth was still embittered by
his dismissal from the reservoir service, for which he (justly) blamed the Beaumonts, and he railed against them in a manner unbearable to Joe, who hated to hear the name of Beaumont mentioned. Mrs. Booth too, from whom Joe had inherited his sweet and loving disposition, distressed him by showing a most unusual temper; she stamped about with flushed cheeks and tightened lips, ready to flare up at any adverse hint about her son.
Under these discomforts Joe seemed at first moody and depressed. As they walked back together from church, hand in hand, man and wife, Lizzie tried to hearten him.
“Tha mun face it out, love,” she murmured in his ear. “Tha’s done nowt wrong. Stand up to ’em! I’m wi’ thee all t’way, tha knows.”
She pressed his hand. At this clasp, so warm and loving, Joe seemed reassured. He brightened up and became his usual self, gay and laughing, the life and soul of the party.
Both families hoped that once the wedding was over the gossip would die down and ordinary life resume its course. Lizzie, moving from the Listers’ cottage to the Booths’—a separate home could not be afforded—certainly received nothing but kindness from Joe’s mother and the younger children, and Joe proved a most affectionate and considerate husband. But old John Booth would not let them forget the scandal. The Beaumont name still haunted his lips, for he was quite obsessed by the Ling reservoir; he talked of it endlessly, walked up the valley regularly every Sunday, wet or fine, to look at it, and when rain was heavy exclaimed with relish:
“Ling’s filling! I hope Tom Beaumont likes her when she brims!”
A gloomy, sodden winter gave him plenty of opportunities for these remarks, which by reminding Joe and Lizzie of Rosa, continually replanted thorns in their hearts.
6
It was on the first Sunday in February that old John Booth returned from his usual walk drenched to the skin, but with a look of satisfaction and excitement.
“Well! She’s filling fast. She’s like to brim if this rain goes on,” he commenced as he hung up his dripping coat behind the door. The Booths, sitting round the bare wooden table at tea, gazed up at him without much interest.
Tales of the West Riding Page 6
