Collected works of j s f.., p.702
Collected Works of J S Fletcher, page 702
“Yes, yes!” he answered. “Yes, to be sure — I’ll go with you. There’ll be — things to be done, of course.”
He opened the door as he spoke, and from a peg in the narrow passage took down his old overcoat, a garment at which Trissie had exclaimed in disparagement for at least two winters. Carelessly thrusting himself into it, he turned to the open door of his landlady’s living-room.
“Mrs. Greenwood,” he said calmly. “I shall have to go with Miss Ellerthwaite in her car, and I shan’t be back to-night, so don’t wait up. My father’s dead.”
The woman, who had already heard the news from Milly, gazed at Bright as if wondering at his composure. But something had to be said, and she said it.
“Eh, dear!” she exclaimed. “An’ him such a fine, upstandin’ gentleman — and such a colour!”
“Aye, well, but it was his heart,” observed Bright. “Good-night, Mrs. Greenwood.”
He opened the front door and hurried Milly across the wet pavement into Ellerthwaite’s big, luxurious car. There were rugs in there, and an inside lamp by which things could be seen: he pulled one of the rugs from the front seat and carefully tucked it round his companion as if her comfort was the only thing to be considered at the moment.
“What a night!” he said, as he settled himself at her side. Then, as the car turned the corner of the street, and came out on the road that descended in long winding curves to the river and the town, he leaned forward, looking through the rain-dimmed window, and pointed to something far across the valley. “See that light?” he exclaimed suddenly. “That! — all by itself, right over there, at the far edge of the moor? That’s your house! Queer to think that my father’s lying there, just now — dead! He and I — we didn’t look at things in quite the same light, but after all, he was my father. And he was a good one. Do you remember, Milly, when he gave me a pony, and you used to ride it — behind me?”
Instead of replying, Milly Ellerthwaite, for the second time that night, put her hand into his, and held it close, and Bright realised that she was crying. At that, he kept her fingers in his, and thus, hand in hand, they journeyed in silence, down the wind-swept hillside and over the black river, and through the glistening streets of the town, and so came, at its further boundary, to the wide moor beyond, where the storm that had beaten Charlesworth Marrashaw to his death was still howling and screeching as if in triumph over its achievement.
II
AT ABOUT THE time of Charlesworth’s erection of the commemorative statues in the quadrangle of Marrashaw’s Mill he had been fired with another excellent idea, and had lost no time in materialising it. The dead and gone of at least three generations of Marrashaws lay in the churchyard of Haverthwaite: there were some ten or twelve Marrashaw graves immediately facing the door of the south porch; each grave was covered by a plain slab of stone, laid flush with the ground, after the common fashion of those parts, where until the middle of the nineteenth century any erect monument bearing the usual Christian symbol was regarded as an emblem of Popery. To Charlesworth’s thinking, this unobtrusive bestowal of his ancestors’ bones was not in keeping with the Marrashaw grandeur and glory, and after certain negotiations with the authorities, he obtained permission to erect a mausoleum on the spot where those remains lay. After his usual fashion he spared no expense in this undertaking. He had once spent a week-end in Genoa, on his way to the south of Italy, and had passed the Sunday afternoon in admiring the Campo Santo wherein are so many wonderful and beautiful moments of the departed Genoese. Nothing would satisfy Charlesworth but a mortuary chapel of equal artistic merit to what he had seen there, and he despatched a local architect and a local monumental mason to Genoa to see for themselves what the Italians did, and what they must emulate. Arrived in Genoa, these worthies heard of the still more famous Campo Santo at Pisa, and the architect telegraphed to Charlesworth about it: Charlesworth immediately wired peremptory orders to visit not only Pisa, but any other place where ideas could be picked up. Eventually, the Marrashaw mausoleum in Haverthwaite churchyard took the form of a reduced replica of the famous Capella Maggiore at Pisa: it cost Charlesworth an immense amount of money, and became a show-place of the town. Herein he set up tablets to the memory of his forefathers; here he buried his wife, and by her side he himself was now laid to rest.
All Haverthwaite turned out at Charlesworth’s funeral. From the gates of Marrashaw Royd to the centre of the town the roads and streets were lined with throngs of people: the procession which preceded and followed the hearse occupied some time in passing any given point. The Mayor, aldermen, and councillors walked in state; all the public bodies of the town and neighbourhood were represented: five hundred specially chosen employees marched as a vanguard; the number of private carriages which wound up the cortege ran into round dozens. It was eminently characteristic of the dead man that though, nominally, he had been a somewhat aggressive Non-conformist all his life, he had left express instructions that his funeral rites were to be conducted by the Vicar of Haverthwaite, with all the pomp and ceremony that could be introduced into the Anglican ritual: there were those present, cynical, satirical folk, who remarked drily that Charlesworth was always fond of a bit of display, and was not going to be cheated out of a chance of it at the end. As for Bright, compelled to play the part of chief mourner, he loathed and despised the whole thing: could he have had his own way he would have laid his father to rest in quiet and unostentatious fashion. But Charlesworth had taken care to leave full instructions about his obsequies, and Bright was forced to pay due regard to them. He was miserable and ill-at-ease, and Trissie, as he and she, chief mourners, rode side by side in the first coach wondered wherever her brother had got his funeral clothes, which she contrasted, much to their wearer’s disparagement, with the elegance and propriety of Victor Ellerthwaite’s attire. Just before they reached the churchyard she uttered a cry, almost a scream, of dismay.
“Bright!” she exclaimed. “You — why, good heavens, you’ve come out with your old hat!”
Bright, who was staring gloomily ahead at the mass of flowers piled above the hearse, looked down at the disreputable slouch hat which, in his abstraction, he had picked up in the hall at Marrashaw Royd as he led his sister out. He had worn that hat for at least three years — and it was not even a black one.
“I — I forgot the hat!” he said humbly. “I — I’m so little used to finery.”
“And your gloves!” said Trissie disdainfully. “The fingers are half off! And your tie’s getting round under your ear. Whatever will people say?”
Bright dragged his black cravat round to the front: all his life he had never been able to manipulate ties and collars: when he was at work he dispensed with such things.
“Does it matter?” he said. “We aren’t here to be looked at!”
“Matter?” exclaimed Trissie. “Of course it matters! Going to your father’s funeral in an old slouch hat. It’s — it’s low!”
“We’ll manage,” said Bright.
He emerged bare-headed from the coach at the churchyard gate, leaving the offending headgear behind him, and Trissie breathed freely again. But all the time that the committal prayers were being read, and in spite of her grief, which was as great as a young woman of her essentially shallow nature could feel, she was conscious that Bright looked very insignificant and even mean in his mourning clothes, and not at all the imposing figure that should have been found in the new head of the Marrashaws.
Of all the thousands who followed Charlesworth Marrashaw to his vault in the luxuriously appointed mausoleum, there were none, outside the family, who mourned him more sincerely than Lockwood Clough. Lockwood and his old employer had been intimately associated from boyhood. They had played together; gone birds’ nesting together amongst the woods and crags outside the town; they had always been in touch with each other as young men; as man and master they had kept up a long and friendly intercourse. Lockwood had always felt proud of Charlesworth’s doings: it afforded him a keen pleasure to see Charlesworth’s greatness, and to watch him wax mighty in influence and wealth: he knew Charlesworth’s weak points, small failings, and little foibles, but he also knew him for a big man in his way, and according to his lights, for a good and just, if a hard and exacting master. The news of Charlesworth’s sudden death had come upon him as a great shock: it reminded him that he, too, was growing old. And as he stood amongst his fellow-workmen at the funeral, and looked across the gloomy churchyard in the direction of Marrashaw’s Mill, from the roof of which a flag hung at half-mast, he wondered how things would go on now that the guiding spirit — a domineering, resolute, implacable spirit — had departed. He glanced doubtfully almost pityingly, at Bright, and shook his head: Lockwood was even more conservative in his ideas and sympathies than his dead employer, and in secret he considered young Bright to be poor stuff.
For more years than he could remember Lockwood had made a practice of resorting every evening between tea and supper-time to an old-fashioned tavern called the Flying Shuttle, where he drank a glass or two of ale, smoked a pipe or two of tobacco, and exchanged ideas on current politics with certain other frequenters of the bar-parlour, all, like himself, workers at Marrashaw’s Mill. Still in his funeral clothes he wandered round to the familiar resort on the evening of Charlesworth’s obsequies; half a dozen of his cronies were there already when he entered the low-ceilinged room; they too were still in the garb of mourning. And over their pots of ale and their long clay pipes they were talking of the events of the day.
“Ha’ you heard t’ particulars o’ t’ will, Lockwood?” asked the man by whose side he sat down in his accustomed corner. “I expect ye have?”
Lockwood picked up a clean churchwarden from the table in front of him and leisurely began to fill it.
“No,” he replied with a quiet smile, “and nobody else, I should think: it’s a bit early for that.”
“Then you’re wrong,” retorted his neighbour. He pointed the stem of his own pipe towards a man who sat opposite. “Ben theer has heard ’em. T’ will were read as soon as t’ family got back to t’ house, and as there were no secret about it, why, t’ news were spread.”
“Well — and what is t’ news?” asked Lockwood, when he had lighted his pipe. He was thinking, somewhat cynical, of the eagerness always shown by people when a dead man’s leavings were to be distributed. “It’ll none affect any o’ us particularly, I should say, whatever it is.”
Some of the other men in the room laughed slyly, glancing at the same time at the man who was in possession of information. He, a shrewd-faced old fellow, who wore an ancient top-hat perched on the back of his head, nodded at Lockwood with a look of superior wisdom.
“It affects more nor one ‘at’s present, if not all, mi lad,” he said, oracularly. “And thee i’ partiklar, so now then!”
“How me?” asked Lockwood, with a laugh. “I reckon ye know nowt about it!”
“Don’t I!” retorted Ben. “Isn’t my nevvy one o’ t’ clerks at Slater and Pilthwaite’s, and weren’t Slater and Pilthwaite Charlesworth’s lawyers? — come, now! An my nevvy wor i’ what they call attendance on Pilthwaite this afternoon when he read t’ will to t’ assembled company — so of course I know t’ contents, as you may term ’em — i’ a general way.”
“Well?” said Lockwood. “What’s he left thee, Ben?”
“Why, now then,” answered Ben. “A hundred pound! — me an’ every man ‘at’s been at Marrashaws five-and-twenty year gets that theer amount — a hundred pound each. Them ‘at’s been there fifteen years gets fifty.”
Lockwood looked round the smoke-filled room. There was scarcely a man in it whom he had not known all his life.
“Why, then,” he remarked quietly. “I should think all t’ lot on us here present’ll get a bit — we’re all old stagers.”
The other men laughed, and again glanced slyly at the giver of tidings.
“Tell him, Ben,” suggested one. “Let it out!”
“He’s done better by thee, Lockwood,” said Ben, suddenly. “He’s left thee a thousand! What’s ta say to that?”
Lockwood started and his worn face flushed a little. The others watched him in silence.
“We’d known each other all our lives,” he said at last. “We were lads together. I daresay he thought o’ that. However—”
“An’ ye were allus a bit of a favourite, Lockwood,” observed one of his neighbours. “We all knew that. But favourite or no, it ‘ud seem ‘at he’s remembered most on us — as far as I can make out, there’s summat for every man and woman, lad and lass, ‘at works i’ t’ mill, accordin’ to t’ length o’ labour.”
“Aye, that’s so,” assented Ben. “Everybody gets summat — down to five pound apiece for lad and lass. My nevvy, he says ‘at him and Pilthwaite, as they rode home after t’ will had been read, reckoned up ‘at t’ legacies, as they call ’em, to us workfolk’ll run into thousands on thousands o’ pounds! But that’s nowt, I reckon, to what he’s left — nowt!”
“And — how’s it been left?” asked Lockwood. He was wondering what the future of the great mill, at whose very gates he and his cronies were just then sitting, was going to be. “You’d hear that, Ben?”
“Aye, I heard that,” replied Ben. “I heard all t’ lot, and I’ve as good a memory as ever I had, and a bit better. There’s some money left to t’ town charities and institutions — a good deal. And as for t’ rest, t’ dowter has two hundred thousand pound, in a lump. That settles her — two hundred thousand pound she gets; no more and no less. That’s her portion, as they term it. And all t’ rest, t’ mill, t’ business as a going concern, t’ house at Marrashaw Royd yonder, all ‘at t’ owd chap owned, everything, brass, property, all goes to young Bright. That’s t’ lot. An’ my nevvy, he says, ‘at Pilthwaite said to him, on t’ way home fro’ t’ buryin’, at t’ owd feller were a deal richer nor what anybody imagined, and ‘at young Bright is now t’ wealthiest man i’ Haverthwaite.”
A deep and significant silence fell on the room. There was not a man there who had not either heard Bright’s speech at the Independent Labour Hall or read the Guardian’s report on it. And now each was thinking, not of the wealth into which Bright had come by his father’s sudden death, but of what Bright himself had said about wealth. Presently a man spoke who had hitherto kept silence.
“There’s nowt alters a man like comin’ into brass!” he murmured. “A man ‘at’s nowt at one time is varry different when he comes to ha’ summat at another. I’ll lay owt ‘at all that fine talk o’ Bright’s ‘at t’ Labour Hall a two or three nights ago’ll be relegated to Limbo, as t’ sayin’ is. It’ll be convenient to him to forget.”
Nobody made any remark on this, until one of the younger men opened his lips, with a somewhat uneasy glance at his companions, as if he were not quite certain of the reception likely to be given to his remarks.
“Well, I don’t know,” he said, diffidently. “Seemed to me ‘at he were in earnest. I couldn’t like to think ‘at t’ young feller talked all that just for t’ sake o’ talking. Besides — he were Charlesworth’ heir, then.”
“Aye — and Charlesworth were alive!” remarked another man, meaningly. “An’ might ha’ lived another twenty year, for all Bright knew. But now — now Charlesworth’s dead, and Bright’s stepped into his shoes, and, whatever he may think, there’s no denying t’ fact ‘at he’s a capitalist and an employer — and all t’ rest on it. An’ he’s already denied t’ right of any man to be — what he is!”
“What’ll happen?” asked somebody.
A very old man who sat in the darkest corner, and until then had made no contribution to the debate beyond an occasional grunt, leaned forward and smote his hand on the table before him.
“What’ll happen, say you?” he exclaimed. “I’ll tell you what’ll happen! Nowt’ll happen! All’ll go on i’ t’ same old way. T’ owd maister’s dead — theer’s an end on him. T’ new maister’s stepped in — he’s beginnin’. An’ he’ll be just t’ same as his father wor afore him, and as his father wor afore him, and so on to t’ very start o’ t’ chapter! Nowt’ll happen. Is young Bright a Marrashaw? Is them mills his? Does three thousand on us work for him? Answer me that theer! If onny on yer’s thinkin’ ‘at there’s goin’ to be a revolution, or ‘at t’ millennium’s comin’, or owt o’ that sort, then ye’ve less reason i’ yer craniums than what I hev! Nowt’ll happen! We shall go on workin’, and grum’lin’, and addlin’ wor brass, and t’ new maister’ll go on makin’ his brass, and he’ll dee a richer man nor what his pa wor! Never ye mind what he said at t’ Labour Hall — he wor nowt and nobody then, i’ a way o’ speakin’. But now! — now he’s t’ richest man i’ Haverthwaite, and howiver he wanted, it ‘ud be as hard for him to carry out them principles ‘at he wor so ready to preych as it is for a camel to pass through t’ eye of a needle as it says i’ t’ good owd Book — Mark my words! Nowt’ll happen!”
There was a further period of silence after this declaration: broken at last by one of the younger men, who observed, very quietly:
“I reckon it’ll be summat like that — things’ll go on as they allus have.”
Lockwood went home rather earlier than usual that evening. He and his daughter lived in one of a better-class row of small houses which Charlesworth had built near the river for the benefit of his foremen and overlookers, and he reflected as he entered his door that what with his savings and his legacy he was now comfortably provided for as long as he lived: Bright, he knew, would never dispossess him of his house. And then he suddenly remembered that according to her own story, Hermione was engaged to be married to Bright.
Hermione, who was deft and quick about household arrangements, in spite of her book learning and student habits, sat reading by the fire in the living-room; at her elbow the supper-table was laid, and from the hearth came an appetizing smell of cooking meat. At her father’s entry, she got up, and began to busy herself about the oven: she was always careful of Lockwood’s comfort and never allowed him to wait for his meals. He dropped into his elbow chair and watched her curiously as she moved about.
